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Staff
Ganderia Middle school has one paid teacher. Community members and parents volunteer, either
weekly or when their schedules permit, to come in and teach topics of
interest
or expertise. Parents
also
volunteer in many other ways, including transportation, cleaning the
classroom
and the bathrooms, fundraising, chaperoning on field trips and camping
trips,
and recruiting.
Head
Teacher
Susan Bryant - Susan earned a degree in Human Ecology from Connecticut College and from there literally made the world her classroom. Susan studied wildlife biology and management in Kenya, developed a program to enlist experts from public and private organizations to serve as role models for rural high school students in Madagascar and trained teams in environmental conservation with the Madagascar Peace Corps, created curriculum for students in China on sustainable development with the Sustainability Education Center, served as Director of Curriculum Instruction at the Port Sailing School, consulted for the mentoring program for the New England Board of Education to bring professionals together with students underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (S.T.E.M.) careeers, and developed a cross-cultural curriculum for the Afghanistan Provincial Reconstruction Team through the International Resources Group, LTD.
Susan has presented hundreds of teacher training workshops in math, science, social studies and environmental education at college education classes, national and statewide teacher conferences and at museums, zoos and aquaria. The workshops featured participatory activities for teaching complex population and environmental issues in appropriate ways and received high praise for their relevence to real world issues, appeal to diverse learning types, utility in multicultural and bilingual classes and adherence to national teaching standards. Susan wrote "Multiplying People, Dividing Resources" curriculum for middle school math, which focuses on issues of human population growth.
Most
recently Susan has been involved in documentary film making, serving
various roles including producer, director, sound recorder and
educator, both in how to use the equipment and how to bring filmaking
into the classroom. She was involved in a project to bring
documentary filmaking to students in South Africa. Susan has a
long list of film credits that include "The Education of Shelby Knox",
"Tecapi Kin - Young Lakota", "In Debt We Trust", "Harlan County, USA",
"The Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing", Zambia's first African feature
film "Bad Timing", "Frontrunner", filmed in Afghanistan where she
earned the nickname "MacGyver", "Listopad", filmed in the Czech
Republic, and "Gerrymandering", a film about political electioneering
in the U.S.
Volunteer
Teachers
Tim
Brophy - Art
Dareth Law - Spanish
Danielle Tran - Music
Carl Costanzi - Science