I had the pleasure of observing several of Ms. Kane More's classes at Olympic Heights High School, in Boca Raton, Florida. In addition to performing the function of the Science Department Chair at Olympic Heights, Ms. More also teaches several classes including Honors Biology, Advanced Placement Biology, Honors Chemistry, and Honors Genetics. Her Honors Genetics class is one of only two such courses taught in the Palm Beach County Public School District. Ms. More utilizes a confidence in her command of the subject matter coupled with an established rapport, apparently built upon both the respect and admiration of her students, to create an engaging environment for her tenth to twelfth graders. She is an example of teaching "made to look easy".
Ms. More acknowledges that since the students she teaches are typically "high achievers", she doesn't have to spend much time dealing with the behavior issues which are not uncommon in many other classroms. She does, on the other hand, have to think of new ways to initiate challenge with her students. Ms. More periodically includes them in making decisions concerning the learning format the day's lesson. She may allow the teenagers to choose between "lab and lecture" ona given day, or, they may proceed independently through a series of pre-lab handouts, after which Ms. More publicly engages each of them in review. Ms. More believes her students tend to have more ownership in lessons, which they have helped to format, resulting in their elevated participation and achievement. She also has the luxury of entrusting them to execute group tasks with a measure of maturity and efficiency which she "should expect from honors and advanced placement students". When preparing to begin a lab one day, Ms. More embarked upon the dreaded "transitional" exercise of going from a lecture to a lab in the middle of an eighty-five minute block session. She led me to believe that this wonderfully calm procession of students, crossing each other's paths as they picked up papers from five different piles throughout the classroom, should be expected due to their level of committment, as learners. (I suspect the student's behavior had much to do with HER expectations of them, as well.) She did add a disclaimer, of sorts, something along the lines of "don't try this with a new group kids", which I felt was a nice way for her to say "don't try this until YOU know what YOU'RE doing".
I found, through my observations, that Kane More truly lives out her motto with her students. She believes that "learning is an active, not a passive, process". I experienced a fun and engaging environment where the students, and the teacher, respect one another and seemingly value the points-of-view being forwarded within the classroom
-- Steven Johnson, Florida Atlantic University