Muscogee County teachers describe Harvard Project Zero takeaways; district expects classroom changes
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Summary
Three Muscogee County School District teachers who attended Harvard’s Project Zero fellowship described classroom strategies—hip-hop pedagogy, thinking routines and participatory approaches—they have begun sharing with colleagues and using with students.
Three Muscogee County School District teachers who attended a Harvard Project Zero fellowship told the school board on Aug. 18 they returned with teaching strategies they have already begun sharing with colleagues and using in classrooms.
The teachers said the weeklong Project Zero program, supported through the Muscogee Educational Excellence Foundation (MEAF), reinforced viewing teaching as both an art and a science and emphasized student-centered, inquiry-based approaches.
Annette Gebhardt, a social studies teacher at Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts, said the week at Harvard reinforced the role of hope in teaching. "Hope is the certainty of why we were here," Gebhardt told the board, adding she plans to use ideas she described as "driftwood"—select key practices from the fellowship to bring back into her classes.
Nicole Ruiz, a first-grade teacher at David Magnet Academy, said Project Zero sessions included "hip hop pedagogy," design challenges and techniques that make student thinking visible. "If we took these ideas back home with us...imagine how engaged our students would be," Ruiz said, citing exercises that prompted teachers to rethink the kinds of questions they ask students and to use thinking routines to reveal student reasoning.
Robin Robinson, a fifth-grade math and science teacher at JD Davis Elementary School, described classroom strategies she implemented immediately after returning. Robinson said she used an exercise called "Who's in the room" to prompt students to reflect on the meaning of their names and to build classroom identity. "We don't teach at them. We bring them in and join them into the teaching process," she said, describing how the exercise changed student self-perception and classroom discourse.
A representative of the Muscogee Educational Excellence Foundation (MEAF) introduced the fellows and said the foundation will support follow-up professional development as teachers pilot strategies across the district. MEAF staff named during the presentation included Karen Cook and Andy Luker; Tasha Mormon and Will Thompson were also introduced as board or partner representatives.
Superintendent Dr. Lewis thanked the fellows and MEAF. The board acknowledged the presentations during the district-wide recognitions portion of the meeting and discussed the fellows' plans to share their work with colleagues across schools.
District teachers who attended Project Zero said they have already run professional-development sessions at their schools and expect more rollouts this school year. Examples supplied to the board included design challenges that model engineering thinking, exercises to surface student thinking, and arts-based approaches to engagement.
The teachers and MEAF representatives framed the fellowship as a professional-capacity investment rather than a policy change; no board action was required or taken on the item during the meeting.
MEAF described the program as "Project Zero classroom at Harvard University" in materials presented to the board and noted the district will continue to coordinate with MEAF on professional-development activities going forward.
