Stealth Gerontology®

Stealth Gerontology® - Teacher Professional Development Workshop

 

*Registration Form

 

Date: July 28, 2011

Title: “You Somnolist! Sawing Logs with Your Polysomnogram!”

 

Description:

Have a ‘somnorific’ time exploring many physiological and chemical aspects of sleep and its importance in overall daily function, learning, and long-term health.

 

Using teacher-made, scientists-approved learning materials, teachers will explore the world of sleep highlighting interdependence among systems, living organism’s capacity to maintain a stable internal balance in response to external and internal stimuli, critical thinking about scientific studies, models, and representations of sleep. Kinesthetic and tactile games and activities that teach about brain waves, neural sleep patterns, melatonin, and a ‘sleep sleuth’ are part of this science, health, and literacy TEKS aligned workshop.

 

No charge – everything is free and provided to upper elementary and secondary teachers by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Voelcker Family Foundation. Web links to learning materials and related resources will be provided. Colored print copy will be available for participants. Teachers may bring a thumb drive to download free PDFs and slides. Parking will be validated.

 

This workshop is hosted by the Teacher Enrichment Initiatives, and its Positively Aging®, Stealth Gerontology®, and Voelcker Biosciences Teacher Academy.

 

Workshop objectives include:

Participants will be able to:

• Identify critical attributes and use a list of root words, prefixes and suffixes to assign complex names to pictures of animals
• Use a list of root words, prefixes and suffixes to infer the general meaning of complex terms
• Assign kinesthetic symbols to selected words and teach the selected words to the class
• Use sleep-related terms in context by stating their meaning and using them in a sentence
• Distinguish between stages of sleep
• Recognize the difference between types of brain waves
• Examine the changes that occur in major body systems during sleep
• Convert tabulated information into a graphical representation
• Analyze a polysomnogram to identify what each line is measuring, i.e. EEG, EEK etc.
• Observe a polysomnogram and identify the stage of sleep and/or specific wave patterns, sleep disorders, etc.
• Compare (labeled) polysomnograms of patients with unknown (unlabeled) patient polysomnograms to infer the stage of sleep and/or specific wave patterns and sleep disorders found in the unknowns.
• Solve a “sleep mystery” involving polysomnogram analysis
• Identify the stage of sleep and/or specific wave patterns, sleep disorders, etc.
• Compare known (labeled) polysomnograms of patients with unknown (unlabeled) patient polysomnograms to infer the stage of sleep and/or specific wave patterns and sleep disorders found among the unknown polysomnograms
• Observe how organ systems are interdependent.
• Identify steps to organizing a ‘dark skies’ challenge.

Science TEKS areas addressed:

Scientific investigation and reasoning

Organisms and environments

 

Reading/Literacy TEKS areas addressed:

Reading variety of texts

Reading comprehension

Reading literary response

Reading inquiry research

Reading culture

 

Health TEKS areas addressed:

Health Behaviors

Health Information

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Stealth Gerontology®:

Amazing strides have been made in extending the lifespan and enhancing the quality of life as people age. As a lifelong process, aging well is important to us all. The World Health Organization*(WHO) encourages ‘active aging’ – optimizing physical, social, emotional, and financial opportunities that help individuals live well throughout their life course and help communities provide ways for all to actively participate in societal and cultural affairs. One of the goals of healthy aging is to maintain our personal autonomy and independence, as well as sustain our interdependent and intergenerational contexts.

 

Thus what is so important in society finds its way into our classrooms when teachers attend our Stealth Gerontology® Workshops. Teachers learn about cutting edge aging research and train with an array of learning activities that can be easily, and stealthily, infused into the regular curriculum and still teach those tough educational standards. Teachers, join us! Prepare students for what lies ahead and provide them with tools to shape their futures.

 

Social Studies classes exploring concepts related to developing and developed nations, population dynamics, GDP, invention?

• Science teachers examining survival curves, body systems, cellular processes?
• Math teachers demonstrating application of density formula, areas of irregular polygons, plotting point?
• Reading teachers engaging in biographies and narratives, reader’s theater and vocabulary development?
• Cultural and psychological studies looking at differences in views on various age groups, role play?
• Career studies exploring new training and service paths?
• Health teachers need self-assessment and goal-setting tools?
• Physical Education teachers need break out activities and playful ways to learn about nutrition, obesity, body image?

The benefits of these lessons last a lifetime as teachers and subsequently their students:

• acquire understanding of growth and development across the life span
• debunk stereotypes and myths related to perceptions of aging
• learn about and adopt health-promoting behaviors
• cutting edge aging research
• careers and services for the aging population

*http://www.who.int/ageing/active_ageing/en/index.html

 

Please see our publication, Educational Gerontology, 30: 691-710, 2004.

THE STEALTH GERONTOLOGY® PROGRAM: Training Teachers To Infuse Aging And Age-Related Content Into Public School Classrooms

 

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