The Center's First Turbo Institute
In three days, 15 teachers walk the Brooklyn Bridge, explore the World Trade Center site, design lesson plans, and learn the beauties of the Salvadori pedagogy.
By the Salvadori Staff • For a PDF of this article, click here. • Posted July 20, 2007 • Click on pictures to enlarge them.
In The Beginning...
"Turbo" [TUR-boh] -- meaning "fast," "charged," like being powered by a turbine engine -- the perfect definition of the Salvadori Center's first-ever Turbo Institute, a three-day, concentrated sprint through the Center's tested built-environment, project-based pedagogy.
From July 10 to July 12, 2007, fifteen teachers from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx as well as Westchester County and Plainfield NJ, ranging across all grade levels and subject areas, gathered at the Center's office on the campus of City College of New York to learn how to integrate the built environment into their classrooms.
And On The First Day...
Day One, titled "Walk Like A Tourist," was designed to get people to notice the built environment around them as if they had never quite seen anything like it -- exactly the way tourists do when they come a new and unfamiliar place. Participants were given a journal and asked to record their observations as they made their way through the day.
Turbo Institute participants visit
the World Trade Center site.
The staff had set up a series of activities to get the participants into "tourist mode," including a "scavenger hunt" for structural elements as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, a guided tour of the Skyscraper Museum, and a visit to the World Trade Center site and an active construction site (the former arranged by Salvadori Board Member Frank Lombardi of the Port Authority, the latter by Salvadori Board Member Keith Behnke of F.J. Sciame Construction).
Unfortunately, the staff couldn't control the weather (it turned out to be the hottest day of the summer so far), but the teachers kept on being "turbo tourists" and rounded the day off with a cool debriefing over food and drink, sponsored by the Center.
And On The Second Day...
Day Two got right to the heart of the Salvadori pedagogy. First, after sharing the thoughts they had written in their journals and viewing a PowerPoint presentation on "Architecture's Greatest Hits," they dived into a discussion of just what, exactly, the term "built environment" meant and how its various meanings could be blended into their specific teaching situations.
Mapping the solar system in the neighborhood.
With this discussion as a framework, the staff took the participants through a set of hands-on mini-projects that showed them how the Salvadori pedagogy weaves the principles of architecture, engineering, and the design process -- the very things that they had noticed as "tourists" -- into the curriculum's individual subject areas.
For example, they were asked to redesign their schools' façades based upon what they had learned about architectural styles and elements, which touched upon both art and history. And then, as a follow-up, they had to create a two-story scaled structure built out of I-beams (from cardstock templates) that required them to learn how to engineer a structure for their façades, which touched on math and science.
And On The Third Day...
On Day Three, again after sharing their observations and thoughts and after a spirited discussion about the meaning of the term "project-based learning," they plunged into creating and demonstrating their own versions of a Salvadori-style lesson plan that they could use in their own classrooms.
And so, after a three-day race through Salvadori's 30 years of built-environment experience, the "turbo teachers" came to the finish line exhausted but nourished. One teacher remarked that she found that "a lot more than the visible elements…constitute a structure," and another found himself wondering "should a built environment not complement the natural environment." Others mentioned how, even after a few days, they were already seeing things with "fresh eyes" and "becoming aware of the shapes and patterns around me," and all of them were glad to be leaving the Center with, as one person put it, "a powerful resource to reach my students."
Related Salvadori Professional Development Links
- Read accounts of previous Salvadori Center professional development programs: the 2005 Election Day Workshop at the Skyscraper Museum and the 2005 Summer Institute
- Learn about the Center's Professional Development programs
For More Pictures
See a slideshow from the Turbo Institute.
Mission of the Salvadori Center: Our founder, Mario Salvadori, a world-renowned structural engineer, believed that the built environment held all the knowledge that a person needed to be an intelligent and active member of the community. What teachers need to make this knowledge available to their students are tools with which they can “unpack” the knowledge embedded in the built environment.
The Salvadori Center gives these tools to teachers and students through a pedagogy grounded in what it calls “project-based, hands-on/minds-on activities” that employ the principles of architecture, engineering, and the design process. Through this method, teachers and their students can unlock the math, science, art, and humanities embodied in the structures and systems that surround them.