BZS ‘Thrilled’ With MOU For Signature Schools
The Bermuda Zoological Society [BZS] said they are “thrilled to have signed a formal MOU with the Bermuda Public School System and looks forward to working alongside and with the other organizations that have partnered with the Signature Learning Reform to provide amazing opportunities for Bermudian students.”
A spokesperson said, “Since September 2022, BZS Educators have been working several days a week both in CBA classrooms and in the field to allow students to experience science first-hand alongside experts at the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo and BZS using real-world scenarios and data.”
“The BZS took the view that we wanted to support this initiative right from the start to provide as much as value as possible in the development and implementation of curriculum that met our mission of “inspiring appreciation and care of Island environments” and which fully overlaps with inquiry-based learning and STEM methodology” said Ms. Akinyi Apopa, Chair of the BZS Education Committee and a teacher in the Bermuda Public School System.
The spokesperson said, “To prepare for this new initiative and to meet the new demands at the senior level of the school system, the BZS hired a new educator and a curriculum designer to ensure the highest quality in both the STEM educational materials being developed and their delivery. Additionally, the BZS Education Department has been engaging in significant professional development over the last three years to ensure the best pedagogical practices such as student-centered learning, scientific inquiry, project-based learning and engineering design are being implemented in the classroom and the field.”
Ms. Lisa DeSilva, Education Reform Unit Lead expressed, “BZS has been right there with us during Bermuda’s Education Reform journey, and have been an invaluable ally and co-contributor to the effort to transform schooling and learning for our students. Having played an active role in the school design process, they are now pioneers of the Learning Partnerships feature of signature schooling at CedarBridge Academy.
“They were the first external partner to not just commit to supporting this new vision for learning, but actually following through on that commitment by co-delivering a key module of the STEM Signature for S1 students in Semester 1, and another in Semester 2. As Bermuda’s School System continues to transform, we will look back on these early efforts of partners like BZS to navigate this change together as critical to the overall success of the reform.”
The spokesperson said, “Over the course of this first year students have learned how to think and act like a scientist and engineer through our 10 Science and Engineering Practices. They have developed their critical thinking skills to research credible background information, formulate a research question, design investigations, develop methods, collect and analyze data, and form conclusions.
“Students truly are the center of their learning experience and have many opportunities to try out their ideas, reflect and revise, and try again. Investigations have included an engineer prototyping investigation with boat design, a descriptive methods study of Bermuda’s sea turtles, and a comparative habitat study for Bermuda’s marine habitats. Additionally, they were exposed to the use of drone technology to enhance field research and learned the mechanics of machine learning and AI, creating their own training protocols to teach the computer to recognize objects.”
“To be able to work with these students on these courses allows us to build upon knowledge as the semester progresses. Being able to see the students weekly in class and in the field has created a unique learning opportunity that allows students to explore a more hands-on approach and gives them more autonomy in their learning both in and out of the classroom” said Mrs. Sarah Holmes, BZS Educator.
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