Well, I'm only a little late. I'm not sure if I want to give away too much about the WestCAST thing here, but I do want to talk a bit about what exactly the project is. A couple of weeks ago a buddy of mine came up to me with a proposition. Imagine that, as a person who is specializing in English/Language Arts, one of the first jobs you are able to get is that of teaching ninth grade science. Unfortunately, that kind of scenario is not too uncommon. As such, she was gathering a group of people from different disciplines to try to come up with approaches to science that break convention pretty hard. I was intrigued, so I signed on. After several meetings with the group now (people studying to teach Spanish, Inclusive Ed, Social Studies, English, and so on), I now have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do with myself. It's actually kind of risky. To give a bit of a preview, coming from my Philosophy background, my intention in teaching science is to communicate that science is inherently unfinished and that the goal of it is not to communicate a set of objectively true facts but to find flaws in what we know in a constantly continuing process of refining humanity's knowledge. As such, I intend to get the students pretty involved in argumentation and questioning what they are told. There is one slight hold-up however, in that I think I may need to talk to people about ethical clearance before I go ahead on things. It's a risky idea I have, but if it turns out it could be an incredibly memorable and powerful experience for potential students. For the WestCAST workshop, this is all hypothetical, but as I'm aiming to teach at the elementary level, sixth grade science may well be something I'm teaching sooner rather than later, and I'd love to implement something like this. More to come closer to the February 23rd presentation date.