Passion in education

             Tuesday was a great day, we visited Orange County and Dan brought us to a couple of places.  Our first stop was at the Marine Institute . This is a very special organization. This place educates kids about Science in general and about ocean in particular. Also, during their programs kids develop such qualities as leadership and ability to work in team, learn how to solve problems and puzzles. Stop. Did I say kids? Kids of ALL ages. 

Everybody who comes there is super excited and passionate about what they do or what they learn.  So, as I mentioned there are some programs. One of the program puts kids on the ship and they spend two days and 1 night there (for sleeping they return to the institute itself), exploring the ocean blue. During these 2 days they are young sailors, make teams, solve puzzles and problems and learn about the ocean blue. But it is better to see once then to read 100 of times.

 Here you can find a video about the institute. And I can’t not mention about the great CEO they have.

 He is not only super kind and hospitable; he is also a good businessman with outstanding way of thinking. It was a great pleasure to spend time with such great and smart people as he and Dan.(to be honest I really admire people I meet here, they are amazing, smart and awesome, but it is another topic) Oh, I forgot to mention that there are a lot of volunteers, who work in the institute. They are with very different background – students, teachers, retired businessmen. But the thing which connect them – is passion to what they do in the institute, love to the ocean and desire to share the knowledge. We left the

place with lots of ideas and fully inspired for the next step.

Our next step was a lunch ;)))) We went to my favorite Souplantation (great thanks to Rogers who showed us this place).

 It is a great place with unlimited salad-bar, soup, and super tasty desserts. Super healthy and you get complete nutrition for your body. 

After such a good meal we went to Westminster Middle School. We’ve seen many schools so far, so such things as fully equipped gym or school orchestra do not impress us that much anymore. But STEM lessons keeps impressing me cause I kinda like Science and wish we had had more Science lessons at school. Again it was a great pleasure to see so inspired and passionate about engineering and Science kids with the great plans for the future. “I took one lesson of STEM last year by chance and then I realized that I want to be an engineer and now I am here. Mum told me that if I am good at it I can start working for my uncle in Chicago, he has a big company. It is a great future. I want to be an engineer” – shared with us one of the kid who was presenting us his robot.

Do you think it is enough for one day? Absolutely not! We also conducted a webinar for students from Iowa Institute. We told them about Russia, about our project, about education in Russia. Students who are doing their Master in Teaching were very interested, ask lots of questions, answered our questions. I worried a bit before webinar as I like more when I see the audience and can interact with people. But it was perfectly participatory and interactive ;) (we couldn't see more than 9 people at once, but in total there were about 25 participants ;))

On our way back home we talked to a very nice guy in the train, who works for Panasonic and travels around the world and buy different companies and who did his Master in Soviet Studies. Usually I don not discuss politics a lot here, but this talk was super interesting as he says – “to understand the current situation in the Ukraine you need to know history, many people do not.” I totally agree. And in the end it is just a big game with the cost of people’s lives.

And we finished the day with the nice walk from the Oceanside to our favorite Carlsbad, watched sunset and took some photos.