Joining the Team

Two weeks ago I took an overnight trip to San Francisco to meet the other instructors who will travel to India.  I was met at the San Francisco airport by Bryce Johnson who has been with the Science for Monks program for several years.  In addition to working with the Science for Monks program, Bryce is a post-doctoral fellow at the Exploratorium, the science museum in San Francisco.  It was a nice sunny day as we drove north from the airport to the Exploratorium.

The Exploratorium is a wonderful place.  It was the first time I had been to this science museum and I must say it is now one of my favorite places.  All of the exhibits are hands-on and there are many demonstrations that show how the mind and senses work.  Soon I met two more of my traveling companions, Paul Doherty and Modesto Tamez.  Paul is a physicist who has been with the Exploratorium for 25 years and Modesto is science teacher who has worked at the Exploratorium for 8 years.  It was great getting a personal tour of all the exhibits at the museum from these experts!

For dinner we went to a Vietnamese restaurant (Modesto knows all of the best places to eat in San Francisco) where I met Richard Sterling.  Richard is an English professor who currently works at UC Berkeley; he makes the last member of our team.

The next morning we all met back at the Exploratorium to plan the two weeks of instruction in India.  We all agreed that hands-on activities with plenty of time of exploration, discussion and debate will work best.  Our days with the Tibetan monks and nuns will be divided into four or five periods of 90 minutes.  Each of us will take the lead for at least one of these blocks each day. 

I plan to discuss neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and the senses and help Paul, Modesto and Richard with their lessons about light, sound and writing.   We all seemed to get along and I look forward to working with this very talented group of educators.