From: Raleigh McLemore (raleighmclemore@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Feb 25 2002 - 10:37:56 PST
Message-ID: <20020225183756.63090.qmail@web13006.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 10:37:56 -0800 (PST) From: Raleigh McLemore <raleighmclemore@yahoo.com> Subject: Help for Chemistry Teachers
First, after a recent conference on nuclear energy I
was given a couple of geiger counters. They are bright
yellow and friendly. They make clicks that I am told
come from radiation. I like them a lot and have given
each a name ("Wogie Norple" and "Exploding Poptart",
thanks Daniel Pinkwater!). You may borrow them if you
need them, but you need to pick them up and return
them. I'll use them to confuse and vex my fifth
graders.
Second, I'm passing on the following message:
This announcement has been posted by the California
Science Education
Advisory Committee (CSEAC).
_____________________________________________
TEACHER-LED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR HIGH SCHOOL
CHEMISTRY TEACHERS
Due to the current teacher shortage, especially in
science and math,
many
new chemistry teachers are teaching with emergency
credentials, are not
chemistry majors and have had little or no training in
conducting a
laboratory course. In addition, little opportunity is
given to
collaborate
with other teachers with similar student audiences and
content levels
especially since most schools only have between 1-3
teachers delivering
this
content even in the larger urban schools of
3,000-4,000 students. There
has
always been support for the higher level AP Chemistry
teachers through
the
College Board with test-driven content and available
workshop training,
but
what of those of us teaching regular and honors level
chemistry?
Content and
student audience, focus and interest is very different
at these levels.
In response to these needs, we have developed our
own Chemistry
Teacher
Support Group to lend a hand and to encourage
collaboration among all
chemistry teachers. The Chemistry Department of our
local university,
California State University, Northridge, has given
great support to our
efforts by sponsoring our group, participating and
providing space for
meetings and most importantly, by hosting space on the
university
server for
a new High School Chemistry Listserv, Website and
email services. In
addition, local community college Chemistry
Departments have also
joined our
group bridging the high school - community college -
university gap
which
addresses incoming student expectations, exploration
of local resources
and
other forms of support and community collaboration.
In a few short meetings, our local, teacher-driven
professional
development group has accomplished much. And in only
few short hours,
subscriptions to our listserv topped 246 individuals
nationwide and
even
worldwide. News about our website, which provides
additional networking
and
resource information to all chemistry teachers, is
slowly getting some
notice and recommendations for improvement. Local
users have become
accustomed to it's ever-changing environment which
allows for the
trading
and sharing of equipment (locally), nationally and
internationally (if
requested), recommendations and evaluations of
pre-packaged laboratory
kits,
professional resources, workshop and summer research
opportunitites and
automatic posting capabilities for job announcements
and needs.
What had originally started out as a local
voluntary service has now
expanded into a resource for all high school chemistry
teachers.
Regardless
of the size of our nationwide and possibly worldwide
audience, our
goals
remain as originally intended. Our vision is to
provide an environment
of
easily accessed, teacher driven, staff development
with a focus on the
sharing of best practices and collaborative
development of standards
based
teaching materials, benchmark assignments, laboratory
experiments,
demonstrations and assessment tools. Our future plans
include the
development of ways to collect and evaluate student
performance data in
conjunction with the website for the use of all
teachers.
We welcome all to participate in this project
developed for the
benefit
of high school chemistry teachers everywhere. Log on
and utilze the
website
resources, post and participate in the listserv and
communicate with
teachers involved in delivering the same content with
high standards
and
positive student outcomes. This is collaboration at
its best between
new and
veteran teachers working collectively to establish
exemplary secondary
school chemistry programs for the benefit of all
students everywhere.
Visit: http://www.csun.edu/chemteach. To join our high
school chemistry
listserv, send an email to majordomo@csun.edu, put
nothing in the
subject
line and in the body of the email write: "hschem-L
subscribe."
Submitted by:
J. Flint Baumwirt, Project Director CSUN Chemistry
Teacher Support
Group
cts@csun.edu
With firm handshake,
Raleigh
__________________________________________________
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