The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) stresses the importance of promoting teacher leadership in the United States. Here at TIES we feel that our fellow teachers are our own best resources. We are looking for high school and college biology educators who are interested in presenting our TIES workshops to middle school science teachers in their state. Our reasoning is that a middle school science teacher will typically cover many areas of science within his/her annual curriculum, including earth science, physical science, and life science. It is virtually impossible to become an expert in all of these areas, at least not initially. The purpose of TIES is to inform interested middle school science teachers about the most up-to-date concepts of natural selection, common ancestry, and diversity in order for them to confidently cover the topics in their classrooms and fulfill their curriculum requirements. In addition to providing science teachers with innovative professional development opportunities, TIES also has ready-to-use online resources for the classroom, including presentation slides, labs, guided reading assignments, and an exam.
- I wrote up proposals to present our materials at two state science teacher conferences, one in Florida and one in Missouri. Both conferences are next October. I secured a presenter in Illinois who can travel by car to the Missouri conference in the event our proposal is accepted.
- We had two successful workshops this week, a district-level workshop in North Carolina and another at the Annual NSTA Conference in Los Angeles.
- Our Kansas presenter and I had a good phone conversation this week to prepare her for her April 22 workshop in Wichita.
- Kenny is working on getting teachers registered for our two upcoming zoo workshops.