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.
- We got Alabama!
- August 2, 2017: Alabama Career Technical Education Summer Conference, Birmingham, AL
- There is a new TIES Teacher Corps Member in Virginia Beach, VA, Therese Whitehurst.
- I wrote a proposal for a workshop in Virginia, one of our TIES Teacher Award winners, Christopher Moran, has agreed to present for us in the event the proposal is accepted.
- I spent a good part of the weekend “blitzkrieg-ing” about half of the US states with e-mails about TIES. Responses came from South Carolina, West Virginia, Nevada, and Idaho. These states are sending TIES information to teachers across the state. I am fielding a couple inquiries from Nevada today.
- A successful TIES Partnership will take place in Lancaster, PA on June 2. A biologist at Franklin & Marshall University will be visiting a high school class in Lancaster.