Ninety-nine elementary teachers were called into action July 27-28, 2005, at the Hands-on Science Boot Camp to explore new and creative science integration strategies for making science education come alive in their classrooms. Named Operation Just Do Science, the intensive two-day, hands-on science training targeted early childhood through third grade teachers who wanted to make science more fun and meaningful in this classrooms.
I overheard a group of teachers on the elevator this afternoon talking about calling in “sick” in order to attend this amazing conference (NAEYC 2004 – see previous blog entries). Why? Because their school administrators don’t support this type of continuing education. And we wonder why our education system is failing! How is a teacher supposed to learn new teaching strategies and techniques without surrounding him or herself with other professionals who are experts in their field? In other words, teachers need to attend conference and professional development seminars just as doctors, lawyers and other professionals do. Let me go out on a limb here and guess that your doctor, dentist or lawyer doesn’t have to lie to anyone in order to attend a conference. Professionals don’t have to lie to further their education in order to better serve their clients. Hmmm? Maybe we might want to start treating teachers like professionals and stop complaining when they ask to attend a conference.
If your child’s teacher is out sick this week, think twice. She just might be in California with 25,000 other early childhood teachers at the largest conference of its kind in the world. Anaheim, California is host to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) annual conference. The doors flew open at noon today and the exhibit hall looked like a life-size ant farm with thousands of people scrambling for every free thing they could find. It didn’t take long for science hungry teachers to find our booth and cash in on the free Tornado Tube offer for the first 1,000 teachers. This year we’re fortunate to have 6 teacher Ambassadors from our Hands-on Science Institute behind the booth to share their teaching ideas that are guaranteed to make science fun.
