Tag - Teachers

Mad About Science Week – Pam Schmidt

When it comes to doing science, I’ll volunteer for anything – fear is not a factor for me. Then I visited Pam Schmidt’s class at Thunder Ridge Middle School in Centennial, Colorado… and 49 of her pet snakes! That’s right, at 5:30 in the morning, I was greeted by a room full of enthusiastic kids all holding snakes – big snakes. Each snake has a name – there’s Phantom, a 12′ 11″ Albino Burmese Python and Jazira, a 16″ Blotched King snake. Pam loves snakes, and shares that passion with all her students who learn plenty about their biology, habitat and eating habits. Read more.

Video: Day three of the Steve Spangler Mad Scientist Tour slithers to Thunder Ridge Middle School for a reptilian experience. 6 a.m. October 5, 2005.

Mad About Science Week – Fred Sherrer

When you work on the morning show of a news station, getting up early is just a way of life. The alarm clock went off at 3 AM this morning and I was on my way to meet another great teacher. The kids at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lakewood love Fred Scherrer. He makes science come alive for 4th, 5th and 6th graders. Most days you’ll find him in his white lab coat, hunched over some kind of hands-on experiment that gets his kids all amped up and ready to learn. Read more

Video: Day two of the Mad Scientist Tour takes 9NEWS Science Guy Steve Spangler to Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lakewood. 6 a.m. October 4, 2005.

Mad About Science – a week-long salute to amazing science teachers

I approached my television producer with this idea several months ago… let’s invite viewers to nominate their favorite science teacher to receive a special visit from our morning crew at their school during our “Mad About Science” week at 9NEWS. My producer didn’t even have to think twice about the idea – do it! Within the first few hours after we made the announcement on-air, emails were coming in from all parts of Colorado. Every teacher nominated was worthy of a visit, but travel to some of the far reaching areas of Colorado played a factor in the selection process. The producers selected 5 amazing teachers who have their own special way of getting students excited about science.

Video: Day 1 of the Mad About Science Tour takes 9NEWS Science Guy Steve Spangler to the University of Northern Colorado on October 3, 2005.
We hit the road and made our first stop at the University of Northern Colorado to visit Professor Courtney Willis who prepare students for a career as classroom teachers. But these are no ordinary teachers of science… these pre-service teachers are getting hands-on experience in learning how to create science lessons with impact.
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Laugh! Here come teachers with humor

Comedian, motivational speaker and magician Brad Montgomery has three children, ages 4, 7 and 8. My own kids are 6 and twins aged 3. All we have to do is tell each other what the kids did and we have plenty to laugh about.

The same thing happens with teachers. Just write down the funny things that happen throughout the year.

You can always tell the sign of a healthy school if you go into a teachers’ lounge at lunchtime and the teachers are laughing.

When people say: “Brad, we need our school to be more fun”, the first step is to decide that it’s OK for that to happen. I have seen people who are the most dour, sour, uptight people in the world and you can tell they are not funny. In fact, they are the opposite of funny. Funny is not allowed. Some teachers are like that.

Everything will follow if you not only allow yourself to be funny, but you allow others to be funny. How do you do it? Just laugh yourself. The next time something crazy happens in your classroom – laugh. Everyone else will see that, and they will realise you have and cherish a sense of
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Make $1000 writing a lesson plan… JUST DO IT!

When opportunities like this comes knocking… answer the door! Teachers are encouraged to enter lessons for grades K-8 that highlight innovative investigations and exciting experiments on the subject of chemistry for an opportunity to win cash awards from the Chemical Educational Foundation (CEF).

The Foundation will award $1,000 as first prize, $500 for 2nd place entries, and $250 for 3rd place entries in the three categories of Scientific Inquiry, Structure of Matter, and Safety and Recycling. The six winning lesson plan entries and their authors will be published on the CEF Web site, www.chemed.org.

This year CEF is adding an extra prize for those who submit early! The first 50 entrants to the competition will receive a complimentary You Be The Chemist kit. The YBTC kit for grades K-8 features detailed lesson plans, vocabulary, assessments, activity sheets, homework opportunities, and experiment materials that consist of non-toxic household items. A tool that strives to be both educational and fun, You Be The Chemist provides chemistry concepts with real-world references.

For complete details, rules, regulations, guidelines and submission categories, visit www.chemed.org. Contest deadline is October 21, 2005.Â