Assist of the day: One of the past NDeRC fellows approached me and asked if we needed help in biology at all because she had experience with teachers through NDeRC and Bioeyes. She wants to continue her work with teachers – you’ve made a good impression on her. And, yes, I did take her up on her offer:)

Quote of the day: Lynda Rose, a chemistry teacher from Penn HS who doesn’t like to speak in front of crowds, made the statement of the day, IMHO. She was stressing the importance of reaching all students and howguided inquiry can help us get there. Then she said, “We’ve done difficult things before, and we can do difficult things again!” (Amen!)

Observation of the day: Prof. Marya Lieberman made an interesting point: if we can teach graduate students to present a particular lesson over and over in various classrooms, couldn’t we do the same with parents? If there were even a few interested parents, they could help in classrooms all over and not just in their children’s schools.

Interesting idea of the day: One parent suggested parent/child workshops on topics of science. One idea: I recently read about a Title I school that had quarterly parent/student meetings that focused on one subject each quarter plus they had an additional parent meeting each quarter where they learned the math that their children would be working on that quarter. Through this, they were more able to help their children with math homework.

Stay warm,
Beth

NISMEC activities: http://www.nd.edu/~nismec/nismec11.htm
Read and contribute to the NISMEC wiki at: https://nismecwiki.wikispaces.com/

Teachers using probeware in apples (photo taken by Phil Sakimoto)

Well, here we go! I am the new facilitator for North Central Indiana STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). I have visited many professional development activities over the summer and have heard the need from K-12 STEM teachers to have someone available to help them when they come across a problem. I hope to be that person!

Two groups of middle school/intermediate school teachers met for 1 week each to learn about Vernier LabQuest and probeware. They created lessons that would use the probeware that they got to keep for their classrooms. Prof. Gordon Berry has written a grant to provide probeware for more intermediate centers in the South Bend Community School Corp. – let’s hope we get it! I am available to help those of you who have probeware in your classroom and am cited numerous times in the grant proposal as being on various committees to help those of you who are slated to receive probeware in the future. OK, the classroom is more fun than a committee, but I didn’t write the grant proposal:)

Well, let me know how I can be of help to you either now, before school commences, or later when you can’t remember how your probeware works.

I have created a wiki at:  http://northcentralistem.wikispaces.com/ I hope that you will spend time there sharing your successes and frustrations of teaching science, math, technology and engineering to students young and old. Please visit early and often to see where you can help out another teacher. Remember that the whole is better than the sum of its parts:

whole > teacher1 + teacher 2 + teacher3

– Beth