JEKYLL
ISLAND -- Education reform and how to teach effectively within
shrinking school budgets without shortchanging students top
the agenda for a three-day gathering of Georgia science
teachers that began yesterday.
"Teaching has always been challenging," said Polly Cox, a
biology teacher at Brunswick High School. "The difficulty
today comes with more and more being asked of us as teachers
but we're not getting enough positive reinforcement or support
such as salary increases, which were eliminated this year, to
do our jobs."
Cox, along with Clelia Scott, science lab teacher at Golden
Isles Elementary School, are being honored for teaching
excellence by their colleagues during the Georgia Science
Teachers Association's annual Science and Leadership
Conference.
"As a teacher, what you have to do is shut out what the
Board of Education, the state and the governor is demanding
and focus on the kids," Cox said. "The whole purpose is
sitting in those desks. It's those kids. They're what being a
teacher is all about."
They are among about 1,000 science teachers from across the
state attending the conference at the Jekyll Island Convention
Center.
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Barbara King,
of the science center in the Griffin-Spalding County
school district in Griffin, reacts to the results of a
dry ice experiment at the conference.
-- Andre J.
Jackson/Staff
|
The conference features a
variety of hands-on professional development seminars allowing
educators an opportunity to share teaching techniques, lesson
plans and tips to challenge and motivate students to excel in
the sciences, math and technology.
The teachers will discuss concerns about effects of
education reforms under the federal No Child Left Behind Act,
as well as increased public demands to raise student academic
achievement levels despite school budget cutbacks, said Karol
Stephens, president of the 1,800-member association.
"Science teachers are great scroungers and good innovators
when it comes to improvising things to demonstrate our
lessons. But teaching science takes stuff. We've got to have
supplies, and supplies cost money, which is in short supply
because of the state and local budget crunch," said Stephens,
who also is science curriculum director for the Bibb County
school system.
She said the No Child Left Behind law is a double-edged
sword. It places more emphasis on the importance of science in
the schools, but unless teachers have the classroom tools and
support they need, then student achievement as measured by
test scores could suffer.
Cox, a teacher for 37 years, is the association's regional
High School ScienceTeacher of the Year.
 |
Science
teachers watch as water inside a coke can boils away and
later implodes when cooled during a demonstration at the
conference. Science teachers from across the state
gathered for the three-day convention on Jekyll Island.
-- Andre J.
Jackson/Staff
|
Scott, a teacher for 11
years, is the regional Elementary School Science Teacher of
the Year.
Cox and Scott were selected by their peers from among
science teachers in the association's District 10, which
includes school systems in 10 South Georgia counties.
Both were honored last night at the association's awards
banquet.
Success in the classroom, conference participants said,
also comes with sharing ideas.
Andrea Williams, a chemistry teacher at Bleckley County
High School in Cochran, teamed with Barbara King of the
science center in the Griffin-Spalding County school district
in Griffin to be lab partners in the "Dry Ice Day" session.
Equipped with gloves, dry ice, liquid dish detergent, a
balloon and some beakers of water, they learned how to do fun
experiments to take back to their students from
teacher-presenters Nancy Brimm and Kathy Switzer, DeKalb
County high school teachers.
The experiments showed how dry ice, which is frozen carbon
dioxide, is transformed directly into a harmless gas through
sublimation.
 |
Jay Williams,
a physical science teacher at Langston Chapel Middle
School in Statesboro, uses a gas-powered blower Thursday
to floating a rubber ball in the air during the Georgia
Science Teachers Association annual conference on Jekyll
Island.
-- Andre J.
Jackson/Staff
|
"The kids will love this,
especially with our Harry Potter and magic potions day," said
Williams, a 14-year teaching veteran as soap bubbles frothed
up out of a beaker containing dry ice and water containing
dishwashing liquid.
King, an educator for nine years, works with elementary and
middle school students. She said the conference "revitalizes
you as a teacher."
Many of the conference seminars were geared to teaching
science on a shoestring budget.
In a session called "Cheap Bag of Tricks," a team of
teachers taught their colleagues how to turn peanut M&Ms,
balloons, paper dots, a tube of toothpaste and a sharp pin
into Earth science lessons for elementary and middle school
students.
The candy resembles the Earth from its crust down to its
core. Sticking a pin into a tube of toothpaste allows the
paste to ooze out, forming a mound that gushes up like lava
from a volcano.
Students can replicate the "Big Bang" theory of the
creation of the universe with a balloon filled with tiny paper
dots and a black piece of construction paper covered with
glue.
Staff writer Teresa Stepzinski can be reached at
(912) 264-0405 or via e-mail at tstepzinski
jacksonville.com.
