Chemistry Teacher Enrichment Programs A Decade of Success Lee R. Summerlin University of Alabama in Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294
With the recent release of several surveys and reports, including those of the National Science Board and the National Commission on Excellence in Education, a great deal of introspection is occurring in funding agencies, professional scientific organizations, state departments of education, colleges, and universities to seek ways to reverse the erosion in math and science education. One aspect of the overall prohlem. and one receivine serious attention. is that of teacher training at both pre-service and in-service levels. I t therefore seems appropriate to outline a t this time some suggestions for teacher training based upon the successful plan we have used over the last 10 vears a t the Universitv of Alabama in Birmingham. Earlv in the development of our oroeram in chemical edu. .. catiton, it was nerelirary to make some major commitments and honest aporaisals and to establish realistic aoals. !+st, we decided a whole department that chemicaieducation was a legitimate area of chemistry and deserved major commitme& of resources and facultytime. Secondly, we realized that improving the chemistry background of high school teachers should result in better prepared freshmen for our university courses. We hoped that this would help curb the rising number of students requiring remedial work prior to heing admitted to the general chemistry sequence. Finally, we realized that snecial courses and soecial instructional formats had to be developed in order to'fit the high school chemistry teacher's schedule and allow us to work around other constraints. A major assumption was that emphasis should be given to uodatine and exoandine the backeround of hiah school teachersand giving them chemical experience dGectly applicable to their own classroom situations, rather than merely offering advanced graduate level chemistry courses. Our programs use a variety of formats and deal with a wide range of teacher background deficiencies and needs. The courses and programs discussed so far are programs that award graduaie &edit and apply toward teacher certification at the Master's and rust-Master's levels. These are offered on a rotating hasis thateasily permits teachers to earn the 12-18 hours their programs require.
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The Academlc Year Programs We developed two highly successful academic year programs for high school chemistry teachers, the first heing a eeneral survev of chemistrv with h e a w on new de- emphasis . " velopments, model building, and laboratory experiences. Teachers learn to make balloon models t o show sigma and pi bonding between atoms, use Styrofoam spheres to construct models showing the packing of atoms and ions in crystal lattices, construct simple spectroscopes, and make other teaching aids. The class meets one evening a week and is devoted to an overview of thechemical topic the teacherswill explain totheir classes the following week. The chemistry teachers look upon period" and take full advantage this as an e~tended"~lanning of the resources of the Chemistry Department to prepare themselves for elassroom activities for the following week. The second academic year program follows a different format and is designed to update chemistry teachers and introduce them to major chemical instrumentation. Teachers 698
Journal of Chemical Education
meet for a full Saturday each month for 10 months. Each Saturday is devoted to a specific laboratory instrument or a chemical technique. These include: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Electron Spin Resonance, IR and UV Spectroscopy, Gas Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry, and Thin-Layer Chromatography. The morning lecture emphasizes the chemical principles involved, the principles of instrument operation, and the kind of information obtained from the ins t r u m e n t . ~ f t e lunch, r each teacher receives hands-on experience with actual operation of the instrument. The day concludes with a auk-Althourh teachers do not become "experts," they do become familiar enough with these instruments to understand their operation, appreciate their use, and discuss them intelligently with high school students. Incidentally, a few of the high school teachers became so interested that they elected to sit in on additional graduate-level courses involving these instruments. Minl-Term Courses A series of short courses desiened for hieh school teachers was taught during two-week periods in e A y September and in December to correspond with the periods of low usage of departmental laboratory facilities. Although the format varied with different courses. the most nonular arrangement included three full-day ~ a t u r d a ysessibns with additional evening classes and take-home assienments. The most popular mini-term offering has been a course called the "Chemistry of Common Substances!' In this course, teachers have the opportunity to try out about 60 short experiments specificallv desianed to catch and hold student interest by ;nvolvingihem i n investigations using common, inexpensive drug and grocery store items ( I ) . Not only are these simple experiments designed as vehicles for the introduction of more sophisticated chemical concepts, hut they give the teachers greater flexibility in their laboratory programs and convince them that involving their students in laboratory work need not he such a formidable and time-consuming task. Although our p r o g r m are primarily intended for high school teachers. manv of our oarticioants teach a t the iunior hieh level and have transplanted this laboratory program intact as the laboratorv comoonent of their iunior hieh courses. Our feeling here is &at this program, alt60ugh ne;er intended t o he a complete laboratory experience for students, is certainly better than nothing, which is what most of them had hefore! Although most of our courses for teachers are activity or experience-centered, we did bend to their demands and designed two straight lecture courses, one in organic chemistry and one in biochemistrv. In both of these courses, teachers are brought up-to-date on chemistry content and are also encouraged to find the appropriate places in their high school programs where this material fits. A number of biology teachers also participated in these courses. The professors of these courses conscientiously provide an effective role model for the teachers, incorporating models, slides, overlays, and demonstrations into their well-organized, effective lectures. ~
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Technique Courses
In order to permit greater flexibility in designing and of-
feting chemistry courses forteachers, we reserve one course numher, CH 509, as "Techniques for Chemistry Teachers." As we develop new courses in chemistry teaching techniques, they are included under this general heading. Two such courses are repeated on a regular basis. The first is a course in "Apple Computer for the Chemistry Teacher," which emphasizes programming and use of the computer to support laboratory experiments. Participants also become familiar with availablesoftware. The second, and perhaps most popular, technique course is "Chemical Demonstrations." During this course, participants prepare, perform, and evaluate over 100 demonstrations especially selected and designed for the high school chemistry program (2). They are allowed to keep the solutions they arepare which encouraees them to take these demonstrations ~-~~ hirectly hack to their classrooms. Most of them need little encouraeement! Thev exhibit a level of enthusiasm in this course that we college professors seldom see in our students. This oroaram orieinated from an Exoert Demonstrator raining 'kctivity (EDTA) workshop, wkch the chemistry department conducted with soonsorshin of the American chemical Society. As with o& other iaboratory-centered courses, the chemistry department has prepared an extensive collection of experiments and demonstrations that is available to the teachers for use in this course. ~
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Other Speclal Interest Courses Several courses have been designed to he taught on weekends over a period of six months or so. One such course, orieinaring with a grant from the Drpartment of Fnergy, i s . ' ~ n vironmental Chemistry." This i~roaramis desianed to give chemistry teachers a better underst&ding of energy and how it relates to the environment. In addition to regular classroom activities, several weekend field trips are included, allowing teachers full opportunity to immerse themselves in environmental situations not typically encountered. Special Format Courses As our chemistry programs grew, more chemistry teachers were attracted from outside the ereater Birmineham area. including neighboring states. hise expansion progpted us develop a course to he offered in a correspondence format which could serve a wide geographical area. With the aid of a teachinp-imorovement grant from UAB. we developed a course in"~tdichiometry" to be taught b y correspondence. Teachers who enrolled in the course are asked to attend an orientation session a t UAB where they are given a small calculator, a textbook, and the first assignment. Assignments are graded immediately upon receipt a
