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M.S. Science Teachers Return Renewed

Contributed By SYSTEM

Last week the Middle School science team traveled to Portland, Oregon for the National Science Teacher's Association Conference. We spent an amazing three days in a variety of presentations and workshops. Every evening the team met for dinner and enthusiastically shared what we learned that day. Our dinner conversations ranged from how to better use technology in our classrooms, to how to extract DNA with our students from their own cheek cells. We even spent the plane ride home reading materials we gathered at the conference and helping generate ideas for ways to incorporate all of our new knowledge into our curriculums.

As a rookie teacher, this was an amazing experience. I learned a lot about science education and was able to spend time with the rest of my team in a way that would not have happened had we attended a conference locally. I came back to school with renewed enthusiasm for teaching science and a million ideas swirling in my head. On Monday morning I came in early and rearranged my room using the advice of another science teacher and already I see my classroom as a more productive environment. I have incorporated several lesson ideas from the conference into the fifth grade curriculum and finally set-up my blackboard site so it is useful to my students. I have even heard myself answering students' questions with the prefix "At the conference I just went to.....".

As you have probably gathered, this conference was a great experience for me and all of the other science teachers in the Middle School. When you see us on campus, ask how it went, but be prepared to talk for a while because we are all pretty excited to share our new knowledge and ideas. What science geeks!