District News

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The following district directors have submitted news items for NCSTA members:

• District 1
• District 2
• District 3
• District 5
• District 6
• District 7
• District 8

Not sure which district you are in? Check out the district map at the bottom of this page.

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News from District 1
Director: Colleen Karl

The school year is underway for the educators, administrators and students in North Carolina with everyone feeling rested and ready from the extended summer break. I know many of you are trying out new teaching strategies that you practiced over the summer at specialized workshops all over the country. I am proud to be a part of a group of dedicated professional teachers who constantly seek to improve what they are sharing with our students through professional development. With that said, there are several excellent opportunities coming up this fall that you won’t want to miss. On November 10th and 11th, the NCSTA Professional Development Institute is scheduled in Greensboro, NC. For all of us veteran educators, we recognize this as a time to build important contacts with people who share the same professional interests; for all the new North Carolina science teachers, you can not find a better institute to gather new ideas, preview new educational products and to feel a part of the strong state support force for science education. I hope to see all of you from District One in Greensboro for the 2005 exciting agenda.

Another special opportunity for environmental educators is happening right here in Eastern North Carolina. On November 4th –7th, the 15th Annual Environmental Educators of North Carolina Conference will be held at the Eastern 4-H Center in Columbia, NC. “Connecting Through EE for a Greener Future – a Natural Convergence at the Scuppernong” is this year’s theme with strands for the sessions to include EE Trends and Techniques, Coastal Connections, Sustainability Education and Exploring the Environment through Arts, History and Health. The best part I left for last. Teacher scholarships are available to help fund your trip to the Northeast from a support grant from Progress Energy. Applications are being accepted through September 16th, 2005 from Rachel Golden at 919-733-0711 or Rachel.golden@ncmail.net.

News from Dr. Linda James and Dr. Rhea Miles, for the whole region, includes the following events and happenings at East Carolina University. The Science Education Faculty at ECU is sponsoring a Student NCSTA Chapter. Any student with an interest in teaching science is invited to become a member. The chapter will host monthly meetings focused on science teaching in the classroom. Guest speakers, field trips, exploring equipment and activities will also be part of the fun. Contact Dr. Linda James at JAMESL@MAIL.ECU.EDU if you have an interest in science teaching. And Linda also reports that the Science Ed Online program at ECU is BOOMING --more information can be found at http://personal.ecu.edu/jamesl/online.html. Both Dr. James and Dr. Miles would like to welcome Tammy Lee to the department at East Carolina University. If you have not checked out what is going on over at the Center for Science, Math and Technology Education at http://www.ecu.edu/cs-educ/csmte/ , you will find recaps of the exciting summer staff development programs and links to programs for the upcoming year.

Many of the science teachers in the Northeast participated in summer initiatives and workshops. At ECU, the Revitalise Project challenged the participants to explore data visualization techniques. Cadre II included teachers from Elizabeth City, Windsor, Edenton, Greenville and many more from around the state and also from the distance-learning site at the University of Illinois. The diagram featured is a dimensional mapping project that the teachers created with the sophisticated software from this project. The technology of the future… how cool! See the homepage at http://revitalise.ncsa.uiuc.edu/index.shtml for additional information. Five of the Northeastern teachers participated in the summer Millpond Academy in Edenton, NC in early June 2005. The Millpond Academy is the kick-off to a year of student research on Bennett’s Millpond – this project is sponsored by a HHMI grant and administered by The Science House at NCSU. The teachers and the Millpond students have this week to interact with environmental specialists and to learn new technologies. Do they look like they are having fun and also learning? Read more about starting your own community-learning project at http://www.science-house.org/student/hhmi/millpond/academy/.

So, put your efforts in place for the students of North Carolina, and enjoy the 2005-2006 school year!

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News from District 2
Director: Barbara Stroud

Congratulations to Walt Gray (Science Coordinator) in Pender County. He was accepted into the North Carolina Science Leadership Association (NCSLA) Fellows Program. Anyone who would like to learn more about the program go to the NCSLA website at www.ncsla.net.

In May, teachers and students participated in EstuaryLIVE, a real time computer program that brought the Rachel Carson Estuarine Reserve in Beaufort to the classroom computers. The program featured the study of blue crabs, oysters, water quality, geology/dredging, weather as wellas carving decoys, and sand sculpting. These were live, interactive sessions that students participated through the Instant Message Board. Visit http://www.estuarylive.org for future programs and to get involved.

Students from four Pender County schools participated in the regional ROCAME Jamboree on Saturday, April 16. The event was held at North Brunswick High School. Approximately 200 students from Brunswick, New Hanover, and Pender County Schools participated in the event, which was coordinated by the Region “O” Council for the Advancement of Minorities in Engineering Board of Directors.

Area industry and educational leaders established the ROCAME program in 1979 to encourage minority students in grades 6-12 to pursue careers in math, science, engineering, and technology. Each year the ROCAME program provides over 1000 minority youth in the region with opportunities to visit colleges and universities, tour area industry, improve academics through peer tutoring and mentoring, obtain leadership skills, and participate in community service projects. Annually, ROCAME awards two scholarships to program participants who pursue higher education toward attaining a degree in math, science, engineering or technology.

The organization’s major project is the annual ROCAME Jamboree. This event provides hands on engineering related competition for students in the region. This year’s award winners from Pender County are:

Quiz Bowl Middle School: third place – Elwood Lee, and Terrance Luines (Burgaw) and Tyrese Hansley and Maurice Corbett (West Pender)
Quiz Bowl High School: second place – Keith Simpson and Shama Batts (Pender), Danielle Daniel and Tyrell Hicks (Trask)
Chemistry Clue: first place – Adia Clark and Shama Batts (Pender)
Chemistry Clue: third place - Danielle Daniel and Shenequa Smith (Trask)
Egg Drop Middle School: first place - Terrell Ingram and James Murphy (West Pender)
Write-It-Do-It Middle School: second place – Donovan Lofton and Terrence Luines (Burgaw)
Write-It-Do-It High School: third place - Deondrea Moore and Chris Newkirk (Trask)
Mystery Architecture Middle School: second place - Michael McIntyre and Tyrese Hansley (West Pender)
Pentathlon Middle School: second place – Kadijah Hatchell and Danquan Smith (Burgaw) and Diamond Moore and Terrell Ingram (West Pender)
Pentathlon High School: third place – Natishia Stringfield, Rasheed Johnson, Tierra Lewis, and Raymahl Sutton (Trask)
Whitney Eakins a seventh grade student at Burgaw Middle was named Regional ROCAME Middle School Student of the year.
Jessica Lewis, a senior at Heide Trask Sr. High School was named Regional ROCAME High School Student of the Year.

At the end of the day’s events, Pender County was declared overall winner with 80 points, Brunswick County was second with 79 points and New Hanover County was third with 77 points.
Pender County ROCAME students are advised by Gloria Garrsion and Karen Lindley, West Pender Middle; Tabitha McAdoo, Burgaw Middle; Patricia Henry-Smith and Darlene Lewis, Heide Trask; and Marie Eason and Daisy Larkins, Pender High. Joyce Keith, Community Schools Coordinator, is the program’s coordinator and serves as the county’s representative on the ROCAME Board of Directors.

In New Hanover County, K-5Science Coordinator, Maggie Guggenheimer states that second grade science teachers are gearing up for another exciting year with “Investigating Life Cycles” using chicken eggs. This is their 3rd year and the children love it.

Another neat idea for the elementary teachers is the creation of a program using science kits. Science kits from various supply companies have been assembled for each strand of the SCOS. Teachers receive these kits, use and return them, and then receive another. This is a great idea!

UNC-W Science and Mathematics Education Center is likened to a gold mine. A plethora of workshops and services are offered to educators. There website has a wealth of information, please check them out at http://www.uncw.edu/smec.

Peggy Sloan is a wonderful contact person at the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher. If you get on her mailing list she will send information about workshops in and out of our state. Her email address is peggy.sloan@ncmail.net.

In Brunswick County many opportunitieswere given for workshops during the summer. One of these was the Coastal Ocean Research and Monitoring Program(CORMP). The program began in 2000 as “an exploratory coastal research program focusing on collection of data applicable to physical and ecological predictive models, fisheries sustainability, and water quality in the coastal ocean of southeastern North Carolina.” Visit the website www.cormp.org to learn more about this fascinating program.

Congratulations to Dr. Ralph Smith in Wayne County for being selected as the Wayne County Science Lead teacher. We wish you well in your new position facilitating science education.

Students involved in Technical Students Association (TSA) participated in the national conference in Chicago June 28-July 2. Eastern Wayne High School won 4th in Chapter Team. Michael McKnight won 2nd in Technical Sketching and Application and 5th in Engineering. Norwayne Middle won 8th in Environmental Challenge, 1st in Medical Technology, and 2nd in Agriculture and Biotechnology. Congratulations to all!

Joyce Thorpe from EWHS attended an “Ag in the Classroom” workshop July 18-20, sponsored by Farm Bureau in conjunction with NCSU. The workshop was a comprehensive program designed to foster a greater appreciation of agriculture among our state’s young people. Teachers were provided with professionally developed curricula materials that enhances high school biology students’ understanding of and the appreciation of agriculture.

Lenoir County elementary teachers attended science workshops during the workdays at the beginning of school. They were shown science demonstrations that correlate with the SCOS. A follow up workshop will occur in October.

I know that all of you are busy, but please take the time to send me information. I hope to see many of you at the Professional Development Institute in November.

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News From District 3
Director: Mike Talley

As part of an on-going professional development cycle several high schools in District 3 have created book clubs where the whole staff reads and discusses current educational issues and topics. Listed below are the current titles and schools.

Book	Schools
Breaking Ranks II	Knightdale
Classroom Management That Works	Millbrook
Doing School	Leesville
Fires In the Bathroom	Sanderson
Fires In the Bathroom	Sanderson
Fires In the Bathroom	Sanderson
Fires In the Bathroom	Sanderson
Fires In the Bathroom	Sanderson
Framework For Understanding Poverty	WF-RHS
Interdisciplinary Curriculum	East Wake
Secrets of the Teenage Brain	Southeast Raleigh
Secrets of the Teenage Brain/Teaching with the Brain in Mind	Southeast Raleigh Enloe
Teachers Do Make A Difference	Cary
Teachers Do Make A Difference	Middle Creek
The Big Picture	Middle Creek
The Differentiated Classroom	Green Hope
Welcome to Our World	Green Hope
Welcome to Our World	Broughton/Green Hope
Welcome to Our World	Wakefield
Whatever It Takes	Enloe
Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites	Garner

East Wake High School has been awarded a New Schools Project Implementation Grant to redesign its existing campus into four small autonomous learning environments. The first school is to be a small learning community formed around the Health Science field.

Three Enloe High School students earned three of the top scores on the culmination exam at the 2005 Resource Conservation Workshop (RCW) at North Carolina State University (NCSU). The RCW is a week-long summer conservation camp that offers 100 high school students from across the state a unique outdoor experience in learning about natural resources management and conservation techniques. First, second, and fourth places were captured by Shin-Ping Lao, Samantha Powers and Miles Huang, respectively.

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News From District 6
Director: Debbie Michael

Welcome back to school! I hope everyone enjoyed their long summer. I hope you got energized through staff development and got lots of rest. I hope everyone has a great year!

Stephanie Jacobs writes that she, Dina Baxter, and Leonard Hawkins are implementing a new grant at Lincolnton Middle School. The grant is titled CSI:Lincolnton. Good luck to this group of hard working teachers and have fun!

Congratulations go to Kathy Bosiak of Lincolnton High School. She was recently named NC Outstanding Earth Science Teacher. Way to go, Kathy!

Cindy Moss writes that she had an extremely busy summer here in science in CMS. With the new adoption materials we kept busy training nearly 5000 teachers K-12 in science. The most exciting trainings were with the K-5 teachers, because they had 3 days to learn about the inquiry materials, the literacy materials, and all the components of the textbook series. All of the new software for science K-12, is not posted on our intranet system, so teachers were given the opportunity to learn to use it effectively and efficiently. We adopted McMillan McGraw Hill textbook + kits and our teachers are so excited about the possibilities! We had a Science Warehouse that delivered kits only to each school every 10 weeks, but the reality of the situation was that less than 10% of the kits were even opened, and many of those were only  missing cups and plates when they returned (indicating that the class may have had a party). I knew that we could no longer have science be something that happened in only a few select classrooms, so we adopted materials that allow any good elementary teacher to be a good teacher of science. McMillan McGraw Hill said that no school district anywhere in the country has ever attempted such a massive and intense training. We paid the teachers $75/day stipends for their attendance and the only way they got their Teachers' editions was to come to training. We ran 12 3 day sessions and the energy of the teachers was overwhelming!

For middle school our teachers also received 3 days of training. The middle school adopted materials are McDougal Littell and this training. Even though we have always had scheduled science classes for 6th-8th grade students, the reality of this situation is that most science classes became remedial math after Christmas. We also knew that nearly 80% of our middle school teachers had less than 24 hours of college science, so intensive inquiry training was required. This training also centered around teaching to "Big Ideas", using graphic organizers, teaching using reading guides, and alternative assessments.

Our high school teachers received 2 days of training, because at the high school level we have been tested and understand the requirements of our EOCs and AP exams. Much of this training was in using the new PowerPoint presentations, LCD projectors, laptops, virtual labs, and performance assessments that accompany our adoption.

We are also using the "Big Ideas of Science" K-12 as the connecting themes for all science in CMS. Helping teachers understand the value of teaching to Big Ideas and constantly tying new learning to former understanding was a focus of our summer training. It doesn't sound like that much when I write it down, but I can assure you, it was overwhelming and exhausting at times, but I feel that adopting new materials without meaningful training would be wasteful.

On October 1st, we're having a "Celebrate Science" event at Discovery Place. Discovery Place is going to have free admission that day and we will have master teachers K-8 setting up inquiry experiences in various rooms. Our goal is to encourage parents who care about science to come see what should be happening in their son/daughter's classroom, the new NCSCOS, the materials provided for the teachers, and the excitement of science. We're having a teleconference with Sally Ride and students will submit questions to ask her. We also have a panel of local scientists so that students can ask them how they got to be real scientists and try to find out what scientists do. My goal is to equip parents with enough information to ask questions at their son/daughter's school, so that we can make sure science really is happening there.

Please check out all the staff development opportunities that are available from UNC- Charlotte. http://education.uncc.edu/cmste/ee/.

UNC- Charlotte will also host the Advanced Placement Science Alliance Meetings on September20. October 18, November 15, February 21, March 21, and April 29 for test review.

Have a great year and let me know if there is anything I can do to help you!

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News From District 7
Director: Jane Crosby

Carolyn C. Elliott, 2004 President of NCSTA, has been appointed to the Awards and Recognition Committee by the National Science Teachers Association. Carolyn's three year appointment began July 1, 2005 and she is one of only two high schoolteachers on a committee of ten across the nation.

Nominations are needed for awards for distinguished science teacher at the elementary, middle and high school levels ASAP!

AMS DataStreme courses offer 3 hours of FREE graduate credit. Fall courses have begun but keep spring in mind. Classes are on-line except for 3 face-to-face meeting with your facilitators. Email me for more info or go to the American Meteorological Society web site.

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News From District 8
Director: Kyle Carver

The 2005-2006 school year is off to a great start in District 8. Evidence of this can be seen in almost all areas of our district. Some examples are from our past District Science winners. Clearmont Elementary School in Yancey County was listed among the 25 most improved schools in the state. This was in large part due to the leadership of Kay Ball, our 2004 District winner. As you may recall, Kay and some of her colleagues wrote a grant that brought in 1.3 million dollars for the school of less than 150 students. Kay was selected as Teacher of the Year and will be attending a conference in Hawaii.

Our 2003 District winner was Mark Etheridge, a science teacher at Tuscola High School. who is continuing the exciting experimental studies in the Great Smoky Mountains.

We have suffered a loss as Beth Allen has resigned as Director of the Math-Science Center at WCU. She has moved back to the mid-west to be closer to her family. We wish Beth the best.

Other innovations are helping improve science education in the western part of our state. The following example was given by Alexsandra Voso Mull Lawson at West Henderson High: “Henderson County Public Schools in conjunction with Learning Innovations at WestEd (200 Unicorn Park Woburn, MA 01803) spent a week over the summer developing midterm assessments for every EOC course. These comprehensive local assessments provide quality control for technical and ethical issues, address policy, leadership and professional development, link data about resources, programs and practices, student results to planning and engage teachers in ongoing evaluation of the assessment system. Each EOC had a team of 4 classroom teachers, selected from different schools throughout the district.

We were challenged to make a midterm assessment that was alligned with the curriculum standards, followed the format of the EOC's and that would provide interpretive data so that classroom teachers could assess not only individual student progress but their own teaching methodology. The goal of all this work was to have a uniform finished product to be utilized district wide at the halfway point of each EOC course. It is our hope that having a local accountability system that is founded on standards-based instruction and high-quality assessments will improve student performance on all standards-based tests and exams, including the EOC's.

The science department of any secondary school now carries the lions' share of EOC's, therefore a disproportionate amount of accountability for the ABC's is science based. By having an EOC-like assessment at midterm, science teachers across the county can make adjustments to pacing guides, reteach weak objectives and identify and intervene with individual lower performing students.

If your school or district is interested in pursuing a local assessment, feel free to contact Kathy Revis at Henderson County Public Schools 414 4th Ave. West, Hendersonville NC 28739 (828) 697-4733. ”

Our district is very proud of our NCSTA President, Renee Coward. Renee organized and conducted an outstanding Director’s and Officer’s retreat at NCCAT this summer. As a result of this retreat there will be great things ahead for NCSTA.

I would like to thank the science teachers of Western North Carolina for your support over the past four years. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to serve you.

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The Science Reflector
Newsletter of the North Carolina Science Teachers Association
PO Box 1783, Salisbury, NC 28145
Elizabeth Snoke Harris, Editor