This 8-week program selects top teachers in the STEM fields to come to the University of Delaware for a unique experience.
Why Come to the Labs?
Cutting-edge research can really connect you and your students with the trajectory of learning. That is, the answer to the question, "Why do I need to know this?" Teachers will see and understand how engineers use all of the challenging concepts being taught in school, in their research. However, perhaps most importantly, our teachers come out of our program even more excited about teaching. There is access to faculty and students that few other teachers have. There is unparalleled access and support for learning about new concepts.
Each day, lectures and hands-on experience give teachers a new way to cover topics and introduce vocations into their classroom. Further, the connections teachers make in our program, last. Teachers from this program engage in more visits with their students, and their students tend to be a part of our other programs.
Why the Lending Library?
The lending library model is designed to make the information and new knowledge learned in the labs useful to our participant teachers as well as teachers in the region.
Through careful guidance by a science education expert, as well as technical support by the faculty-host, teachers reflect on their current curriculum to develop new hands-on curriculum using their newly found research concepts.
The key is: developing units that enhance and extend, rather than replace current curriculum. Adding more teaching demands is not, generally, a successful approach to helping teachers. However, finding a new way to teach a difficult concept (e.g., electron transfer) can make the difference between understanding and loving a concept in the classroom.
What Happens to the Units?
Each teacher/participant will develop a unit in a team. They will consult with both our science education expert and their faculty host on content, pedagogy and construction. Once the unit is complete, they will be able to use one copy of the unit in their classroom and one copy will reside in our lending library, for any teacher to "check out" for their classroom.
In this way, we can increase the impact of the units, to teachers unable to attend our program. It just makes sense.