CU biology institute program hosts first elementary school teachers

From left, Marie Halse, second-grade teacher at Averill Park Central School; Nadine Hayes, kindergarten teacher at Chittenango Central School; and Karen Harris, fifth grade teacher at Schodack Central School, perform an experiment on magnification in Stimson Hall July 7 during the Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers program for elementary school science teachers. Robert Barker/University Photography

By Stephani S. Pierce

The Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers (CIBT) has expanded its highly successful, 11-year-old summer program for high school teachers with the inclusion, for the first time, of elementary science teachers.

From July 5 to 7, 30 elementary school science teachers from across New York state attended a Cornell workshop that included lectures by professors, hands-on lab exercises for the teachers to use in their own classrooms, and field trips.

CIBT director Rita Calvo said the impetus for starting a program for elementary school teachers came from the institute's high school teacher alums. "They said, 'You need to do this for elementary school teachers,'" Calvo recalled.

Since the CIBT began in 1989 under the direction of Peter Bruns, professor of genetics, with funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, more than 250 teachers have completed a three-week summer program to update their knowledge and teaching skills in molecular biology.

The teachers -- mainly from upstate New York as well as from Boston, Cleveland and Hartford -- also learn some of 50 new laboratory exercises that are designed for high school classrooms and are developed in collaboration between teachers and university scientists.

In addition to teaching the new information and labs to their students, the teachers have trained dozens of other teachers.

Calvo said she was reluctant at first to widen the program to include elementary teachers because the content covered in the program would be so far removed from college-level science. When the elementary teachers' program was first conceived, the institute organizers believed they "would be lucky to have 20 applicants," said Calvo. In fact, they had more than 200.

Calvo said she thought this was partly because of recently adopted New York state regulations that require all teachers applying for permanent certification after Feb. 1, 2004, to have 175 hours of professional development, with one university class credit equaling 15 hours. Certified teachers will be required to have 175 hours of professional development every five years.

The summer institute is "just the beginning" for both high school and elementary teachers in the program, said Calvo, because the teachers return to school from the workshops to test the effectiveness of what they have learned. Also, it's hoped that the elementary teachers will make contacts with local high school teachers and set up collaborations with them.

The lab exercises, which were the main focus of the elementary teachers' workshop, were the result of a process that began in the fall of 1998 when high school and elementary school teachers contributed their initial ideas. The teachers met at Cornell in December of that year to brainstorm their ideas, went off to develop their topics and then presented the labs to each other in summer of 1999. During this past school year, the teachers field-tested the exercises in their classrooms. At each stage of this process, less successful labs were dropped while the best were fine-tuned. Some of the collaborating high school teachers taught the material to their students who in turn presented classes at the elementary schools.

The July workshop was both the culmination of that process and the starting point for teachers to begin using the most successful labs in their classrooms in the coming school year. They include a "bat activity kit," which includes videos on bat behavior, bat games, counting exercises and books on bats; a "teeth lab kit," which includes books on children's teeth, sets of animal teeth, and petri dishes and agar, so that children can see how much bacteria there is in their mouths before and after brushing their teeth; and a "flexible camera kit," which includes a video and a set of microscopes.

Although the elementary school teachers have the texts of the lab exercises, they also will be able to borrow the actual equipment from the CIBT's lending library. Susannah Burman, the lending library's outreach coordinator, has provided each teacher with a list of equipment for loan. Additionally, each new institute alum will receive a $200 gift certificate to buy supplies from Wards Scientific Co. of Rochester, N.Y.

When, at the close of the three-day workshop, Calvo asked the assembled teachers where the CIBT should be going with its programs for elementary school teachers, it was clear that the institute had successfully impressed the participants. When Calvo asked if the institute should continue to do more for elementary school science classes, the teachers responded unanimously and loudly: "Yes, more."