Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO (1888PressRelease)
July 08, 2007 - If you peeked into the Chicago Room at the Jones Center for Families a couple of weeks ago, you might have seen a group of adults carefully adding icing rivers to cookies, working intently on moving a toy pirate across a table (no hands!) or identifying their "nests" just by their sense of smell.
Who were these people? Area teachers at the Education Station's summer workshops.
Those who don't teach may imagine that teachers spend their summers relaxing by the pool, but actually they put many hours into preparing for the upcoming year and honing their professional skills. The Education Station, Northwest Arkansas's teacher store, is offering workshops in July and August to support these goals.
"It's always important," says trainer Rebecca Haden, "but this year it is especially so, because the new standards for both social studies and science are now in place, and that means a lot of changes."
Haden has a Masters degree in Linguistics, is a Certified Arkansas History Teacher Trainer, and has done teacher inservices on Arkansas History for a decade.
"It's always hard to fit Arkansas History in," she says, "but now teachers are having to come up with new ideas for the new standards. Our philosophy is that teachers deserve to have fun at the workshops, and they need to be able to walk out with a complete unit. So that's what we do."
Scheduled workshops are as follows:
Tuesday, July 24 Cinderella Around the World
Thursday, July 26 Arkansas History K-2
Tuesday, July 31 Insects Across the Curriculum
Thursday, August 2 Arkansas History 3-5
Tuesday, August 7 Physical Science for Primary Grades
Thursday, August 9 Arkansas History for Middle School
All the workshops are at the Jones Center for Families, in Room 218, and pre-registration is required.
Call 756-8985 for more information.
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