Joining a pilot study, field test, or research study can be a fun great way to learn new content and new teaching skills. Typically, you get access to interesting, new curriculum and you get to implement it while working with a team. It’s more social than traditional teaching, and it causes you to reflect on some area of practice you may not have considered before.

The most recent GSTA newsletter contained a call for Georgia and Alabama high school biology or environmental science teachers to participate in research on modeling, which has been given new emphasis in the Next Generation Science Standards. It even includes some financial compensation. See Models and the Standards near the bottom of the most recent GSTA eObservations for more information, or contact Daniel Capps as quoted in the excerpt below:

“Our team was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant to further pursue this idea [modeling] in the area of high school environmental science and biology. As part of the project, we will recruit a small group of high school environmental science and biology teachers from Georgia and Alabama to join our team. These “lead teachers” should be interested in being on the leading edge of learning and teaching about models. The team will work together during the 2017-2018 school year to pilot some ideas, and in the summer of 2018 we will provide a professional development workshop for other interested Georgia and Alabama teachers. There will be financial compensation for the lead teachers and opportunities to travel to conferences. More importantly, lead teachers will have an opportunity to learn about models and modeling and have a hand in developing knowledge about what students should learn about models. If you are interested in getting involved (either as a lead teacher during the 2017-2018 school year or would like to participate in professional development workshop in the summer of 2018), please contact me (dacapps@uga.edu) ASAP and let me know how you might like to be involved.”

(From Models and the Standards: What should your students know? in GSTA eObservations, October 9, 2017)