January 2006

Teaching Moments: Education Workshop 2005

Mary Conrad, a seventh grade teacher at Lake Gibson High School, was very proud of herself this fall.

She was teaching her students about Plate Tectonics as she does every year, and as usual one of the students looked at the super continent of Pangea and asked her where Florida was in the melded land mass. Authoritatively she told the student that Florida was part of the land that would become Africa before breaking off again to form North America.

“I am embarrassed to say,” she told fellow Florida Institute of Phosphate Research (FIPR) 2005 Summer Workshop participants at a fall follow-up meeting, “that before I attended the FIPR workshop I would have said that Florida is so small it is difficult to know where it was.”

Conrad was one of about 40 elementary, middle and high school teachers from Broward, Highlands, Hillsborough, Martin, Orange, Pinellas and Polk counties who came to FIPR’s Teacher Training Workshop this year. They learned about Florida’s phosphate deposit, the mining and processing industry that exists because of the deposit and the role phosphate plays in agriculture and life.

They also learned how information about this local resource connects to the state standards they must teach.

As a state research agency, FIPR’s focus is science and its education program brings teachers on a scientific investigation of phosphate as a part of Florida’s past, present and future. FIPR, founded by the Florida legislature in 1978 to generate facts and technologies on phosphate-related issues that impact the health and welfare of Florida’s citizens, environment and economy, reaches out to all educators - not just science teachers.

Planning for the 2006 workshop is in motion. Anyone interested in attending the workshop, scheduled for June 12-22 should call FIPR’s Education Program Coordinator Lisa Jap-Tjong or Education Training Specialist Sandy Small at 863-534-7160 or E-mail them - ljaptjon@mail.usf.edu and sesmall2@mail.usf.edu.

The two-week workshop consists of field trips, hands-on experiences and interaction with experts. It included an exploration of how Florida and its phosphate formed as well as an introduction to the scientific method showing how it can be used to promote critical thinking skills in all grades and subjects.

The process comes to life as the teams of language arts, math, science and social studies teachers work together to process the information and then apply it and create lesson plans that can be taught in their classrooms to meet the Sunshine State Standards.

While not all the teachers use the lessons they create during the FIPR workshop, most report that they use the information they learned to enhance lessons.

Dan McFarland, an AP Biology teacher and head of the Science Department at Durant High School in Hillsborough County, for example said his curriculum is so structured he would not be able to fit in a unique lesson plan that connects phosphate to his Biology curriculum.

“What has surprised me,” he told workshop participants at a workshop follow-up session, “is the way I have used information from the presentations FIPR scientists and experts gave during the workshop in my lectures.”

Learning experiences during the workshop related Florida’s history to the regional impact of phosphate and world agriculture; biology to Florida’s natural habitats, physics to phosphate mining, chemistry to converting phosphate rock to a soluble form plants can use, economics and transportation to phosphate as a worldwide industry and local community reality, environmental studies to land changes, hydrology and how land is reclaimed after mining.

Throughout the program teachers connect what they learn to what they teach and to lesson plans they develop. Teachers that completed the program receive a $500 stipend, in-service points and the opportunity to apply for a $1000 mini-grant to create a teaching unit for their school and a $500 field trip grant.

More than 1000 teachers from 30 counties have benefited from FIPR’s education program since it began in 1997. The Institute has also funded the creation of 45 integrated teaching units and seven teachers who created and pilot tested full teaching units used the experience to successfully apply for National Board Certification, a demanding process that requires a teacher to provide evidence of being a learner, leader, collaborator and curriculum developer.