How did you choose your profession? Perhaps it was a family business, or perhaps the winds of fate chose it for you, but for many of us, there was a teacher along the way that sparked our interest and pushed us along a path. For me, this person was Mr. Alexander in ninth-grade biology. He was so old I think Gregor Mendel (a famous geneticist from the 1800s) had just died when Mr. Alexander went to college to learn biology! And yet, Mr. Alexander seemed to be able to answer all of my questions!
In science, we are constantly discovering new things and developing new technologies. How did he stay up to date? How did he know so much? Given all that we ask teachers to do, how do they have time to learn new things?
One answer is professional learning! While it has gone by different names over the years (job training, professional education, professional advancement, career growth, in-service training, etc.), teachers attend events at which they learn about a topic from experts in that field.
Of course, just like you and I, they learn other ways, too: through experiences and through reading, for example. But because Alabama and Mississippi require documented professional development to maintain classroom certification, these events allow teachers to meet these requirements in an effective and efficient manner.
In the field of coastal and marine science, the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium (MASGC) has made this happen through its support of teacher workshops at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab for more than a decade. Instead of asking teachers to pay the costs for this learning, financial support from MASGC through Discovery Hall Programs at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab has opened access to all science teachers; all they have to do is get to the Sea Lab. Once here, all costs are covered – outdoor experiences aboard our vessels, trips to local area sites, work in our labs, supplies to develop classroom activities, lectures by guest scientists, for example.
Over the years, we have shared information about habitat restoration, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the biodiversity of the Gulf of Mexico, sea level rise, ocean acidification, managing watersheds, new and emerging technologies as well as information about specific groups of marine organisms – sharks and rays, plankton, fishes and more.
If I had a dollar for every teacher who said upon arriving, “Please don’t PowerPoint us to death and please don’t bring out those dreaded charts,” I could have significantly enhanced our budget! Instead, they are pleased to find out that we practice hands-on, feet-wet education.
We take them out in the field and let them see things for themselves. We let them listen to and ask questions of the experts and researchers from the Sea Lab and MASGC (who so generously give their time when we ask). We help them find engaging ways to bring the information or topic to their students in age/grade-appropriate approaches. And through our passion and enthusiasm, we try to help them all have a good time learning while at the beach!
And the evaluations indicate the teachers and informal science educators who attend do learn new things, are grateful for our approach, do appreciate MASGC support and generally have a good time! Over the past decade, these workshops have reached more than 500 teachers and delivered more than 13,000 contact hours. At the current requirement levels (50 contact hours over 5 years), this equates to supporting the retention of more than 260 teacher positions. We recognize and thank MASGC for this support over this past decade and look forward to sharing coastal and marine science with many more educators in the years to come!
Meet the author
Tina Miller-Way, Ph.D.
Assistant Director for Education
Tina Miller-Way serves as the assistant director for education for the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium (MASGC) and is a former chair of the national Sea Grant Education Network. She has... Read more
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