16,000 TEACHERS AND COUNTING: IMPROVING THE COMPETENCE AND CONFIDENCE OF PRECOLLEGE TEACHERS THROUGH AMS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COURSES

A goal of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) is that all teachers become earth science literate. To achieve this, the AMS Education Program offers content-rich, professional development courses and training workshops for precollege teachers in the geosciences.

During the fall and spring, AMS, in partnership with NOAA, NASA, and SUNY Brockport, offers DataStreme Atmosphere, Ocean, and Earth’s Climate System. These courses are delivered to small groups of K-12 teachers through Local Implementation Teams positioned throughout the country, with twice-weekly online study materials, weekly mentoring, and several face-to-face meetings, all supplemented by a provided textbook and investigations manual. Upon completion of each course, teachers receive three free graduate credits from SUNY Brockport.

The DataStreme courses have been completed by more than 16,500 teachers, increasing their knowledge of online geoscience resources and their confidence in understanding dynamic Earth systems. Through courses modeled on scientific inquiry and fashioned to develop critical thinking skills, these teachers become a resource for their classrooms and colleagues.

With the additional partnerships of NSF, the NWS, and the U.S. Navy, AMS also runs two, two-week long, summer residence workshops, Project Atmosphere on the fundamentals of meteorology and the Maury Project on physical oceanography. Alumni of both workshops peer-train teachers in their local communities and at various conferences, using topic modules provided by AMS. They also assist in offering DataStreme courses.

With a long standing history of championing diversity within its program, the AMS actively recruits teachers who are members of groups traditionally underrepresented in science or who teach at schools with significant numbers of minority students. In Spring 2011, 47% of DataStreme Atmosphere participants and 38% of DataStreme Ocean participants worked in schools with a greater than 25% minority student population.

The AMS has helped raise the scientific literacy of more than one million students through content-rich, precollege teacher professional development courses. For more information, please visit http://www.ametsoc.org/amsedu.