RELEVANT, PLACE-BASED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR URBAN TEACHERS, INSIGHTS FROM THE MICHIGAN TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM

MTU’s Michigan Teacher Education Program (MITEP) is a multi-year, NSF funded professional development program for secondary science teachers from Kalamazoo and Jackson. Cohorts of teachers advance through three years of experiences that include field work in the Keweenawan Peninsula and downstate, school year professional development, attending and presenting at professional meetings, and internships at national parks. Content is aligned with the Earth Science Literacy Principles.

Downstate professional development took place over two weeks in two consecutive years, and focused on field work related to hazards, glacial landscapes, energy, water resources, and geologic history. In the first year, teachers conducted a water quality study of Woods Lake (Kalamazoo) to learn how human activities impact lake systems. They continued with site visits to the Kalamazoo River impacted by the 2010 Enbridge oil spill, along with building classroom models of oil-water-sediment interaction. A quarry on the Blue Ridge Esker (Jackson) provided examples of subglacial deposits and an introduction to aggregate resources. Fossil fuel resources were the focus of a visit to the WMU core library. A trip to Grand Ledge provided an introduction to the geologic history of Michigan as teachers interpreted the rocks and placed them in geologic time. In the second year, teachers investigate how the remnants of Hurricane Ike caused extensive flooding in Michigan, through calculations of rainfall volume in the Kalamazoo River basin and balancing the input against river output and groundwater recharge. In the field they gauged Portage Creek and evaluated impacts of flood events. Classroom models of melting glaciers transitioned to the state Quaternary map. Teachers described outwash exposed in a quarry in the Kalamazoo Moraine and landforms at the Waterloo Recreational Area. Sources of energy were contrasted with visits to a coal power plant in Lansing and a natural gas energy facility in Jackson. Water was investigated using classroom models, USGS maps, and touring the shallow aquifer water supply for the city of Jackson. To synthesize their field observations teachers construct stratigraphic columns of Pennsylvanian and Mississippian rocks at Grand Ledge and relate their rock specimens to a geologic cross-section of the state.