Teachers Workshop

To reach youths in our communities, the MIT CEHS COE2C recognizes that we need to support our classroom teachers. Teachers provide a multiplier effect for environmental health information because they instruct on average 80-100 students each year. The COE2C support for teachers includes not only providing materials for instruction, but also providing professional learning sessions for the teachers. 

The workshops provide teachers with the opportunity to experience implementation strategies first hand, to exchange tips with peers, and to acquire the background content knowledge.

The COE2C leads teachers workshops locally, nationally, and globally. For details about our offerings, please visit COE2C Events.

To learn about future Teachers Workshops look for notices here. An online registration information will be made available.

To request a teachers workshop, please contact us.   

Local COE2C Activities:

The COE2C staff participates in professional development conferences sponsored statewide by two organizations: the Massachusetts Association of Science Teachers (MAST) and the Massachusetts Department of Secondary and Elementary Education (DESE). 

Our COE2C staff members respond to local schools’ science department’s requests as well. We lead after-school teacher workshops in schools implementing environmental health curriculum available through the MIT Edgerton Center. For example, we have led workshops for the Boston Public Schools Science Department, the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School Biology Department, and the Brockton HS Science Department.

National COE2C Activities:

Over the past 5 years we have responded to teachers workshop requests in Houston TX, Rochester NY, Bangor ME, Portsmouth NH, and Clarksville, TN. The workshops held in NY and TX were at Peer P30 NIEHS Core Centers. The COE2C staff have annually led two full-day teachers workshop at the Environmental Health Sciences Summer Institute for K-12 educators in Texas.

We also received teachers workshop requests from other universities. Universities see a value in this workshop offered by the MIT COE2C in order to train their own university outreach staff along with an initial group of teachers from their local school systems. The K-12 programs at these universities can then serve as hubs for local fieldtrips and teacher training workshops, greatly increasing MIT CEHS COE2C’s reach with the environmental health materials. 

Global COE2C Activities:

We have ongoing programs in Singapore. A teachers workshop was held in Singapore in 2012 at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and instructors from several Polytechnic Schools attended. 

Two middle school teachers workshops is scheduled in Southeast Asia for March 2015 and they are sponsored by the Cambodia Science and Engineering Festival in Phnom Penh and the Institute for the Promotion of teaching Science and Technology (IPST) in Bangkok, Thailand. Both of these workshops will feature “Understanding Air” a lesson plan designed to help teachers around the world educate children about air pollution and climate change.

Teachers work with the “MIT DNA Set,” a double helix from individual nucleotides.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Teachers model the products of incomplete combustion reaction using colored bricks as atoms. They discover that burning a hydrocarbon fuel such as propane will produce molecules of soot, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. 
 

 

 

 

 

Activity mats from the “Understanding Air” lesson. Using the mat “Air Chemistry and Pollution,” students become familiar with the molecular formulas of common air pollutants. Using the mat “Model the Molecules in Air” students are able to visualize the composition of air. It is also fun to build and place the molecules on the mats.