The purpose of this proposal is to strengthen the background and preparation of 25 to 35 high school chemistry teachers in southwest Missouri. The program will be carried out in two phases. Phase I will involve 25 secondary school teachers who are teaching high school chemistry, but who have only a chemistry minor or less of formal preparation. The program will involve an intense review of basic chemical principles, a considerable amount of time spent on problem solving, laboratory work involving experiments suitable for use in a high school laboratory and laboratory demonstrations performed by the instructional staff who will concurrently be encouraging participants in the development of their own demos. The participants will work closely, both during the summer workshop and during the academic year, with a mentor who will be one of the area's strong high school chemistry teachers. The basic program will start with a three-week summer workshop, followed by four Saturday workshops during the school year. Phase II will commence the next summer, with the selection of 25 teachers, as many as 2/3 of whom will have been participants the previous summer. This phase is for teachers with a deeper background than Phase I teachers and will include more in-depth discussion of several theoretical topics, such as organic, chemistry, biochemistry, environmental chemistry and computer-aided instruction. Lecture, laboratory, problem-solving and demonstration sessions will again be scheduled for this group of teachers. It is expected that about thirty five different teachers will be involved in the program in one or more of the two phases. Evaluation will be carried out by pre and post-testing the participants and their students and by the observations of the mentor teachers and University personnel during their classroom visits. Letters were received from the high schools being served supporting inservice time to implement and encourage changes in the teaching of chemistry.//
