Twenty-five Junior High School science teachers from the Central Alabama area will be selected to participate in a project designed to give them practical laboratory experience and update their chemistry background. The chemical activities will be patterned after those in Chemical Activities, a recent publication from the American Chemical Society. This program consists of over 100 chemical and physical science activities suitable for junior high students. It has also been approved by a safety committee of the ACS for student use. The primary objective is to give this group of teachers suitable background in the appropriate chemical topics in order to implement these activities in their classrooms and laboratories. Application of chemistry to social and environmental issues will be stressed and activities that relate chemistry to everyday life will be emphasized. An instructional format of monthly two-day sessions followed by a week-long summer session will be used. Extensive follow-up activities are planned with visits to participants' schools by project staff and at least two regional day-long conferences in which participants will share their experiences. The University of Alabama and the participating school districts are contributing the equivalent of 10% of the NSF grant.
