This Teacher Enhancement project will increase the expertise of 20 high school biology teachers per year in the areas of biotechnology, biological research, problem solving and scientific writing. These twenty teachers will return to their schools, following a 6-week summer program, to enrich their instructional program, to provide inservice experiences for their colleagues, and to exert leadership in curriculum reform and laboratory development. Teachers will be selected from school districts in the upper midwestern states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North and South Dakota. Follow-up activities will assist the teachers in both their instructional modifications and leadership activities. Teachers selected meet in the spring to consider their summer research project with the appropriate college faculty. The project is planned and partially developed by the time they arrive for the summer. During the summer, in addition to working on their project, they attend seminars on contemporary topics in biology and develop activities for their own classrooms related to both the research activities and seminars. In addition, they will develop the outline for the inservice activities which they will conduct. During the academic year, university staff will make visits to the participant's schools and conferences will be held at the University or other appropriate settings to further the knowledge of teachers or to report research results. The proposal is an outgrowth of an honors workshop for high school teachers conducted in the past two years. The PI is well-qualified to conduct the program, being a research biologist, but also having prior experience in directing teacher development activities. The other staff are research biologists from the University. Experts in biotechnology from the private sector will be used as speakers and consultants.
