CEF Hosts Workshop at Houston Dow Center (- and gets a great selfie!)

On Friday, July 8, Dow Chemical hosted seventeen elementary and middle school teachers at the company’s Houston Dow Center for a You Be The Chemist (YBTC) Essential Elements^SM professional development workshop. The local organizers for Dow Chemical were Suzanne Gschwind and Fabiola Lopez and the workshop instructor was Larry Sernyk from Indiana. In addition to Suzanne and Fabiola, nine Dow STEM Ambassadors from the Houston Dow Center participated. Dow STEM Ambassadors work in communities to support teachers and inspire learners through in-school and out-of-school activities.

Participants were introduce to the three YBTC programs and participated in a mini YBTC Challenge for prizes supplied by Dow Chemical. The teachers then participated as “students” in the “Separating Salt and Pepper” Activity Guide experiment and learned about how to use the 5E learning model to bring hands-on science to their learners. After a lunch break, the teachers were split into four groups and each group was assigned a different CEF activity for which they prepared a 5E lesson plan, which they later presented to the group.

Several of the teachers shared that they were not very confident in teaching science before the workshop, but as a result of participating in the workshop they felt ready to bring experiential learning to their classes. One teacher commented that she was “getting excited to go back to school and use these lessons. I hope to be able to use the Dow people in my classroom, too.” Another commented on the Dow STEM Ambassadors’ involved in the workshop: “I totally appreciate their appreciation of teachers!” Other teachers said that “these activities will be great to help my students have real world connections to the concepts behind the activities,” and that “the different experiments will be enjoyable and fun to my students. They will love science.”

All teachers who participated said they strongly agreed that they would recommend the workshop to other educators. If you would like to offer an Essential Elements workshop in your community, please complete an inquiry form today!