Pick any environmental issue affecting the area and spend one week learning how to make it an effective lesson for middle school students.That was the opportunity offered by Solutia to three area science teachers recently.
Tim Gallahar from Munford High School, Ellen Cannon from Wellborn High School and Anniston Middle School teacher Juanica Reynolds will each fly to Keystone, Colo., this summer to spend one week at the Key Issues Institute learning how to integrate their respective issues into a curriculum.
Solutia, the spin-off company to Monsanto, will sponsor the trip. The company has been enmeshed in costly PCB trials regarding past practices.
The teachers were allowed to choose any environmental issue, including local PCB concerns, according to David Cain, CEO of Solutia's Anniston branch.
Cain said he hopes the current news surrounding Solutia is not ignored.
"I'm hoping it's a discussion that they have (at the institute)," Cain said.
Weaving community issues into their classroom lessons is a top priority for all three teachers.
Gallahar has covered water quality with his students during the four years he's been teaching, but it's an issue he hopes to find new ideas for in the coming weeks.
The science teacher said he finds it important since Choccolocco Creek is not far from the school in Munford.
Air pollution is a possible issue Ms. Cannon will pursue at the institute since she finds her fifth-grade students at Wellborn are interested in the chemical weapons incinerator at Anniston Army Depot.
The incinerator, built to destroy the 2,253 tons of chemical weapons stored at the depot, is slated to begin burning in April 2002.
"It's something they can read about in the paper," she said.
The lack of awareness of the need to recycle in the Anniston City Schools and the community bothers Ms. Reynolds. When she tries to stress the importance of recycling to her seventh-graders at Anniston Middle School, she knows something is not quite right.
"It's kind of hard to talk about pollution when your school doesn't even (recycle)," Ms. Reynolds said.
She hopes her experience at the institute will enable Anniston Middle School to become a pilot program for the school system.
The teachers are among 125 from across the country selected to participate. Although none of the teachers have so far found professional development opportunities weakened by budget cuts, they admit workshops such as this one, provided by major corporations, always provide bigger opportunities.
The Key Stone school is run out of the Key Stone Center, a nonpartisan organization directed by large corporations and conservation groups aimed at investigating environmental issues.
The one-week session will take teachers through various hands-on field experiences, such as a day at a gold mine. All of them expect to share their experiences and additional resources with their fellow teachers.
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