Teacher Enhancement through Mentoring Program

Engage local science teachers in summer agricultural research fellowships, a summer science institute, improving their research skills, content knowledge, ability to apply science concepts and knowledge of scientific careers in agriculture; enable teachers to reform their local science programs through the establishment of ongoing collaborative partnerships between local schools and the USDA-ARS laboratories; and prepare teacher interns to provide inservice training to their peer teachers.
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Improve the content backgrounds of the teachers, guiding their development of thematic agriscience units, and train them to implement experience-based learning activities in their classrooms. Strong emphasis will be placed on helping teachers to develop leadership skills. Each teacher will plan inservice training for his/her department and design methods to implement change in science classrooms using agricultural science as a basis.