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Highlands Today

Teachers Prepare For Different Subject Standards Next Year

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

From left: Sophomore lab partners Lauren Robinson and Naydaliz Soto use a microscope to view DNA during a strawberry DNA extraction lab in their Honors Biology class on Monday at Sebring High School.

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By MARC VALERO

Highlands Today

Published: December 16, 2008

SEBRING - Peering into a microscope, Sebring High School sophomore Lauren Robinson spotted the outline of the double-helix DNA molecule from strawberry.

The honors biology lab exercise works well with strawberries and bananas, which have simple DNA without a lot of chromosomes, according to Sebring High biology teacher and science department head Angie Mann.

As her students study biology, Mann and her fellow science teachers at Sebring high and statewide will be learning the new science standards they will start teaching students next school year.

"It's a big changeover," Mann said.

The science curriculum across all grade levels will not just be different but more detailed compared to what is being taught.

Sebring High School Principal Toni Stivender recently attended the third in a series of four two-day workshops on the new math and science curriculum standards. The new math standards are being taught this year.

Stivender volunteered to attend the Principal P.R.O.M.I.S.E. program, which is short for Partnership to Rejuvenate and Optimize Mathematics and Science Education.

Her group of 50 principals studied and compared the U.S. teaching methods to Germany and Japan.

The principals have been looking at effective ways of teaching that are from a totally different perspective, Stivender said.

"In Japan they do more problem solving than we do in America or Germany," she said.

For example, Japanese teachers will expect their students to attempt to solve a new math problem on their own and then work in groups on the problem. Then the teacher intercedes and shows how to solve it.

In America and in Germany, the teacher would first show the students how to do a new math problem followed by examples and then have the students practice on some problems, she said.

Stivender has passed on to her department heads some what she has learned in the workshops and she will use the early-release days for more meetings with teams of teachers.

While she was in Tallahassee recently for the latest curriculum workshop at Florida State University, Stivender was interviewed for a local television station's news report.

For the interview the principal said, "There was such an emphasis on reading that it just dominated education for years and years, now we're finding that compared to the world, we're really lacking in the areas of math and science."

The focus on reading will be maintained, Stivender said Monday, but she is also focusing on math and science student achievement.

Ultimately, Stivender hopes her school will maintain or improve upon its FCAT math scores and improve its "very poor" FCAT science scores. The science scores are low statewide, she noted.

Highlands Today reporter Marc Valero can be reached at 386-5826 or mvalero@highlandstoday.com

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