TMRA Teacher Workshops

TMRA Teacher Workshops

By Francye Hutchins, TMRA Director of Education

“Where do the teachers come from that attend the summer workshops?” you may ask.

Well, the best place to recruit teachers is at the yearly Science Teachers of Texas Association’s CAST meeting. Science teachers from all grade levels come from around Texas to a 3-day conference where they can attend “classes” to learn about what is new in science education. These teachers are from all types of schools in Texas – public, private, charter and homeschool. The one thing they have in common is wanting to learn more effective ways of reaching their students.

There are hands-on workshops and classes and an exhibit hall where all types of vendors of science education materials and classroom materials are set up. TMRA has a booth each year. We hand out free lignite samples, which are very popular because most teachers have never seen real coal. This year we also handed out stress balls shaped and colored like lumps of coal.

Every year our booth is very popular and by the end of the tradeshow we feel like most of the 6,000 plus attendees have come by to see us. With the use of technology we are able to scan name badges and create a database of contact information from those who visited our booth. We send them an email reminding them to apply to the workshop.

The best part for us is when teachers who have already attended our workshops bring their co-workers and friends over to the booth and say, “You ABSOLUTELY have to go to this workshop – it is amazing.”

This year CAST was in Dallas and attendance around 7,000.