{"id":27626,"date":"2019-08-10T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2019-08-10T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=27626"},"modified":"2019-08-10T10:51:18","modified_gmt":"2019-08-10T15:51:18","slug":"austin-peays-center-for-rural-education-serving-teachers-in-houston-county-humphreys-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2019\/08\/10\/austin-peays-center-for-rural-education-serving-teachers-in-houston-county-humphreys-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay\u2019s Center for Rural Education serving teachers in Houston County, Humphreys County"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – To stage a good, minor explosion \u2013 for scientific purposes only \u2013 you need about $5.00. That\u2019s what the chair of the Austin Peay State University (APSU) chemistry department, Dr. Lisa Sullivan, said when she used a cheap plastic bottle, a little methanol and the free oxygen we all breath for a quick scientific experiment.<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay Dr. Lisa Sullivan presents low-budget demonstrations to 30 rural science teachers. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you should be able to do science on a shoestring budget,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cI can show you thousands of dollars of phenomenal experiments, but that doesn\u2019t help you in Houston County and Humphreys County.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Sullivan presented low-budget demonstrations (\u201c$5.00 or less\u201d) to a group of 30 science teachers from those two rural counties during a special, two-day STEM workshop, hosted by Austin Peay\u2019s new Center for Rural Education. In the spring of 2018, the University\u2019s Eriksson College of Education opened the center to serve rural Tennessee school districts that experience, according to the center, \u201chigher per-pupil costs, higher poverty rates, population decline, hard-to-staff positions with high teacher turnover, geographic isolation and resistance to innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month\u2019s workshop marked the center\u2019s first initiative aimed at helping rural teachers get the training and tools they need to succeed in their classrooms.<\/p>\n

\"Thirty<\/a>

Thirty science teachers from Houston and Humphreys counties visited Austin Peay State University in July. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe worked with the county (school) supervisors to identify the need in their county, and the new science standards were a big need,\u201d Dr. Cheryl Lambert, assistant professor of education and the center\u2019s coordinator, said. \u201cWe wanted to start with the professional development component, so these teachers are getting professional development hours, they\u2019re getting credit from their schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Houston and Humphreys teachers attended seminars hosted by APSU\u2019s Eriksson College of Education and APSU\u2019s College of STEM, and they were able to practice their own science demonstrations within the University\u2019s state-of-the-art Jack Hunt STEM Center. Those experiments, even when they followed the instructions, didn\u2019t always end successfully.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all about probing your students with deeper questions, and science lends itself to that,\u201d Dr. Phil Short, assistant professor of education and director of the STEM Center, said. \u201cEspecially when you allow for failure to occur.\u201d<\/p>\n

[320left]Sullivan immediately echoed this sentiment to the rural teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to be OK with letting your kids fail, and letting them be OK with failure,\u201d she said. \u201cScience is not always going to work how the manual or the textbook or the handout says it\u2019s going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the professional development hours, the group of rural educators also received science equipment and tools to take back to their classrooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pushed out a survey at the beginning, and they said they needed resources,\u201d Lambert said. \u201cWe have some funds for this effort, so they were able to look for something around $50 from these approved vendors. They\u2019re getting resources, professional development credit for the hours they\u2019re spending here and we\u2019re developing strong relationships with the rural counties we want to serve.\u201d<\/p>\n

For information on the new Center for Rural Education, visit www.apsu.edu\/education\/ruraled<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – To stage a good, minor explosion \u2013 for scientific purposes only \u2013 you need about $5.00. That\u2019s what the chair of the Austin Peay State University (APSU) chemistry department, Dr. Lisa Sullivan, said when she used a cheap plastic bottle, a little methanol and the free oxygen we all breath for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,31902,26182,30582,33588,262,31908,512,825,7657,8901,16282,33897,9398,33898,2955],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-7bA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27627,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27626\/revisions\/27627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}