The Storm King campus has proven to be a sought-out venue for summer camps again this year. Popular youth camps including the Arsenal Soccer School, Step It Up Summer Stage, and the NY Fencing Academy have all taken advantage of SKS’ scenic location and its facilities this summer. But it’s not only kids who are having all the fun. This month, biology teachers from the NY metropolitan area, including two SKS faculty members, have also converged on the Mountain to participate in a program of their own.

 

 

From July 30 through August 10, a biology modeling workshop is being held at Storm King with the aim of motivating science teachers for the upcoming school year and promoting the teaching methodology known as Modeling Instruction™.  The workshop is led by Glen Stuart, a master New Jersey science teacher, and organized with the help of STEMteachersNYC.

Storm King Science Department Chair Dr. Paul Feffer, who supports STEMteachersNYC, helped to bring the event to Storm King. “Several years ago, I had heard the term “modeling” at a time I was looking for a more engaging and coherent way to teach physics. I identified a group, STEMteachersNYC, who were running these workshops in space provided by Columbia’s Teachers’ College in NYC,” explains Dr. Feffer.

 

 

“The modeling “cycle” was developed for physics initially, but has been extended to chemistry and, most recently, biology,” Dr. Feffer continued.  “Last summer, we brought a chemistry modeling workshop here for our faculty. This summer, given that we have two biology/environmental science teachers entering their second year at Storm King, it made sense to run a biology workshop.”

During the two-week session, participating teachers are busy engaging in thought-provoking, pertinent experiments that they can utilize in their own classrooms. Participants will switch between student and teacher modes while they conduct experiments, analyze findings, and discuss the pedagogical rationale for all aspects of Modeling Instruction ™ in biology.  Storm King science teachers Michael Vondras and Lindsey Plummer both joined the workshop and are looking forward to implementing what they learned in their science classrooms this fall.