Six things
you need to know, April 2023
Did you
know?
Science
teachers report having higher or equivalent overall job satisfaction
compared to other STEM professionals.
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New Facts
& Data section on the website
Check out our new and
improved Facts and Data section! We added about a
dozen new facts to this section that focus on topics that faculty
typically ask us about. More to come! Let us know if you find it
useful!!
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Did you
know… Science teachers
report having higher or equivalent overall job satisfaction compared to
other STEM professionals.
We asked science and
math teachers to tell us, “What provides you with day-to-day
satisfaction?” The teachers silently wrote down their reasons.
Then responses were exchanged between tables and each table kept only
those that everyone at the table agreed with. See more
here…
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One
of the most popular GFO resources is the student presentation (“Busting Myths about the Teaching Profession”)
aimed at conveying facts about teaching careers. Across a large number
of students, we find that these presentations not only convey the
facts, but lead to positive changes in perceptions. Stephanie Chasteen,
GFO external evaluator, recently pulled together a large data set of
the project impacts to date; this is last of three posts about what she
found in those analyses. (The other two are about the presentation for faculty
and GFO’s impressive reach.)
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Follow
a day in the life of Jas’Minique Potter, known as Ms. Potter to her
students, as she teaches middle school math in Indianapolis, IN. She
shares how she ended up in the classroom, what she loves about her
career, what she typically does during the summer, why she recommends
teaching to STEM majors, and advice she has to those thinking of
entering the profession. Check out the post here!
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What are people in the GFO Community
doing?
Here are
some interesting things Champions have shared with us:
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Leslie West, program
coordinator, and I work together in our UTeach replication program,
JacksTeach. We’re thrilled to have the GFO resources! We learned about
them at the UTeach conference last June. Since then we’ve been
presenting around campus. We recently collaborated to present Teaching:
The Best Kept Secret! to the Center for Career and Professional
Development. Knowledge and attitudes toward teaching really improved!
We reached both professional staff and student workers with this
presentation. We also now have a bulletin board displaying GFO Facts at
the entrance to our building.
Jane Long,
Director JacksTeach,
Stephen F.
Austin State University, TX
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Sumita Jaggar and I
held a 75-minute GFO Student Presentation at a local conference, STEM Ed
Central Coast Conference (https://www.stemedccc.org/),
for local STEM educators to which STEM undergraduates from local
universities, Cal State Monterey Bay and University of California Santa
Cruz, and community colleges, Cabrillo College and Hartnell College,
were invited! Though we targeted STEM undergraduates, a good number of
STEM early career teachers attended our session as well. We had about
40 participants and Sumita facilitated a "four corners" activity
to provide some physical movement and active student engagement. This
was our first GFO presentation and we thought it went well. A local
Community College was in attendance and asked us to present on their
campus - exciting!
Soleste Hilberg
- Education
University of
California - Santa Cruz
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Our ACS partner published an article
about STEM teaching in inChemistry
A GFO-consultant for
ACS, Stephanie Ryan, interviewed Jonte Lee for a feature in
inChemistry, an online magazine for the American Chemical Society that
is geared toward undergraduate students. The interview follows Jonte’s
career from industry to STEM teaching with a few stops along the way.
One of his highlights about the career change? The salary bump! Check out the
interview here.
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GFO at the AACTE 2023 Conference in
Indianapolis
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Jean Lee and Drew
Isola did a tag-team GFO presentation at the American Association of
Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Annual Meeting 2023.
This was a new organization for GFO. Conference attendees were
mostly education faculty and deans along with other teacher
preparation-focused individuals and groups. AACTE represents more than
800 postsecondary institutions with educator preparation programs
dedicated to high-quality, evidence-based preparation that assures
educators are ready to teach all learners. While attendance was small
at this first attempt at presenting to this audience, we had lots of
opportunities to network with administrators, faculty and staff from
IHEs most of whom had not heard of GFO before. Most of the
feedback we received was along the lines of….”I had not heard of this
before”, “This looks like a great project”, “Really? These resources
are free to use?”, “I will certainly share this with my department when
I get back.”
We encourage members
of the GFO Community whose institution belongs to AACTE to use that
opportunity to share your teacher recruitment strategies and
activities. It was a need that surfaced in many of the discussions and
sessions that we attended.
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We are excited to welcome 13 new GFO
Champions!
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A GFO Champion is anyone who
shares facts about the teaching profession by using the materials and
messages from the GFO project locally or nationally. A GFO Champion can be a current
teacher, a faculty member, a teacher recruiter, or a careers advisor,
or more!
It helps the project a
great deal if you register
as a Champion - and, you will appear on the community map, earn
designations that can be included in your professional portfolio, and
can make priority requests for local teacher salary and benefits data.
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We are
excited to welcome our 13 newest GFO Champions:
Hope Blinco (Human
Resources – Mineral County School District, NV)
Jillian Bonaventura
(STEM Teacher Prep– Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA)
Adam Bennion
(Chemistry– Brigham Young University, UT)
Alicia Scott (Human
Resources– Laurens School District 55, SC)
Amy Greene (Chemistry–
Albright College, PA)
Jeffrey Hovermill
(Math– Northern Arizona University)
Fonya Crockett Scott
(STEM Education– Middle Tennessee State University)
Brian Moudry (Math–
Davis & Elkins College, WV)
Roger Wolbert (Math– Pennsylvania Western University)
Maria Fernandez (STEM
Education– Florida International University)
Kirstin Milks (AP Bio
and Earth/Space Science– Monroe County Community School Corporation,
IN)
Sarah Dyess (Math– The
University of Alabama in Huntsville)
Sumita Jaggar (Math
and Science Education– University of California- Santa Cruz
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Not a Champion yet?
Learn more about becoming a GFO
Champion.
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Talk to us! We want to hear from you –
your successes, challenges, questions and concerns! Email getthefactsout@mines.edu.
Get the Facts Out is an NSF funded
partnership between the Colorado School of Mines and four national
societies: American Physical Society, American Chemical Society,
American Association of Physics Teachers, and the Association of
Mathematics Teacher Educators. GFO is a unique project that is designed
to reach STEM majors in a large fraction of all U.S. mathematics,
chemistry, and physics departments and has potential to significantly
address teacher shortages in these high-need STEM disciplines.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant Nos. 1821710 & 1821462. Any opinions,
findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material
are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the National Science Foundation.
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