A report from Dr. Lawrence E. Banks
on the November 11, 1999 G2K meeting:
Thanks for the effort made by those of you who attended our
11-11 evening meeting.
We had another great meeting.
We got a small start on the writing/summarizing
efforts that will be needed as we finish up the G2K project this year. This
effort must continue if we are to achieve the purpose we have labored over for these past
few years.
As was discussed, we must either find ways to make this
program self-sustaining or try find more money for it after this year. The safest
and best approach in my opinion, is to find approaches that will make it
self-sustaining. Frank Lojko has made a tremendous suggestion of some form of
guaranteed K-12 employment for all members of this program who have over 60 hours and can,
therefore, be given temporary certification. I suspect other schools might be
willing to make the same arrangement with us if we explain what we are doing and how this
could provide better substitute teachers for them. BUT, if we are going to get
serious about this approach, University courses may well have to be scheduled differently:
e.g., a block structure. We need to discuss the pros and cons of this option in all
committees. This will be an item on our next meeting agenda.
I could tell that we all thought Roberta did a great
job in telling, and making us find out about, what goes on in the LHS-GEMs program.
I have been an avid reader of their activities for years - just because they were so much
like what I knew Bob Whitaker and his cohorts were doing. And now, this sort
of training is going on in all our science and mathematics courses for elementary
teachers. If there is enough interest, I am willing to try to search out the money needed
for us to become a GEM Center. I really think this would be a great plug for all of
our s/m education programs - it's so widely known that this would almost be like a s/m
education accreditation. Roberta will report on what we need to do to gain some sort
of GEMs status, since there was a clear interest in doing that. If you
would like Missouri State to be a GEMs Center and/or would be interested in going through this
training next summer, would you please send me
a note to that effect?
It was a fine meeting and I hope to see all that are interested
in helping at the next one.
