For the ninth straight year, Jill Granger has won a competitive grant from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia to help Central Virginia school teachers be better teachers of math and science.

Granger, a professor of chemistry at Sweet Briar College, learned in May that SCHEV will grant the College $177,983 to fund its “Inquiry Approaches to Math and Science: Grades 3-8” teacher development workshops for 2007-08. The funding — pending federal approval to make it official — brings Sweet Briar’s nine-year total in SCHEV grants to $968,525.

The news arrived on the heels of word that SCHEV also approved a supplemental award of more than $26,000 to augment last year’s grant. The extra money — which raises the 2006-07 total to $218,100 — was necessary to accommodate unexpected demand for teacher workshops scheduled for this summer.

Registration filled up so quickly that Granger, who co-directs the program with associate professor of physics Hank Yochum, added sections of the science classes. The new sections increase capacity from 96 to 168 participants.

Granger was initially shocked at the overwhelming response to this year’s program, she said. The big difference is that for each workshop, participants can now choose between earning one credit toward a graduate degree or points toward required re-certification. In the past, earning points was the only option. Yet the tuition remains free, paid for by the grants.

The money is provided by SCHEV’s “Improving Teacher Quality” program, which is funded under Title IIA of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

“We had started hearing from administrators that [teachers] needed graduate credit in the content they teach,” Granger said. “The fact that we’re offering these graduate classes in the sciences, we’re really filling a need.”

In order to offer graduate credits, the workshops — intensive, three-day courses that focus on inquiry-based methods of teaching — were restructured to delve deeper into the content area being presented. That means teachers will have both a greater level of comfort with the material and more options for applying their efforts to career development, Granger said.

Sweet Briar’s program is available to third- through eighth-grade math and science teachers from public and private schools in the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford, Buckingham, Campbell and Nelson, and the cities of Lynchburg and Charlottesville.

Under this year’s funding, four science and two math classes are being offered from June 18 to 30. Another, “Inquiry Methods in Math and Science,” is planned for Aug. 2 and 3 under the 2007-08 grant.

SBC math and science faculty teach the workshops. This year they’re getting help from an assistant professor at James Madison University and two Bedford County teachers who are in graduate programs in math education at the University of Virginia.

The workshops form two of three prongs that make up the overall program.

The first two components are the summer courses and follow-up Saturday workshops held during the academic year. Topics cover Virginia’s Standards of Learning in math and science. The Saturday sessions require teachers to evaluate their implementation of the inquiry-based lessons and student learning.

Debby Foran, a sixth-grade life science teacher at Forest Middle School, says she’s found the workshops beneficial both for the content – learning or relearning the topic – and the methodology.

“I have always used activity-based lessons in science, but the workshops have shown me more ways to use the students’ own questioning skills,” she said.

As students work through problems, Foran says she sees their confidence grow and they begin to trust their own reasoning.

“I see my students thinking scientifically, questioning each other. ... The ability to use content in ways other than just matching an answer is evident for many students.”

The program’s third prong was added in 2004, when an instructional support specialist was hired. The specialist provides ongoing support to participants, including working with teachers in their own classrooms to implement the lessons.

For more information on the program, see the story in the May 29 edition of the Lynchburg News and Advance or visit SBC’s SCHEV information site.

– By Jennifer McManamay, SBC staff writer