Supporting High School Chemistry Teaching

Chemical Education Today

JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 12 December 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education 1567

Editorial

Supporting High School Chemistry TeachingThis month marks the end of Emory Howell’s five-year

term as Secondary School Chemistry editor of JCE. Dur-ing those five years Emory has worked tirelessly to improvethis Journal’s effectiveness in serving high school and pre-high-school teachers. Were it not for his impending retirementfrom the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi,all of us would have been able to benefit from another fiveyears of Emory’s excellent service as high school editor. Hedeserves the heartfelt thanks of those who read this Journaland everyone who is concerned about improving science edu-cation in the United States. All of us in the editorial officesay thanks, Emory, for your dedication, intelligence, empa-thy, and hard work. You have done a great job, and we reallyappreciate it.

Beginning in January 2002, the high school editorshippasses to Diana Mason and Erica Jacobsen. Diana taughthigh school chemistry in Dallas for a decade, is immediatepast chair of the Associated Chemistry Teachers of Texas,carries out demonstration programs and other outreachactivities, and has just joined the faculty at North Texas StateUniversity. Erica is certified to teach chemistry, physicalscience, and life science in Wisconsin and Minnesota, taughtchemistry, AP chemistry, and physics in Wells, Minnesota,for several years, and has worked in the JCE editorial officeon JCE HS CLIC, our special section of JCE Online for highschool teachers, and on JCE Classroom Activities. Beginningin the late 1970s when Jim DeRose, Tom Lippincott, JoeLagowski, and Mickey Sarquis initiated JCE’s current high-school efforts, and continuing for the past five years withEmory, JCE has established a strong tradition of communi-cation with and service to pre-college teachers. Diana andErica enthusiastically support that tradition and intend toexpand and enhance it. Their joint editorship will enableeven more time and effort to be dedicated to the Journal’sgoal of serving the high school community as well as we pos-sibly can. If you have ideas for improving what we are do-ing, please communicate them to me, Diana, or Erica.

In my September editorial, I noted that the publicbelieves that high-quality teachers constitute by far the mostimportant component of our educational system, and thatthe demand for chemistry teachers is greater than the supply.Better high school materials in JCE support existing teach-ers, but all of us should be doing other things as well. One isto support the ACS-approved chemistry education option forcertification of undergraduate chemistry majors that has beenavailable for the past decade under the auspices of the ACSCommittee on Professional Training (CPT). A program thatmeets CPT’s criteria will prepare excellent teachers. Unfor-tunately, both the number of approved programs and thenumber of students who have received ACS-certified chem-istry education bachelor’s degrees are small. CPT is currentlyreconsidering requirements for such a degree, with an eye tomaking this program more popular and effective. CPT is alsoconsidering whether to set criteria for an ACS-approvedchemistry minor intended for those obtaining teaching cre-dentials in a field other than chemistry.

There are sev-eral things each ofus can do in sup-port of high schoolteaching and CPT’sinitiative in thisarea. First, considerthe existing CPTchemistry educa-tion option by vis-iting the CPT Website for information (http://www.acs.org/portal/Chemistry?PID=acsdisplay.html&DOC=education\cpt\index.html) and dis-cussing the requirements with your chemistry and teacher-preparation colleagues. Could your institution implementsuch a program? If so, would you be willing to lead the ef-fort to do so? Would one of your colleagues be willing? IfCPT has specified too many course requirements to set up aviable program, how could the requirements be eased to makeit possible for your institution to initiate a program? Perhapsyour investigations will reveal that a chemistry-education de-gree is not likely to be popular with students no matter howit is set up. In any of these cases, your input to CPT will bevaluable and welcome.

If an ACS-certified chemistry-education program appearsto be viable at your institution, you could lead the effort tomake it happen. This will almost certainly involve many dis-cussions with colleagues in your department, throughout yourinstitution, and possibly at the state-government level. It mayalso involve setting up a new course and learning how to teachit effectively. Finally, once a program exists, it is necessary torecruit students and to make certain that school districts inyour state or region are aware of the quality and effective-ness of the program—and therefore hire your graduates.These go hand in hand, because good students will be at-tracted to a high-quality program that leads to good jobs. Itmay be difficult to convince school districts to hire better-trained teachers, because at present the lesser criterion thatteachers be certified in the field they teach is not always met.Nevertheless, if all of us were to provide school boards andstate certification agencies with evidence of our concern anda brief statement of how they could improve chemistry teach-ing, it would help a lot.

CPT will be considering these issues at a meeting inJanuary 2002. Additional opportunities to react to the out-comes of that meeting will be provided in symposia at theSpring ACS National Meeting in April and the 17th BCCEin July. Send your opinions and suggestions now to the chairof CPT’s subcommittee on the chemistry-education option,Margaret V. Merritt, Chemistry Department, Wellesley Col-lege, Wellesley, MA 02481 (mmerritt@wellesley.edu). Eachof us needs to support high school chemistry teaching asstrongly as possible. Please do whatever you can.

If an ACS-certified chemistry-

education program appears to

be viable at your institution,

you could lead the effort

to make it happen.