A few of the science teachers at our school went to the annual Michigan Science Teacher Association Convention, the MSTA Convention, in Lansing. The teachers that went this year are science teachers Robert Smitka, Bethany Allen, Brian King, Scott Wheeler, and Kathy Roumell.  The purpose of it is for science teachers all over Michigan to attend for a day and enhance the way they pass on information to the students. They have sessions for almost all science fields and subject areas for different ways to teach and special techniques to get the information to the students more efficiently. It is very helpful for the teachers to learn new ways to improve how the students are learning and how they can improve performance in class.  

“I have been going to these for a couple years now and decided that it would be beneficial if more teachers came and we could all learn how to teach the lessons in a more efficient way,” Smitka said.

Smitka has been going to these individually and decided that they were very beneficial. He wanted more teachers to join him and spoke to principal Patrick Adams for more teachers to come along. He approved and the teachers that wanted were able to go and more teachers were able to go this year than in the past years. They have been given a schedule and chose which seminars they wanted to attend based on the subjects they teach.

It was very beneficial and all the teachers had a good time. The convention taught the teachers many new ways to teach the subjects and improve the students’ performance in their classes. We hope it makes a big difference in the outcome of grades.