NORTHRIDGE : Science Workshops for Teachers Funded

Cal State Northridge has been awarded a $1.1-million federal grant to conduct a series of workshops to turn elementary school teachers into science teaching experts.

Many elementary school teachers simply don’t know much about science and so don’t teach it, said Steven Oppenheimer, co-director of the new Eisenhower grant program and director of CSUN’s Center for Cancer and Developmental Biology.

Oppenheimer predicts dire consequences for national competitiveness as a result. Postponing science education until high school is too late, he said.

“It will change the course of science in this country if little kids have fun with science,” Oppenheimer said. “If you don’t turn kids on to it early enough, you are losing them.”

The grant money will allow CSUN faculty and staff to hold a series of Saturday workshops with 100 teachers in the Montebello School District teaching such classroom science projects as building volcanoes in their classrooms, he said.

The grant will also provide for the continuation of a science day camp the district started earlier this year, and will pay tuition for 50 teachers in the program to get master’s degrees from Cal State Fullerton, Oppenheimer said.

The grant expands a science workshop program started three years ago by CSUN.

Lynn Buezis, a second- and third-grade teacher at Suva Street School in Bell Gardens, took part in the first three years of workshops, and now plans to get a master’s degree with the new grant money.

“I now teach about the ozone layer,” she said. “Before I didn’t understand what the ozone layer was.”