Educators discuss challenges of teaching

INDIANAPOLIS -- Getting kids interested in science, math and other complex subjects isn't easy for high school teachers, who face the daily challenge of explaining often abstract concepts to their students without boring them.\nAbout 500 Indiana educators gathered Thursday to tackle that daunting task during a two-day conference exploring how teachers can spark students' interest in subjects that could eventually help them land high-paying -- and technically demanding -- jobs.\nGov. Mitch Daniels, who opened the conference, said Indiana can learn from the innovative teaching models other states have devised to teach science, math, technology and engineering.\nA crucial part of that, he said, is making sure Hoosier teachers have an in-depth understanding of the topics they must explain to their students.\n"If you don't know math and science, it's hard to fake it," he said.\nThe conference, "Indiana's Future: Economic Development and the High School Connection," is part of the ongoing push by policymakers, businesses and educators to create a highly skilled Hoosier work force attractive to high-tech industries such as biotechnology companies.\nThis week's conference is a collaborative effort which was held at the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis.\nThe teachers, principals, superintendents and others who signed up for its sessions hope to learn something from the North Carolina Science, Mathematics, Technology Education Center, a nonprofit formed 2 1/2 years ago at North Carolina's Research Triangle Park.\nThat privately funded group is trying to improve the performance of North Carolina's K-12 students in science, mathematics and other fields.\nA coalition of Hoosier educators and businesses is looking to the North Carolina center as a model for a statewide resource center that would help Indiana's teachers inspire their students in the same way.\nThe coalition plans to announce proposals for that resource center by next May.\nSuperintendent of Public Instruction Suellen Reed said coalition members aren't interested in reproducing the North Carolina center, but in emulating its best approaches.\n"We can learn a lot from them, but the biggest thing we have to learn is that change will always be with us in education," Reed said. "We never will arrive, because there's always new challenges," \nDr. Sam Houston, president and CEO of the North Carolina center, addressed the conference Thursday, explaining some of the techniques it is trying -- in particular, reaching out to elementary school teachers to help them with their science-teaching skills.\n"They're not math majors, they're not science majors, but math and science are pretty sophisticated nowadays, so they need all the support they can get to reach their students," he said.\nRob Robertson, a biology and anatomy teacher at Triton Central High School in Fairland, Ind., about 10 miles southeast of Indianapolis, said he attended Thursday's sessions hoping to hear about some new approaches to teaching.\nRobertson said he's learned plenty about teaching in his six years at the school of about 500 students. Recently, to illustrate for his students the workings of cellular respiration -- the process that keeps every organism alive -- he took on the guise of an organic molecule.\nClutching tennis balls that served as stand-ins for carbon atoms, he paced his classroom, explaining the complex metabolic interactions cells employ to produce life-sustaining energy.\n"That's the trick -- to find some way to tap into the passions of the student and try to get them interested in science," he said. "If you can do that, hopefully they'll want to sit down and do the reading, the memorization, the math, the equations -- they need to succeed"