Education Story Archives - Page 157 of 162 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Catching Up With West Virginia's Teacher of the Year

It’s been a busy year for Berkeley County’s Erin Sponaugle, West Virginia’s 2014 Teacher of the Year. Aside from teaching fifth grade at Tomahawk Intermediate School near Hedgesville, West Virginia, Sponaugle has traveled across the state and country representing her profession.

“It’s been life changing and life defining," Sponaugle said.

“When this first happened back in October it appears to be an award and you assume that it is, but you soon come to the realization that it’s not just an award but it’s going to become a full time life,” she said.

That full time life has included attending and being recognized at the State of the State address in Charleston, West Virginia, a trip to Arizona to attend the National Teacher of the Year Conference and going to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where she met writer and West Virginia native Homer Hickam.

Meeting President Obama

In May Sponaugle, along with the teachers of the year from the other states, visited the White House. Sponaugle says the ceremony usually takes place in the Rose Garden but rainy weather forced everything indoors.

“Well they had to move the entire thing, bummer, into the White House,” Sponaugle said. “We had 20 to 30 minutes to roam around the green blue and red rooms and then they had the ceremony in the East room and we got to walk out the front doors of the white house which was amazing.”

Berkeley the Bear has traveled with 2014 West Virginia Teacher of the Year Erin Sponaugle across the country and state.

Sponaugle has not been traveling alone during all these trips. Her constant companion has been a stuffed bear puppet she calls Berkeley, after Berkeley County. Sponaugle takes photographs of Berkeley everywhere she goes.

“I’ve taken pictures of him and he writes a blog about all the experiences. It’s really me doing the writing,” Sponaugle confides, “bears aren’t that talented.”

“He talks about all the places he’s been for kids so they can see what this journey is about and learn more about their state,” she said.

Sponaugle took photos of Berkeley at Space Camp, the White House, and the Vice President’s house with Jill Biden, who is also a teacher. He’s also traveled throughout West Virginia with Sponaugle including a visit to the Exhibition Coal Mine in Beckley, West Virginia.

“That’s something we don’t have in the Eastern Panhandle and that our students know very little about,” she said. “They don’t realize coal is a huge industry in this state and supports many people and many families.”

The Sugar Maple Friends

Berkeley is not Sponaugle’s only stuffed animal companion. She has a whole collection of puppets she calls the Sugar Maple Friends that represent all the state symbols, including a butterfly she named Morgan the Monarch, a cardinal called Clay, a trout names Brook and a honey bee named Harrison.

“All of their names are after the counties in West Virginia,” she said. “The entire thing that I do is very educational and it’s a way to make them feel good about where they live.”

When Sponaugle’s duties as Teacher of the Year end in October, she plans to write and illustrate a children’s book featuring Berkeley the Bear and his friends that she hopes will be exciting for students to read and will draw them into the beauty of West Virginia and the country.

In the meantime, she looks forward to getting back to the classroom when school starts in Berkeley County in mid-August, and to fulfilling the last couple of months as teacher of the year.

NASA Teacher's Workshop Brings Robotics and the Universe into W.Va. Classrooms

Local elementary and middle school teachers in and around the Martinsburg area attended a NASA Teachers Workshop, Wednesday, hosted by STARBASE Martinsburg. Going on its twelfth school year, STARBASE has hosted these workshops each summer to better prepare educators in the ever-evolving field of science and math. But the question is, with all the demands teachers face during the school year, can they effectively take the time for these new resources in their own classrooms?

Pam Casto, a NASA certified trainer, led STARBASE’s NASA Teachers Workshop in Martinsburg. She taught two lessons titled, “WeDo Robotics!” and “Afterschool Universe,” aiming to help guide teacher’s keep their students engaged in the classroom as well as teach new and effective approaches to science and math, and Casto assures that incorporating these new lessons into teachers’ already busy schedules will be easy and fun.

“So far all the teachers that I’ve encountered in my workshops are very enthusiastic about learning new things to take back to their classroom,” said Casto, “but they do have problems, they often have budgetary problems, and so NASA and West Virginia has over a million dollars’ worth of equipment we will loan them for free, and we will show them how to use the equipment in their classrooms, and then they can borrow it from us for free to use in their classrooms.”

For third grade teacher, Heather McCain at Tomahawk Intermediate, her biggest concern is getting her hands on the equipment.

“My concern is when can we sign up, and how long will it take to get the materials, and things like that,” said McCain, “so as long as I have that, as far as putting it into my curriculum, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

Teachers work together to build and program their group’s robot.

To acquire the equipment, all a teacher has to do is attend one of NASA’s teachers workshops to learn how to effectively use the equipment and care for it. Matthew Collier, the head of the science department at Hedgesville Middle School says, it’s worth it.

“As a learner when I was growing up, I learned a lot better hands on and it made the lessons stick,” Collier noted, “so I think it’s actually worth the time, the extra planning, and the travel to have these resources, because it really drives a lesson home.”

Angela Pittenger, a second grade teacher at Berkeley Heights Elementary School, thinks it’s important to change up the old and make way for the new, even if old ways may be stubborn to leave.

“To do this,” Pittenger began, “one of the things that you do, is you kind of modify things to go around it, so if we’re doing something with robotics, maybe we bring in that with literacy as well, where we do something to do with robots, and things like that, and with common core, and it’s a matter of just modifying things as you go, and trying it out.”

Pam Casto, a NASA certified trainer, teaches lessons in improving the science and math curriculum for elementary and middle school teachers.

In the morning lesson, “WeDo Robotics,” the teachers learned to build, program, and engineer robots from lego kits, which could be used to teach concepts in math, social studies, and science. In the afternoon, the teachers focused on an activity kit titled, “Afterschool Universe,” which holds twelve activities that focus on looking at the universe beyond our solar system.

“Today in Afterschool Universe, they will be going outside, and they will reenact the lifecycle of a star, the birth of a star, how it forms, as they wander around on the playground, and if they come in contact with somebody, gravity attracts,” explained Casto, “So they will go back to their classroom to do these activities, and the types of activities we do really fulfill the new science standards and the next generation way of teaching science and math.”

The small group of teachers left the workshop this week feeling positive about the changes they’ll now be able to implement in their own lesson plans.

Attorney, Teacher & Student Say Reconnecting McDowell is Working

A West Virginia corporate attorney, a McDowell County teacher and a high school student traveled across the country to share the good they see coming from the Reconnecting McDowell project.

The three traveled to Los Angeles to speak at the American Federation of Teachers convention about the program they say has changed lives and given the community a new sense of optimism.

The project launched in December 2011 as a public-private, long-term endeavor. It’s goal is to improve educational outcomes, provide better access to health and social services, and boost economic development in McDowell County. Once a bustling coal area, the county is now extremely poor and deals with some of the lowest health and wellness statistics in the country.

Some of the Reconnecting McDowell projects include turning schools into community hubs, creating a teacher village, and Broader Horizons, which provides mentors and job shadowing experiences to some high school students at risk of dropping out.

Emily Hicks is a senior at Mount View High Schools that spoke at the AFT national convention. Hicks was selected for her principals to participate in a Reconnecting McDowell program that could become a turning point in her life.

According to a release Hicks told AFT delegates that the program has inspired her to pursue dreams outside of McDowell.

AFT President Randi Weingarten said Reconnecting McDowell is important “to help reclaim the promise of a community like McDowell, just as much as we do a struggling urban district.”

National Geographic, NOAA Grant Promotes Understanding of Watersheds

A grant is equipping West Virginia geography and science teachers with tools to help better educate young people about watersheds. For one teacher, the chemical spill that left more than 300-thousand without usable water was a wakeup call of just how important this program really is.

Cherri Mitchem can remember her childhood growing up in Southern West Virginia.

“You know, I grew up near streams that were not good, the ones that you could smell before you got there, and I remember that,” Mitchem said. “But it never occurred to me that there was a way to fix it.”

Mining activity has damaged streams and rivers throughout the coalfields of Appalachia. As a science teacher at Pikeview Middle School in Mercer County, Mitchem hopes to help her students have a better understanding of watersheds and how they affect what we drink.

“Yes, I think water, especially with our students, it’s just, it’s taken for granted,” Mitchem said. “They go to the tap to get water out, but it never occurs to them where it came from, how it got there, what steps have to be taken for them to be able to drink it, and what they do throughout the school day while they’re at school can impact that same water.

Mitchem realized she needed to do more after watching student’s reactions to the Elk River chemical spill that left 300,000 without access to usable water earlier this year. She says while students knew what was happening, they thought there was an ‘easy fix’ to the problem. It was this confusion that inspired her to explain the situation in a more practical, hands-on sense.

Thanks to the Chesapeake Bay Science and Geography Initiative, Mitchem received a grant from the National Geographic in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The money is available for water quality field tests to groups in states that that are in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. More than 150 rivers and streams flow into the bay’s drainage basin, which covers parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

As an adjunct instructor at Concord, and grant administrator, Mitchem is preparing to share hands on teaching techniques with other West Virginia educators.

She says one of the ways to test the influence of watersheds is through teacher workshops.

“Part of the reason we’re taking the teachers outdoors is to give them a first-hand idea of what you can do with your students,” Mitchem says. “They can actually take the students to the streams, and we’ve also had a workshop of how they can bring the stream to their students.”

Mitchem says that while first-hand experience is ideal – she realizes some teachers are restrained due to a lack of money. “Some schools, some areas, some teachers simply aren’t able to take a field trip to a stream. It’s just not going to happen.” She continued, “we’ve given them lots of alternatives. Alternatives where they can just use backyard, bring the water in and do the testing.”

Robert Miller is a graduate student at Concord University. This past year, Miller along with other master’s program students collected water samples in Mercer County to study watersheds and test the alkalinity, pH and oxygen levels. Miller is also a 7^th grade teacher at Madison Middle School in Boone County.

Miller plans to take the methods back to his classroom.

“The lessons we’ll learn there, we’ll be able to take those back to some streams that are perhaps not so healthy and we’ll be able to make our connections there,” Miller says.

Joe Manzo is a professor at Concord University and co-coordinator with the West Virginia Geographic Alliance: a partnership between the college and K-12 schools. The geographic alliance is responsible for administering the funds from National Geographic. Manzo says the grant program helps the alliance promote better geography curriculum in West Virginia’s Public Schools.

“So our overall goal is more geography and better taught geography,” Manzo said. “And through the program, that are incorporated through the alliance, teachers have those kinds of opportunities.

Overall, 70 teachers applied for the grant money.

W.Va. School Building Authority Gets New Leader and Members

There will be some new faces at the next quarterly meeting of the West Virginia School Building Authority. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has appointed a new…

There will be some new faces at the next quarterly meeting of the West Virginia School Building Authority. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has appointed a new executive director and five new members to the SBA.

Tomblin announced Monday that David Sneed will serve as executive director. According to a news release from the Governor’s office, Sneed was the Chief of Architectural Services for the School Building Authority from 1990 until 2012. He has also served as director of school planning in Kanawha County and worked with a private company in educational project planning.

Sneed replaces Mark Manchin who was executive director of the SBA for seven years before taking a job as Harrison County Schools superintendent.

Tomblin also appointed several new members to the SBA: Tom Lange and Eric Lewis of Jefferson County, Victor Gabriel of Harrison County, Robert Holroyd of Mercer County and Chris Morris of Kanawha County.

Deal Offers New Certification and College Credit to High School Students

New River Community and Technical College and the state Board of Education are partnering to offer students a pathway to careers in automotive…

New River Community and Technical College and the state Board of Education are partnering to offer students a pathway to careers in automotive technology.

A deal allows automotive technology students to earn college credits and certifications in high school. The program will offer certifications in maintenance and light repair, and automotive service. A master automotive technician designation can be earned at the postsecondary level.

New River president L. Marshall Washington and state associate schools superintendent Kathy J. D’Antonio signed the agreement this week at the college’s Advanced Technology Center in Raleigh County.

Washington says in a news release that automotive technology students previously had to travel out of state to receive advanced training.