First and foremost we need to find the resources for supporting implementing teachers / schools after the HHMI funds are no longer available.
To accomplish this we are preparing grant proposals to private foundations that have already provided us with encouragement to apply.
Second, we need to find a mechanism for interesting more high school science teachers to make the big step of moving beyond safe, structured curricula to embrace real research oriented activities thus making their courses science discovery experiences for their students. We shall address this challenge by changing the structure of our workshops; about half of workshop participants will be teachers in training (students at a partner university school of education). The other participants of the workshops will be already practicing teachers who can act as mentors for the students.
A third challenge is to bring the program to underserved schools. We plan to address this limitation by setting up cooperative relationships with select schools with large underserved student populations. Our first such school will be the Brockton MA high school.
