Sixteen secondary school teachers will work with Health Science Center scientists and researchers to develop new curriculum on science, math and health for the middle school level.
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Sixteen middle and high school teachers are coming to the Health Science Center for six weeks in June and July to interact with scientists and researchers to create new teaching materials to improve science, math and health education at the middle school level.

This year’s program builds on work done the past several years in the Positively Aging®: Choices and Changes curriculum project. That project has evolved into a K-12 Teacher Professional Development Program, which is sponsoring this summer’s training called I.N.Q.U.I.R.E.

I.N.Q.U.I.R.E., which stands for Investigating, Networking, Questioning, Understanding, Involving, Researching, Evolving, will increase the tools available to teachers who are looking for curricular material to address the math, science, health and reading language arts objectives in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) that align with the student evaluation system, Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS).

The teachers will work with scientists and conduct background research to develop new teaching materials on obesity and mobility, and cardiovascular, pulmonary and sleep disorders. These new health promotion and disease prevention materials will add to and revise some of the teaching units developed by the Positively Aging®: Choices and Changes curriculum project. This year’s program could add as many as 20 new teaching units to the program.

“We are thrilled to have this new team of teachers and we are so encouraged by the number of Health Science Center researchers who are cooperating with this endeavor,” said Linda Pruski, education development specialist in the department of medicine, General Clinical Research Center. “We can hardly wait to see what they will create and how they will use the materials in their classrooms next year.”

The 16 teachers come from 14 schools and 6 school districts throughout Bexar and Medina counties. All the new materials will be available, free of charge, at teachhealthk-12.uthscsa.edu, along with the 276 activities already available.