First published: October 2, 2017
URL to live article: https://polytechnic.purdue.edu/newsroom/pltw-ceo-emphasized-professional-growth-for-k-12-teachers-during-purdue-visit
Thousands of K-12 teachers completed Project Lead The Way (PLTW) Core Training over the summer, including more than 180 teachers who attended sessions held at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus. The teachers attended numerous professional development sessions on several topics in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), gaining skills to take back to their own classrooms in Indiana and beyond.
Vince Bertram, president and CEO of PLTW, visited Purdue’s PLTW Engineering sessions.
“Teachers perform one of the most important functions of our society, and they have to be effective at delivering content which is activity-, project-, and problem-based,” said Bertram. “There is nothing as important as preparing our next generation. That’s why we place such a high value on teachers and their professional growth.”
Teachers participating in PLTW Core Training
To prepare for teaching Design and Modeling as well as Automation and Robotics, Daniel Frazier, a teacher at Tri-North Middle School in Bloomington, Indiana, completed PLTW’s Design and Modeling sessions, noting it was both challenging and practical.
“Doing everything hands-on made the material easier to understand and helped me plan how I will teach my students,” said Frazier. “The Master Teachers were superb. The knowledge and encouragement they offered during training was great, and knowing that they are there to support me going forward is huge.”
PLTW’s annual Core Training helped prepare teachers to introduce K-12 students to design thinking, automation and robotics, biomedical science, civil engineering and architecture, digital electronics, computer science principles, and other topics in STEM. Participants completed a portfolio of work and were certified to teach PLTW courses back in their local schools.
In addition to networking with each other, participants also met with faculty and staff from the departments of Technology Leadership & Innovation and Computer Graphics Technology and the School of Construction Management Technology.
Half of the teachers who attended the 2017 sessions were from Indiana. Others traveled to West Lafayette from as far away as Montana, Texas, Georgia, and California.
Read PLTW’s coverage of Core Training, including Vince Bertram’s Purdue visit.
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