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SIERRA VISTA — “They” often contend that professional development for teachers is a boondoggle.
Don’t tell that to Maggie Snell or Sandra Szymeczek, teachers at the K-8 Imagine Charter School on Wilcox Drive.
“They (the kids) want what’s on TV,” said Snell, whose job it is to cover the life, chemical, earth and physical sciences for the sixth through eighth grades.
“They think we have all the answers,” said Szymeczek with a shake of the head.
  
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Which is why, on a recent Saturday, Snell and Szymeczek trooped to Tucson to take advantage of the University of Arizona’s Science Teacher Symposium — a day-long introduction to the school’s new BIO5 Institute and an extravaganza of curriculum and classroom ideas for K-12 science teachers statewide.
“It was incredible,” said Snell, who took a CSI workshop that involved forensic science with advanced lab equipment. “They gave us big binders with instructional materials, lesson plans and projects we can do in class — at all grade levels. They gave us compact discs about Kartchner Caverns, they gave us posters about fingerprinting, bloodtyping kits, magnifying glasses...”
The first BIO5 Science Teacher Symposium drew more than 120 teachers to UA’s main campus for a day filled with Sublime Slime, Insect Discovery, The Teenage Romance Riddle and Cootie Genetics — among other workshops.
“The keynote speaker was fascinating,” said Snell. “It was all about the National Geographic, IBM worldwide family tree, genographic project. It’s the largest geneology project in the world. You can order a kit to send a sample of your DNA and they’ll tell you who you’re related to.”
The two Imagine teachers had their eyes opened to many of the opportunities and services offered by the UA’s science departments.
“They have a Physics Bus that travels around to schools,” said Szymeczek. “It’s powered by vegetable oil. We want to build that in to next year’s teaching plan.”
In the Insect Discovery workshop Szymeczek attended, she was treated to demonstrations she can duplicate here at home — experiments dealing with insect camouflage, termites who’ll follow a line of blue ink, food preferences of hungry crickets.
Snell played detective in the Teenage Romance Riddle, using a gel electrophoresis technique to determine if a “crime” had been committed by a hypothetical girl who may have cheated on her equally hypothetical boyfriend.
“The kids will love this,” said Snell, who intends to order free kits to “re-create the crime” in her class. “In teaching, you usually have to spend a lot of your own money.”
The BIO5 Institute is a collaborative bioresearch institute that brings together scientists from five disciplines — agriculture, medicine, pharmacy, basic science and engineering — to solve complex biological problems. The organization creates partnerships with other sciences, education and industry for the dissemination and application of knowledge.
Objectives include treating disease, feeding humanity and preserving livable environments.
“The teachers got to tour our fabulous new building,” said Deborah Daun, communications director of the BIO5 Institute. “We aren’t even all moved in yet, but the labs are state of the art and researchers in all the disciplines have easy access to each other.”
Daun explained that the space is flexible to accommodate visiting scientists and that BIO5 is committed to cutting edge research, workforce development and commercialization.
“We want to bring ideas to the marketplace, innovative answers that benefit everyone, whether it’s developing new crops, agricultural techniques, new drugs or other aspects of medicine,” she said.
Daun was pleased with the outcome of the first Science Teacher Symposium and said plans are already in the works to make it an annual event. “We haven’t tallied the surveys yet, but everyone told us it was a Saturday well spent,” she said. “We want science teachers to tell other science teachers, because there’s so much available here and so many resources for teachers and students.”
BIO5 is particularly proud of its Web site http://scisource.bio5.org. From this single location, visitors can browse all of the university’s science news and activities, and teachers can find information about curriculum enhancements, summer camps and internships.
Szymeczek was able to put her “Insect Discovery” workshop into practice right away, with her fifth graders’ recent field trip to the Gray Hawk Nature Center, where they spent half a day classifying insects, meeting up with snakes, and enjoying director Sandy Anderson’s insights into local wildlife.
“Science is everything,” said Snell. “It’s why things work the way they do. It’s important to start the scientific method early with kids because then they can figure things out for themselves later on.”
