Teachers add to bag of tricks

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 5, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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About 600 teachers from throughout the South will arrive Sunday in Baton Rouge for advanced training in science and math instruction thanks to professional golfer Phil Mickelson.

Now, in its third year, its second year in Baton Rouge, the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy focuses on teachers primarily in grades 3 to 5.

Mickelson and his wife, Amy, joined up with ExxonMobil to start the training. The National Science Teachers Association and Math Solutions, a professional development service, helped develop the course of study.

As many as 90 teachers from Baton Rouge are planning to attend this week’s training at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Baton Rouge — one of three places offering the advanced training this summer.

Among the participants will be Tonya Armas, a special education teacher at Westminster Elementary School.

Armas said she learned about the weeklong training opportunity from a fellow Westminster teacher who attended last year.

“She could say nothing but good things,” Armas said. “She said they had a lot of really good activities.”

Armas, who last year began working with autistic children, said she’s always looking for new “tricks to put in my bag.”

“It’s always good to find new and more-interesting ways to get my kids involved with what they’re learning,” she said.

Myrtle Jefferson, a fifth-grade math teacher at Park Elementary, said she is “looking mainly for different hands-on ideas that the children can use.

“When children are able to manipulate different things, it sticks with them better,” Jefferson said.

Summers off used to be the norm for teachers, but training is filling much of that time these days.

Armas said she has spent the past 12 years mostly at home during the summers with her family. But this year, she’s added more training.
She said she attended several good training sessions with the East Baton Rouge Parish special education office.