Volunteering your time
Here is the part that I have to confess about. I didn't get involved because I felt this altruistic urge to help my fellow teachers. Actually, I had only been teaching for about 6 years and I heard that vendors sometimes give teachers free stuff for their classrooms if you hung out by the booths so I got involved, quite honestly for the purpose of science supply booty for my classroom. I thought, I'll volunteer some time and then I'll get free stuff. The joke was on me, I had no idea that STAT is the largest state Science teacher organization in the country and it holds the largest state Science education conference second only to the national Science conference, which if you haven't been to NSTA, you must go at least once in your life time because it's absolutely amazing. In fact the picture of the 3 ladies wearing bug glasses that heads my blog is a picture of Jenni Rey, Kelly Rigoni and me at NSTA Conference in Atlanta Georgia at the vendor floor which seemed to go on forever. It's grandiose, its fun and its better than any of the national conferences for teaching including NCTM for Mathematics and IRA for Reading (I speak from experience)...
CAST 2002
But I digress, back to the conference and my experience with CAST 2002 (the Conference for the Advancement of Science Teachers.) The year we hosted it in El Paso, we broke all of their attendance records, over 5K in attendance that year, and no, there was not time to hob nob with vendors, or even go to workshops, I was knee deep in organizing the socials, helping with set up, stuffing conference bags, you name it, we did it. CAST is a 3 day conference filled with keynote speakers, hundreds of workshops, field trips, social events in the evening. Its like bringing the Science circus to town. This is a huge event. Afterwards, when teachers went home with full bags from the vendor floor and minds filled with cool ideas to take to their classroom, I realized that I had been a part of something magical. I may not have gotten stuff from vendors but my reward was far greater than a few free Science consumables. The experience opened the doors to many more opportunities. The people I became close friends with inspired me to be a better science teacher, to eventually write curriculum for my district and to later become a Science leader, first at my campus and then for a district. It all started by getting involved in an organization and donating a bit of my time to help accomplish something great.
Without good people, you lose momentum
After we sponsored CAST for 2002, we decided to get our organizational group together to host a miniCAST. miniCAST is a one day version of the CAST conference held regionally. We held ours at Chapin High School. This was fun too but eventually the group disbanded. People were assigned different jobs or retired from their districts, Tim, started getting involved with a new organization for educational technology (he found a new club, TCEA!) and then Jim and Dusty Milson, who were the regional contact for STAT, retired from the organization. We lost steam, we went dormant.
The Giant Awakens
Nine years later, we get a call from a friend that the Milson's are in search of Tim. They wondered if we would like to take their place as the regional representatives of STAT. Tim and I are now married and we are honored to be a new Jim and Dusty. We decide its time to get the band back together again, and voila, miniCAST 2013 is born. With the help of Carmen Imai from Region 19 and the El Paso Science Network, Cory Stone from the Gene Roddenberry Planetarium, Kathy Kraften, Cynthia Ontiveros, Ernie Herrera, Monika Thomas, Bonita Fraire, Jenny Rey and Margaret Johnson from EPISD Science, Karen Balbier from EPISD Instructional Technology, Diane Perez from Tech2o and Edith Velasquez from Insights, we met over 8 months, planned, schemed and produced a conference that had over 400 teachers in attendance at Brown Middle School. It was fantastic! Thank you guys for volunteering your time for that event!
miniCAST 2014
We are doing it again this year on September 27, again at Brown. We hope that this year we can get even more teachers in attendance! Each teacher in attendance of miniCAST can fill out a form to join the Science Teacher's Association of Texas because your membership is covered in the cost of the $55.00 ticket. You can visit the miniCAST event website by going to the miniCAST link on the home page of this website.
Our regional organization also hosts Science Dinners monthly at the Great American Restaurant on Mesa Hills (the last Wednesday of the month.) At each of these dinners we give away door prizes to help teachers teach science and we have wonderful guest speakers that will talk to you about Science in the El Paso area. We have had scientists from NASA that work on the Mars and Moon programs, a scientist from UTEP that discovered a new species of toad in the Congo, a museum curator that has a one of a kind fossil collection that tells the tale of the Earth's fossil record, Engineers, Water conservationists, Rocket clubs and Robotics. El Paso is rich with Science and our group wants that information in the hands of teachers! And because we know that you also have a life and a family, we encourage our teachers to bring their families to these dinners. (By the way, you don't have to be a member to attend our dinners... everyone is welcome!) Our first Dinner for the 2014-15 school year will take place in October and our guest speaker will be from Fifer's Ranch (the science of ranching.) Hope to see you there.
Well, that's how I got involved in the Science Teachers Association of Texas and that is why I'm asking you to join us. Even if you can't volunteer your time to organize the big events, you can always help by presenting at our conference, or you could spread the word to other Science teachers who don't know we are out there for them, or you could just attend our events and become a member of STAT. We have a blast, we network, we learn about science, we geek out and most importantly, we help kids learn Science, by helping Science teachers become better at what they do.
-Techscichick