SIU hosted the 22nd annual Science in the South Conference Friday.
Dozens of K-12 educators from around Illinois gathered at the Student Center Friday for the annual Science in the South Conference.
The goal of this conference is for teachers to learn new ways to educate students in the field of science.
Suzanne Asaturian has over 30 years experience teaching and help create this conference 22 years ago.
She says teachers attending can learn and teach others as well.in many different ways.
“Teachers that are in their first few years of teaching they should come and get ideas and then teachers that have been teaching for 6 or more years they should come and share ideas.”
Chris Brandmeyer is here for his second time because he says his students at Wesclin Middle School in Trenton really enjoy the new methods he brings back.
“If you tell them I’ve never done this before, they think it’s kind of new, they’re the special class that gets to do it first, so they’re really more eager to kind of incorporate what you’re offering them for the instructional piece of it.”
Conference organizer Kathleen Gaare-Wiese says the conference helps teachers go beyond the book to educate students.
“Hands on is how children learn, they can learn the concepts, but they don’t internalize them unless you’re doing things with them hands on.”
With hands on learning students have a better chance of retaining that information instead of memorizing for a test.
