Teacher Resource Fair Reaches 22 Local Schools

by Tyler Bennett

WVU at Parkersburg’s Education program hosted the Teacher Resource Fair on October 28.

This year was the first year of the fair, organizations like the Clay Center, West Virginia Public Broadcasting Service and West Virginia Division of Forestry gave presentations for student teachers and 22 partnership schools from seven counties.

Rosemary Stull, the PDS Grand Professional Development School Grant, said the main focus of the fair is to let teachers know about outside school information that can help with reaching students. “The focus of this fair is to let the teachers and future teachers know what’s available for them to use with their classrooms in the schools, resources do length them with the CSO that they need to teach and to make learning more engaging and motivating for students,” Stull said.

For those who were unable to attend the fair, Stull had each presentation taped and uploaded to YouTube, so that they would  get the full experience.

“We are video graphing them cause we have 22 partnership schools in seven counties. We thought if we could upload the videos to YouTube so they can be informed in of what they missed,” Stull said.

Being the second most obese state in the nation, Christine McCartney Extensive Specialist at WVU and the SNAP coordinator, said the program’s goal is to educate students on healthy environments from school, communities and work sites.

“We have developed this partnership with WVUP because we are trying to train future teachers on how to identify issues in their environment that may not support health behavior and also understand how to introduce nutrition to students and how to integrate in their teaching and good healthy role models to those students,” McCartney said.

Linda Carnell represented the West Virginia Division of Forestry to encourage educators to utilize the forestry to help engage students in the outdoors.

“With being the third most forested state, we want the students out. The forest is a way of teaching different subjects and we use that through Project Learning Tree is our vehicle to environmental educations to get teachers in the forest.” Carnell said.

Margaret Miller from West Virginia Public Broadcasting, showed how quick and easy it was getting information, and lesson plans all over the state on their website.

All the way from Pittsburgh, Program Manager of Outreach of National History of the Carnegie Museum Pam Keiper showed the resources that the museum offers and can even bring in models of dinosaurs for an assembly program or classrooms.

Keiper said that she wanted the museum to have permanent building in the state.

“We are actually expanding it is one of our goals for 2017, in my department we are expanding into West Virginia so that we are trying to make stronger connections to teachers and student teachers here and I hope these are one of those next steps for next year,” Keiper said.