Workshop on Teaching Astronomy Space Science at High School and Middle School Level

For the last two years we have conducted a workshop mostly supported by a NASA IDEAS grant on providing professional development for teachers teaching Astronomy/Space Science at high school and middle school level. In some cases this effort has also supported efforts at schools in creating new courses in Space Science. The effort has included a one week summer workshop with as many as six follow up one-day meetings in the school year. The summer workshops have included presentations by experts in current space science research themes and also tours of professional and amateur observatories in and around Wisconsin. The format also allows for some time for teachers to share ideas, curricula among themselves and to present and share "best practices". As in many other instances, the different needs of individual schools, students and teachers prevents a single approach to content and course implementation in schools. Therefore our efforts have focused in serving the needs of individual teachers as much as feasible with limited resources. We gratefully acknowledge the support received from NASA/IDEAS program as well as the Wisconsin Idea program funded by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.