Urban PTRA

The Urban AAPT/PTRA initiative directs specific efforts to teachers in urban schools. The goal is to bring the urban teacher to an understanding of the best pedagogical practices of physics learning. A way to affect the urban teacher with these state of the art ideas is to have them experience the approaches themselves over a period of time. The AAPT/PTRA workshops will be presented in a way that illustrates these state of the art ideas for the urban teachers to learn and implement themselves. Since teachers may not have easy access to computers, the initial workshops focus on some of the low technology activities. This does not mean low-level content or process skills. A great deal of science content and high-level pedagogical learning processes can be provided without expensive equipment. This program can provide a long-term experience that will enable the teacher to grow professionally and be able to present workshops to the other teachers in urban school districts.