State and local officials announced Tuesday that a professional development program at the Connecticut Science Center will triple in size thanks to a donation from the Andrew J. and Joyce D. Mandell Family Foundation.
The program currently enrolls about 500 teachers per year, but with the new funding it will expand to 1,500 per year and soon will begin awarding graduate-level college credit.
The size of grant was not disclosed, but Connecticut Science Center President and CEO Matt Fleury said the Mandells’ grant is “the biggest grant the Connecticut Science Center has received since it was opened.”
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Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra said that although the Hartford School district had been historically troubled, the expansion of the professional development program and others like it are key initiatives to climbing out of the bottom ranks.
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Keith Sevigny, a graduate of the Science Center’s professional development program and a teacher at Annie Fisher STEM Magnet School in Hartford, said the program offers teachers like him an opportunity to adjust to their learning curve in the rapidly-changing world of technology.
He said the academy instructs teachers how to “cultivate children as critical thinkers rather than as memorizers of fact.”
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The full article by Jacqueline Wattles appeared in CT News Junkie.Related articles