Mayo High teachers attend teacher development programs thanks to Georgia-Pacific
Nancy Fletcher and Jay Flowers, teachers at the Mayo High School for Math, Science, and Technology, have been selected by Georgia-Pacific to attend special summer workshops.
Fletcher is one of 14 teachers nationwide sponsored to attend Keystone Science School’s 2017 Key Issues Institute: Bringing Environmental Issues to the Classroom in Silverthorne, Colorado.
Flowers is one of four educators Georgia-Pacific is sponsoring to attend the Bill of Rights Institute’s “2017 Founders Fellowship” program in Washington, D.C. This annual fellowship for social studies teachers in grades 7-12 provides training and tools to educate students about America’s founders, their ideals and economic and civil liberties.
Held every June and July, the Key Issues Institute program brings together K-12 educators from around the world for a highly interactive four and a half-day workshop. The program is designed to help teachers of all subjects bring environmental issues and STEM-based learning (science, technology, engineering and math) to the classroom. Teachers learn to present scientific concepts in an unbiased way to their students while discovering ways to boost their students’ critical thinking skills.
“Georgia-Pacific is proud to support educators by helping them highlight important environmental issues in engaging and creative ways,” said Jimmy Lindsey, director of operations at Georgia-Pacific’s Darlington Dixie facility. “The Keystone Science School program gives teachers the chance to learn about environmental issues first-hand and it also provides tools they can use to share these important lessons with the students in our local community year after year.”
Key Issues Institute
At Key Issues Institute, teachers work in teams to solve “real-life” scenarios such as investigating the source of a town’s health epidemic, testing water quality of a nearby river and building a sustainable cable-car model. Teachers bring home lesson plans designed to engage students, and lab kits to apply what they’ve learned to their local classrooms. The Institute also coordinates ongoing support from other educators and instructors online.
Bill of Rights Institute
The four teachers selected to attend the Bill of Rights Institute are from Georgia-Pacific’s facility communities across California, Oregon, South Carolina and Tennessee.
“Teaching economics and entrepreneurship is a critical part of our education system, and Georgia-Pacific Foundation is committed to supporting programs that promote these principles,” said Curley Dossman, president of the Georgia-Pacific Foundation. “The Founders Fellowship program strives to help educators simplify these complex concepts and bring them to life for students when they return to their classrooms.”
Aimed at civics, history, government and economics teachers, one of the Founders Fellowship program’s goals is to help students understand the Constitution and the freedoms and opportunities it provides. The conference offers lectures by constitutional scholars and will explore the liberties of the First Amendment.
Teachers will also visit historical sites and tour national monuments in the Washington D.C. area. Participants are eligible to receive 30 hours of continuing learning credits and will receive lesson plan ideas aligned with national and state standards to bring back to the classroom.
Since 1997, Georgia-Pacific has sponsored nearly 200 teachers from its facility communities across the country to attend Keystone Science School.
Follow teachers in June and July through their Key Issues Institute experience by visiting
Georgia-Pacific on Twitter and Facebook. Follow @KScienceSchool on Twitter or like the KSS Facebook page www.facebook.com/KScienceSchool.
About Georgia-Pacific
Based in Atlanta, Georgia-Pacific and its subsidiaries are among the world’s leading manufacturers and marketers of bath tissue, paper towels and napkins, tableware, paper-based packaging, office papers, cellulose, specialty fibers, nonwoven fabrics, building products and related chemicals. The company employs approximately 35,000 people directly, and creates nearly 92,000 jobs indirectly. Founded in 1958, the Georgia-Pacific Foundation has four key investment areas: education, community enrichment, environment and entrepreneurship. For more information visit gp.com/gpfoundation.
