Our proposal called for 5 or 6 schools in each of the Northern and Western District and 10 schools in the more densely populated Central District. We planned to recruit two additional teachers from each of these schools, introducing them to the project at summer workshops held in each district. This has not proved feasible. Currently, 16-20 cohort 2 teachers have completed the application process.

• Current participating teachers have left their schools for a variety of reasons.
• Rural schools don’t have a large science department from which to draw.
• Many district and state department of education workshops, as well as university workshops, are being offered this summer.
• All of the districts have areas which are a long driving distance from the center base school.
• Center Directors are not natural marketing experts.

Due to problems recruiting, Center Directors would like to accept teachers regardless of their science teaching area. They would also like to encourage cohort 1 participating teachers to attend for more training and to help new teachers. This means that a workshop with 4 or 5 new teachers might have to offer training in 4 or 5 science subject areas. This might possibly work, but is hardly efficient. Our project is tied to core curriculum in these subject areas; our success in implementation this year is due to the relevance of training to curriculum.

By asking all teachers to attend a central workshop, we might lose more teachers. Teachers who cannot attend in their own district due to a commitment during that time currently have the option of attending another workshop at a different time period.

This has led to consideration of working with district science supervisors to offer training during their workshops. This would be supplemented with additional training for teachers who commit to working with the project for several days immediately before school starts, or on Saturdays after school starts. Maryland State Department of Education credit is available to teachers who complete the entire training.