FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 5, 2005
Contact: Sarah Sumners
Roger F. Wicker Center for Creative Learning
(662) 241-6101

Dedicated teachers spend their summer growing professionally
 
COLUMBUS, Miss.--Teachers from across the state spent their summer participating in three Teacher Institutes offered by the Roger F. Wicker Center for Creative Learning located at Mississippi University for Women.
   
The Wicker Center was host to more than 80 teachers who participated in three workshops consisting of two days each in June. These presentations were open to all teachers and administrators free of charge and included topics such as “Differentiating Instruction,” “Motivating the At-Risk Learner” and "Learning to Learn/Thinking and Reasoning."
    
One participant commented, “This was such a wonderful opportunity to meet teachers from my area and to hear such wonderful presentations.”
   
During the month of July, teachers from the Mississippi Delta and local school districts came to the Wicker Center as part of the CHAMPS Project (Creating High Achievement in Mathematics, Problem-Solving and Science). The CHAMPS Professional Development Institute brought together 29 teachers for a three-week program designed to provide Mississippi middle school educators with strategies to appropriately differentiate instruction to ensure all learners are challenged. 
   
The Center for Creative Learning also hosted the CHAMPS II Mathematics and Science Partnership Summer Teacher Institute during the month of July. Thirty-nine teachers from 17 school districts representing eight Mississippi counties participated in the two-week program. The participants also will attend four follow-up mini-conferences and participate in an interactive project website, an online WebCT community, as well as the state and national conferences in the fields of mathematics and science.
   
The institutes are funded by a congressionally-directed grant through the U.S. Department of Education. The CHAMPS Project is funded by a Jacob K. Javits grant for Gifted Education awarded to the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science by the United States Department of Education. The Mathematics and Science Partnership grant is funded by the Mississippi Department of Education.