Web Site Precis
There are four Teaching icons at the top of my home page, corresponding to:

• A Proposed Volunteer Teaching Program (this page)
• Teaching Projects: Notes from personal efforts over the last six years.
• Teaching Resources: Book references and links.
• Main Sequence: Physics/Math/Astronomy/Geoscience pages

This Page / This Project
This page is the "kickoff" or starting point for a volunteer science/math education project I've been mulling over for some time.  The idea is: IF there are more people out there like me who think science and math education is important, and who can make time to contribute, then let's see if there is some way to facilitate just that. From the outset there are perhaps four ways of making such a contrubution.

• Maintain a list of volunteer teaching opportunities and contacts specific to the Boulder area.
• Coordinate in-school tutoring in math and science.
• Coordinate scientist visits to the classroom.
• Facilitate teachers expanding their science perspective through workshops.

Context and Prospects
Some personal observations on why this proposition will be difficult to implement:

• Teachers are often very busy and over-subscribed by the nature of their jobs.
  
• Curricula are guided (some might say constrained) by standardized tests.
• Schools have limited budgets.
• Members of the science community generally are also over-subscribed by their jobs.
• In summary: We have a lot of cultural inertia that makes doing new things difficult.

What we have working in our favor:

• Science community members often love what they do and wish to share it.
• We also have a strong interest in science education.
• There is an increasing institutional emphasis (e.g. through NSF) on including education and public outreach in research programs.

Quo Vadis?
At this stage I'm interested in information, in learning more about the education environment. I need to spend time listening to teachers and building a more complete picture. Ideally this will be the basis for a workable starting plan and continuation from there.  If you are interested in this project please feel free to contact me: rob at robfatland dot net. If you would like to see more of 'where I'm coming from' please feel free to look around my web site, particularly at the Main Sequence.

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