ABOUT THIS ISSUE
- about KSN
- about the author

IN THIS ISSUE
- introduction
- workshops
- field trips
- general sessions
- instant updates
- symposium
- paper sessions
- AIDS in American society
- sponsored events
- exhibitors
- banquet
- summary
- KABT takes a look back at 50 years of biology education
- participants

This page was last modified:
September 1, 2003

Originally posted:
March 17, 2003

Get Involved - Stay Informed
edited by Bob Rose

This is a testament to some of the positive reasons for belonging to a professional biology teacher's organization.  In a largely rural state such as ours, it is common to find only one biology teacher in a school.  Caught up in the daily demands of the classroom, the school, the community, and personal needs, it is not surprising that a biology teacher can suddenly discover that he or she is professionally stranded on a classroom island - isolated from biology teaching peers.  Unfortunately, the same professional isolation can occur in a metropolitan school system with several biology teachers on the staff.  In fact, teaching in a large school, with even larger class enrollments, can sometimes necessitate devoting an excessive amount of time just to keep the ship afloat.  Involvement with other biology teachers, other teaching techniques, other teaching trends, can inadvertently get lost in the tide.

Professional affiliation can enhance your effectiveness and your sense of worth. Belonging to the Kansas Association of Biology Teachers (KABT) will keep you in touch with your closest peers.  The KABT offers regularly scheduled meetings, field trips, workshops, update seminars, and other activities designed to help you improve your craft.  Three or four times each year you'll receive the KABT newsletter, which is recognized across the nation as one of the best of its kind.  Not only does the newsletter bring ideas and information to you from other Kansas biology teachers, but, maybe just as importantly, it invites you to make contributions of your own.  Getting some of your ideas into print and in front of other biology teachers is not only a healthy medium for professional growth for you, but it adds strength to the profession at large.  The camaraderie that KABTers have established has provided years of professional interchange and personal rewards for hundreds of Kansas biology teachers.

The KABT and the Division of Biological Sciences of Emporia State University are fully aware of the benefits of professional affiliation to individual biology teachers, their respective schools, and the biology profession.  Thus, they co-sponsored a KABT contingent to attend the 50th anniversary convention of the National Association of Biology Teachers in Chicago, November 16-20, 1988.  Twelve KABT members traveled to the convention together and participated in almost every kind of opportunity available to biology teachers for professional improvement.  The remainder of this manuscript is a report on some of the activities that occurred at the national meeting of biology teachers.  It is hoped that the evident value of this type of participation in the biology teaching profession will serve to recruit more biology teachers into their professional organizations.  More importantly, the authors of these reports sincerely hope that biology teachers can use these reports to get administrative support to help them join and attend biology association functions in the future.  The biology teaching profession needs your participation and you.  Your school can only benefit from what you take from and what you can give to KABT and its national affiliate, NABT.

The accounts that follow have a double purpose.  First, they exhibit the kinds of information you can acquire by attending a national convention, in this case the 50th anniversary convention of NABT.  Second, these are thumbnail sketches of some of the most up-to-date biology information and teaching techniques for biology teachers.