Iowa Teachers of Psychology Conference April 5, 2019

The Iowa Teachers of Psychology will be holding their annual teaching conference on April 5, 2019 at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo. The legendary Sue Frantz will be their keynote speaker.

For more information, go to their website.

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Professional Development Options for High School Psychology Teachers Part 2

One of the best experiences for professional development is the APA/Clark Workshop. Ask any of the hundreds of "graduates" from the workshop and they will tell you it was one of the most professionally rewarding experiences they have had.

This year, Amy Ramponi and Brad Wray will be the primary Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools TOPSS presenters. Below is the photo from 2018.

I encourage anyone who is the sole psychology teacher in their school to apply. This is especially true if you are from a traditionally underrepresented community. One of the goals for the APA in general, and TOPSS more specifically is to bring in more people to increase ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, age, geographic, disability/ability, sexual orientation, and belief system diversity.

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Professional Development Options for High School Psychology Teachers

The American Psychological Association (APA) and Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS) has some excellent professional development for teachers. Here are but a few:

The stars on the map represents the various regional and state conferences that are held regularly. Grants from the APA are available to apply for to underwrite the costs of the conference and/or speakers. Personally, I have been to both the Northern California, Arizona, Indiana, and Chicagoland conferences in my career. They have all been excellent and I came away with multiple activities and resources from all of them. Best of all, I gained friends and a professional learning network.

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Iowa Teachers of Psychology Conference (ITOP)

If you teach psychology in Iowa or near Waterloo, check out this post. The folks in Iowa are putting together an excellent spring meeting. Waterloo is not that far from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Check it out!

Conference Website
Registration Form

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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Professional Development Resources and Regional Networks

Where can you get some quality professional for your psychology background? Look no further than what we have put together at the American Psychological Association/TOPSS.

If there is nothing in your state, find the link to create your own group and make something happen! The APA/TOPSS has some excellent resources to get you started.

Teaching Toolkit from APA/TOPSS

Check it out!

http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/topss/state-local-groups.aspx

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Excellence In Psychology Instruction Conference (EPIC)

Saturday, October 7 has a fantastic conference for anyone in the Midwest if you can make it to Green Bay, WI. Details here.

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

Announcing the Third Excellence In Psychology Instructposted

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Indiana Students and Teachers of Psychological Science Conference

Amanda Harmon of Zionsville Community High School shared this with the blog about the ISTOPS Conference at the end of September. Below are screenshots from their wonderful web site and a link to register. Marion University is a small, private university in Indianapolis, Indiana and was a wonderfully beautiful campus. If you are in Indiana, western Ohio, Eastern Illinois, or Northern Kentucky, I'd make the drive. They have a great program set up.

To register, click on this link.

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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NorCalTOPSS Psychology Teaching Conference August 5, 2017

Hey, Psychology Teachers!

Are you in 

Northern California 

Central Coast

The Bay Area

Central Valley

Sacramento

or Reno, NV?

On August 5, Eric Castro and Chuck Schallhorn are organizing the Northern California TOPSS meeting. We last met two years ago in San Francisco at St. Ignatius where Eric teaches. This year, we moving to the East Bay to make it more accessible to more people--Mountain House HS in Mountain House, CA, just a few miles east of Livermore just off the Altamont Pass near the 580/205 exchange.

Our agenda includes:

• debriefing the APA Summit for High School Psychology
• debriefing the Stanford ONE conference
• participants sharing out activities that work for them
• how to turn activities into lab experiences
• the scientific nature of psychology
• technology tools useful for teaching psychology
• examining blended learning
• discovering online resources for teachers of psychology
• participant Q/A and discussion about teaching psychology
• plus lots of free textbooks and review books as well as three Flipgrid premium accounts

Go to http://norcaltopss.com for registration details.

If you cannot make it, send or refer a colleague from your school/district/area. Send any questions to cschallhorn@lammersvilleusd.net


posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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APA/TOPSS Clark Workshop-Important Update

This update is from Emily Leary-Chesnes from the APA. She explains the problem and encourages teachers to re-apply.
The deadline to apply has been extended to April 22, 2017. 

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We regret sharing that applications for the APA/Clark Workshop, that were submitted before April 6, 2017, were not captured in the system due to a database error. The online system has been corrected and we have extended the workshop application deadline to April 22, 2017. If you applied to the workshop before April 6th, please resubmit your application here: http://apacustomout.apa.org/ClarkWorkShop/default.aspx.

If you have any questions please email Yvonne Hill at yhill@apa.org. Again, we sincerely regret this error and we look forward to receiving your application. All interested high school psychology teachers are encouraged to apply to participate in the workshop; details are provided below:

APA/Clark University Workshop for High School Teachers The 13th annual APA/Clark University Workshop for High School Teachers will be held June 28-30, 2017, at Clark University in Worcester, MA. The workshop will be open to 25 teachers.

The 2017 workshop presenters will include Clark University psychology faculty, Nancy Diehl, PhD, of Hong Kong International School and Southside Family Health Centre (Hong Kong), and Joseph Swope, PhD, of Northwest High School (Germantown, Md.). APA President Antonio Puente, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, will deliver a keynote address titled "125 Years of Teaching of Psychology: Where does high school psychology fit in?"

Housing in the Clark campus dorms and materials will be provided for all participants. There is no registration fee. Participants will receive travel stipends of $150. For teachers in need of extra travel support, a limited number of travel scholarships of $250 will be available.

The deadline to apply has been extended to April 22, 2017.

This workshop is sponsored by the American Psychological Foundation, Clark University and APA, with generous support from Lee Gurel, PhD. For more information or to apply, please visit http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/topss/clark-university-workshop.aspx.

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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Psychology Teacher Mapping Post--A Request for Information

OK, this idea has been around for a while now and it seems it has not gotten off the ground.

Let's give it a go here. This is a trial run. If you have problems, please email me at thspblog@gmail.com

I made a short Google Form that, when the questions are answered populates a Google map, with the information available for each person.

Link for Google Form--please go here and fill in your information:
https://goo.gl/2f8HHI

When taken, the only data in the spreadsheet was mine, so that is why only one icon exists. I will post periodic updates in the future. The name of the high school is listed at the top of the information.

The Map can be found here:
Version 3 https://drive.google.com/open?id=160BjGqEoTJILVCAwef7NLn8uk_U&usp=sharing

When you click an icon, this information pops up:

At the moment, we have not created any guidelines as to the relationship and expectations between mentors and mentees. The College Board has done a trial version of this for APUSH. No word on when it will reach psychology.

For now, if you are willing to mentor, look for people in your area who are in need. If you are in need, reach out.

Please do not just ask for materials, but rather, make this a working series of discussions to become better psych teachers.

Post Update: 7/5/2016 10:10 AM PST

Mapping the Psych Teachers Update:

--I changed the parameters and got rid of latitude and longitude and used zip code for location. Fewer errors, but still some exist.

--For some reason, google sheets does not accept a "0" at the beginning of a set of numbers, making the east coast zip codes only four digits - not totally sure how this is impacting the mapping

--I must update the map manually

--The map must be used to get an idea only--it seems it will not be perfect, but will get us a pretty good idea of who is around us

--All this data is in a spreadsheet that I can share with people willing/interested in organizing regional conferences

--The spreadsheet will have the accurate information even if the map does not reflect that

--I'm hoping this will spark some regional/state PLCs and connecting psychology teachers with one another

--at the moment of writing this post, we are at 340 teachers

-----as of 7/7/16 we are up to 448

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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