The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) is a project of the

Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS or RDF) is a division of Center for Inquiry (CFI) founded by British biologist Richard Dawkins in 2006 to promote scientific literacy and secularism. Originally a non-profit based i ...

and a program of the

Center for Inquiry The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a U.S. nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal and to fight the influence of religion in government. History The Center for Inquiry was established in 1991 by ...

which provides free workshops and materials to

elementary Elementary may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Elementary'' (Cindy Morgan album), 2001 * ''Elementary'' (The End album), 2007 * ''Elementary'', a Melvin "Wah-Wah Watson" Ragin album, 1977 Other uses in arts, entertainment, an ...

middle school Middle school, also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school, is an educational stage between primary school and secondary school. Afghanistan In Afghanistan, middle school includes g ...

, and, more recently,

high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...

science teachers to enable them to effectively teach

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

based on the

Next Generation Science Standards The Next Generation Science Standards is a multi-state effort in the United States to create new education standards that are "rich in content and practice, arranged in a coherent manner across disciplines and grades to provide all students an int ...

History

In 2013,

Bertha Vazquez Bertha Vazquez is an United States of America, American educator. She retired from classroom teaching in 2023 and became the Director of Education for Center for Inquiry, the Center for Inquiry. Vazquez was appointed a Committee for Skeptical Inq ...

, TIES director and middle school science teacher in

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

, met

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...

at the

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private university, private research university in Coral Gables, Florida, United States. , the university enrolled 19,852 students in two colleges and ten schools across over ...

and discussed evolution education with him and a number of science professors. The discussion surrounded the issue of teachers feeling unprepared to teach evolution. This encounter and the understanding that teachers learn the most from each other inspired her to conduct workshops on evolution for her fellow teachers. After hearing about Vazquez's work, Dawkins followed up with a visit to Vazquez's school in 2014 to speak to teachers from the Miami-Dade County school district. Dawkins eventually asked Vazquez if she would be willing to take her workshop project nationwide. With the encouragement of Dawkins and funding from his foundation, and also with encouragement from Robyn Blumner of the Center for Inquiry, the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science began offering workshops in 2015.

Activity

The first TIES workshop was in April 2015 in collaboration with the Miami Science Museum. A total of ten workshops took place in 2015. Since then, the program has expanded, as of 2020, to over 200 workshops in all 50 states. While Bertha Vazquez presented many of the workshops earlier on, over 80 presenters are now active in the nationwide program. Presenters are usually high school or college biology educators in the states in which their workshops take place, and workshops take into account the given state's evolution education standards. Workshops vary in length, and in cases of longer workshops or webinars, scientists and other relevant guests are also invited to present. Some of these have included Nathan Lents and

Jonathan Tweet Jonathan Tweet (born 1965) is an American game designer who has been involved in the development of the role-playing games ''Ars Magica'', '' Everway'', '' Over the Edge'', ''Talislanta'', the third edition of ''Dungeons & Dragons'' and '' 13th A ...

. In response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, TIES moved its workshops online and produced guided lessons in English and Spanish that students can work through on their own. Vazquez sees TIES as not only about evolution education, but also about empowering teachers to be leaders in their educational communities.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://tieseducation.org Science education Science education in the United States Biology education Teacher training Teacher training programs Pedagogy Educational materials Science education materials American educational websites

History

Activity

See also

References

External links