Piloting and Evaluating a Workshop to Teach Georgia Teachers about Weather Science and Safety

A survey of 691 Georgia teachers suggested that their students generally were not prepared for severe weather. Teachers also were somewhat dissatisfied with the quality of the teaching resources on weather and weather safety. Only 46 (7%) of the teachers were aware of the American Red Cross Masters of Disaster (MoD) weather science and safety curriculum. We conducted a week-long weather science and safety workshop for 49 Georgia teachers in the summers of 2008-2010 to introduce the MoD curriculum so that they could teach it to their students and share it with colleagues. Qualitative analyses of the teachers' and the authors' workshop goals revealed that teachers became more knowledgeable about weather science and safety and learned how to teach the MoD curriculum. Quantitative analyses of the teachers' pre- and post-workshop responses to the project measures revealed statistically significant increases at the workshop's conclusion in science teaching self-efficacy and in self-efficacy to teach weather science and safety. Teachers also evidenced statistically significant gains in their knowledge of weather science and safety concepts. A follow-up with teachers from the 2008 workshop revealed that they had shared the MoD curriculum with 77 teachers and had taught the curriculum to 724 students. We discussed the potential of the MoD curriculum to increase students' knowledge and preparation for weather hazards. In the supplemental materials, we provided a sample MoD lesson and alignments of the MoD curriculum with the Next Generation Science Standards.