LOCAL TEACHER PARTICIPATES IN STARR PROGRAM

Anita Hall, a Scott City elementary teacher, will be bringing some "fresh, innovative ideas and methods" to the students in her classes next year.

Hall, a second-grade teacher, has recently been chosen by state education officials to serve as a leader in a teacher-to-teacher training program that will take place over the next two years. The program, Select Teachers As Regional Resources (STARR), informs a select group of Missouri teachers about new motivational teaching techniques and hands-on learning experiments for children in all subjects.

Selected teachers attend a series of seminars and workshops which are conducted by national education experts. Hall, who was chosen from over 130 Missouri teachers, has already attended four of the seminars and said that the "fresh and innovative ideas that they had about teaching were really exciting."

Hall said she already has learned new motivational techniques, and hopes that she can "make learning more challenging and exciting for her students." She has discovered ways to integrate videos, music, and actual product-making into her curriculum, and hopes that, in the sessions that follow, that she can improve many of her basic teaching skills.

Hall's duty in the program, however, does not end with instructing children. Hall's job now is to "spread around" as many of her newly-gleaned ideas as possible. After completing their last educational workshop this summer, Hall and other STARR teachers will spend the school year giving workshops at state colleges in their area. Hall and other helpers will be working with teachers in Southeast Missouri in order to promote a growing pool of teachers who will ascertain and use the new teaching skills.

The Missouri Department of Education covers the cost of hiring replacement teachers for STARR teachers like Hall who will spend the entire school year in the regional workshops.

"The STARR project is a good way for the state to tap the talent of enthusiastic, master teachers who understand the needs and concerns of other teachers," said Robert E. Bartman, commissioner of education.

The only drawback that Hall sees in the program is that every teacher in the state can't attend the workshops that she is attending. "If I can get local teachers interested not only in the techniques that I've learned, but in the program itself, I'll have done my job well," said Hall.