SOAP BUBBLES, STAWS PART OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

Dr. Henry Garon made the trek from New Orleans to Cape Girardeau to weigh soap bubbles, roll BB-gun pellets on a cardboard tray and turn straws into makeshift scales.

Garon, who makes his living as a physics professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, wasn't testing comic material on a new audience in a moonlighting role.

Rather, he was trying to show how science could be taught with little expense and plenty of creativity.

Garon's students, 11 area elementary school teachers, appeared to be completely captivated by the myriad of ways to stir a child's curiosity of conceptual physics and the like.

Garon advised the teachers to steer clear of dull presentations and complex terminology. "If you're not making it fun for your students, you're barking up the wrong tree," Garon said Monday at the Cape Girardeau Vo-Tech School.

"You don't have to tell them what they're discovering, just let it happen."

To demonstrate how to compare the weight of various objects, Garon placed a stamp on the makeshift scale, then replaced it with a soap bubble. After gently allowing the bubble to fall on the tip of the scale, Garon said, "As you can see, the bubble is about one-fourth the weight of the stamp.

This elicited laughter and increased interest from the teachers who represented Franklin, Alma Schrader, Clippard and Washington Elementary Schools.

Monday's seminar is one of five, two-day academic sessions per year and is part of a three-year program offered by the National Faculty Delta Teachers Academy (DTA).

What started in 1992 as a pilot grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the Delta Teachers Academy has expanded from the original 10 sites to 44 this year, serving more than 600 teachers in more than 60 school districts. The DTA is now funded by the Department of Agriculture.

After just a few hours of the first seminar, Franklin teacher Bonnie Kerr said she already feels like a better science teacher. "Sometimes elementary teachers are weaker in the sciences than in anything else because they haven't had enough training in it," Kerr said. "This not only gives us a chance to learn, but to present the material in a more interesting way."

The first workshop will conclude today. There will be workshops April 24-25, May 1-2 and 17-18 and a two-week workshop July 9-21 at Loyola University in New Orleans.

"The idea is to turn us into teams that bounce ideas off of each other, learn new ways to teach science and come away from this ready to show other teachers what we've learned," Kerr said.

Other workshops that started in Missouri in 1994 took place in Sikeston, Caruthersville and Farmington. "These are the only cities in the state offering the workshop," Kerr said.

A workshop in Cairo,Ill., on local history, culture and geography, children's literature, social psychology and group dynamics was also offered in 1994. Participants meet for an orientation session and decide the subject and scope of their workshops.

There is still room for one or two more slots to be filled in the Cape Girardeau workshop. The workshop is open to both elementary and secondary teachers. "The reason only elementary teachers signed up the first time is because they were the only ones who didn't have scheduling conflicts," said Kerr, one of the team coordinators. "You could still sign up for part of the workshop, but if you want to teach this to someone else you really need to go to every one."

Tony J. Becker Jr. is the program officer for the National Faculty's Southern region. His office is at 200 Carondelet Street, Suite 1700, New Orleans, La., 70130-2900. He can be reached at 504-524-7644.

The National Faculty exists for the sole purpose of improving the quality of teaching in the nation's classrooms. It accomplishes this by mobilizing college professors throughout the country who work in programs with teachers at all grade levels in all academic disciplines.

It was founded in 1968 as an affiliate of Phi Beta Kappa with major financial backing from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

"The idea of sending us to New Orleans isn't to provide a free vacation," Kerr said. "If you're out of town spending time with the same team, you'll have a better chance of learning more and having a more intensified workshop."