Science and Mathematics Teaching Center Professional Development:
The Science and Math Teaching Center (SMTC) at the University of Wyoming delivers professional development that goes beyond traditional workshops, offering sustained, personalized, and research-driven learning for K-12 educators. Each program is developed in collaboration with school districts and tailored to real classroom needs, whether through in-person sessions or flexible virtual formats. From multi-day institutes to focused webinars, SMTC ensures educators have access to ongoing support and practical tools that can be directly applied in their teaching.
What makes SMTC's professional development stand out is its emphasis on relevance, flexibility, and impact. Teachers can engage with innovative resources like digital science labs, assessment tools, and classroom-ready data projects, many developed in partnership with university researchers. These offerings are not only grounded in the latest STEM education research but are also designed to help educators build confidence, deepen content knowledge, and stay current with best practices in science and math instruction.
Our Team
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The Professional Development team emerged as a result of collaborations between the SMTC and school districts, community organizations, and other entities around the state and region. We seek to support science and mathematics education pre K-20 through collaborative endeavors that honor the expertise of all stakeholders, and are rooted in the research on science and mathematics teaching and learning.
Our Mission: To provide sustained, high quality, research-based responsive facilitation of science-specific professional development to K-12 teachers and administrators in Wyoming.
Our Approach:
- We focus on SUPPORTING the adoption and implementation of the Wyoming Science Standards.
- We approach PD from a RESPONSIVE LENS and ascribe to the notion that it must be SUSTAINED.
- We MODEL what we want the teacher to be doing in the classroom.
- We HONOR teachers' knowledge and professionalism.
- We provide COLLABORATIVE PLANNING time for teachers to IMPLEMENT that they have learned.
- We use HIGH-QUALITY and RESEARCH-BASED resources.
- We provide TIME/SPACE for teachers to be LEARNERS.
- We recognize EXTERNAL/INTERNAL PRESSURES and provide teachers SPACE to err concerns and move forward PRODUCTIVELY.
Workshop Offerings
Our PD work in school districts responds to teacher and district needs. The sustained PD we do with districts continues over time and takes different forms from group to group. Our supports range from multi-day workshops, to single days, and even to several hour targeted topic workshops. While we typically work in person with teachers in their districts, we've also expanded into virtual workshops that range from multi-day to several hour sessions. We have loved working with preK-12 teachers, instructional facilitators/coaches, and administrators across Wyoming; check out our district map (above) to see where we've been.
If you're interested in having the SMTC work with your teachers, reach out to:
Science - smtcpd@uwyo.edu
Mathematics - smtc@uwyo.edu
Open Enrollment Workshops
Coming Soon! Reach out to our professional development team for more information.
PD Team in Action
Fall 2023
Science Assessment Repository. Science teachers from around Wyoming (Albany, Fremont, Johnson, Laramie, Natrona, Platte, Sublette, and Sweetwater Counties) have worked for 2.5 years on a repository for Wyoming science assessments. This work was supported by WDE ESSER fund grants, and was sponsored by Platte County School District #2 and the SMTC. Email smtcpd@uwyo.edu or steven.priest@wyo.gov for access to the WDE Canvas course called "K-12 Science Assessment Repository." You will need a WDE Canvas login, as these resources are only available to current Wyoming public school science teachers. You can view webinars recordings to orient you to the repository resources here:
Fall 2023 webinar recording coming soon!
Come back soon for updates on how the repository has evolved.
Guide to Creating Digital Science Labs. Science teachers in Carbon County School District #2, a videographer, and the SMTC collaborated to develop resources and a tool, Guide to Creating Digital Science Labs. With the support of a Wyoming Department of Education grant, this multi-year project focused on supporting students in experiencing productive, rich science lab experiences despite absence from class. Click the button below to open this guide for tips on how to create your own digital science labs.
Fall 2022
We were honored to work with University of Wyoming's Laughlin Lab on their Global Vegetation Project. Supported by graduate assistant Matt Bisk, there are now a set of standards-aligned resources for educators to connect the Global Vegetation Project into their K-12 classrooms! We're particularly excited that Data Nuggets recently published some related resources to make this work available to even more teachers around the country. Let us know if you use these resources - we'd love to hear how they work for you!
