An Award from NABT to Bertha Vazquez

Biological Evolution
STEM
Environmental and Science Education
Edward Hessler

This just in from Glenn Branch, National Center for Science Education.

"Bertha Vazquez received the Evolution Education Award for 2017 from the National Association of
Biology Teachers (NABT). Vazquez received the award at the NABT's recent conference in St. Louis, Missouri.

"The NABT award, sponsored by BEACON and BSCS, 'recognizes innovative classroom teachers and their efforts to promote the accurate understanding of biological evolution with the larger community.'"

"Vazquez teaches at G. W. Carver Middle School in Miami. and directs the Richard Dawkins
Foundation's Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science."

Mr. Branch provided these links:
 
About NABT's awards, visit: https://www.nabt.org/Awards-About

For Vazquez's "Sharing the Passion for Evolution Education," visit:
https://ncse.com/blog/2015/08/sharing-passion-evolution-education-0016580

And for the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science, visit:
https://www.richarddawkins.net/ties/

If you only have time to read one, read the last. Ms. Vazquez is remarkable in many ways. In a note to me in September she told me how TIES started.  

"We kicked off TIES together, Richard Dawkins and I. I met him a few times here locally and then talked to him at length at a private event back in 2014. I told him I had decided to start helping middle school science teachers with evolution workshops in Miami. Just on my own, with the blessing of my district supervisors. He wanted to help so he came to my middle school. We invited teachers from all over the district and I interviewed him in my school auditorium (pic attached). Hundreds of science teachers came. Then he asked me to do this nationally and he would pay me. Almost three years later, we've presented or confirmed 73 workshops in 28 states. I run a very positive project. I feel that the NCSE takes care of the creationist teachers. We focus on the good teachers in the middle, who just want good resources and content knowledge. HHMI is superb but is geared more towards high school and college. Our niche is middle school."

HHMI is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

h/t: Glenn Branch, NCSE