The Virginia Association of Science Teachers, Inc. (VAST) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
VAST is a comprehensive educational organization dedicated to the nurturing and advancement of superior science education. Its objectives are to advance the study of science, to promote excellence in the teaching of science and to provide opportunity for communication among science educators in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Leadership is provided by promoting the study of science at all grade-levels, supporting conditions which ensure an optimal environment for the teaching of science, advocating high quality science instruction for all students at all levels and by providing an avenue for communication among the members of the science education community.
Formed in 1952, it is the Virginia chapter affiliated with the National Science Teachers Association.
Famous quotes containing the words association, science and/or teachers:
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)
“The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)