It is an exciting challenge and an honor to have been selected the next editor of the Secondary School Chemistry Section. My interest in secondary school chemistry teaching and teachers is the result of many experiences, which began when I was a chemistry student in an Iowa high school. I received my B.S.Ed. from Indiana Wesleyan University, the M.N.S. from Arizona State University, and the Ph.D. in Chemistry from The University of Iowa. I have taught in both high school and university. Currently I am Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. I have worked extensively with middle and high school teachers through NSF-funded projects and I am actively involved in pre-service chemistry teacher education. My goals for the Secondary School Chemistry Section include making the section more useful to high school teachers, encouraging a greater number of teachers to submit manuscripts, increasing the number of high school teachers who read the Journal of Chemical Education, and building on the established strengths of the section. The section should be useful also to college and university faculty members and others who are interested in secondary school chemistry teaching and learning. In order to accomplish these goals I am seeking suggestions from you. I want to know what you, the secondary school chemistry teacher, find useful in the Journal and what new features you would like to see included in the Secondary School Chemistry Section.

Note: Emory Howell will officially replace Mickey Sarquis as Secondary School Editor January 1, 1997.

You can reach him by any of the following paths:

Email: jehowell@wave.st.usm.edu
Telephone: 601-266-4375 Fax: 601-266-6075
Mail: J. Emory Howell
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, Mississippi 39406-5043

Especially for High School Teachers

Many articles appearing in each issue of the Journal of Chemical Education are applicable both to secondary school and post-secondary chemical education. Some articles carry the Secondary School Chemistry Section designation but many do not. "Especially for High School Teachers" is written specifically to help secondary school chemistry teachers, and all others interested in secondary school chemistry, identify articles that are likely to be of interest.

An Applications and Analogies feature titled Musk Oxen and Micelles by J. W. Hill, describes the protective behavior of musk oxen as a means of explaining how micelles of soap form. J. H. Burness outlines a safe and easy method for generating gas to explore molar mass and molar volume relationships in Oxygen from Hydrogen Peroxide: An Experimental Modification. Soap, food coloring, and potassium iodide are used in a Demonstration of the Catalytic Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide by A. R. Conklin, Jr., and A. Kessinger. The dehydration of CuSO₄ · 5 H₂O and subsequent hydration of CuSO₄ is shown by C. M. Brozek to be a Simple and Attractive Demo of the Reversibility of Chemical Reactions. A laboratory exercise that helps students develop observation, measurement, and deductive reasoning skills is presented by C. R. Olander in An n-Bottle Lab Exercise with No Hazardous Waste. An open laboratory with guided discovery experiences that significantly improves student attitudes about beginning chemistry is described by L. D. Hansen in Teaching Concepts in Beginning Chemistry with Simple Exploratory Experiments.

Most students, and teachers, are interested in food. C. Bravo-Diaz writes about simple, safe, and inexpensive experiments that use almost exclusively kitchen utensils in Showing Emulsion Properties with Common Dairy Foods. Teachers who demonstrate the polar nature of water by deflecting a stream of water with a charged rod can increase their understanding of this activity by reading G. K. Vemulapalli and S.G. Kukolich, Why Does a Stream of Water Deflect in an Electric Field? Two articles about teaching and learning discuss strategies used in secondary schools, although they are written about post-secondary settings. One, by R. M. Felder, is Active-Inductive-Cooperative Learning: An Instructional Model For Chemistry? In the second, Treadway reports on using interactive videodisc laboratory lessons in The Multimedia Chemistry Laboratory: Perception and Performance. Finally, do not miss the JCE: Software Abstract: ChemDemos II Videodisc.