Our Education Programs: An Overview

Background

The Sterling Hill Mining Museum is dedicated to educating teachers and their students about natural resource issues, with particular reference to the State of New Jersey. Our education programs explore such topics as the geology of New Jersey, our nonrenewable resources (metals, nonmetals, and fuels), how those resources have been extracted and used over time, and, in a global sense, how our present lives are shaped by the materials available to us. We work within the broad fields of the STEM core subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), which we often explore not only in their current but also historical contexts. All of our educational offerings are aligned with New Jersey core curriculum standards and are designed to be implemented by teachers within the context of their existing school curriculums.

A Unique Facility

The Sterling Hill Mining Museum is situated on 35 acres of a former industrial mining and milling complex, including the historic Sterling Hill zinc mine, a world-famous locality with more than 275 years of mining history. Facilities of the museum include the zinc mine itself, an astronomical observatory, the Rock Discovery and Fossil Discovery Centers, a mineral gallery, a large exhibit hall featuring educational exhibits on Earth resources and extraction technologies, numerous outdoor exhibits of mining equipment, a museum featuring educational displays of fluorescent materials, laboratory facilities for the study of Earth materials, a library and map archive, and a geotechnical center for lectures, seminars, and workshops. Also on-site are the buildings and much of the original equipment used in the mining operations.

Educational functions at the Sterling Hill Mining Museum take place not in a classroom, but in the buildings and on the grounds of a well-preserved industrial complex and unique geological site. The entire site is a dynamic interactive classroom that is utilized not only by science teachers, but also by numerous colleges and universities that bring their students to this world-famous locality for direct field experiences unobtainable elsewhere.

Our Education Program

The Sterling Hill Mining Museum is now in its 14th year of providing inservice programs for teachers of grades 3 - 12. The museum is registered by the New Jersey Department of Education as a provider of continuing professional training for science teachers in the State of New Jersey, and is a designated Specialty Site through the New Jersey Statewide Systemic Initiative program.

Our educational opportunities include both on-site and off-site teacher workshops, classroom visitations, videoconferences, and field trips on topics in science, history, technology, math, and social studies. We provide classroom visitations for grades 3-12 through our Rent-a-Scientist and Rent-a-Miner programs, plus a full range of on-site opportunities for teachers who wish to bring their classes to us. Videoconferences are available on a growing list of subjects. In addition, we offer on-site seminars and field training for college and university students, summer institutes with geologists in specialized fields, and cooperative educational events with other organizations.

The museum partners with PRISM (Professional Resources in Science and Math) of Montclair State University and with the County College of Morris to provide inservice training to teachers from school districts throughout northern and central New Jersey. Collaborative inservice programs exist with numerous other organizations as well, through which we reach teachers in 20 states.

Our Staff

The education director at Sterling Hill, Dr. Earl R. Verbeek, is a research geologist who oversees and implements the museum's program of geoscience content instruction. Professional instructors affiliated with the museum includes earth scientists from research institutions, industry, government, and academia, all of whom base their teachings on decades of real-world experience as professional scientists and educators. Educators on our staff have career experience in geology, mineralogy, hydrology, paleontology, stratigraphy, environmental geology, land-use planning, resource extraction and land remediation, and historical preservation.

Our Specialties

Flexibility: Our educational offerings are designed with flexibility in mind. We routinely tailor content to different age groups and modify presentations depending on curriculum specialty.

Relevance: We provide content that is relevant to students' daily lives — we make the connections to what they know and are interested in. We draw examples from the State of New Jersey, not just generic sources.

Custom design: We work with educators to custom-design our presentations and activities to the specific needs of individual schools and school systems.

How to participate:

For more information on our education offerings, see the relevant sections of this website: On-site Workshops, Off-site Contract Training, Classroom Visits, Distance Learning, Field Trips, and College-level Instruction.

To request additional information or to discuss customization of our offerings to better suit your needs, contact Dr. Earl Verbeek at shmm@ptd.net or by phone at 973-209-7212.

To sign up for a scheduled event, or to receive e-mail notices of upcoming events, contact Teresa Crerand at tcrerand@ptd.net.