Grading

This is a test bunny--I have a couple that go around during exams. A very nice lady makes them for me.

Young adults clutch them tightly when they are stressed. I used to think they were talismans, but now realize I worry more about kids doing well on exams than many of them do.

Many just want to pass.

My test bunnies make stressed students feel better. I'm glad that they feel better, but wonder how hundreds of tests over much of their waking hours affects how they view the world.

Storytelling

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the physical world

Albert Einstein

It is easy to teach science badly, or what passes as science anyway.

With textbooks morphing into monoliths, immutable facts are drilled into the cranium. While a few pages of the text may allude to classic experiments, they are presented like ancient battles in a history book--the experiments matter for their contribution to the scientific database, not for the opportunities in thinking they present the student. As the database increases, we are obliged to increase the diameter of the craniotomies drilled into our students' skulls.

I stumbled onto a wonderful site, What is Science? while googling, natch, "What is science?"--it looks like a simple question. Seems a science teacher ought to have a handle on the word "science."

I wandered around the site while pretending to do lesson plans, and found a lovely essay that argues that the essence of science is storytelling. The article is co-authored by Barry Bickmore (geochemistry) and David Grandy (philosophy), faculty members at BYU.