Maybe I'll try teaching science for a change

Saw a double rainbow just before dusk....

Science did not create Little Boy and Fat Man.
Technology did.

Little Boy

But our knowledge of the natural world made the technology possible.

I do not train engineers, I do not train scientists--I share the natural world with children. Our classroom is just over a mile from where the folks from the Manhattan Project originally purified uranium--the site is still contaminated.

***

Our Superintendent-in-Chief Arne Duncan believes that "we have to educate ourselves to a better economy." In a world defined by the global economy, education is reduced to a tool needed to create citizens worthy of this new world empire.

For this Scarecrow, the degree matters more than knowing

Most of my kids remain blissfully unworthy, still filled with a  joie de vivre that requires taming for success in Arne's world.

I have little faith in Duncan or anybody else who places ambition over love, though I do grudgingly admire their machine-like pursuit of a life not worth living. Such a life gives him the option of not living within a stone's throw of a radioactive field.

Connecting my lambs to the natural world takes more time than the curriculum allows. Seeds simply do not sprout fast enough in ArneWorld to make biology education efficient (though Zeus knows we try--go read about Wisconsin Fast Plants^®).

Every August, as the sunlight dims, I ask myself the same question, and this year I am asking aloud.
What will it be, science teacher?

Wheat, grown in our classroom

"Biology 101" again, or helping young adults build real connections to a deep, deadly, and beautiful universe, connected to and of this Earth, where food and feces trump  finances and fear.

Biology feces much more interesting than the shit we pretend matters....

Clamming and competency

A former student dropped by today to tell me she just got her pilot's license. 
She worked on it for over 4 years, and openly admits to being a little jittery first time she soloed'. 
This post is now 3 years old--but I need a reminder now and again.

By the time you hit your 5th or 6th decade, you're mostly competent at what you do. You've long abandoned the things you're incompetent at, and mortality precludes starting a whole lot of new things.

As a result, most older folk forget what it means to learn new things, forget what it means to be a decade or two old, when everything requires climbing a wall to gain mastery.

"Potential" becomes an albatross around the neck of the young. (Go read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner if you have not. Yes, it's Coleridge; yes, he can be onerous; yes, it's worth your time.)

***

I got a clam rake last spring. It's an old rake, and a good one.

I can only imagine how many clams ended up in a pot after being pried out of their homes before I got it. The tines are rusted brown, the handle oiled by the sweat of others before me.

Still, as good a rake as it is, it was almost useless in my hands last June.

***

Can you remember when you first drove a car? When every twitch of the wheel required thought?

Just about every 17 year old Homo sapiens on the planet has faster reflexes than me. Just about every Homo sapiens in the western hemisphere has more facility with technology than me. Still, All State Insurance charges me a bucketload less for auto insurance than any 17 year old I teach.

Teachers need to remember how hard it is to drive the first time.

Or else go clamming.

***

Back in June, the rake was a weapon--plow through the mud, rip out whatever it hit, say a prayer for another unfortunate creature impaled by its tines. Horseshoe crabs, whelks, worms--but very few clams.

These days the rake is an extension of my arm, its tines tickling the mud beneath the water. I can feel shapes, I can feel density. A tine or two bump against a clam, my sympathetic system reacts. Against a stone, nothing.

The horseshoe crabs are safe again. The clams are not.

***

I like clams.
I really, really like clams.

I practiced and practiced and practiced because I like clams, and slowly my brutal assault against any critter large enough to suffer from misguided tines evolved to a gentle prodding of the mud.

My students like driving.
Really, really like driving.

They practice and practice because they like driving, and slowly their jagged starts and turns evolve to hugging the road unconsciously.

***

Here's my plea to anyone of us arrogant enough to presume we have something to offer to the young. Try something new.

Try to master something you suck at but like to do anyway.

Now imagine trying to master something you suck at and don't really care for.

Welcome to high school.

Photo mine.