Last day of 2010

Our last beach walk of the year. Much of the ice has melted, the animals can scavenge again, feasting on horseshoe crabs and blue claws dredged up by the grim grinding ice. Dying comb jellies glistened on the beach, ignored by the gulls.

I found a small whitish clam panning the beach with its foot, perhaps a young surf clam. I tossed it back into the bay, my last clam of the year.

The last day of the year is a human construct.,

Today will be a little different than yesterday, true. The sun will hang in the sky a minute longer today, angling a hair higher in the sky. High tide will be almost an hour later, and a few inches higher.

I teach indoors, obviously, in 48 minute chunks. Biology happens outside, in millennial chunks. Transferring knowledge of life is a Sisyphean task.

I condemn others' acts of hubris while ignoring my own, trying to stuff minds with abstract shadows of what can be found just outside the classroom window, if we took time to look.

The word "education" comes from educere, "to bring out, lead forth." My best days are those when I lead the students out the door to the real world outside, the one that created us, the one we cannot hope to fully grasp.

Photo by Leslie, December 31, 2010

Napkin ed

If you cannot teach someone with no more than a napkin and a pen, or less, you should not teach.

A few reasons why the napkin and pen (or beach and a stick) method is superior to anything that requires electricity:

• The nature of napkin ed requires one to one teaching. Both the teacher and the student are exposed, limits of knowledge tested. As uncomfortable as this may be, it's the heart of education--the ledge of ignorance for both the student and the teacher is an integral part of the process.
  
  
• It's cheaper. I like cheap. Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! I'm not blowing off mountaintops, damming rivers, or splitting atoms.
  
  
• Any drawing used requires intimate knowledge by the teacher. Hand-made drawings matter more than any fancy illustration you can toss up on a Smartboard. The value of the process of etching a drawing live, with the student watching, cannot be overstated. It's not an easy thing to do without an exquisite knowledge of the point you are making. Electric palettes cover a lot of ignorance. (Darwin's On the Origin of Species had one illustration, a crude, hand-drawn picture of a branching "Tree of Life.")

Most of us doing this gig for any length of time can wow our young charges with flashing lights. We are performers, entertainers, dragging bored children through curricula they see as pointless.

So long as our job is to instill a common cultural litany, well, high tech pizazz works just dandy.

If you want to teach a child how to think, though, be careful with the new tools. If you are letting an electronic third party make a point in your classroom, and it does a better job than you can, well, draw your own conclusion.

You can do better. It might take time, it might require more work, it might even cause you to burst out in tears now and again.

You wanted to be a teacher, no?

The first drawing above is by Francis Crick, a doodle of his impression of DNA, a concept he shared with his pub brethren.

The second is by Darwin.
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Ironically, neither is likely to be featured in a high school science class.

Late December on the beach

A late December walk on the beach, feet exposed to sand and snow and sea, fixes just about anything.

I found a live pipefish on the edge of the sea today. I tossed the writhing critter back into the surf, saw its silhouette in a wave just before it broke, swimming along the surface, then saw it no more.

Every walk on the beach is different, every walk reveals something new, every walk renews the human animal that houses my mind, that is my mind.

There is nothing abstract about a tiny fish tossed at your feet on a December beach. No truths to be revealed, no alliances to build, no money spent.

Just a fish on the wet sand, now cupped in my hands, now swimming in the crystal green crest of a wave highlighted by a late December sun, then nothing.

I have never seen a bored child by the ocean's edge.

How do I bring that back to class?

Both pictures ours, taken today, the shell on the Atlantic, the setting sun on the Delaware Bay.

The real war on Christmas

I don't care if folks at Target say "Merry Christmas" and those at Home Depot say "Happy Holidays." I love the returning light, however it is celebrated, and anyone who ties The Christ to merchants' manners needs to go poke his head back into the Gospels.

Heck, if we got back to our New England's Puritan roots, publicly celebrating Christmas would be outlawed. No nativity scenes. No Santas. No merrie.

One enthusiastic English 17th century vicar, "Blue Dick" Culmer, "climbed up to the stained glass windows in the Martyrdom [of the Canterbury Cathedral]and smashed the stained glass windows with a pikestaff," part of his duties to eradicate the church "of all monuments of superstition."

Meanwhile, when no one was looking, long before the Puritans polluted our shores, a couple of dead Roman Emperors gone done slipped their names into the calendar. Julius believed he was a demi-god, and now we celebrate him in July. Augustus was accorded the same honor, but his month, Sextillis, was a day short of Julius', so a day was stolen from February.




We continue to worship Mars, Juno, Janus and Maia without a peep from Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly.

***

Meanwhile the real war on Christmas, and every other day, continues thousands of miles away, with our young men and women serving in a war few of us understand. Cpl. Tevan L. Nguyen was killed in combat Tuesday, one of 498 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year.

And what does any of this have to do with teaching? Maybe very little.

We can use Google Earth to study the terrain of Helmand province where Cpl. Nguyen was felled. We can search online databases and follow the body counts. We can use YouTube to see the damage done by IED's.

Or maybe everything. Maybe grasping what matters is the heart of what matters. Maybe a Walmart greeter's choice of words, dictated by his employer, carefully chosen through market research, matters less than knowing how hard and cold the ground felt under Corporal Nguyen's face, a man who died for us this week, 21 years old.

Cpl. Nguyen graduated with the Class of 2007 Hutto Hippos, ran track, part of a 4 x 100 meter relay team that took 3rd place in the 2006 Texas State Regional Qualifiers Meet. Here's more about him here:

Tevan's life, for most of us who even hear about him, can be summed up as a casualty, a moving but ultimately abstract tribute to abstract ideals.

Corporal Tevan Nguyen was a brave Marine who gave his life in service to our country. Maria and I were deeply saddened to learn of his death and we will forever be grateful for his sacrifice.

Governor Schwarzenegger

Tevan, for those who knew him, leaves a huge hole in their hearts, because he was real.

We keep our amygdalas raging about how the Giants are doing, about who says "Merry Christmas," about Justin Bieber's newest haircut.

It's evening in Afghanistan now. A gentle breeze from the southwest chills a soldier's face in Kabul, as she gazes up a Jupiter through the haze. She's not thinking about the astract--she's thinking about home.

Information on Richard Culmer from P. Blanche here.

An American rant

In that land the great experiment was to be made, by civilized man, of the attempt to construct society upon a new basis; and it was there, for the first time, that theories hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable, were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by the history of the past.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1821

What is my role as a teacher?

Let's lay it on the table:

I don't give a rodent's orifice what your child grows up "to be"--I got her in front of me every day now, a human being, one who lives now, a good lesson to be learned by all of us.

I would like her to be happy, of course, but that's not my charge. I am charged with helping your child learn how to think in a Peter Pan culture. A functioning republic depends on it.

I don't give a rodent's orifice what your child's potential earnings will be, beyond her ability to reasonably clothe, feed, and house her clan.

Bigger forces than public education are conspiring against her. Just look at the distribution of wealth the past decade or two. I am charged with helping her understand the myriad ways science and technology affect her, and her children, and her children's children.

I don't give a rodent's orifice what her test scores are beyond getting her through graduation requirements.

I do care about what she understands, and how she gets there. If she runs off with John Travolta and I see her expounding on the benefits of Scientology on the local news, well, I failed. I suspect even a decent score on her SATs won't make her less immune to that kind of nonsense.

I don't give a rodent's orifice what your or your daughter's politics are.

I do care that she can sort out various sources of information, critically analyze data, and make reasoned conclusions based on thinking. She should save exercising her amygdala for NFL football and such.

I don't give a rodent's orifice about how your child tests against a child in China or Singapore or Great Britain or The Antilles.

I do hope she can find China on a map, that she grasps enough economics to make reasonable choices when she shops, and that she has a sense of how large (or small) Earth is.

I am an American public school teacher. We are teetering on the edge of failure of the greatest social experiment known to Western culture. We sit on fabulously fertile ground, in a moderate climate, with plenty of water and sunshine, and we judge wealth by how much we earn in cash.

I have no problem if your child should grow up to be a ridiculously rich derivatives trader on Wall Street, so long as she does so deliberately, and so long as she continues to support this American experiment.

I also have no problem if she grows up to be a park ranger, a casino dealer, a greeter, a plumber, a salesperson, or anything else that lets her live her life, contribute to our community, even pursue happiness.

Oh, and maybe remember the equation for photosynthesis along the way....

Altars of unhewn stone

Late December, slanted sunlight, frozen beach.

The edge of the bay is slush now, uncountable crystals reflecting the low sunlight with each wave. Three months ago we were swimming here. Now we climb the frozen ridges defining the edge of the sea.

We walked a couple of miles along the edge of ice, Leslie and I, poking around for seals (we saw none), ghost crab holes (we saw a few), and for light. Back home last summer's tomatoes thawed on the counter, tonight's dinner.

When we got back, I plucked a few Brussels sprouts to go with the tomatoes, maybe the last fresh meal we get until May now.

***

I'm sipping some peach melomel, brewed last summer, made from local peaches and honey by yeast I bought at a store. Next week I will be teaching my students about NADH, and fermentation, and ethanol, but we won't, of course, be sipping melomel.

We teach science backwards--here are the rules, now go make the experimental data fit them.

When we worship the monitor, the digital, the binary, we will lose sight of what matters.

I think I can teach. I can get kids to bubble the right answers to our state test, I can get kids to parrot the Krebs and the Calvin cycles, I can pacify a couple dozen adolescents with procedures and stories, I can run a classroom.

***

I went to school yesterday to water the plants.

In our tiny garden in the back of the classroom grow basil and peas and squash and dill. While watering the plants, I saw the golden shoulder of a carrot as it poked through its peat.

On Monday, I will show the children the carrot, and a few of them will be mesmerized by it--bright golden orange erupting from brown peat. Most have never grown anything. It's a powerful thing, growing food.

There's a pot of basil growing as well--tiny black seeds now bright green leaves with an impossibly rich basil aroma, arising from the earth born of our breath. I've been growing things for decades, and each and every plant still amazes me.

***

Wes Jackson is a biologist, and a good one. He is also a gifted writer.

I lifted the blog title from one of his books, Altars of Unhewn Stone. After Moses came down from the mountain with the commandments, he was to build an altar made of uncut stone--if any human attempted to shape it, it would be "polluted."

Our monitors have become our man-made altars, whole worlds created and maintained by humans. We risk losing our imaginations by limiting them to what we ourselves can produce.

Walking on a 3 foot frozen ledge over a sea that is rising, as it does twice a day, with the sun dancing in a million directions on the liquid icy waves, cannot be conveyed in words.

It cannot be conveyed in pictures.

It cannot be conveyed by sound.

I am inside now, warm, drunk with words, feeling cleverer than clever, while the ghost crab sits in its winter hole, waiting for the tide to rise, so it can soak its gills once again, long enough to stay alive until the next tide returns.

I teach by telling stories of NADH and cytochromes and ATP and DNA, all of which matter, at some level, in some human space.

They do not (and should not) matter to a young human who has never planted a seed, who has never slaughtered a lamb, who has never felt part of this whole whatever it is we are part of.

To speak of altars of unhewn stone makes no sense to a culture feasting on Justin Bieber and Oprah and the NFL, no more sense than speaking of NADH and ATP.

So here's the deal. Put up with the state's biology curriculum, and I will show you a few things your grandparents knew before they were in kindergarten: plants come from seeds, meat comes from animals, life moves in cycles, everything worth anything comes from the ground, and none of this is truly comprehensible.

Or maybe I'm just too simple to grasp how a golden carrot erupts from nothing more substantial than a seed and our breath.

Pictures taken today.

The fire within

I warmed myself up tonight, shoveling snow off a patch of concrete. Orion, lying awkwardly on his back, shivered above as he aimed his bow at Taurus snorting high in the southeastern sky. On my way back in, I grabbed a handful of Brussels sprouts, plucked off the plant now surrounded by snow.

Winter is here, as good a reason as any to talk about our inner fire.

***

I love blasting my propane torch, flashing flame on steel faucets, a blush of condensation dulling the metal, water from fire. (Yep, a lit propane torch emits water--go ahead, check for yourself.)

Electrons trapped in high energy states tumble into the welcoming arms of oxygen, screaming with delight, releasing light and heat as they settle into their pajamas, ready for rest.

Yes, of course, I broke a few rules there. And, yes, of course, it's not quite accurate.

It's closer than you might realize.

***

Our cells need oxygen gas for one reason only--to accept electrons released from food as they travel down their energy gradients, settling into basal states of energy.

The oxygen accept the electrons (and associated protons) to form water. This happens in the innermost regions of our mitochondria, ancient critters subsumed by our forbears.

When you get down to it, we really don't need oxygen at all. Our mitochondrial slaves need it. If a cell doesn't have mitochondria, it has no need for oxygen.

Our red blood cells, designed to carry oxygen, use none of it themselves. They have no mitochondria, no need for oxygen. That's why you can keep RBC's packed in plastic bags waiting to be transfused.

***

Mitochondria are organelles, membrane wrapped particles in your cells that help convert food into a useful form of energy called ATP. Think of ATP as cash energy--no matter where you need a shot of energy in a cell, ATP can provide it.

(ATP works by adding instability to compounds--it's like when your crazy Aunt Margarita crashes onto the Thanksgiving table. Things are going to happen.....)

Mitochondria have their own DNA, most closely related to bacteria than to you. They reproduce on their own. They are an ancient life form that have been coexisting with larger cells for a long, long time.

This is so freaky I don't think it registers with most of my students. Mitochondria allow us to "burn" food down to carbon dioxide and water, releasing the energy caught by chloroplasts in plants.

***

What is fire? What happens to the fuel, to the oxygen?

Most adults here cannot answer this question, and it's pointless if your goal is to make money or get the girl or glom power.

Children love the question, and I doubt most ever get a decent answer. Heck, I know my students don't.

We teach chemistry as if it was handed down by Moses himself, the 10 Commandments in one hand, the Periodic Table of Elements in the other. I show them over and over and over again that water comes from a flame, and few can remember this two minutes after the demo is done.

***

Oxygen gas gets to your mitochondria by bouncing randomly around the inside of a cell. Since most of our cells burn a lot of food, their oxygen concentration is low relative to the fluid bathing them.

Just as fart molecules bumble their way across the room to embarrass their producer, oxygen molecules bounce around inside cells until they wander into a mitochondrion.

Red blood cells carry the oxygen molecules through our vessels, and they get dumped off where the oxygen concentration is lowest, needed only by the mitochondria, to produce the ATP needed to keep us alive.

This all happens very, very fast.

How fast? Cyanide blocks electrons from reaching oxygen inside the mitochondria. killing within minutes.

No oxygen, no fire, no life.

I have felt bodies quickly cool moments after death, no longer warmed by the trillions of mitochondrial furnaces within.

The shot of Orion is by John Gauvreau found at NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day."

Mitochondrion photo from Allen L. Bell, Ph.D, UNE COM here.