Enough to make a biology teacher scream

There's a reason I have emblazoned on two of my four walls the words of Theodosius Dobzhansky:

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" 

The American Biology Teacher, March 1973

Here's what Americans believe, as of June, according to a Gallup poll.

The world is not flat, and humans have been around for a lot longer than 10,000 years.

And at the risk of Bible baiting, Good Lord, folks, if you choose to defend the Good Book (and as our cultural legacy, there's much worth defending), at least read it. Critically.

Then come chat with me--but I got to warn you, I can wile away an evening on Genesis 2:7--a beautiful passage that most "Christians" I know have all wrong.

Wise peoples knew the world more intimately than we ever can with our amygdalas hooked up to these machines of perpetual images.

They knew more than most of us can ever appreciate--even if we dumb down their words to fit the needs of our own.

The mystery is all around us--and science only enhances it.

August light

The days fade quickly now--in three weeks we'll have an hour less sunlight gracing us than today.

We will assault children with a sterile view of science, reduced to a method and streams of vocabulary, "ideas" we can test.

The sun slides south without notice as we huddle under the subtle, damning hum of fluorescent lights, each one filled with vaporized mercury, coated with phosphor, a steam punk amalgamation of  early 20th century technology and vision.

We talk little of either, the sun or the hum, the light of our lives.

***

Here's the heart of biology: We're matter put together in an orderly fashion by light. When light fades, we fall apart.

Follow the energy--the breath you take brings in oxygen that allows you to convert the toast you ate this morning back into carbon dioxide and water. You literally breathe out a few bites of your breakfast  by noon.

Wheat grown in our classroom

The toast, of course, is mostly wheat--these days we take out the best part of the grain and feed it to animals (flour keeps better on the shelves this way), but what's left over , is still wheat, a plant, like most plants, that combines carbon dioxide and water into marvelous strands of carbon compounds, weavers that rival Rumpelstiltskin--the miracle is in the flax, not the gold.

And yet when we talk of "photosynthesis" the kids groan under the weight of the terms: photolysis, ATP synthase, electron chain transport, chemiosmosis....sighing vast quantities of carbon dioxide molecules, drooling on the desks.

Yes!...there's your breakfast, in the sighs, in the drool!

***

The fading light is not metaphorical--it is real. Outside the classroom windows the living world is dying, as it does every fall. The hunger season is coming.

We start the school year in late summer, as we do, as our bodies, still untamed, feel the dying light. We pretend otherwise, talk of the "new year" and of "objectives" and "benchmarks"--as the sun slides slowly south, the shadows lengthen ominously, and the ice returns.

We teach children to stop paying attention to what matters, to focus on the trivial. That is how you survive in a world of concrete and glass, in a world where many of our children would not recognize their breakfast in its raw form.

Biology is the study of life--let's shine our light on what matters.

Back to school is a bittersweet time...

Why I left medicine to teach

I used to be a doc, the real kind with tongue blades. I am now entering my 7th year of teaching. 

Students often ask me why I left medicine. Here's what I thought last year, and it still holds.

I used to be a doctor, the kind with a stethoscope, the kind licensed to hurt you for your own good. It puzzles children to learn that a physician would walk away from medicine in order to teach, and there are days I am baffled myself.

I liked medicine. I love teaching. I did not know that this would be true when I left medicine, so while it is true, it is not enough to explain why I left. Why leave something you like, especially when it pays ridiculously well?

Every year children ask me this, and so far I have not quite gotten it right. I thought I had it right, but high school sophomores would kind of shake just a little bit sideways. I wasn't fooling them.

I think I got it right now.

***

I saw a lot of bad stuff in hospitals. I saw a lot of good stuff, too, but good stuff can be found in a lot of places. The truly bad stuff has a home in the hospital.

• The unlucky (an elderly woman who slowly died from an infection caused by an errant piece of metal ripping through her car's floor, riveting in her thigh).

• The doomed (a woman burned over most of her body, still conscious, still talking, immediately before we intubated her, rendering her speechless--we knew she was doomed when we did this. We did it anyway.)

• The curious (two babies sharing the same torso, the same heart, the same fate).

• The geographically screwed (an Asian toddler who needed a new heart, but who could not afford one, twisting away towards death as she lived in an American hospital as an alien).

• The innocent (children wasting away from a virus we barely understood, acquired from a mother's heroin habit or her lover's proclivities).

I was very good at diagnosis, and not bad at making things better once a diagnosis was made. A few were better than me, but not many.

***

 When you are surrounded by hurt, there are two ways to respond if you want to remain functional--fix it, or pretend it does not exist. I did a lot of fixing.

If you do medicine long enough, and if you are paying attention, you give death its due. It's real, it's usually ugly, and it's inevitable.

I can't beat death--took me awhile to get to that realization, but I got there. And it's liberating.

Turns out living isn't the goal--living well is what matters.

I was pretty good at helping people live longer. Now I'm getting good at helping people live well.

I thought my job mattered before, but had my doubts in the pitiful wail of a dying toddler, bruised and bleeding as we laid our hands, our technology, and finally our fists in futile CPR on her tiny body as it cooled its way back to entropy.

A life worth living is our only compensation against the greedy hand of death.

So I help children carve out a life worth living.

I'm a teacher.

If you teach, teach as though lives depend on it. If you think this is excessive, get out.
Photos by me or Leslie--feel free to use under CC.

First year survival guide: Pencil wars

For the price of a daily cup of coffee (and a bit less than a daily Lexapro), here's a little advice that will go a long way to saving your sanity--buy pencils.

Antique pencil vending machine, via Showtime Auction Services

Everyone, everyone, knows the rule--bring a "writing utensil" to class. There are some variations--some teachers require certain types (the ol' Number Two vs. the I said black ink ballpoint pen)--but all have the same basic idea. Bring your tool.

I worked on the docks a long time ago. I worked hard, and I mostly enjoyed it, except when a boss got up my butt. The simplest way to slow down a job was drop a tool into the drink, which meant getting off the barge and retrieving another one, which meant 10" of sauntering. For a few moments, I had control.

I teach high school students--they know the rule. So what do you do with a child sitting with empty hands as class starts? First let's look at a few things that don't work.

Do not ask a child if she has a pencil--either she doesn't, which is pretty obvious, or she does and is keeping it hidden, and she's got other issues that need addressing, but not during class.^* Just asking the question wastes time.

Do not ask a child if she knows the rules. She does. The whole freaking world does.But you go ahead and waste time explaining the rule anyway, which only makes you look ridiculous.

Here are the usual solutions, which all stink for various reasons:

Points off class participation:

If a child deliberately refuses to carry a pencil, well then, you'll show her! 

Stop for a moment and think about your logic--you're engaging in her battle, and docking points for a behavioral issue, not good. If a child simply forgot, you're docking points for an action that has not been cured by 10 years of formal public schooling--not likely you will affect any real changes.

Next time a colleague bums a pen off you, sneer at him. See how far that goes.

Giving the child a half-chewed used pencil with no eraser/stubby golf pencil/My-Little-Pony-style pencil:

Har, that's hilarious! Works even better with a loud announcement to the class about how this is the third time this year that Lynnea gets to use whatever crippled version of a pencil you're handing out.

Humiliation and blatant reminders of who has the power always works with mid-adolescent children so charged up with estrogen and testosterone they make the bulls of Pamplona look like kittens, no?

You can watch the other kids focus on Lynnea as she saunters into class again without a pencil. It's showtime! And you're the clown. The kids know this even if you don't.

Giving the speech:

"In the real world... blahblahblah.... responsibility..... blahblumblah... unemployment.... blahbityblap ...starvation...."

Eyes roll, class time is lost, and now you've elevated this into a crisis worthy of the International Criminal Court.^** Pencil-less children ultimately end up prone drooling in city gutters, and our economy goes to pot. Just ask Arne Duncan...

Detention:

Really?

---

The solution?

I tack a red Solo cup on my bulletin board stocked with a few freshly sharpened spanking new pencils. If you need one, take one. Put it back when you're done. And yes, a few kids forget, because that's what some do--but even they eventually put one or two back.

The cost? Maybe 3 pencils a day, less than half a cup of coffee.
The return? Fewer battles, more trust, and (dare I say it?) a happier classroom.

*I am not talking about major issues, which, of course, should always be dealt with immediately. Latest spat with BF usually doesn't count.

**Yep, too far over the top...which is, of course, the point.

Do something

If you’ve got 300 million people, most of whom produce nothing for themselves or for the community and to whom everything has to be brought from somewhere else, then there’s no way you’re going to have limited government, or limited anything. All organizations feed upon the helplessness and ignorance and passivity of the people. 

 Wendell Berry

Hammer, sow, slaughter, drill, knead, write, harvest, brew, sew, strum. Do something.

If you are in reasonably good health with no disabilities you should be able to make simple repairs. If you do, you quickly learn that even simple repairs often go sideways, and you need to solve problems.

A child's education should, at a minimum, teach her how to solve problems.

***

I sometimes make an overly hoppy ale, because I like hops, especially in ale. Occasionally I find myself calculating the cost per bottle, comparing it to the cost of a decent commercial brew I like. And that's a mistake.

You cannot monetize joy. Too many of us have monetized joy right out of our lives.

What does this have to do with public schools? Well, depends on why you think public schools exist.

Is it to create corporate-ready workers or to create citizens capable of inheriting a functioning democracy?

If you want the latter, then art, woodshop, music, cooking, and sewing classes matter, probably more than science, at least the way science is traditionally taught, because every one of those classes involves persistence, problem-solving, and joy.

If you don't like swarrin' or truth, skip the video--

It's hard to keep a self-sufficient joyful citizen happy in a corporate cubicle.

It's near impossible for democracy to flourish in a population that could barely feed itself if each citizen were given 40 acres of fertile land and a decent water supply.

My Mom grew up with "Georgie," the only kid in her neighborhood who could skate faster than her. 

I miss both of them.

Dear New Science Teacher

Dear New Science Teacher,

You're going to get lots of advice, too much really, much of it self-contradictory. Let me add to your growing pile of nonsense.

*Children are innately curious; students, however, are not.
Unless you're getting a fresh crop of toddlers, most children learned long ago that questioning in a classroom leads to all kinds of problems. If your kids do not rise like flies to the wonderful poop you bring to class, don't get all sour-pussy about it.

If your enthusiasm lasts until November--which it will if you stop expecting the kids to care how much you spend out of class "for their benefit"--they'll start spilling out their curious guts, which leads to a different kind of problem.

My recommendations:

Treat your students as you would human beings that have been traumatized by years of schooling. Because they have.

If a child want to know what happens if... let her try it (provided it's safe to do so). Memorize the state standards that pays lip service to exploring science, and be ready to rattle it off should an administrator wander in just as Brian attempts to see how long he can stand shocking himself with a hand-cranked generator. (In New Jersey, it's NJCCCS 5.1.12.B.1 "Design investigations, collect evidence, analyze data, and evaluate evidence to determine measures of central tendencies, causal/correlational relationships, and anomalous data." This covers pretty much everything.)

*Demos usually suck.
Why? Half the kids can't really see what's going on, and traditionally demos are followed by some inane worksheet, or quiz, or some kind of assessment that just sucks all the cool factor out. Even if you don't zap them with a quiz, their response is Pavlovian. I'm not saying don't--just don't expect the students to fawn over you like the Pied Piper.

My recommendations:

• Do 'em anyway. If you singe an eyebrow or two (yours, I mean), you'll be an instant legend. 
• Accidentally trigger the smoke alarm during a chilly rainstorm in November--your fame will spread beyond your classroom.

*Live critters reproduce.
And poop. Your lovely tank of cute roly-polies will become a teeming mass of stink by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, and you won't have time to clean them.

My recommendations:

• Do it anyway, and let 'em stink, tell them it's the natural world, and keep a butterfly net around so that when some horribly fierce looking critter breaks out and buzzes around the room, you can non-chalantly catch it as you meander through tables of differentiated groupwork. Kids learn more from these tiny reeking cesspools of life than they'll ever grasp from a PowerPoint.
• Forget using filters in fish tanks--they're loud and need maintenance.Just use water plants--they'll take up the nitrogen, then scrape the algae off the sides every month or two with a microscope slide.
•  If something stings you, smile, pretend it doesn't hurt, and keep the EpiPen handy.
• Never, ever bring in spiders. You'll get a few thousand anyway wandering in to eat the various flying critters erupting from your terrariums, and you can honestly tell your principal you didn't bring them in.

*Science teachers stay late...
So what? We do what we love! We get the big rooms! We blow things up! We have showers in our rooms!

My recommendations:

• If you'd rather be streaming out the door at 2:45 PM like a lost lemming, go take a few courses and get certified in...well, email me privately, I don't need to get into a pissing match with about 4 other departments. Just stand by the door and see who streams out first. (Be careful, though--those English folks carry out enough papers to fuel the Netherlands for a week in December. They may work more than we do.)
• Squirrel away a lot of granola bars, power drinks, and a toothbrush.
• Quit. This isn't for you.

Stop reading advice and go teach!
Bust your butt, enjoy the good moments, move on past the bad--the children know who's in this for real, and who's mailing it in. You'll find your way if you fundamentally like kids, and you stick with it.

No shame if you don't. This profession breaks a lot of people. The kids are here because they have to be. They deserve teachers who are there because they want to be. 

If you like, please send words. Dopamine beats alcohol.

Tribalism and truth

False tales are, first of all, tales, and tales, like myths, are always persuasive.

Umberto Eco. "The Force of Falsity," Serendipities, Language and Lunacy

Our biggest fears lead to our biggest myths: Danse Macabre, Michael Wolgemut, 1493

Tribalism, culture, whatever you want to call it, matters. Science has its tribes, but eventually every idea must fit in with the consensus view of what consitutes the natural world. It has a community dedicated to that.


Still, as much as science folk love understanding the world, the day to day world remains remarkably detached from the scientific--and we risk losing our students by forgetting that.


Perhaps the hardest thing to convince a high school sophomore is just how tenuous much of our grasp is.

I ask my students how do they know that the Earth spins. The question startles them as a ridiculous. Why, everyone knows this!

I ask again. Silence.

The answer lies right outside our classroom windows. It's not obvious, and it takes time but it's there. Knowing it is so is not science, it's cultural. Everyone knows the Earth turns. Few know how we know this.

***

Major election years are always interesting in high school--communities split as our discourse fails. Our discourse fails because tales, even false one, are persuasive, and when walls are crumbling, shared stories of mythical castles tie together voting blocs.

How do we tease out the truth when few folks want to know it? Like our Copernican view of the daily dance of the sun, truth can be discerned from comfortable and seemingly obvious myths.

But even with the sun, even consciously knowing what we know, we still feel the sun move:

Our perception is still Ptolemaic: we not only see the sun rise in the east and travel through the arc of the day, but we behave as if the sun turns and we remain immobile. And we say, "the sun rises," "the sun is high in the sky," "it sinks," "it sets."

Umberto Eco, "The Force of Falsity," Serendipities, Language and Lunacy

Science is different--the process forces true community, the natural world (or at least our perceptions of it) is the final judge.

Few of us truly live "scientifically"--we would go mad.

We live in a culture that truly believes in magic, that resists anything that challenges our comfortable cultural myths that allow us to continue to behave the way we do.

Election years offer students a chance to rediscover how to tease out truth.
Not everybody lies. And while scientists themselves cannot claim to be paragons of virtue, in an odd way the field itself is a paragon of truth. The rascals get outed, because the community puts truth above all else.

Sure, it's a stubborn, limited (and at times grouchy) sort of truth, but it's there.

So how do we know the Earth rotates on its own axis, and revolves around the sun? I can show you. It's right there for you to see.

Even if I wander to the bay most nights to watch the sun sink below the edge of the world.

Should any student ask, I'll say I'm voting for Pat Paulsen or Frank Zappa.