Why kids love science anyway...

As much faith as I have in natural laws, I have much less faith in my ability to lasso them as needed in a classroom. I've had some spectacularly loud, messy failures.
Kids like this.

As much as the Arne's and the Eli's and the Bill's want to control curriculum, they cannot control a child-driven experiment. To be fair, neither can I.
Kids like this.

We grow beans and basil in class, edible stuff from the breath they exhale--at first they resist the idea, as any reasonable creature would, and I don't give them any particular reason to believe it, but some do anyway.
Kids like this.

Many of the hypotheses generated in class are as good as mine. A few are better. Now and again a child develops a spectacularly good idea, beyond anything I'd likely generate. Their ideas, crafted within the nature of science, count as much as mine.
Kids like this.

I am wrong a lot. Science teachers in general are wrong a lot. What we "knew" not so long ago is less true than it used to be.
Kids like this.

We have critters that swim, crawl, fly, hiss, poop, pee, and screw pretty much whenever they want to. Kids can't do any of those things without permission during school, except maybe hiss, and even then, very quietly.
Kids like this.

I don't quite know what the word "authentic" means, as much as it is bandied about in edutopia, but I do know that it is impossible to fake science. Children have eyes and noses, they have brains, and they have imagination. They get to use all three, and while there are some days they'd rather not, most of them find pleasure in using their bodies the way nature intended them to be used.

Want more science teachers, Mr. Duncan? Let us teach science....

All photos from B362

Distracted

I lost a friend this week, a strong woman who once jumped out of airplanes to fight forest fires, and lost her fight with some vagrant cells after a long, long battle.

None of us are permanent, of course, a flippant statement when one is healthy.

She's dead, I'm still here.

That won't always be true for me. Nor you. Nor our students.

***

I took a walk today and saw gannets crashing headfirst into the bay. Their wings fluoresced against the gray March sky. Some folks believe that gannets go blind from their forceful foraging. I used to believe this, too.

I am easily confused by words, and trust them far more than the trust they earn. Most literate folks do.

The edge of the sea defies words, and will continue to defy words, and so long as words are mere symbols (which is all they'll ever be), this will be true. The edge of the sea defies recorded images, recorded sounds. I walk along its edge several times a week, and every time it surprises me.

Our problem is not so much our inability to train our lambs to manipulate the abstract, though that is a necessary skill for anyone landless who wants to survive in our culture. Our problem is that we forget that the abstract is dependent on the world.

Global is abstract. Core standards is abstract. God is abstract. Country is abstract.

A mudflat in March, the aroma of dead critters mixed with the milt marking those who will replace them, cannot be captured by our imagination, never mind our words. What's real exceeds what we know.

The abstract matters, of course, but is utterly dependent on the real. Death does us a favor by reminding us of this. Every time I lose a friend I briefly become a better teacher.

Then I forget.

Bye, Christine

A Christmas Tale

I love the Christmas Story, the lights, the glitter, the love. I love that the day coincides with the first glimmer of the rising sun. I love the madness that reminds us how tenuous our grip is.

Here's a photo from the latest Vatican nativity scene. It's a lovely crèche, just unveiled on Christmas Eve, and as tradition mandates, the Magi are there, bearing their gifts.

Only problem, the wise men didn't show up until a year or two after the birth, at least according to the Holy Bible.

I'm not looking for a fight on Christmas Day. I was raised Irish Catholic, grew up with various crèches as much a part of today as our tree and our Santa, and put faith in The Gospels (while recognizing humans told these stories long after the Crucifixion).

But here's the rub--just asking a practicing Christian when the Wise Men finally got to Bethlehem often brings an  incredulous stare with a hint of hostility.

If the Vatican sanctions the bastardized story that the Magi were present the night of Jesus' birth, a story the Holy See must know to be corrupt, what hope does a science teacher have of sharing stories that do not fit a child's preconceptions of the universe?

None, actually, but my goals are far less grandiose. I just want a child to learn to see, and to question inconsistencies in our stories based on the natural world.

If a child happens to question the inconsistencies in other parts of her life--sustainable economic "growth," Peacekeeper missiles, and a nuclear submarine named the USS Corpus Christi ("the body of Christ")--she has a chance to change a human world that needs a bit of changing, a world that is worth saving.

The Corpus Christi insignia is from Bluejacket.com. 

Yes, I know the official name is USS City of Corpus Christi--heck, I even lived there when I was still a Marine brat--but it's original name was Corpus Christi, changed under pressure by the Church, despite objections by the Navy Secretary John Lehman.

The nativity scene by Max Rossi (Reuters) via Indonesia Katakami.

The microscope "e" lab kills science

Telescopes, when introduced too early, kill interest in astronomy. Everything moves the wrong way, the field of view shrinks to impossibly small increments of sky, and, alas, a star is a point of light no matter how powerful the scope. Nothing looks like the pictures (with the startling exception of Saturn, if you can find it).

The first night out ends in tears--Daddy's upset because he bought the most expensive one he could afford, spent an hour setting it up, and now he's standing outside, alone, trying to line up something, anything, that looks interesting enough to justify the money spent on a tool no one knows how to use.
 
He could have saved everyone a lot of grief had he bought binoculars instead--greater field of view, everything's where it's expected to be, right-side up, and it works right out of the box.

Yep, it's not narly as powerful--only magnifies 10X instead of 500X--but it will provide years of enjoyment, its body worn smooth by hundreds of hours of use, while the telescope languishes in the closet.

It's not about power, it's about seeing.

***

Every year students learn the parts of the microscope, and every year we drag them through the infamous "e" lab. Cut out the letter "e" from a newspaper, mount it correctly on a slide, look at it in the scope at various mags, figure out its orientation.

The most interesting part of the "e" lab may be seeing the "e" move left when you push the slide right, up when you push the slide down. But we don't talk about the why, that's for physics, and they haven't had that yet.


We trade stories in the lounge--Can you believe she thought the air bubble was alive? That he cut out an upper-case "E" from a headline? That she couldn't see anything because he forgot to turn on the lamp?


And then we wonder why a few children don't even pretend to care when we finally bring in some pond water full of wiggly aliens, full of life, full of wonder. There's just no reaching some kids.

For the love of Zeus, why  the letter "e"?

***

I just used a coffee maker, and it worked, even though I have no clue what the parts are called. I only used it because I wanted a cup of coffee. I did not learn how to use it until I wanted to make coffee, and I would have thought you mad if you tried to teach me about it before I liked coffee.

***

Here's a microscope lab that works:

1) Use dissecting scopes instead of the traditional compound scope. You can look at things whole, alive, in 3-D. If those are not available, get your hands on magnifying glasses--they do the same thing.

2) Bring in live wiggly stuff. Earthworms, sow bugs, beetles, snails, slugs, mosquito wrigglers, whatever. Give a brief demo on how to use the dissecting scope, let a couple of students peek in, then stand back.

Really--within minutes, the more adept will be teaching the less adept, kids will have a better grasp (and love) of slugs you could ever generate with a Prezi, and the kids will learn how to use the scope proficiently (which really doesn't matter anyway, when you get down to it).

If you've never used a dissecting scope, get your hands on one--it will change your universe.
Microscope quiz lifted from here--it's been passed around since Leeuwenhoek first drew it. 

If my biggest worry is how to grade something like this, well, I'm on the right path.

Dusk on the edge of the bay

The time between anniversaries of the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima, plutonium on Nagasaki, have the same off-center pull on me of the awful hours on Good Friday. Attaching this disequilibrium to specific times is, of course, a human conceit, as is dreading the inevitable.

Still....

***

 The mid-moon evening tide lets us wander out onto the tidal flats at dusk--there's still a hint of color on the western edge of the bay, but the sun sank a half hour ago.

I wander around collecting horseshoe crab molts, the exoskeletons split along the front edge, where the sea creature wriggled its way out of its shell, self actualization in action. The husks of these ancient creatures hold no flesh.

As I scuffled my feet in water only inches deep, a globular critter wiggled its way from the edge of the sea back to the depths, and I pondered whether it was a sally growler, a croaker, a northern star gazer, or something else.

As if a name matters to it, to me.

To anything.

The shells in the photo were collected two dusks ago.

The critters that once claimed them are likely wandering around in the brown cool depths of the Delaware at this moment, unaware of anniversaries, but not unaware.

Awareness is not what makes us human.

Horseshoe crab graveyard

 Horseshoe crabs and I have a long history.

 Theirs longer than ours.





These were tossed up on a huge hill of dredge waste, peering through the gray mud.




I have witnessed much, most unspoken, in my years, as I am sure you have, too.

I do not understand, or trust, my silence.

 

Their blood runs blue, copper grasps the same oxygen molecules that let us strip electrons from our food.

 Our blood runs red, the deep rust of iron, 

Most of us can see, most of us can talk.

Our stories remain as opaque as the mud deep below the waters of the Delaware Bay, where now in the darkness, a solitary horseshoe crab consumes a careless clam, neither ever seen by humans.

 

They have not changed much in hundreds of millions of years, their life perfect for their world.



And now they rest on the spoils made by us, we who are impossibly foreign in our own skins, looking for something beyond this life.








When you walk the fissured hillock on a chilly April morning, the exoskeletons whisper what they know.

This is all, and all is enough.

Photos taken by me.

Slow seeing

If you want to kill a child's interest in astronomy, buy her the biggest piece of glass you can afford the first hour she expresses any interest in the stars. Make sure it's got a computer-guided star finder, and that it "talks" to her as she explores the skies. Better yet, have her log onto a remote telescope where she can "guide" the scope to spectacular deep sky objects, seeing details on a screen that would dazzle Galileo himself.

I wouldn't give a child on a tricycle the keys to a Suzuki Hayabusa GSX1300R just because she's decided she want to advance to a bicycle (even if motorcycles did come with training wheels).

There is a push, a huge push, to digitize classrooms, to get connected, to leap into the 21^st century. It's all quite exciting, and there's plenty of money to be made, and ooh, shiny, shiny!

Many of those who hawk promote the digital classroom, presumably for the best interests of the children, seem particularly prone to a binary view of the universe. If you're not with us, you're against us.

I know they are busy people--so many new gadgets, so little time to master the New Best Thing--but they're screwing up the ed world a bit with their listlessness. I'll make this quick.

A child who cannot see the grace of a caterpillar using only her eyes and enough free time to think will not benefit from a magnifying glass.


A child who cannot see the finer details offered by a magnifying glass, a tool used with the caterpillar still whole (and alive), will gain nothing by looking at a slide of caterpillar tissue under a microscope, and the child might reasonably ask if you really needed to kill the caterpillar.

Gypsy moth caterpillar, by Materialscientist

Here's my point. Put down the iPad for a moment, stop texting, let your scattered thoughts dissipate.

Humans have the same cognitive and sensory tools today that we had a few generations ago. Observing the world is an acquired skill that cannot be learned through a screen. It requires interest, it requires time, and it requires building an internal scaffold that allows the child to make some sense of this universe.

Very few high school sophomores observe well, and it's to our shame that those who do, often do despite their formal education. My best students of the natural world are often the least able to function in a classroom.

Before you jam down the latest version of the Graflex Schoolmaster 750 filmstrip projector into my classroom--and when you get down to it, the Smart Board doesn't add a whole lot to the original concept--make sure you have given me enough time and space to teach the children how to see.

Give that much room, then you can have them to manipulate as you will. If I have done my work well, their excrement detectors will scream at the crap that passes for rational discourse these days. Good teachers--parents, neighbors, school teachers, librarians, the corner philosopher ranting at the #34 NJ Transit bus every time it rolls by--focus on meeting a child where she is in the universe, and just about all children are a decade or two away from mastering a scanning electron microscope or a raging road bike like the Suzuki Hayabusa GSX1300. Some of them will never be ready for either, and that's OK, too.

Ironically, anyone who takes the time to look around can see that we are blindly headed to catastrophe. We cannot afford another generation of Americans who think they'd rather not think.

The Suzuki phot came from Motorcycle Best Picture blog--don't know yet who to credit.
The caterpillar is from Wikipedia by Materialscientist, released under GNU FDL
The Brayco Projector ad taken from The Bray Animation Project, permission pending

Letting go

I'm letting go this year. I'm going to trust the collection of young humans sitting in my class, brains honed by countless generations before them, each and every child with a lineage going back as far as the first protobionts that globbed together in the seas here billions of years ago.

I'm letting go this year. I'm going to remind myself every morning, right after the Pledge of Allegiance, that I am mortal, that my students are mortal, and that the "liberty and justice for all" means just that. Neither is cheap. Nor are our children.

I'm letting go this year. I'm singing aloud in class, because I can, and because it helps children remember, It helps them remember facts, true, but more important, singing itself helps us remember who we are. I may drop a couple on a used guitar. I don't play well, but I do play. I don't sing well, either, but I do sing. As the warm July sun sets, I hear the squeaks and squawks and chimmering and chammering of cicadas and cardinals and squirrels and bees and crickets and grackles and dogs. Even the fish around here make noise, croakers and sea robins grunting in protest when dragged out of the water.

I'm letting go this year. I'm going to overtly share my ridiculous love and awe for this marvelous universe, one that belongs to any critter with ribosomes and some nucleic acids. I'm sharing our emerging stories of the natural world along with the joy and fear these stories elicit. Squid flashing light signals to each other deep in the ocean, orgiastic balls of earthworms reveling , bacteria sensing each other before working communally to a common goal--stories about other lives that help us grasp ours.

I have no idea what worlds lie outside what we can sense and rationally infer. I do know that what exists in our natural world exceeds the imaginations of all of us.  If a child's curiosity gets dampened in science class, you cannot blame the world.

Leslie's photos.

Diving into early elementary science curriculum

I've gotten a tad involved with the kindergarten science curriculum in our district. I know a little bit about science, and a little bit about kids.

Looking at much of the commercial stuff available, a lot of well meaning (and well paid) folks know little about either. It's time to put these well meaning folks who make a lot of money somewhere else. Maybe Mars

There's a lot of awful stuff out there. It's eye-catching, and well produced, and quite entertaining, but it's awful. Really awful.

Energy and matter are very difficult concepts to master. It's OK if a 6 year old doesn't know much about Newton's Laws. What is not OK is teaching nonsense that will make it more difficult for the child to grasp science later.

Here's something from PearsonEducaton, written for 1st grade:

Where's the science?

I start each year with a classroom of sophomores who think energy means to move something. By the time I get them, this misconception is seared into millions of neuronal connections. Teaching crap is worse than teaching nothing at all.

(The gratuitous "Go Green" symbol on a page feigning science about one of the most ecologically destructive
inventions ever might, though, make a good lesson on irony. Or cynicism.)

I will be posting a variety of seemingly simple ideas for teaching young'uns some science. The goal is not to produce Junior Scientists® rattling off the scientific names of obscure penguins like some unfortunate child with Asperger's syndrome. I just want to help kids see the natural world.

I do not have a particular beef with Pearson--it came up first when I Googled elementary science instructional materials.

If you look at other companies, there seems to be equal opportunity awfulness.

xkcd channels Feynman

This was sent to me by a friend I've never met.

Today I watched a dozen young adults get excited staring at fruit flies. Fruit flies, like pretty much anything alive, have stories to share. The deeper you delve, the more interesting they become.

Too much of what is called "science" in school is just pushing around big words with little thought. Knowing the definition (if not the meaning) of, say, "ubiquinone" may impress a few folks outside of science, but really, what's the point?

If you do not share the wonder and the beauty of this huge thing that wraps around us, is us, then what hope do any of our lambs have?

I'm not saying you got to make this a touchy-feely quasi-religious ecstatic experience. But if you're doing this right, you are going to ignite a few students along the way.

Isn't that why most of us got into this business?

Screw STEM, I want to teach science....

If you like the cartoon, go watch Dr. Bonnie Bassler--she's wonderful!