Sunsets and the solstice

Sunset on the Delaware Bay

The earliest sunset of the year (in these parts anyway) happened a couple of sunsets ago ago. The sun is setting later today than it did yesterday.

Folks will argue the point, but I am not so interested in their arguments as their need to have the discussion at all.

We are truly trapped in an abstract of our own making. Noon once meant the time the sun is as high as its going to get on a particular day, and solar noon still means just that, but the sun peaking at noon only happens four times a year now.

And despite what my teachers told me, the sun is never directly overhead in this part of the world.

So I can point folks to the United States Naval Observatory to support my claim, and I often do.

North Cape May winter beach

Here's a better idea, though. Go outside (or at least to a window) and look. Tomorrow do the same. Do it for a week or two. Do the same for sunrise.

I guess it really doesn't matter if someone knows the sunsets are getting later. It may be trivial to most of us. But that's not the point.

If we can so easily fool ourselves about the rise and fall of the sun, imagine the nonsense we do not know that we do not know....

What we believe becomes who we are.

Pill bug Christmas prayer

My Christmas prayer last year....

Less than a mile away, in the gray shadows of a closed classroom, a pill bug wanders around some compost, feeling relief as it moistens it gills. It stumbles onto a fellow pill bug, exchanges greetings with a brief twitching of touching antennae, then ambles over to a piece of potato.

Wild pill bug, loitering on a North Cape May driveway.

It sees light we know exists, but no human will see today.
It knows sound we know exists; an old analog clock ticks a few feet away.
It knows of existence, and the existence of others like it.

Christmas means nothing, of course, to a critter no bigger than a wheat berry.
But living does.

The light is returning.
Amen.

There is joy and wisdom in silence and darkness.
Merry Christmas!

Photosynthesis in December

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again
And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is–
I hold it towards you.

--John Keats 

The shadows are as long as they will get in these parts, and will stay with us for a few more days. Our shadows trail us like stretched cartoon monsters chasing us over browned grass and fallen leaves.

Too little sun left now to put back together the stuff we break, complex molecules put together by plants in brighter times. Every moment we live we create chaos out of order, our bodies hanging on by the grace of entropy, freeing the energy of sunlight trapped by the plants now waiting for the return of spring.

Our lives depend on this instability--large, unstable molecules masquerading as a grilled cheese sandwich, a pint of ale, a bowl of cereal literally shredded apart in our cells and tossed out of our bodies with every breath.

Puff on your palm--the moisture and the exhaled gases were part of the bread you ate less than a day ago, the heat the energy of transformed sunlight captured in July by a wheat berry in Kansas. This is the material, real world, the stuff in us, of us. This is not metaphorical.

There is no global economy--it is the sounds of words and numbers and data, all too abstract to sustain even the tiniest critters among us. Yet that is what we tell ourselves matters.

The real economy is found in the breath we exhale, the knitting of these cold and stale molecules back into the rich stuff we call food, only to be broken again. And again. And again. Until we cannot do it anymore.

A year ago the "I" part of me came close to falling out of this lovely and utterly terrifying cycle of life, though I'd still have been a part of it, my cremated corpse contributing to the building blocks of the living.

I'm still here. So are you. Let's keep it real.

We work at what we worship, and the gods of the old were far less abstract than the ones we worship today.
Photos by Leslie Doyle. If you want to use them, ask.

Thoughts on finding a mako's tooth

Found today at the edge of the ocean.

We are mammals, all of us, trapped by words of our creation, most of us.
We are human, all of us, trapped by technologies of our creation, most of us.
We are all mortal, all of us, trapped by belief we shall live forever, most of us.

Just a few hours ago I stumbled upon the tooth of a mako shark, a creature likely still very alive within a few miles of here, now sliding through the dark depths of the water, living in a universe as incomprehensible to us as iPhones are to the shark

This tooth has ripped the bodies of other living beings, its serrated edges cutting through flesh not all that different from our own.

An old horseshoe crab, just recently dead.

We credit ourselves with awareness, with knowledge, with wisdom, stored in books and hard drives and stories we share with each other.

If the stories focus on us, as they mostly do, we can still learn.
If they exclude everything but us, however, we'll become as ignorant as the machines that dominate our days.

We're losing our way.

***

[Update: a local biology teacher just told me that this may be a fossilized tooth--
how cool would that be!]

[Update 2: A geologist friend of mine assures me it is a fossil!]

I've never regretted a single moment outside.
Photos by Leslie.

New Year's Resolutions: a science teacher's list

These were last year's resolutions.
I liked them so much I'm going with them again.

New Year's Day is coming up, and with it, the fantasy of resolutions kept.

Only wear shoes when you absolutely have to. 

Science teachers need to wear them during lab, but unless it's snowing and a bunch below zero, my toes are collecting photons.

It also cuts way down on foot issues, and if you teach, your dawgs matter as much as your voice.

My foot and a cabbagehead jelly--and no, haven't tried eating that (yet).

Eat fresh food, as much as possible, but don't make a fetish out of it. 

You can do it for health and a whole lot of other extraneous reasons, but the best reason to do it is because fresh food tastes good, and we only have so many meals in a lifetime.

If nothing else, grow some basil in a used milk carton on a southern windowsill. Even if you never eat them, basil will cheer you up--just brush against the leaves and the smell will wrap your limbus with love.

Brussels sprouts, anyone?

Walk a couple of purposeless miles every day.

No stopwatch, no GPS, no heart rate monitor, no walking shoes, no laps. Just you and the world. If you don't know where to go, you're already halfway there!

Avoid ceilings.

Get outside as much as possible, whenever possible. No telling what you'll see.

Today I got to hold an old live horseshoe crab, and found myself within a couple of feet of two ruddy turnstones. We stumbled upon a hobbled vulture nibbling on a dead black-backed gull. I considered plucking a few oysters off the rocks, but given the recent rainfall, thought better of it. None of this is possible indoors.

Chase what gives you joy for hours a day.

For me that means strumming a stringed instrument (hardly matters which), singing, and gardening. For you, it might be skating, baking, or playing hop scotch.

The universe existed for billions of years before you came to be, and it will last billions more long after you're dead.

If I teach anything at all in biology, I hope it is this much.

You only have a lifetime to live your life.

Observation vs. information

There's the difference between "information" and "observation."

An alert letting you know it's raining outside is information. Standing outside getting hit by drops of water under gray clouds while your brain melts from the earthy aroma, that's observing.

Both can be summed up as "it's raining outside." On a multiple guess test, you'd be hard-pressed to separate the two--but it matters.

Here's a piece of information--that rainy day smell comes from geosmin, and chemists draw it like this:

"Geosmin" means "earth smell"--that's information.
Letting a child dance under the first raindrops of a late May rainfall, letting her sniff the ethereal aroma, that's observing.

If a child is to have any hope understanding the natural world, she first need to observe it.

Yeah, ethereal is the wrong adjective there--
chemists use it to mean related to ethyl ether. That would be information.

Discovery Education's "Beyond the Textbook" Forum, Part 2

While some schools have fancy Madagascar hissing cockroaches, we made do with an American cockroach, the huge one found in norther Jersey.

A child volunteered that she her dad had caught one at work, and wondered if she might bring it in. I loved the idea, most of the class groaned, and the next day she waltzed in with a margarine tub poked with holes.

(This says a lot about the child who was curious, about her father who saved a "pest" for his curious child, about our town where kids can freely talk of cockroaches without being ostracized, and about our school where kids believe that bringing in cockroaches is an option. Think what you will, I love Bloomfield!)

Once the class settled down a bit--a 1 1/2"  live cockroach in a classroom beats the Krebs cycle any day--a few kids started paying attention to this critter, one they knew they were supposed to hate.

Cockroaches like to groom themselves--and our particular cockroach, when trapped in a Petri dish groomed her antennae incessantly like a nervous tic.

This is what a scientist sees:

Antennal grooming behavior consists of the following sequence of events: 1) medial rotation of the head coincides with the raising and extending of the foreleg opposite (contralateral) the antenna to be groomed; 2) the flagellum in the region of annuli 15-20 is contacted by the fore tibia and adduction of the foreleg bends the flagellum to the mouth parts; 3) the foreleg returns to the substrate; 4) rapid lateral movement of the maxilla and labium on the flagellum as it moves through the mouth parts; and 5) the flagellum returns to the original, extended position, and the maxilla and labium continue to move for a short time. This sequence of five events comprises one episode of antennal grooming.

A child sees a creature "cleaning" herself, taking care of herself, getting nervous--a child sees herself in the movements of a creature she was taught to hate, and an odd thing happens.

The child becomes interested in a cockroach, a once reviled critter. She looks some more. She falls in love. She becomes an entomologist.

***

You cannot love (or know) the idea of things unless you love (or know) at least one thing that represents that idea. A child who loves bugs loves them because she knows something about particular bugs.

You can go through life loving abstract ideas more than living, and many of us do. (Those who chase the abstract seem happy enough, and they're are plenty of days I do the same--Go, Giants! Our economy depends on this.)


 If you want to create children interested in science, though, the abstract must emanate from the real. You need to let them play with cockroaches and magnets and balls. You need to let them fall into puddles, to fall out of trees, to scrape knees as they master something they can truly know, not mere ideas pushed on them by a culture that honors magical thinking.

***

And what does any of this have to do with textbooks?

Any educational tool that honors the abstract above the real helps foster magical thinking. Magicians make lousy scientists, have no need for math, and design crummy bridges.

Traditional textbooks exist to be sold. The larger the market, the less attached to the real, to the local, they must become, unless "the local" means a market as large as Texas, whose laws affect the content of science textbooks.

Pearson started as a construction company, nothing wrong with that, and now aims to take control of the education business, whatever that means. It is a publicly owned company, PSO on the New York Stock Exchange, nothing wrong with that either, as long as it's understood that their primary obligation is to earn money for its stakeholders.

Pearson's latest financial data from Google

Our school bought a wonderful set of textbook's from Pearson last year--Campbell Biology, a wonderful and hefty book that I love to read. But I already love biology.

My students (in, ironically, the abstract sense) are not reading the book. They do not care how beautiful the photos are, how accurate the words, how much money their town spent on them. They do not dive into the website set up for them, they do use the CD that comes with the book.

But I bet if it had a photo of something we did in class last week they'd all take a peek at that page.

***

Discovery Communications, inc., is also publicly owned, you can follow them on NASDAQ. Discovery Education holds a huge influence in our classrooms, providing free digital and media (redundant?) through the internet. Pearson, of course, does the same, but the two are coming from different angles.

Discovery Education has bought a piece of my time--I've learned more about them in the past few days than the past decade. I'm not immune to influence, and I'm a sucker for anything that allows me to hang out with folks wiser than me.

They think I might have some ideas on how to reach kids through the next-generation tool--I'd love to drop the word textbook, it's too limiting--we'll find in our classrooms.

***

So why am I doing this?

It looks like fun.
1) We have been assured that this is not meant to be a direct promotional bid by Discovery--anyone who's been kidnapped by time-share schemes knows the dangers of committing oneself to a confined space.

It looks like fun
2) Steve Dembo wants us to spread our ideas publicly before we even meet. Not sure his bosses are keen on this, but his emphasis on sharing ideas openly makes this more than a junket. (/me waves to the Pearson folks....)

It looks like fun
3) I'm older than most folks bleating the tech story, and age has tempered my enthusiasm. A conference like this needs an old goat, a Luddite, a keeper of tradition, if nothing else than for amusement. If I had a choice, I'd take a slate board over a SmartBoard, for several valid reasons. (To be fair, though, my typewriter's collecting dust as I write this.)

It looks like fun
4) It's free and I'm cheap.

It looks like fun
5) I love train rides. Trains are older than planes, buses, cars, and rocket ships. You could look that up.

 It looks like fun
6) At the risk of being influenced, and there's no pretending that I am not, I get to have some input into an extraordinarily important process. Last time I got to do anything like this was back in 1993 when I served on a sub-subcommittee for the Clinton Task Force on National Health Care Reform chaired by his wife. Not sure I accomplished much, if anything, but I got a nice train ride and a few free meals (see 4 and 5 above).

 It looks like fun
7) I get to grovel and apologize (and apologise) to varied folks who have tried to drag me into the 21st century. (Lessee, I already apologized to Eric, there's Alex, Dean, Tom, good Lord, Jon, David--is there anyone online I haven't tangled with?)

It looks like fun
8) I have my Principal's blessing, Chris Jennings, who just won a NASSP Breakthrough School award last week in Tampa. We're good. We want to get better. Mixing with folks from around the continent can only help.

Next up?
My dream school toolkit....

Downside? I hate missing classes. We got a lot of stuff going on in Room B362, and never enough time.

Cockroach photo from Virginia Cooperative Extension, Virginia Tech, and Virginia State University, used with implicit permission.

A child's critique of modern science education

I got to spend a wonderful few days in Tampa at the NASSP Convention schmoozing with principals and other high falutin' admins, a rare treat. One of the folks I got to meet was Eric Sheninger, one of the winners of the NASSP 2012 Digital Principal Awards.

At the conference, Eric mentioned that he got his digital start with a guest post on a fellow administrator's blog. Two days after I heard that, a fellow teacher wondered if she might guest post on mine. 

Her name is Susan Eckert, an erstwhile genetics counselor.  She has two children--David, who just turned 6, and Julianne, who's not much older.

And here it is:

I woke up late on Monday morning and asked my daughter, Julianne, if she could just have hot lunch today (such a treat to not have to pack a lunch).

“No!” she cried, “We’re going to the planetarium and I want to bring my own lunch!” That’s right! She had been excitedly talking about her upcoming field trip to the planetarium for days. And so when I posed the requisite “How was your day?” question after school, I was a bit surprised to hear her thoughts on the field trip.

She paused, she thought, she seemed a bit deflated. She carefully chose her words and then she slowly told me she didn’t really like the planetarium because she wishes she had “more knowledge” about it.

Hmmm, this needed to be explored. I probed, asked her a few more questions, specifically on whether she had learned anything. And her response was a mixture of words about “adoms” in her pinky exploding and blowing up the whole town.

She had no idea what that meant (not sure I do, either) but that is what stuck with her. The lasting impression, though, is that she is now a little turned off to planetariums, the stars, the moon, and the planets because she was confused much of the time. Jules seemed to almost feel guilty telling her science teacher mommy about this but I truly appreciated her honesty.

My daughter’s homework that night was good, very good. She was asked to be a critic and to review the planetarium trip. I could get on my soapbox about what I think some of the shortcomings of elementary science education are but I think the earnest words of an 8 year-old tell the story perfectly. And so here are some her words:

I didn’t really like the glenfield planetarium. Because I didn’t really know a lot of the words the guy said… I think people who like space movies like star wars would understand. And people who don’t know what rambunctious means wouldn’t understand. Also the guy would be talking about atoms and not explain what atoms are. And he also got me confused about what he said.
[Sidenote: Knowing what the word rambunctious means and how to spell it is some kind of intellectual litmus test for my daughter.]

As educators, we tend to say too much. I have done this and I still do but I am much more aware of it these days. Our intentions are often good but in our eagerness to teach children about the wonders of the natural world, we sometimes do the complete opposite—we kill their curiosity.

When should children learn about atoms? NJCCCS says by grade 8. I don’t really know but I’m pretty sure it’s not during second grade. Before I entered into education, I would tell my own children all kinds of facts and I tried to ignore their eyes glazing over. And now that I know a bit more about teaching science I try to say much less. It’s my new mantra: just be quiet. I’ll have to undo this—I’ve already put the North Jersey Astronomical Group Telescope Night sponsored at Montclair State University on our calendar. And I swear that I’m going to keep my mouth shut and just let my children do the talking.

Addendum: This morning, two days after Julianne went to the planetarium, I signed my son’s permission slip to go on the same field trip. “Oh, you’re so lucky! I love it there!” she said to her brother. 

 Huh? When I questioned her about this considering what she wrote just two days prior, she explained that it’s still really cool to be there and look up at the ceiling. What she saw had a more lasting impression than the confusing words buzzing in her ears. I wondered if this diminishes my message, but after further reflection, I think it just amplifies it: let our words not distract from their wonderment.

Please comment liberally--I want Ms. Eckert and her little one to get hooked on this blogging thing.... 

Et tu, Zappa?

There's seems to be some confusion about my role.

I am, of course, an agent of the government, of the public, of my town. I am a science teacher, which should mean I teach science.

Arne says it means I am the linchpin of our economy.
Einstein said I have the power to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Governor Christie says it means I'm a lazy ass lapping at the public trough. His sidekick Cerf says I'm an ankle-biter.
Walt Whitman said I should be destroyed.
Cicero said I am pretty valuable to the state--even used the word "noble."
Frank Zappa advised children to avoid me lest their minds rot.

Frank Zappa might be right....

 
All kinds of noble and ignoble nonsense spews from the mouths of those who would judge me.

Teachers are fair game, and understandably so--we're involved in a process no one truly understands honing our varied skills on the most impressionable among us. That these impressionable folk happen to be the result of sexual unions among adults who (mostly) live in the same town I teach only adds to the fun. Add to that that they're paying me out of pocket to do this, well, I expect a little noise.


I'll make it easy for you.

• I teach children science because I want them to see the world outside of humans--infinitely fascinating.
• I teach science because I want my republic to survive the nonsense spewed by those who'd stomp on their children to push a career--a nation still worth salvaging.
• I teach children because their fresh views help me see better--and as my senses fade in my twilight, I need all the help I can get.
• I teach mostly because I love it--I'm selfish that way.

Frank Zappa photo from The Rebel Kind. 

Gingko blues

Do not ever follow any advice I give for eating anything. If something has an acetyl group in it, I'll try it. 

Some folks' skin reacts to the pulp, too. This is the Science Teacher blog, not Fine Foods.

My favorite tree on the Bloomfield Green was cut down a couple of days ago, mostly for the crime of doing what its family has done for a quarter billion years: stink.

The tree was about as old as me, had its first offspring about the same time as I did. I pray the coincidences end with its death.

The gingko is infamous for its stinky fruit--some call it the "vomit tree"--but I loved my tree, walked by it several hundred times a year, and I'm going to miss it.

***

While the fruit do stink--imagine a dog vomiting into your son's gym socks sometime mid-June--the wood's subtle piney jasmine scent rivals my stash of ambergris for my favorite nose candy. I brought a wedge back into B362. One of my lambs also loved the smell--she took the wedge home with her.

I'm hoping the nuts are at least half as good.

I've read several different ways to prepare them, but I think I'm just going to roast them until they look roasted enough, then pop one or two or more into my mouth. I'll let you know how it goes.

***

What does this have to do with teaching science?

Most of my lambs have no idea where food comes from. A few watched me as I picked up a few fruits off the ground. I told them I planned to eat them, and I do.

An ancient tree planted decades ago in my town, likely by someone now dead, has been fallen by a cultural intolerance of, well, smell. Before the tree passes from my memory, I want to know what she tastes like.

The aroma of my fallen gingko reminded me of the vast unknown pleasures that await the curious. I want my students to chase the pleasures nature offers each of us, for barely the cost of paying attention, even here in an urban district, long tamed by concrete and asphalt.

The world is bigger than we can dream. It's not enough for me to say it, no child should accept the word of a teacher because he is a teacher. The gingko can speak for itself.

To be fair, the tree was not completely healthy. Then again, neither is anything else our age.

Photo from "Wildman" Steve Brill's site, a site well worth the visit.

Siemens STEM Institute video

OK, I'm not sure I'm allowed to do this (but it's usually easier to be forgiven than get permission--my Mommy taught me that)--here's my video for the Siemens STEM Academy program this summer.

Mind you, it was edited on a cheap laptop running Vista Home Basic, about 17 hours of my life I won't get back.



But I like it anyway....

It's already banned in Germany--does anyone know Izzy's address?

Imbolc

An Cailleach Bhearra wandered around back in the 10th century in western Ireland,
eating "seaweed, salmon, and wild garlic" (my kind of woman), looking for firewood.

If the day was bright and sunny, beware--she had gathered plenty of wood and was set for many cold days ahead.
If the day was gray, she didn't bother, and she will make the days warm up again. Sound familiar?

Imbolc again.
The daffodils have broken through the earth. My words shrink as the sunlight grows.
Groundhog Day has always been a favorite of mine.

***

We are trapped by words.

This week my lambs are being tested. They sit silently as they analyze stylized marks on paper, then fill in 90 bubbles on a piece of paper holding 500.

This is serious business, this thing we do with words. Outside a gull glided by lifted by the unusually warm mid-winter breeze. No one else in class saw it.

What's the use of knowing the word gull if you have no use for the animal?

We pretend our words make us safe. We pretend our words give us control. We pretend that words make us special, and that these words separate us from the bacteria, the fungi, the jellies, and the gull.

***

A few days ago I watched a crow at the ferry jetty caw caw caw at a gull sharing a light post. The gull did not respond. The crow then swooped down, picked up a piece of paper, then returned to its perch near the gull.

The crow carefully ripped up the paper, piece by piece, dropping each piece, one by one, watching each piece until it hit the ground, looking at the gull between pieces as if to say Hey!

When done, the crow cawed once more, and this time the gull squawked back. The crow, now seemingly satisfied, nodded, then flew to a trashcan and cawed at a few humanfolk, one (not me) who cawed back.

I have no idea what that was about, nor could I justify discussing it in my classroom. So I don't.

Curriculum stops at the point where humans are besides the point.

That makes sense if you live in a world of words. It makes less sense at the water's edge.
A child can parrot the Calvin cycle without knowing a thing about a seed, about food, about the billions, trillions of other organisms teeming around him.

If we keep ignoring things where humans are besides the point, we will become just that.

***

I teach biology, the study of life, in a culture that fails to recognize death. The children spray themselves with Axe, yet shy from the pond water and the mud brought in from outside.

I can hardly grade a child on her ability to keep a plant alive in a public building . I cannot ask a child to slaughter a calf in class. I can ask her to tell me how many NADH molecules are generated from one molecule of glucose during the Krebs cycle.

With the return of the sun comes the return of my sanity, when I feel comfortable letting go of the words again, learning (again) that what I thought was besides the point is the point.

Photos by us.

A science teacher's challenge

 "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
Thoughts on Rachel's Challenge.

Atoms, as most adults know them, do not exist. Never have. Our models are human constructs, useful but little more than organized patterns of neurons firing away, as we try to make sense of the world around us.

Yet most reasonable adults in these parts will tell you that they know what an atom is.

Quahogs, on the other hand, are as real as these hands upon this keyboard. Beautifully curved mollusks that live with as much purpose as most of us, tucked away in mud flats just a few miles away. Good eating, too.

Yet most reasonable adults in these parts could not find one with a GPS mounted on a bull rake.


Which matters more?


The abstract matters, of course. Without it, language dissolves and bridges fall. Still, the point of language is to share our collective grasp of the world around us.

 We worship our words, our images, more than the ground we literally walk on, the dirt that keeps us fed.

***

Today our lambs got exposed to a cacophony of sound and images--Chuck Norris and bullets and Sean Hannity and smiling babies and Hitler and  white coffins and Anne Frank and moving anthems and stories of coincidences that defy logic all to send a simple message: be kind.

The show was designed to rip at the amygdala, an organ already pretty charged up in the adolescent crowd. I don't like seeing truth and children manipulated, even if (or maybe especially if) the message is kindness.

The models of science ultimately rest on our understanding of the ground beneath our feet. As abstract as science can get, it's ruled by what can perceive of the physical world. Science requires evidence, and it requires open discussion of how that evidence can be fairly interpreted.

Maybe I just don't like Chuck Norris.

I'm a science teacher. I worried a bit about my students accepting the stories told today at face value simply because their emotions were twanging like Duane Eddy's guitar.

I needn't have worried. My students have been mostly kind this year. I kept quiet as I listened to their conversations.They're adding a healthy skepticism to their kindness.

The kids are all right.

Oh, and a suggestion--if you spend an hour telling the kids how everyone matters as much as everyone else, don't end it by announcing a "select" few will get together later to start a club.

Chuck Norris photo from Amazon.

Clamming: a 21st century skill

19th century version:

Yesterday I headed for one of my favorite places with one of my favorite people to do one of my favorite things--clamming. The moon is waxing and near full, so I knew low tide would fall in the early afternoon.

COST: months of intermittent observing, which I enjoy.

21st century version:
Yesterday I checked the computer for the tides, clicked through a few buttons, and saw that low tide would fall precisely at 1:29 PM. and that the moon was 93% full.

COSTS: computer, internet connection, electricity. 

Jersey fresh quahogs, a couple of hours out of the mud.

Which gives me more information? 
Probably the latter. It's clearly more precise, and it's also more efficient than watching the moon and tides in a particular area for a few seasons.

Which gives me more knowledge?
Depends on what you mean by knowledge, but becoming part of the local natural rhythms requires a deeper understanding than needed to read a computerized tide chart, and maybe even something called wisdom.

Which gives me more pleasure?
Following the rhythms of the moon, of the bay. We do not talk much of pleasure in education, and I'd bet most "educators" would would put pleasure far down on the list of reasons for schools to exist.

Of all the reasons to push for high technology in the classroom, arguing that it prepares students for the 21st workplace, that students need to be trained on computers, is, well, hogwash.

Our students do not lack for information--many carry phones more powerful than the computers that got astronauts to the moon back in 1969, and can easily look up today's tide should the need arise.

We've come to see schools as little institutes for job preparation. We used to call that vocational school.

Given the economy, kids around here might be better off learning how to read the moon the 19th century way.

A wise child might wonder why it's warm enough to clam comfortably  in January.

A science teacher's resolutions

Say a prayer every morning honoring a mystery. A prayer for light, for life, for gravity, for cosmic rays, for the source of water. I pretend I know nothing. I want to know what knowing nothing really means.

Remind myself every morning, when I wake up, should I wake up, that I am mortal. Not as in some shimmery philosophical sense, but in the full entropic mess of death that marks the end of any life. Keeps one focused on what matters.

Continue to get outside. Every day. Hubris melts under the sunlight, dissolves in the rain.

Teach children science, as science. Every day. Not technology. Not trivia. Not as a means to better the economy. Teach children to know the world more today than they knew yesterday, to understand their place in the natural world. Why else teach?

Every minute spent on this machine is a minute in Dante's Bolgia 4.

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.

New worlds

As various factions wrestle with various standards for various (and occasionally dubious) reasons, I find myself in a classroom with a couple dozen young humans at various stages of cognitive development, learning about the world.

A drop of pond water sits on a slide now projected on the screen. A creature, too small to see naked eye, wraps itself around an even smaller one. Other critters scoot, slither, slide, and wiggle by.




My charges can "draw" mitochondria--the NJCCCS expect the children to "know' the major cell organelles by 6th grade, to "model and explain ways in which organelles work together to meet the cell’s needs." A few can tell an amoeba from a paramecium without my help. This impresses some people.

It shouldn't.

A child looks at the slide on the microscope, back up at the screen, then back at the slide again.

A single drop of water holds a world of life. The slide warms up from the lamp below. The critters under the cover glass start to fade as the oxygen level drops.

I could, of course, pontificate about aerobic respiration and diffusion and concentration gradients; I could give the children boxes to fill and diagrams to label; I could drag out one of our myriad models telling the kids what they can't quite see.  And on many days I do just that.

But not when a child see the world open a bit wider than it was just moments ago. There will be time, maybe enough, maybe not, to learn the human language that describes this new world to the satisfaction of the state of New Jersey.

The class remains mostly silent as the children take in what they cannot yet grasp.This impresses me.

As it should.

The video is from YouTube--our critter was not an amoeba, and truth be told, I did not know what it was.

In the you cannot make this stuff up department....

"When using and choosing technology for children teachers should let children pretend with the types of gadgets they see their parents using. Stock the dramatic play area with a non-working mouse and keyboard, cell phone and/or electronic music device."

from the New Jersey Technology Standards

Or maybe just give them a box of crayons and let them draw a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head.

Photo from Buffet O' Blog.

On misconceptions

The deeper I dig into how much a child understands a particular idea, the more I  realize persistent misconceptions can be.

We have plenty of places for magical thinking in our culture: horoscopes, good luck charms, religious incantations, and the stock market take up a good chunk of our time. So long as your magic does little harm, and horoscopes and talismans fall into that category, blessed be.

Alas, much of our magical thinking has disastrous consequences. Each morning I grab my wand and recite incantations, hoping to teach science. Before I teach science, I have to unteach the magic.

If you teach young children, and you do not quite grasp something, do not preach it as Gospel. I can teach a child who knows nothing a whole lot more than I can teach a child that knows everything.

We are starting cell energetics this week, the soul of biology. After a few years of doing this, I now know what I must have them "unknow":

• Plants make food from sunlight.
• The "stuff" of plants mostly comes from the ground.
• Plants have no need to respire.

Pretty much all of science gets down to the Conservation of MassEnergy, and in high school biology, where a Newtonian view of the universe is usually sufficient, it gets down to this:

Stuff (matter) is stuff, and energy is energy,
and never the twain shall meet.

These misconceptions run deep, deeper than I realized until the past couple of years. I've gotten better at working through them, but misconceptions are tenacious, and, I think, comforting--children want to grasp the world, and a science teacher running through a laundry list of vocabulary words and biochemical cycles cannot replace the comfort of knowing, even if the knowing is wrong.

This week I'll grab my propane torch, as I have done multiple times, and again show children that water comes from combustion. I'll blow into bromothymol blue solution and again give evidence that CO₂ leaves us with each breath.

My stories have to be better than the ones they heard before. My stories have to make as much sense to them as the ones they already believe. My stories must be more true than the ones that define their universe.

My stories need to become their stories, or I've taught them nothing.

Grab David Rudel's books on science myths. Should be mandatory reading for any teacher at any grade that teaches science.

Last Saturday of November

Raked some leaves, then some clams, then some charcoals to cook the clams. New moon tide in late November on a spectacular day makes for good living, at least for me. Can't say the same for the clams now in my belly.

In between the leaves and the clams, Leslie and I kayaked up a local  creek. The cormorants are still here, soon to be replaced by the loons. The osprey are gone. We say a flock of surf scoters--a sure sign winter is coming.

The zinnias now put up tiny flowers, so little energy now available from the sun, but they're still trying.

I saw a few lazy bees hang onto the cosmos flowers--they were pretending to scoop up what little nectar remains, but they were mostly slumming in the sun. The only animals in these parts that cannot see the obvious are the H. sapiens sort.

The sun is dying. Long live the sun.

We can pretend to thrive under the fluorescent hum of madness, or we can settle into the patterns of the seasons. Biology is all about available sunlight.

If my lambs get that much, it will be enough.

Grace.