Flying on a Jet Plane

I recently entered an essay contest for the National Science Teacher's Association. They were giving away 30 free plane tickets to their local conferences, and our science department was planning to attend the one in Charlotte on November 7-9. All I had to do was write a 150-word essay on what I wanted to learn most from the conference, and I won! Here's my entry.

"In Version 1.0 of my science classroom, I was relying heavily on a textbook and worksheets, with students passive for most of the class. In Version 2.0, I began to explore inquiry-based instruction, and had students trying experiments before we ever opened the book. The release of Version 3.0 has been jam-packed with improvements. I am using video tools and a YouTube channel to screencast lectures, explain lab procedures and even animate classroom supplies. Some of these videos have been part of “flipped units” where students pace their own learning according to what they need. At this year’s NSTA conference in Charlotte, I’m looking for ways to advance to Version 4.0. I’m envisioning a fully paperless classroom, synced with augmented reality, and gamified into a “Choose Your Own Adventure” experience for students. Version 4.0 is bold, uncharted, and just what my students need. Will you help me get there?"

Tired

Teaching is a job that is never finished. Each lesson could always be a bit more structured (or unstructured), each unit could be a little more student-guided (or more teacher-facilitated), and each year could always be restructured and reorganized. Couple that with the constant barrage of new technology, fancy 21st century teaching terms that are in style this year but may not be next year, along with my dearest 64 emotional and psychological preteen roller coasters who are just trying to find their place in the world, and it makes for an exciting, challenging career. 

For the most part, I am energized by this career. But today I am tired. 

Tired in my bones and in my brain. Today it feels like it doesn't matter what I try or don't try, what I do or don't do. It won't ever (in any of the countless iterations or improvements of my lessons or units or plans) be good enough.

Oh the Joys of Technology!

When it works, it is GLORIOUS!

To refresh my students' memories of the scientific method and lab report writing, I gave them a simple question to test: How does the height of a dropped ball affect how high the ball bounces?

They brainstormed with their group, downloaded a simple (and mostly empty) lab report template from our class Schoology page, uploaded it to their Google docs account, and shared it with their group members. Each member was then easily able to type in the document at the same time from their own laptop, collaborate about each section of the lab write-up, and discuss how it should be written. (This was my first time really using the collaborative feature of Google docs, and I'm now officially HOOKED!)

Collecting data, WITHOUT PAPER!

When it came time to actually test the question, several groups decided to film the dropped ball using the built-in camera on their laptops, and play each trial back in slow motion using iMovie or PhotoBooth. Genius!

 

Students lining up the camera on the laptop to film the ball bounce.

Replaying the ball bounce in slow motion to more accurately measure height.

What amazed me most is that not only did the students accomplish the entire experiment in one class period (with no other guidelines except the starting question), but they effectively collaborated on all sections of the lab report, and even polished off properly labeled tables and graphs using Microsoft Excel, inserted them into the lab report, and uploaded their finished report to our class Schoology* page for me to grade digitally!

With the help of some fantastic technology, we accomplished in 50 minutes what it would have traditionally taken me to do in twice that time. Not only was I amazed at how much got done, but also at how the technology allowed their creativity, ingenuity, and fluency with the science concepts to shine. For the first time in my teaching career, I felt that I was no longer having to teach the technology alongside the science content. This time, the technology quietly slipped into the background, and the students' understanding (or lack of) the science became more clear to me than I could have seen it otherwise.

Here's to hoping the rest of the year's technology is as beautifully seamless as it was today!


*If you don't have Schoology, you should definitely check it out. It's like Facebook for school use, has fantastic gradebook functions, allows you to give tests and quizzes online, sends out assignment notifications, and enables great discussion thread features. The very best part? It's free!

Secret

I am not really a scientist. Just a nerdy teacher disguised as one. In my trusty lab coat and goggles, which at times feel more like props than safety equipment.

Is this somehow a detriment to me as a science educator?

In the core of my teacher-heart I am in love with pencils and paper and staples and folders. Flash cards and highlighters and black and white marble composition books. Multiple choice questions and white board markers and three-ring binders. Gold star stickers and "Way to Go" stamps and red felt tip pens. Cooperative learning and glue sticks and graphic organizers.

Am I more in love with "doing school" than "teaching science?"
(I worry this affects my ability to actually help students integrate new science information. Especially those students who aren't as naturally gifted at "doing school." *Swallowing hard...*)

Or perhaps have I just been teaching middle school too long?

Simulations

For my girls in 6-1, 6-2 and 6-3:

1)Click on the simulation below. Then on the right side, click "Mystery" button. Use the scale and the water to measure the densities of each block A-E, and compare them to known values in the table. Write down what you think each block is made of on your paper, and check your answers with a neighbor before going to the next simulation.

Click to Run

2) Click on the simulation below. Then click on the tab, "Micro" and shake some sodium chloride into the water. Answer the following questions in your composition book.

Click to Run

A. What does the sodium chloride look like before it enters the water?
B. What happens to the sodium chloride crystals after they enter the water?
C. What do the purple dots represent? What do the green dots represent?
D. What can you do to increase the concentration of the salt water? (Make it saltier?)
E. What can you do to decrease the concentration of the salt water? (Make it less salty?)
F. Click "remove solute" and change the solute to sucrose (a type of sugar similar to glucose). Describe what the sucrose looks like before it hits the water.
G. What happens to the sucrose molecules after it enters the water? How is this different from the sodium chloride?
H. Click on the tab "Water," and see what happens on a smaller scale when you add sodium chloride and sucrose to water. What colors represent the water molecules?
I. Why do the all the molecules seem to move around so much?
J. What do you think would happen to the speed of the molecules if we heated the water? Why do you think this?
K. Click back to the "Macro" tab and experiment with the conductivity device (the lightbult and battery). Talk to a classmate and come up with an explanation of why you think the salt solution will light the lightbulb but the sugar solution will not.

Check all your answers with a classmate before you finish. Turn in your paper when you are done.

Have fun!

Why I Teach, Vulcan Version

If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Mr. Spock

I teach because science makes sense. It answers questions. When all is upside down and inside out from a heartbreak, a loss, an unexpected turn of events, science sets things right again. The predictability smooths out the rough edges of the rest of my life. I know that if I ask a question, make observations, and conduct a controlled experiment, then my results will either support or contradict my prediction. In this way, fears can be quelled, and renamed mere uncertainties. For example, a fear of the darkness is (at the risk of sounding like Spock) irrational.

Darkness is merely an absence of visible light. Darkness is the photoreptor cells in the back of my eyes not being stimulated, and in a way, resting. They are not busy distinguishing different wavelengths of light energy, and so my brain interprets this resting as darkness. In this way, life, when it is hard or scary or unpleasant, can be made manageable. Understanding, then, equates to clarity, which gives me (a sense of) control.

On a daily basis, I feel like I'm trying to impart this idea to my students: "Let not your heart be troubled. There is an explanation. For everything."

Yet, I sense there is a hefty trade-off here. In all my attempts to calm troubled minds, to answer the questions, to bridge the gap between a world off-kilter and one that makes sense, I remove the mystery. Without mystery, I fear there is no wonderment. No curiosity.

When a child is twelve years old (as most of my students are), how much of the balance should I be tipping toward the unknown then? My mind tells me that there will be plenty of time for mysteries as they grow and mature. Plenty of time for unanswered questions, for results that still don't address the heart of the problem, for ghosts and gut feelings and human fallibility. So I think, now must be the time for certainties.

My heart, however, reminds me that those same mysteries, if administered to the students in carefully measured doses (look at me, still trying to quantify and control!), can provide the impetus for not just a sixth grade love of science, but a lifetime of love for it. (*And oh, how the weight of this responsibility feels massive on my shoulders.)

Alas, what started as a statement of why I teach has somehow transformed itself into both a professional and personal challenge. One way (out of many) to become a better educator, and perhaps also a better human being. To embrace more of life's uncertainty and mystery, for myself. To stop trying to quantify those things which cannot be contained. To let go. For without the unknowns (things that are not known at the present moment) and the unknowables (things that can never be known), I risk sending my students out into the world believing that all questions do indeed have answers. That all of life is calculable, measurable, and perfectly logical. And that is probably the most detrimental scientific misconception I could ever propogate.

Butterflies

I can explain to you why the Moon has phases.
I can show you in the lab how temperature affects the solubility of a substance.
I can demonstrate why air is considered matter.
But when you ask me,
"Miss K, why do you have all these butterflies around your room?"

I am stopped in my tracks.

Like a clogged drain.
All the words get stuck in my throat
And my brain spins around
off-balance and awkwardly empty.

All I can manage to say
Is something cliche and pre-packaged
About how butterflies first begin their lives
As squishy, wandering caterpillars.
And that likewise, we all go through
strange
transformations
To become more capable,
More beautiful
Versions of ourselves.

Except I don't even say it as eloquently as that.
Because I fear your eleven-year-old minds
Won't understand what it means to have
Another version of who you are today.

There is a part of me that wants to say instead,
"Ask me in ten years."

It would be like asking a caterpillar
Why he couldn't stop staring at the butterflies
Above him in the air.
"I don't quite know," he would say.
"But something about them just feels so familiar."