Saturday, July 10, 2010

Post from Wednesday June 23rd

This was my first reflection. I was posted elsewhere, but I should add it to the rest:

I am literally sitting here at 12:33 on the day after finals have ended with two kids that never bothered to show up for my class. Dragging them through a review of a semester's worth of material - actually forcing them to answer out loud before they take the final. And I am being paid as a substitute. But the one girl is pregnant. And the other kid I know is facing all kinds of issues. I can subtract race from this equation - one kid is white and the other AA.

The kicker is that they both seem to sort of actually like science. There is such a huge divide between my whole way of thinking and being and doing. Perceptions are so dominant. I am sharing this physical space with these students and we both have a common goal of discussing a certain topic and helping them to fulfill requirements to pass high school, but we just have so little in common. We just don't look at the world the same way. And it does matter. It matters a lot. I think what I am opening my mind to the most is that there is a vast divide that has to be crossed in order for me to get high school students in the 21st century to talk about science. Now that I am past the fact that they don't care and don't really like the content for the most part and they need to be motivated somehow to develop study skills that they may or may not have and are not remotely interested in developing - now what? I have to move on from here and so do my dear friends who love science and the art of teaching it.

Some things happened over the past 10 weeks that have changed my view of this whole discourse thing. No. 1 - I was more organized and managed my classroom like never before and that actually made all of the difference for some of the most challenging students. Just the fact that the environment went from being disorganized to being super-managed allowed them to succeed. So now the next level of progression is how do you make things exciting. How can you move into discourse? Motivation is the key that unlocks discourse. Without it -as in anything else in life, there can't be a conversation. Motivation through pressure to get good grades and competition for recognition works - but only to a point. That will get you to the first level - question and answer. Learning basic info. My science teacher buddies have pretty much settled for that - and I did too. But there are moments when the kids are interested and want to know more and then, of course talk more. I want to know how to create more of those moments. That is what this journey is really all about. I am hoping that the coming weeks as I listen to the classroom sessions from my buddies at BHS and I will show me some things that will lead us there. We'll see. The focus groups really bring out our backgrounds. Looking forward to it.

Friday, July 9, 2010

How to defeat your own conditioning

How do I un-do so many years of conditioning that molded me into a person that understands how science is not only taught and learned - but how it is lived? When I struggled with physics initially - I just knew I had to open the book and read about the concepts. Just doing the problems wasn't going to cut it for me. At age 16 I was already conditioned. So now - with the available technology - I have to re-create myself. I wonder if the story is being told about the shock that a teacher experiences in charging herself with becoming something else. This is no simple task. I am reading about how teachers must change their perspectives and widen their lenses - but throwing away all of that convention and tradition is not unlike converting to another religion. Which is why so many that I have met have shunned public school education. For the most part what I have seen - in a number of schools - is a faculty of science teachers who are trying to force the traditional manner of doing science into an environment where that approach is not going to be received. I was thinking this morning that field biology is what hooked me and kept me in the scientific community. And the ability to bring that excitement about hunting for clues in the natural world is what kept me going. I have learned that I am willing to scrap lectures for discussions - as long as I can find way to convince my students to go on a scavenger hunt for information before we attempt to talk about a topic. I am at odds with myself. If I take out all of the detailed explanations about processes and do not discuss the scientific instruments and how they work - how can I teach science? Is it science at all? Those are precisely the two things that scare off the majority of college prep and level 1 students. But they seem to be willing to listen to it if it is a part of a video game or cartoon or tv show. And mind you - I am not being condescending. I'm just thinking about how to get students to think about and talk about science without being threatened with failure on a lab or quiz. What I am receiving form the literature is that the method of delivery has to fit the times. Students need to talk about the concepts, and they need to be encouraged to collaborate and design and execute projects and labs in order to really be engaged in science. All of this needs to take into account sociocultural differences. And - there really is no reform initiative that will "do it" for you. It has to be developed from what drives you as a lifelong lover of doing whatever science you do. So I return to the two most basic and fundamental questions that are only superficially addressed by most teachers and students. Who am I? Who are they? And then once again to the questions about what happens when we can't find common ground about what is and is not important. I suppose it can just be alright that we don't agree and that students might refuse to ascribe value and beauty to the science that we teach. But none of us really wants that. The students don't even want that - they are seeking meaning and purpose for the time they spend with us. Nobody likes time spent in their lives on any task - even if it is one they do not enjoy - to be a complete waste. And there is a place where the most resistant teenager will meet you if you are trying to meet them half-way. I've found that place before - I just haven't a method of delivery that works for them. But I will. I will.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Cramming

I was looking at a quote from Lemke's 2000 paper. "In a larger sense all scientific explanations also belong to the culture of science, a culture that seeks particular kinds of knowledge for particular purposes. The cultures of everyday life also seek knowledge and explanation, but often for quite different purposes; their criteria of validity are also correspondingly different. When we move well outside the orbit of European-derived cultures, or even of middle-class subculture, the nature of what counts as knowledge and what qualifies as explanation may also be startlingly different." She went on to say, "Our goal is science for all, but what does this mean if our particular view of science is too aggressively masculine to sit well with many students' identities? Too narrowly rationalistic to accommodate spiritual longings? Too technicist, abstract, and formalist for a wide range of humanistic, aesthetic, sensualist, and pragmatic dispositions? Must all students love machines, numbers, predictability, and control to be welcome in our construction of what science must be? Do we have to continue to ignore the well-attested and documented (e.g., Wechsler, 1977; Tauber, 1996; John-Steiner, 1985) aesthetic, intuitive, and emotional components of scientific creativity in our teaching methods"?

I took another look at this paper today. And it is even more relevant now than it was when I first read it in 2007. The glazed over look that I see in the eyes of countless students as I peer through the windows of the laboratory doors speak to the disassociation many of them feel when we seek to indoctrinate them into our world. I have to agree that I see much evidence that we are making much of whether the students can "get it" or whether or not they can grasp the material and forgetting the social context of our charge to introduce students to the ideas and communication patterns of scientists. We really are forgetting to ask ourselves what does it mean for the students if they can perform this task or restate this idea? If they can design a model rocket that shoots the highest and travels the fastest, what does that mean within the context of the students' view of themselves and their world?