Blinded by Science

There was a time I didn't enjoy teaching science. My first few years in the classroom I didn't know what to teach. It's hard to imagine now but at the time I didn't even know what state standards or standardized testing was. For better or worse we were allowed to teach from our interests. In my classroom this meant we did some really cool things with astronomy but once that topic of exploration was exhausted we were left with a few random studies or experiments to fill out the year.

Part of the problem was probably the fact my own experiences with science in the classroom were sub par, at best. While I don't remember a single moment of science instruction in elementary school, I vividly recall six years of middle and high school classes that called for the memorization of terminology, cell parts, and the periodic table of  elements. My only positive memories are of dissecting a frog in biology and then later using a strobe light to measure the distance between ripples in a tray of water in physics. That's not a lot.

By the time I entered my science methods course as an undergraduate student in the elementary education department I had all but given up on science. Nothing about it held any interest for me. The course surprised me. It was fun. However, I didn't think this was entirely fair because all we did in the class was play with science tools, develop and conduct experiments, and pull apart little foil balls to discover a mouse skeleton inside (we later found these came from owls). All this playing around didn't really seem like teaching. Certainly not the teaching I was accustomed to.

My final course before graduating from college was an earth science class. It would generally have been the type of class you'd take first. Not surprisingly, I had put it off until the bitter end. To save money I took it at the local community college and really didn't expect much. Early on that's about all I got - no much.

However, a few weeks in we began to learn about space. I became really fascinated not just with everything to be found outside the earth's atmosphere but with the incredible predictability of it all. Equipped with a few charts and a little math you could accurately predict where the moon would be and what it would look like next Tuesday at 10:10 pm. You could figure out what time of day Mars would come into view and which constellation it would be hiding in. It wasn't something you just memorized but something you could go out and actually do yourself. Before long I bought my own telescope, sky chart, and red flashlight. After graduating I continued to read books on both physics and astronomy and even went back to college to take a few advanced math courses.

And despite this I still walked into my first day of teaching feeling the science blues. This continued after moving to South Carolina. Here in the Palmetto state I was introduced to strict state standards that told me exactly what I should be teaching and sometimes even when I should be teaching them. This would have been a relief except for the fact that half of what I was charged with teaching was topics I knew little to nothing about: states of matter, rocks and minerals, the physics of sound. Fortunately my new school had a science lab equipped with an assistant who would pull together materials for me and even help teach the lessons. There were a lot of experiments. They came from a popular science program and weren't really all that bad. The kids were getting to use all kinds of tools, record data, and make connections. I slowly began to learn that science in a classroom doesn't have to be boring at all.

I've since moved to a school that is about as science-oriented as any school could possibly be. In the place of the old programs are lots of time spent exploring, playing, asking, reading, and experimenting. I've had the incredible fortune to teach next door to my buddy Tim who has taught me that teaching science isn't as much about memorizing or conducting a series of set experiments as it is about living in wonder of the world. I've learned to be amazed by a caterpillar building its chrysalis, curious about grass seed growing in pencil shavings, and inspired by the many artifacts and creatures brought in each day by seven and eight year olds who have learned already how cool science really is. More than anything, I learned that to be a good science teacher you just have to spark an interest and get out of the way.

I've been thinking about all this over the past few weeks. The kids have been observing animals, studying seeds, designing and conducting experiments, inquiring into fruits and vegetables, learning about nutrition, and mucking through non-fiction books in search of really cool facts to delight their friends with. Their excitement and curiosity has no limits. What was once a disappointment has turned into a highlight of the day. Here's a few pics from our studies...

An opportunity to observe flamingos in an unnatural setting - the zoo.

Setting up an experiment with seeds from home.

These apples came from New Zealand. We actually grow apples in SC.

Thousands of heads of lettuce grown in downtown Columbia.

These microgreens are grown completely chemical free.

Feeding the fish in our pond.

A visit from the executive chef of Richland 2 schools.

We found out our school lunches are INCREDIBLY healthy.

The chef told us you can plant the top of a pineapple and it will grow. We're making sure.

I'll end this post with a big thank you to Tim for helping me to see how much fun science is. If that thing takes off we'll send the first pineapple your way!