Some random thoughts on leadership.

Working in a huge district such as I do, it is really difficult to make any kind of impact much beyond my immediate school. I have tried over the years to affect certain changes, by finding out the appropriate people in charge and respectfully submitting suggestions, only to see them sink like stones never to be heard from again. So I have had to learn to curb my frustration at not being able to make system wide changes, and do what I can where I am placed.

As a teacher, I have watched science teaching change over the seventeen years of my career. When I began (as a 3^rd grade generalist), I was given a set of reading and math texts, and when I asked what to do about science and social studies, I was told to look around my classroom to see what books were lying about and use them. A rather cavalier attitude toward the subject, I thought. Then a few years in, we were given a lock-step curriculum. (On this day, you will be teaching this…) which at least gave everybody the same materials to work with, but heaven forbid you fell out of step with the pacing. The students had better “get it” on the first try, or else!

Finally, this year, we were granted a bit of autonomy, because our school is not in “corrective action” (though it will be if they students don’t make AYP…). So I FINALLY was able to make a change this year. I taught my seventh grade students evolution for the first time. The district timeline has us skip that chapter in the book! But I just couldn't face myself sending them off to high school without that in their background knowledge locker. Thank goodness my principal was on my side on this point.

Maybe this sounds like a small thing, but to me, it was a big victory. The other day, my husband was joking with me about what I will do with my free time now that my time at Walden is coming to an end. I think perhaps I will finally have time to put some action behind the things
I have learned about leadership and social advocacy and maybe put myself out there and LEAD? 

Effecting Change at School Level

How can one teacher effect change at school level or beyond? This is an interesting concept to ponder and one that is difficult to achieve in today's climate. Unfortunately, with the current emphasis on reading and math due to the need to receive passing scores on high stakes testing; the "other" subjects tend to fall by the wayside. 

Two weeks ago, my school held a whole school science fair. At that point, the other teachers seemed to rediscover my value and contributions to the school, as everyone came to me for tips and materials. That was fine, and I was pleased to see the overall quality of the projects the classes produced; but I feel as if I have been put back on the shelf again until next year. 

I don't feel that the other teachers downplay the importance of science, they just lack the time to properly devote to it with all the other things that are constantly being put on their plate. 

My district used to have full time "coaches" who came out to help science teachers implement inquiry lessons. Those positions were all cut several years ago. There also used to be specialized professional development on Saturdays including topics for science teachers. Those were also cut. It has become nearly impossible to buy replacement materials for the lab kits, and so on. Is it no wonder that the students don't see science as "important" when the schools apparently don't? 

But this is one of the challenges of working in an impoverished district.  I've noted over the years that our focus seems to be very short sighted, but of course our leaders are responding to public perception. 

For me, what this means is all I can do it to continue to speak up and advocate for science education at the building level; and hope for better days to come. 

A Sputnik for the 21st Century

Having read Thomas Friedman's Op-Ed piece "What's Our Sputnik?" took me back to my own childhood, since I was born a scant two years after the launch of Sputnik. I was raised during the Cold War, when Americans were afraid that any letdown in science education might lead to finding Soviet soldiers on the doorstep at any moment. 

Today, we are much more complacent, in some ways and less so in others. Friedman notes that we are a nation obsessed with "the war on terror", and that we are spending a lot of our intellectual and fiscal capital fighting this "war" (Friedman, 2010).  He believes that this is the current times' "Sputnik", and makes a case that perhaps instead America should be focusing on our competition with China (Friedman, 2010). 

While he makes a good case, I'd like to propose a different "Sputnik" for the 21st century: the development of practical hydrogen fuel cells as an alternative energy source for automobiles. There simply has to be a way to make that work, and think of the energy independence we could gain from foreign oil suppliers. 

Right now, I know that it's "just not possible", but of course no one would have thought we could have made it to the moon by 1969 when that first satellite was launched, now would they? 

Reference

Friedman, T. L. (2010, Jan 17). What's our sputnik? New York Times. Retrieved from     

          http://search.proquest.com/docview/434270918?accountid=14872

A quote from Carl Sagan

                                               Appropriate for this week. I still miss Dr. Sagan.

Modeling layers of the Earth

I was in a real bind with the lesson on Earth science since I won't be teaching this topic for months to my own students. It's very difficult to get them to shift gears, unfortunately, but I did have an inspiration when I remembered that the third grade was working on Earth science at this time of the year.

So I went and offered my services to one of the third grade teachers as a demonstration lesson in model building. As luck would have it, that week she had just completed working with the kids on the layers of the Earth, so I was able to bring a model creating activity to their classroom.

I had forgotten that third graders were so LITTLE! At least next to my seventh and eighth graders... But they were very cute, and very eager to please. That was a breath of fresh air after my super sophisticated teens, that is for sure.

I had decided to do an old fashioned, low tech activity where the students work in pairs to create models of the Earth from clay, starting with a spherical inner core, and building layers on top of it until you have one large globe. Then the globe is sliced in half, revealing the four layers which the children then attach labels to.

I had planned to use the class Smart Board to display some video about the topic, and talk about the best laid plans of mice and men... because wouldn't you know that our entire network crashed that day and wasn't restored until the afternoon. (This lesson was in the morning.) I had to laugh, as I was thinking about how I had wanted to integrate technology into my lesson only to have it fail me.

Just as well, with only 45 minutes to establish a rapport with the class; activate their prior knowledge; demonstrate the procedure; AND help ten pairs of eager little ones to construct and cut their models in half... I can't imagine also having time for video!

The kids were thrilled with the lesson though, and I was SO proud of their performance. They worked hard to complete their models, they helped each other and got along very well with no problem sharing the two rolling pins I had brought. Every student completed the model with correct labeling in the time allotted, which was really great, in my opinion. I saw the class passing by the principal at the end of the day and they all stopped to show her their models (thank goodness I had remembered to bring plastic bags to wrap them in for transport home!).

Though the lesson felt a bit hectic to me due to the intensity of the pacing of the lesson, I felt it met the goals completely. The students were engaged, and had a lot of fun doing the activity. It was one of the fastest 45 minutes in the classroom ever!

Natural disasters and students

The concept of using natural disasters as a way of teaching students compassion for others is one which has promise. When a large scale natural disaster occurs, it dominates the news and captures the attention of people, at least for a while. I think about the Haiti earthquake, the tsunami in Indonesia, and Hurricane Katrina, all of which occurred during my teaching career. The staff of our school tried very hard to use these disasters as teachable moments for our students, and we began fund raising drives after each disaster. 

We were not very successful with the exception of the Haitian earthquake effort. To this day, we're not certain why that particular disaster struck a chord with our students. We don't have students from Haiti in our school, but we do have a large population from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, which are of course close neighbors to Haiti. This likely explains the connection. 

Our students live in poverty, some of them in extreme poverty. I am not sure if this causes the students to be less aware of others in need, or they simply just lack the means to respond in ways more well off students are able to. 

Unfortunately, the only way to find out will be when the next severe headline grabbing natural disaster comes along. I'm not really anxious for that day to come. 

A day late and a dollar short... again!!! (Review of backward design.)

I knew there was something missing... and here it is! My blog post about the backward design lesson plan. I had written the plan for a group of young campers, hoping to get permission to work with the local nature camp but it ended up not working out. So I pressed my husband and my daughter, a recent college graduate, into service.

I did my lesson in two parts. The first was a discussion, to establish what the students knew about the scientific definition of life, habitats, ecosystems and so on. My husband was a bit puzzled since he hasn't been in a classroom for many years and he couldn't understand why I kept turning his answers into more questions.

Once we had had our discussion period, it was time to head out into the woods for real-life observation of the local ecosystem. My husband declined to go with us, so I gave my daughter a circle of rope and directed her to toss it into a clearing. She did, spread it out, and then sat down and began to diagram. I reminded her that diagrams must be labeled. I also had her make a T-chart, and note living things on one side, and non living things on the other.

I noticed when she was done that she had misclassified sticks and dead leaves as non-living. This is an error commonly made by third graders, the age group for whom I intended the lesson. It serves as a reminder to emphasize the differences between living, non-living and formerly living, ie, dead.

This is a lesson I would have enjoyed doing with students. It's a shame it didn't work out with the nature camp, and unfortunately, I teach nowhere near any sites that could reasonably be substituted. But the experience of working with backward design was worthwhile and with practice could prove to be a very efficient way to plan lessons.