Trees

My friends at Birches have been making keen observations about many of the different trees that surround their school.  They noticed that the trees around campus hold leaves with a considerable variety of identifiable features.  A couple weeks ago, friends selected an assortment of leaves and decided to categorize them based on size and features, such as leaf outline shape.  They also made leaf drawings and wrote highly creative stories about each leaf they chose.  On a nature walk, friends noted that many of the trees' bark have quite different textures, and that some trees keep their thick bark covering while others have thin bark that is peeled away.  Theories about why certain species undergo seasonal shedding is a topic we will likely return to at another time this winter.

We decided to collect leaves from 5-8 of these different tree species and to use a field guide to make tree species identifications.  Since we have been talking about seasons and the weather changes that come with fall, friends were interested in making predictions about the leaf colors that they expect to see and in discussing why some leaves change color during autumn time.  

Our friends wondered what makes certain leaves turn from green to bright warm colors in the fall, and why some tree leaves turn brown, while others turn yellow or red and orange.  We decided to test what color we would find if we closely analyzed the green leaves that we had collected.

Using paper chromatography, we carefully rubbed leaf pigments onto a piece of special filter paper in a thin dark green line.  Then we submerged the paper strip into a small glass flask with a tiny volume of ethanol (solvent).  When our paper began to soak up the liquid, friends noticed that the green pigments began crawling up the strip as it was carried by the solvent. We were pleasantly surprised to see that, on some of our leaf rubbings, we were able to see other colors appear!  Over the autumn, friends plan to observe the trees from which they collected their leaves, and to see if the color predictions we made based on the chromatography experiment come true.

Climbing

My teaching mentor and most sage advisor, in all things related to inquiry-based science curricula, told me that the first week of teaching science to youngsters would be an almost euphoric experience.  She of course was right.

But after teaching science to young children (from preschoolers to third graders) for over a year, I am happy to report that the experience has not lost it's initial honeymoon glow.  If you have not experienced it yourself, I can tell you, it is the most amazing rush in the world. To be able to play some small role in presenting scientific phenomena to young children, to witness their engagement, exploration, absorption, understanding, and wonderment, it feels like there is nothing else at that moment.

As pop psychology as it may sound, I do believe that in adulthood we seek to fulfill some need of our younger selves that may not have been fully met in development.  I know now that the inadequacies, insecurities, and doubt that I felt about my own educational upbringing is what moves me to bring child-driven science lessons to very young students today.  It is my mission to empower children with their own sense of intellectual curiosity, to engage them to express their own thoughts, to explore deeply what ever subjects they find most intriguing, and to encourage them to trust their own creativity in problem solving.

Critical Explorers

While attending a three-day teaching workshop in August, I felt honored to be able to meet and study with Eleanor Duckworth.  Over the past year I had read several of her publications, and meeting her in person only increased my admiration of and respect for her.

A former student and English translator of Jean Piaget,  Eleanor has developed a teaching approach called Critical Exploration in the Classroom.  Her teaching method is surprisingly straight forward but hardly simple, it is one that explicitly values the learners' experience and insight, and I wonder why it is not yet the standard in our public schools.

Critical Exploration relies first on teachers making careful and deliberate selections of rich source material (for example, historical artifacts) and on allowing children to investigate and make discoveries of these documents for themselves.  It offers a restructuring of the classroom, turning the straight rows and authoritative lecturing at the blackboard, to one where all chairs are placed into an inclusive circle and students are invited to express their own thoughts, to learn from each others ideas, and to, hopefully, think more deeply.

While the initial materials (and take-home objective) are selected by the teacher, the technique requires precise listening skills and careful following of the students thinking; so that the teacher is flexible in figuring out what her/his next step will be in designing the subsequent curriculum for helping students to go deeper into the subject.

I see Critical Exploration in the Classroom as providing a learning partnership or, dare I say, learning community where the teacher is acutely aware of each and every one of their students personal perspective and where learners benefit from listening to each others ideas, allowing for the active exchange of discoveries and revelations.

Read more:  http://www.criticalexplorers.org/

Going for it

We are finally really going for it!  After talking about it forever, drafting, revising, and asking for expert-sisterly advice, my book idea is evolving into something I am proud of.

My Dad is illustrating my first science book for young children.  The project is amazing and it is a long time coming.  It's so true, how easy it is to think abstractly about all the things we want to do and how difficult it is to actually make them come to fruition.  I'm so happy we are moving forward.

Although we do have a long way to go, it is awesome to be working together and making something for kids.

More details to come, for now just wanted to share good news.

Why should we care about ants?

I want to share an update about a fantastic workshop I attended last week.  I was fortunate to have been offered a spot in the 2012 Summer Session of the Urban Ecology Institute along with some amazing science teachers from L.A. and Boston schools.  As participants, we had the opportunity to work along side leading field biologists and to contribute to their NSF-funded field-research by assisting them in data collection.  The project topics included: crow intelligence research, tracking feral cats, identifying invasive plant species, and classifying ant diversity within urban habitats. After a week in the field, each team collaborated to modify their respective field-work experiences into an inquiry-based curricula for kids and also presented their work to the entire institute.

My group worked on ants.  The projects' specific aim was to look at species diversity in three different urban green spaces: community gardens, forests, and tall grass/wild flower fields, in order to answer the question, do certain habitats aid in the preservation of native ant species?  Specifically, do green areas that are connected to larger green spaces (>150 Ha) preserve a greater diversity of native ant species than do isolated green sites?

While I vaguely knew that ants are important players in the garden, I now appreciate the magnitude of their countless contributions to the world ecosystem.  Just to list a few.  Ants disperse seeds, pollinate plants, and are said to turnover more soil than earthworms.  I was also reminded that ants are predators, herbivores, decomposers, and scavengers.

If you want to check out our teaching tools please visit the wikispace below for ideas on ant projects for kids!

http://pmt-ueiants.wikispaces.com/Team+2

Inquiry-based awakening

Inquiry-based learning/teaching is something I've been recently bitten by.  Last spring I took a course with one of the most inspiring professors I have ever met; now I am completely hooked.  I am looking forward, but I can't help but feel some smidgen of regret at not having been taught this way myself in earlier schooling.  I think my whole outlook on testing, education, and knowledge evaluation, would have been changed, and for the better, by being exposed to this pedagogy earlier in life.

I guess the teaching method formally came about in the 1960's, but it's new to me.  As many of you may know, this form of active learning sets students (in small collaborative groups) upon a clearly defined problem to solve.  The instructor decides the objectives for the lesson and the project can last for several weeks before the task is completed.  This seems perfectly suited for teaching kids (or adults) about science.  Problem-based learning lends itself to building student confidence and developing skills for tackling problems they have never seen before. Whereas subject-based learning, lecture format, is perfect for being told just what we need to know, studying it for the exam, and regurgitating the information for a grade, problem-based learning starts with a problem being presented, then students themselves need to identify what they need to know to solve the problem, and finally through active team participation they learn the subject matter, critically apply their ideas in action, and make discoveries.

As with virtually all good things, moderation and balance are key.  Group assignments and individual work is equally important.  It strikes me that the inquiry-based philosophy achieves this balance.  This teaching methodology is labor intensive.  Effective curriculum and lessons are best designed by teachers who have already participated in doing the lesson themselves, ahead of time with a small group of colleagues.  This format requires a ton of time, effort, and foresight on the part of the instructor.

That said, I am thrilled to be attending two inquiry-based curriculum design workshops this summer!

Welcome!

I'm afraid of blogging.  It feels permanent, exposed, out there for ridicule.  Aren't there too many people blogging already?  That said, I occasionally take a leap and force myself to do things that scare me.  What's life for, if not to try new things?  

For the past few years I have been ruminating about making a big change.  Now I am finally ready to take a leap.

What inspired me to act now was a conversation I had with a fellow scientist the other day about her decision to leave science.  That sounds melodramatic.  She's not leaving altogether but she is leaving life as she knows it, life at the bench.

There has been a lot of press lately about why highly educated women leave the field.  But I'm not sure that they are actually leaving; in the sense of completely abandoning their roots.  What seems closer to the truth is more nuanced.  Perhaps these scientists are actively deciding to set priorities in their own lives that allow them to balance work & home, and to rejuvenate.

Why does science stand in stark contrast to this trifecta?

For one thing, most of the work is background.  Long hours are required just to gain the skill and the tool kit necessary for the "real experiment."  The ultimate experiment (or more like several ultimate experiments) that you are expecting will give you great insight into the biological phenomena you're focused on, does not come cheap.  Virtually all your time feels like mere preparation for the real-thing.  Small steps forward are often mixed with large set backs.

I've wondered for the last three years how scientists - who are also mothers, are able to balance it all. I don't mean just getting by but really managing to balance: a healthy relationship with their significant other, cherishing their children, time to exercise; all while advancing their professional lives.

Is this struggle to balance really unique to scientists?  Speak to what you know is what they say.  The most successful scientists I know are OCD types who have channeled their obsessive tendencies into a highly productive work life.  And yet I wonder what gives.

Who is at home making sure the kids are happy, read to, bathed, fed, clothed, and nurtured?

So in hearing about my fellow scientists' decision to take control of her own life, set her own priorities (and after defending her PhD later this summer), to become a science educator (at the collegiate level) - I too felt emboldened to develop my own path toward science education (albeit for a much younger cohort).

As long as I have known this scientist I've been impressed by her dedication to research; her loyalty to her PI, her unwavering hours of devotion to bench work, her confidence, and her drive for understanding basic science.  

Why does it seem like she is giving something up?

Maybe it's just because I have always seen her as someone who could/would one day run her own successful lab. She has the ability and yet she is choosing to walk along a slightly adjacent path.  It's not a lesser path. I have to allow that realization for myself too. 

It is not a lesser path, but a peripheral one to traditional to hands-on-science, I feel sure she (and I) will now have the opportunity to inspire future scientists - many of whom will undoubtably be here - as I am - at a crossroad, needing to one day make a similar decision about how they want to spend their waking hours.  

I hope that through this blog I will push myself, educate myself, inspire and inform others about developing science curriculum for youngsters.