Jack Hassard, professor of science education in Georgia, has discovered a wonderful new science educator with great ideas for the Atlanta Public Schools, and they don’t cost a dime.
Veteran education guru Ed Johnson has some tips on how to put science at the center of the elementary school curriculum. His plan calls for using nature, exploring, seeing, touching, paying attention, learning the science that is right in front of you.
Hassard quotes Johnson’s advice to the school board:
Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Meria Carstarphen has blogged good news: Let’s Play! Every APS Elementary School Gets a Playground! She recaps that, as a consequence of the school board having decided to provide for schools to be more equitable operationally, nine of ten priority elementary schools now have a playground ready for back-to-school. In addition, she reports that a playground at the tenth priority elementary school, Beecher Hills Elementary, is under construction and that the planning process there includes working with a City of Atlanta arborist. Great!
So, speaking of Beecher Hills Elementary School…
One of several points of entry onto a system of greenway trails is right next to the gated entry to Beecher Hills Elementary. It is at that entry point to the trails that I sometimes start and end a walk-run. Being out there to emerge in the surroundings and to be open to The Universe always proves a way to more fully engage the senses, and to renew. What am I seeing? Hearing? Feeling? Smelling? Tasting? One the most engaging times out on the trails occurred during a torrential downpour, and I got soaking wet. Still, the rain provided a very different learning context and experience I had not before imagined.
The greenway trails effectively extend Beecher Hills Elementary School’s backyard. And because they do, I often think it would be magical to be a kid at Beecher with freedom to play and learn in and from that extended backyard.
The point of entry to the greenway trails at Beecher Hills Elementary lies adjacent to the school’s front driveway. From that entry point the greenway meanders northward and down the westward side of the hill upon which the school sits. Then the greenway curves eastward along a fence behind the school before curving northward and connecting with an east-west trail just beyond having crossed a creek.
Environments outside the classroom for students to explore and learn.
Out Beecher’s back doors and down the hill, the fence encloses an expansive green field just begging to be played on. The field catches my eye, every time. It always invites me to pause and wonder what would kids do if let loose upon it? What sort of games would they innovate and play? What sort of learning would they innovate and personalize and internalize for themselves? What sort of questions would the kids ask prompted by observations they would have made? Would they even ask questions, having been trained to give only answers à la standardized teaching, learning, and testing? Would teachers run themselves ragged trying to control the kids’ play? How would teachers deal with kids’ questions, especially questions lacking answers?
And then I think, hmm, nighttime. Hardly any surrounding light! Look up, “billions and billions!” –thanks, Carol Sagan! And, of course, thanks, too, to that astrophysicist guy Neil Degree Tyson who claims “All I did was drive the getaway car” when Pluto got knocked off. So, yep, a telescope, right in the center of the field out back Beecher Hills Elementary School. Can’t you just imagine?!
Now there is a radical and innovative idea: Let the children play! Let them learn the lessons right in front of them! Let them understand that science is part of life and they are living in its midst.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Nature is indeed the best science educator in the Universe.
LikeLike
Autocorrect strikes again:
Carl ( not Carol) Sagan and deGrasse (not Degree) Tyson
Just when you think autocorrect could not get any worse, it does.
The people who write the computer code for this stuff are idiots who can’t speak English.
LikeLike
Tyson’s name flubbed intentionally for his messing with Pluto.
LikeLike
Sorry
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between satire and self correct .
LikeLike
You are correct about nature. Children should get out in it more.
LikeLike
My own children grew up with nature walks from a consultant that worked with the public schools. Now adults, they still mention how much they enjoyed the opportunity to discover and learn about trees and plants. Despite some health issues, Mr Bieber is still introducing children to the wonders of nature. https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/rockland/2017/10/16/ed-bieber-hopes-regain-trail-lost-parkinsons/731130001/
LikeLike
My first teaching job was at an environmental Ed center in southern New Hampshire called Otter Lake.
Not sure if it is still operating, but schools in the area bussed in students to spend a week learning about swamps, bogs, forests and all the creatures who live in them.
One night each week was called Creature Feature, which involved putting swamp insects under a magnifying overhead projector and projecting them on the wall.
Another night was spent wandering in the woods in the dark and looking up at the stars.
It was as much fun for the teachers as for the kids.
LikeLike
Everyone knows that being in and learning about nature is good for children. That is why many schools have community gardens and class pets. We need to produce young people with a healthy respect for the environment, or they run the risk of growing up as takers like #45 and his band of mostly deplorable private school grads.
LikeLike
Sadly, lots of children who grow up in the city never really get to experience the mystery, wonder and magnificence of nature at it’s best.
My brother is the elementary school science teacher at a private school who takes his deplorable private school kids outside to streams and parks, but sadly, many school children think science is all about learning dry facts from a Pearson textbook because that’s all they have experienced.
Lots of elementary schools don’t have a dedicated science teacher. Many regular teachers still do an admirable job of teaching science, but I don’t really even blame the ones who don’t with all the crap that has been shoveled on their plates in recent years (Common Core, testing, etc)
LikeLike
“Now, in addition to the field, thoughts of experiencing something new at any random point along the greenway invite imagining there could come from being a kid at Beecher Hills Elementary School a magical mix-up of unconventional play and learning from inquiry kids tend to do innately until thought to do otherwise”
Half-baked hippie pedagogy (and bad writing). The dream of “inquiry” education is half-baked. Kids need to be taught about Nature before they know how to enjoy or intellectually profit from Nature. “You only see what you’re looking for, and you only look for what you know,” said a former dean of the Cornell U. Medical School. Dissecting a cadaver with no knowledge of anatomy is not fruitful –you just see guts and blood. Thoreau said much the same thing –being a keen observer is not natural. It is the fruit of prior mental preparation. Teach kids about worms and THEN bring them outside to dig in the dirt. Teach kids how to identify different species of trees and THEN take them out into the forest. Teachers, by banking knowledge in kids’ brains, create new interests in kids and empower them to see. As with reading, you only see what you recognize and your only recognize what you’ve “cognized” first. We keep reinventing the failed hippie school.
LikeLike
Yes, it’s much better to learn about nature from a textbook.
Do you even hear yourself sometimes?
LikeLike
Did I say anything about a textbook?
LikeLike
Which drives useful curiosity . . .
. . . play?
. . . inquiry?
. . . ignorance?
. . . knowledge?
Hint: the more you know the more you want to know.
LikeLike
That’s an extreme position. Certainly doesn’t jibe with my own rural childhood experience. Though I was a lousy science student, I did enjoy studying geology, which stemmed directly from lifelong rock & arrowhead collections, starting with examining driveway gravel specimens at 6yo. (My mother promptly gave me an illustrated rock & mineral guide). We gathered weekly with neighbors at the lakeside by shale cliffs, which started me on fossil hunts & books. Flower, tree and bird guides soon joined the others, sparked by curiosity when roaming woods and fields. Curiosity & observation of the concrete has always preceded fact collection for me. Pencil & watercolor sketches were/ are part of observation for me, & I always end up researching phenomena so as to hone in on accurate rendition.
The PreK/ K kids I teach don’t seem any different.
LikeLike
Good points, but think about all of the interests you did not develop because the subjects were not directly observable. The world is filled with hidden subjects that could fascinate you. That’s what good teachers do. Unfortunately our test-centric, ELA/math-centric curriculum is so constrained tat schools are stifling student interest and curiosity rather than encouraging and developing them.
LikeLike
Be careful not to project your personal level of observation driven curiosity onto the average child. I teach science in middle school and find that most kids, when unprompted, are really not that curious. It is much easier to be intellectually lazy. Curiosity followed up by independent learning is hard work, unless it becomes a labor of love.
LikeLike
I do think kids are naturally curious, but the question is, curious about what? Middle school kids are intensely curious about other middle school kids, sex, etc. These are their natural interests. Pace the Romantic/hippie theories, school is about helping kids transcend the merely natural. Few are naturally interested in electoral politics, 20th C history, Chinese grammar, Hopi artifacts, etc. It seems to me it is the job of schools to plant and cultivate artificial interests and knowledge so that kids can function well in the artificial sphere called human culture. Romanticism’s worshipful approach to Nature is getting in the way of clear thinking about education.
LikeLike
No Rage, it didn’t work that way. By 4th&5th gr I was fascinated by the cell processes of leaves/ trees & rudimentary phys & histor geolog, all connected to my fave things. There was time in the rural elemschday of yore– & at home– to learn more when one was curious. Nobody shushing your questions & rushing you back to prescribed curriculum. I stopped being curious & started feeling stupid in jr&srhi, when sci/ math/ hist became a 3-headed torrent, TMI to “master.”
It’s not just me. The 175 age 2.5-6 I see every week are loaded w/Q’s.
Ponderosa, PreK/K age too are highly distracted by social/ emotional issues, & just as overwhelmed by [different] phys issues as older kids. Their ‘natural’ preoccupations are I miss my Mom, I was sitting there, Suzy kicked me, I’m jealous/ tired/ hungry, nose running, have to pee. But something is seriously wrong in elemsch pedagogy if they lose their curiosity by the time they reach midsch. I cannot help but suspect interest gets stamped out because there’s too little freedom to pursue their Q’s.
LikeLike
Bethree: I confess that young children are not my forte. I teach 12-13 year olds. They seem mostly interested in their phones when I take them outside. However it’s surprising how, when I teach them something about say, bread baking or the Congressional election, suddenly they seem interested in bread and the Congressional election. There is so much potential interest in kids, but I think adults need to cultivate that potential. Perhaps what kids need is to see another human show interest in something. That could be the necessary spark.
LikeLike
Exactly what I mean by “guided curiosity”. It hard to develop interests in subjects that you don’t know exist.
LikeLike
Ah, Rage & Ponderosa, I answered too quickly & should have read on. You are both touching a key I need to use in every lesson to get PreK/K kids onboard. Otherwise, Spanish is just “my thing” & why should they care.
The for-lang-teaching method I prefer calls it “personalization,” but it is really just helping them make connections to what interests them, or even just what they’re encountering in other subjects. Easy for me to do at their age: color-words become fascinating when related to what they’re wearing, likewise feeling-phrases to express how they actually feel, or want to role-play feeling. And I keep the content seasonal, as that often synchs w/their other projects. [We just did a story about bears catching salmon in November & it was a hit: who knew that 4-y.o.’s are already learning about hibernation?]
I agree that one’s own interest [‘guided interest’, i.e. engaging them in subjects they didn’t know exist] sparks theirs– & they are much more curious about your interests if you have a related exchange acknowledging theirs.
LikeLike
“There is so much potential interest in kids, but I think adults need to cultivate that potential. Perhaps what kids need is to see another human show interest in something. That could be the necessary spark.”
I think you have got something there.
LikeLike
“You only see what you’re looking for, and you only look for what you know,” said a former dean of the Cornell U. Medical School.
Perhaps, but misdiagnoses are also a product of assuming that what you know is what you should look for.
I have a different example. First year medical students are being introduced to the task of looking at works of art, precisely because these encounters can be structured to challenge their preconceptions—what they think they know. Here is one of these studies illustrating the spillover from this program and variants at many medical schools. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170906103528.htm
Almost any teacher in the visual arts will tell you that drawing what you see is one of the best ways to learn how to see. Many children are told too early that the sky is blue, grass is green, and the like. These are “schooled” generalizations.
In any case, teachers of science who regard the outdoor environment as a lab for learning and discovery may be stymied less by what you call “half-baked hippie pedagogy” than a relentless and well-funded federal campaign since 2007 to integrate studies of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics when STEM was embedded in the America Competes Act.
Now we have proliferating acronyms: add some art for STEAM, or make that STREAM with reading tossed in. From what I can see on Google images, Pinterest, and related lesson-sharing venues, these acronyms are cited to justify a lot of conventional projects, activities, not many of these requiring much more than following directions and too many still tied to the Common Core.
LikeLike
The Romantics’ gauzy dream of kids spontaneously learning in flights of joyous ecstasy as soon as they’re liberated from the stultifying confines of the traditional classroom is a pernicious zombie idea that needs to die!!! (Ironic fanaticism). This dream underlies so much of the pablum that comes out of schools of education and edu-meddling billionaires’ butts (e.g. George Lucas’s Edutopia). Why are we so allergic to actually teaching kids? Guess what? Kid prefer to be taught than to “discover”. Sure, make show-and-tell part of the lesson. But don’t neglect the “tell” part. I am an avid hiker. I often take non-avid hikers along with me. They are often bored by Nature. I think it’s because they often know nothing about it. They don’t know an oak from a bay laurel, a lupine from a poppy, a lark from a raven. They know nothing. They do notice some things that I, a veteran hiker, do not notice. But they fail to notice so much else: the bird songs, animal tracks, seed pods, tree types, light conditions… I see these things because I am looking for them, and I look for them because I’ve learned about them –from elder hikers and naturalists who’ve shown and told me and from reading nature guides. An ignoramus who walks into the Met is bored. A well-educated mind has found paradise. The hippie pedagogue foolishly sends a virgin mind into the Met and expects fireworks. Folly!
LikeLike
I’m no hippie pedagogue. I remember reading about the teaching of biology in the early 20th century. They studied diagrams of flowers. They memorized the names of the parts. They never saw a flower. Just a drawing of a flower.
LikeLike
As Juliet said, what’s in a name, that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.
LikeLike
The best time to start taking kids to the Met (or any other museum) is about three years old. Let them go where they want and see what they want and observe what they observe. Then children learn to make art their own from an early age.
The Collaboration for Kids in Oak Park, IL does a Symposium every year and one year the keynote speaker advised doing exactly that, as he’d been doing with his kids and grandkids for decades. He told a funny story about one granddaughter on her first trip, who became fascinated by a painting of a nude woman in the bath. The girl stared at it for over ten minutes in silence while he spent the time wondering what was going through her mind and even doubting himself thinking maybe it was a bit inappropriate for her, given her fascination with it. Finally, the little girl said in a very thoughtful voice, “I think that lady goes to our church.”
LikeLike
BTW, Ponderosa, if you’re ever in the Oak Park area, I sincerely invite you to look up The Children’s School and schedule a visit. They’re very happy to give tours and have you observe the work the students are doing. The students who started at TCS from kindergarten have exclusively learned in the way you scorn, yet if you look at what they’re doing by the middle level years, you might find your chin on the floor. Whereas if you look at a typical traditional middle school classroom where kids have learned with textbooks and tests, you’re likely to find a roomful of kids trying to keep their eyes open.
LikeLike
Diane, I have only read about Pompeii, but I am still fascinated. If my teachers had been able to take me there, that would have been even better, but I see no reason to disparage the indirect experience of reading or hearing about it. My point is that having a human teacher, one who has already internalized the knowledge, explain that knowledge to the uninitiated is the best form of education, and that fuzzy-headed, half-baked, fashionable and fallacious Romantic ideas have thoroughly obfuscated this core truth about education. Of course they sound oh-so-wonderful in theory, but look at the evidence of your own eyes: do they really work? I am watching them fail every day with NGSS in our schools –kids hate science now, even though it’s now all inquiry and almost no teacher talk. And they are learning less. Everyone loved my middle school science teacher. What was her approach? Mostly lecture. Clear, engaging, exuberant lecture, with occasional labs and projects. It was the lecture we enjoyed most. I’ll bet you enjoyed your teachers’ direct instruction in Houston Public Schools. I’ll bet you’d hate a typical inquiry lesson today. The reality doesn’t live up to the theory at all.
LikeLike
Don’t you think there is a role for both direct instruction and experience?
The older I get, the less comfortable I am with dichotomies in education.
LikeLike
Dienne:
I agree with you on this point: learning by textbook is lame, especially if it’s one of the wretched modern ones that attempt to contort themselves to fit Common Core standards.
As a learner, what I like is hearing a knowledgeable human give lucid explanations of what she knows, preferably with well-designed graphics and illustrations. Don’t you? Video is OK, but live is much better. I find my students –most of them –enjoy this very much too. Parents often tell me with astonishment that their kids regularly come home and talk about what they learned in my history class, and that my class is their favorite class. I’m sad to say most kids seem to dislike the NGSS science, as well as the Common Core ELA and math classes at our school. There the norm is complex chores, usually done in groups, that allegedly build mental powers and often entail “discovery” of knowledge through reading and activities. It’s like going into a museum without a human guide, and told to do projects based on what you can glean on your own. Frustrating and unpleasant. I am an eccentric in my embrace of direct instruction and putting the teaching of knowledge above the exercise of “skills”. Once the knowledge is delivered, I give students opportunities to use it –in games like history pictionary and creative projects, e.g. skits, as well as quizzes. But the core of the class is my presentations on important world history, based mostly on my own wide reading and experiences –not the textbook — which I carefully craft to make lucid and interesting. This is difficult and I’ve devoted a lot of time to craft these well. This craftsmanship is not discussed or valued in education schools, from what I’ve been able to gather. My aim is that students emerge from their year with me with lots of new world and word knowledge in their long-term memory banks –substantial value-added. (I doubt the other classes are adding much value, alas.) This added value, this knowledge, makes them more literate, more creative and better able to think critically and participate competently in the public sphere.
LikeLike
“As a learner, what I like is hearing a knowledgeable human give lucid explanations of what she knows, preferably with well-designed graphics and illustrations. Don’t you?”
At times, but only if said knowledgeable person is knowledgeable about something I already know enough about to find it relevant. And chances are, I already know something about it because I was already interested before I met said knowledgeable person. You could be the world’s leading expert on mitochondrial DNA or subatomic virtual particles, but I don’t know diddly about microbiology or quantum physics, so regardless of how spiffy your graphics and how exciting your presentation, it’s pretty likely to bore me to tears because it’s not relevant to my life.
For children (and, heck, adults), knowledge becomes relevant through experience. Try to explain a Rothko painting to someone or show them a picture in a book. Chances are, you’ll get a blank look. But show them a real Rothko painting live and in person, you’re much more likely to get an emotional reaction that makes Rothko relevant to that person. Then, maybe the person might become interested in reading about Rothko or hearing a lecture about him. It’s the same with nature, science, geography, history, and, frankly, all human experiences. We have to learn by experiencing and doing before we’re ready to learn by reading or listening about something.
LikeLike
dienne77: “We have to learn by experiencing and doing before we’re ready to learn by reading or listening about something.”
Yup. There’s a reason toddlers eat dirt, and stuff everything into their mouth that isn’t nailed down. Try first “lecturing” toddlers about any of that before they have the experience and see how far you get. Ponderosa, so much me-me-me scattershot. Unfortunate life experiences?
LikeLike
Diane,
I think experience is valuable, but I want to take it off its pedestal, and I want to pull lecture out of the ditch its been thrown in.
Dienne,
I think it’s a mistake to look at kids as individuals who arrive at school with a clear identity and a clutch of embryonic interests, and that school’s function is merely to incubate this embryonic self. School –and life –are supposed to GIVE kids identity and interests. There’s a reason schools are called “alma maters” –soul mothers. They shape a person; the give her her identity in many ways. How limiting to say we should only teach Suzie about dolls and things that are clearly related to dolls because that’s her main interest when she enters school. Teach her about ancient Egypt. She may find it dull at first, but the more she learns, the more she’ll be interested. By the end of the unit, she will be eager to see the Met’s Egypt exhibit. She will have a new interest. She will have a new facet to her identity.
You may be right that knowledge becomes relevant through experience –but learning IS an experience, isn’t it? Listening to Mrs. Smith show-and-tell about hieroglyphics is an experience. Future exposure to hieroglyphics will become more interesting as a result of having had this experience. I think we’re all capable of becoming interested in almost anything. The more we learn about a subject, the more we’re interested in it, don’t you think?
LikeLike
Thank goodness someone bothered to expose me to knowledge outside my little world! There is so much I never would have become interested in without the introduction that school gave me. There is so much I didn’t even know to be interested in. That is still true today, but at least now I know it.
LikeLike
Ponderosa, the skill you are describing is more commonly found at university. In my Ivy League U, there were at least 2 per year (out of 4/ 5) capable of it. I think something you’re missing is that very few K12 teachers– at least in my experience as student, teacher, & parent– are skilled at the pedagogy you use and promote. I had 2 K12 teachers like that [9th-gr Gen Sci & 12th-gr Amer Hist]– there was one like that at the hisch where I taught [11th/ 12thgr Amer Hist]– & there was one at my kids’ hisch [geological/ meteorological science].
I agree: there is definitely a place for K12-teacher-directed imparting of content via lecture, enhanced as you note by follow-up activities. But this is not an ordinary skill. It requires not only “wide reading and experience.. [carefully crafted] to make lucid and interesting,” but a certain panache, & a tremendous amount of energy. I doubt very much it can be taught in ed school [tho it might be learned at the knee of a mentor teacher… If mentorship existed in public schools]. It should be one of a spectrum of pedagogical methods taught in ed school [if pedagogical methods are even taught in ed school?!]
LikeLike
Laura, you remind me of my first course in painting, as a sr in college (when I could do a couple of non-major-related electives). I’d been doing B/W drawing/ sketching nearly all my life, but wanted to learn how to use the set of oils my mother had given me.
My first assay was ambitious: an out-the-window view of fall foliage. Shrewdly, the prof asked me about the windowsill. “Is it really white ? Do you see… maybe some pink in there?” It was the beginning of a whole new world of seeing for me. I eventually gave up oils in favor of watercolors [more difficult technique], for true light-infused colors.
As a student of art history, it was my experience that the more one was guided to see– & learned of the historical context, & compared other artists’ work of the period– the more one could actually see . [I remember particularly a guided exhibit of Mondrian & Pollack, whose works bored me beforehand]. What a wonderful idea, applying this concept to medical students, who (as in many professions) must learn to think outside of the box.
LikeLike
I guess I should be happy to read this, but it makes me sad that we have to re-discover it. What next? Is some brilliant new dietician going to stumble on the innovative idea that children should eat vegetables?
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂
LikeLike
Young children are naturally curious.
Just take one out to a pond, stream or bog. Or on a hike through the forest.
Ironically, it is largely education that has curtailed the natural curiosity of most adults.
By and large, adults no longer ask basic questions about the natural world because they have been told the “answers” time and again.
The answer is obvious!
But sometimes it is not.
Scientific breakthroughs are often (if not usually) made by people who did not accept the patent “obvious” answers.
Einstein was one: I am not a genius, I am just curious. I ask many questions. and when the answer is simple, then God is answering.”
Isaac Newton was another:
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
LikeLike
Perhaps, but ignorance is an obstacle to curiosity. Teachers (books and videos are teachers too) clear paths through the forest of ignorance to allow curiosity to go deeper and further.
LikeLike
Actually, I agree that knowledge is very important in science, but so is curiosity.
Unfortunately, the focus on memorizing facts without any real context effectively kills the curiosity.
Some of the comments here make it sound like experience based teaching is the equivalent of letting the students try to rederive Netwons laws on their own.
That’s just silly.
If you believe that, you really need to visit with some science teachers who use this method (among other methods)
My brother uses experience based teaching with elementary school children to great effect. The students love him and so do the parents and so do the upper level teachers who get his students, who are probably BETTER prepared than most middle school students.
LikeLike
Poet,
I can imagine a good experience-based elementary school science class guided by a knowledgable teacher, like your brother, who guides students to accurate knowledge, and if that fails, (gasp) just flat out tells them the accurate facts. But I can imagine bad experience-based classes, where confusion reigns and nothing solid gets learned. In my experience as a learner and a teacher, kids like to learn facts and they get frustrated when learning is nebulous. I fear the contrived experiences in many NGSS classes fit this category.
I can imagine bad direct instruction in science. There’s a teacher at my school who just reads out of the textbook (history, not science) and kids take notes. This is bad teaching. But I’ve experienced excellent direct instruction in science, so I know it’s possible. If anything, it increased my curiosity about science (though I must say I am not super interested in doing science at the moment –but is that really the test of a good science education?).
I’m a bit puzzled by the rage over curiosity. I hear Googlers and other techies banter the word around as if it’s the supreme virtue and their badge of high intelligence. As if they’re these pan-curious beings that are just rarin’ to investigate any which whatnot. Is there a generic, all-purpose curiosity than can be strengthened by certain forms of teaching? Or is curiosity much more domain specific? Does dissecting a worm make you curious about all scientific fields, or does it just make you curious about worms? What is it that makes a broadly curious person (as the Googlers purport to be) so broadly curious, or do such people really exist? Teens have intense curiosity about sex, so is it accurate to say they have a curiosity deficit?
LikeLike
Ponderosa: Curiosity is motivation to learn. And you don’t have to have pan-curiosity to learn how to learn. You could have narrow interests when young, & follow only those interests in depth– meanwhile exposed to other fields, taking them in only shallowly [getting awful grades]; it can be enough just to sense they’re out there to be plumbed when needed.
Let me give you an anecdotal example– me, an artsy type who needed to learn sci/ math/ hist at a slower pace than I was taught in jr/srhi [& so learned little]– who learned best when allowed to research subjects of innate interest [in my case, linguistics, lit analysis, philosophy]. The important thing: even tho it was only in those areas, I learned [in K12, enhanced in college] how to frame questions, research answers, argue other positions.
That learning-how-to-learn stays with you. Tho I was poor at history, I became widely read in 16th-20thC lit, which engendered curiosity about the historical [& social, & philosophical-hist] context, & I’ve been filling in the blanks ever since. Same goes for hist context of political ideas as I acquired them. And tho I was a truly terrible student of sci/ math/ statistics, I became quite the maven in middle age due to the affliction of my eldest w/a combo of rare phys disease & atypical mental disease.
LikeLike
Ponderosa wrote: “School –and life –are supposed to GIVE kids identity and interests.”
Pure nonsense. Better yet, bountiful bollocks.
Identity and interests are but two emergent traits of the individual child. Nothing “GIVE[s]” these traits to the child. Moreover, school is an aspect of life, so not “School –and life.”
Life, as a child experiences it in school and elsewhere, is an unavoidable, necessary, and time-varying influence hence constraint on the development of the child’s identity and interests as a human being. No two children experience life in exactly the same way simply because, if for no other reason, no two children can occupy the same space at the same time – “space” being physical, neuronal, or whatever. Thus life ensures different children will develop and manifest different identities and interests subject to continual change, over time. In short, life ensures learning by various influences, including but limited to playing, questioning, inquiring, happenstance, and, yes, lecture.
Thus it appears Ponderosa has a very limited imagination about and understanding of life that then prompts arguing purely for the sake of arguing. Yosemite Sam comes to mind.
LikeLike
Why are schools called “alma maters”? An error?
LikeLike
So tell us how Ponderosa would have developed a fascination and interest in Mt. Vesuvius and the destruction (and unearthing) of Pompeii without the influence of a formal teacher or parent?
Why would any child develop an interest in the life cycle of a star, the structure of atoms, biodiversity in a drop of pond water, the French horn, lost wax casting, genocides, migrations, cultures, the magnetosphere, art history, the Civil War, maps, other languages, and . . .?
LikeLike
Hate to have to interject this in the midst of “school-talk”, as it opens up that whole other question of SES.. But. One cannot ignore the huge impact on kids of parental interest. Probably double school impact. If your parents spend all their spare time reading books, you’re going to be interested in reading. (Especially if they read to you when young, & give you/ surround you w/books.) if they ponder Pompeii, the cosmos, the holocaust– conveyed by choice of books & PBS-special-watching– chances are their kids will be sensitive to those topics & interested in learning more, or will find parallel subjects that interest them.
Here’s another example, anecdotal, from my own family.
Engineer husband spends every spare minute listening to/ playing music, learns new instruments, joins several bands. Mom, tho engrossed w/raising kids/ attending to their needs, hires childcare 2-3 nights/wk to sing w/choral groups– & continues to do so even after re-joining workforce. (Etc, e.g., parents lulled babies to sleep w/classical-music CD’s, entertain kids [when older] on long car rides by sharing CD’s from every era of their fave pop music. )
Why are these parents surprised that they’ve turned out musicians who’d rather do & teach others to do what they love for pennies/ min-wage income, rather than work their a** off for job security?
LikeLike
Learning about “nature” at the elementary level is a perfect starting point for a K to 12 science education. However, the type of “play” described here, although not without value, is extremely over-rated as a way to learn about real science. Very few kids have the kind of curiosity that helps them develop a sound knowledge base and vocabulary. Why? It’s not their fault, they just don’t know enough. On the other hand, “guided curiosity” is a method that kids appreciate and is often a great starting point for a science lesson.
Methodologies such as play, exploration, inquiry, discovery, and project based learning are not only far less effective than more direct teaching, but the vast majority of kids really dislike them. Kids want teachers to be the sage on the stage – not guides on the side trying desperately to help them “construct” their own knowledge. They really prefer knowledgeable teachers who make their subjects interesting and meaningful in ways they could never have “discovered” on their own.
Using student “interests” or trying to making learning “relevant” are also over-rated approaches. This philosophy offers little more than a disservice to kids who have few interests and are too young to understand how important information is relevant to their very limited life experiences. It is the responsibility of the science (or SS, or math, or ELA, or music, or art) teacher to immerse kids in their subject areas, exposing them to as much interesting and compelling facts and ideas as possible.
NGSS is a disaster in the making for these very reasons. Kids want teachers – not so-called “facilitators”. They readily see through the debunked and failed methodologies that are the foundation of the NGSS. Inquiry, discovery, and constructivism are pedagogies that fly in the face of cognitive learning theory and brain/neuro science. Solving problems in the absence of adequate knowledge stored in long term memory is asking the impossible of young science students. This fundamental flaw will be the downfall of the NGSS as currently structured. The adults in charge must stop conflating the ways that highly trained and well educated professional, adult scientist DO science with the very different requirements that children need to LEARN science.
Science is the last subject that teachers should be wasting their time frustrating kids instead of enlightening them.
Ponderosa
The disparagement of content knowledge and direct instruction/lecture by the 21st century education establishment is undermining the very meaning of “education:
Go figure!
LikeLike
I wonder if the authors of NGSS made any effort to base the standards on actual science. Wouldn’t it be ironic if they completely ignored cognitive science (as I suspect they have)? I am an humanist, leery of scientism, but I sense that only science will save us from the wrongheaded groupthink that prevails in education circles today.
LikeLike
cx: a humanist.
LikeLike
Whew. I am not familiar w/NGSS, & have been trying to figure it out from internet sources. Even the K level is so opaque/ jargon-laden I am at a loss to understand how it is applied on the ground. Are there any sites that explain how it is actually used day-to-day?
LikeLike
Give this a look:
https://www.nextgenscience.org/resources/examples-quality-ngss-design
NGSS and related lesson/activities are supposed to make use of anchor phenomena (case study observations) to help students learn underlying facts/vocabulary/ concepts/principles of science. The fundamental approach to teaching relies on inquiry/discovery/ constructivism – all failed and debunked methodologies – unless you want to confuse, frustrate, and turn off kids to science.
https://www.ngssphenomena.com/
LikeLike
This looks fun! I love categorizing questions using cross-cutting concepts.
“Categorizing Questions using Cross Cutting Concepts:
The crosscutting concepts from the next generation science standards are the frames through which scientists think about the natural world. They are the big ideas that connect the sciences and help to understand nature and how science and engineering work. ~How to use the symbols for the NGSS Crosscutting concepts
http://crosscutsymbols.weebly.com/how-to-use-the-symbols.html
Scientists ask questions through the lens of the different cross cutting concepts. Some cross cutting concepts relate to a scientific phenomenon more easily than others, however, any cross cutting concept can be used as a lens to ask and answer questions about phenomena relating to the natural world.
Each team will receive one cross cutting concept to explore more fully.
Step 6) Write the name of the crosscutting concept on a piece of chart paper or large white board. Carefully review the information provided about your cross cutting concept. Use your own words to summarize your cross cutting concept description in 1-2 sentences. Record 3-4 sample questions provided underneath your description.
Step 7) Determine which of the class questions most closely relates to your cross cutting concept. Record these questions on your chart paper. (minimum of 3 questions) If there are not questions that relate to your crosscutting concept then use the sample questions provided to create at least 2 possible questions that relate to your crosscutting concept. You may use one of the phenomenon questions provided and then you need to create at least 1 question of your own.
Step 8) Choose at least one question from your list to revise. Use a different color marker to revise the question so that it better addresses your crosscutting concept category.
Step 9) Post your chart paper/ white board in the room so everyone can see it. (Follow teacher’s directions as to where to post) “
LikeLike