Bending with the wind

I found this draft when I was cleaning up my old blog to create the new one. It was written at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year.

One of the things that can be discovered about me pretty quickly, is that I have a lot of one-liners and quotes in my head. I use these to bring myself back into focus when I get blurred. I know that there are a lot of people out there who are annoyed by these one-liners and even a little annoyed by my use of them, and so I try not to use them often, but I have one that has frequently been running through my head these last few weeks.

“We often grow more by bending with the wind than by standing in rigid defiance.” J. Stephens

I’ve begun this new and exciting school year with a fresh optimism for the impact I might be able to have in the classroom. It promises to be a school year full of changes. Changes in the way I teach, changes in the administration in my school, changes in my own perceptions of the things that happen around me.

Because of the changes in the administration of my school, I’ve observed three categories of teachers at my school. There are those who are in a wait-and-see mode. I believe this is the bulk of the faculty. There are those who are standing by and ready to consider the new changes and what they mean to the kids – willingly implementing anything that works toward the improvement of our school and our students. Then there is a small group of those who are standing in rigid defiance . . .

The truth is, it is like this in any workplace. It is not reserved for schools. Anytime there is a “changing of the guard”, there are bound to be issues. Even within a classroom, we can see this effect.

I began my first year of teaching half-way through the school year. The person I replaced was a well-liked coach who had a much different teaching philosophy than I. My students divided into the same three groups I’ve witnessed recently. Some of them really seemed not to care about the fact that Mr. G was now Mrs. P. I would say this was a majority. Then there were those who were kind and helpful and tried to adapt to my style as quickly as they could, eagerly embracing the new way in which they were being taught. And yes, I had those who stood in rigid defiance. It became a battle of wills. Who was going to give in first? Well, it wasn’t going to be me – I had too much riding on actually keeping my job!

I can remember the day it all came to a climax. I had just handed back an test which none of my students in one of my classes had passed. I told them that obviously, I had neglected them in some way and that we were going to go through the unit again, in condensed fashion, so that we, together, could figure out what went wrong for them. One of the students stood up – apparently having been elected somehow to be the class spokesperson and said, “Mr. G wouldn’t have given us such a hard test – Mr. G wouldn’t have made us learn this!”

This had been a frequently heard mantra  – Mr. G never made us do homework, Mr. G always gave us multiple choice, open book tests with two answer choices, Mr. G didn’t make us do this! I don’t know if any of this was true, but they certainly wanted me to believe it.

Can you guess my answer? “Do I look like Mr. G? Because if you think I do, then I might have to send you down to the nurse to get your eyes checked!” The class erupted in laughter and never did I hear “Mr. G . . .” again. Did they automatically stop rebelling? No, but the fact that I did not let them move me from my plan of action went a long way towards establishing respect from them and it went an even longer way towards establishing my own self-confidence.

What’s my point? The next time you find yourself saying things like “we’ve always done it this way” or “we never did it that way” or “Mrs. X had us do it this way”, remember . . .

Bend.

Two Sites for Science Videos

I’ve recently been made aware of a couple of websites that host videos of a scientific nature. I thought I’d pass them along so that you can explore the sites and let me know what you find.

The first is DNATube. Like YouTube, but the videos uploaded are by scientists. I have to admit, the time I’ve spent here is minimal, and most of the videos I found were a little high brow for a high school student. However, there is current, accurate information there and a lot of the graphics would be good companions to a well delivered lesson.

The second is ScienceHack. ScienceHack is also a host for science videos. The site claims “every science video on ScienceHack is screened by a scientist to verify its accuracy and quality”. Some of the videos are better than others, but the site is worth a look-see.

Try them out and comment here to let me know what you find!

NSTA Day 2

Today was a really good day at the conference. I started the day by attending a session about Alabama’s virtual school system. It was very informative and interesting. Next, I attended a session sponsored by NASA where the stereotypical, long-haired, eccentric science teacher showed us several demo-style ways to explore Newton’s Laws of Motion with students. I learned how to make a hovercraft using a CD, a spool, and a balloon. On the bus ride back to the hotel, I was talking about it and another teacher added a couple of tips for making it work even better. THAT is the part of these conferences I love – the way that teachers share and collaborate gives me the best new information I could ever get!

In the afternoon, I attended a session by CPO using their light and optics kit. It was very engaging and seemed like a great way to investigate the properties of light and terms like reflection, refraction, diffraction and focal point. Lastly, I attended a session about integrating technology into the science curriculum and somehow I ended up sharing several of the web 2.0 tools I use. It was a fun session, though.

Of course, somewhere in there, I visited all the exhibitor booths, got lots of free stuff, and numerous ideas that I’ll have to sort through in my free time (cough, cough).

Things I Learned Today at NSTA

I’m attending the NSTA regional conference in Birmingham, Alabama. Today was the first day of the conference and I attended beginning at 8:00 this morning. I had flown in from DFW last night, got settled in to my hotel room in the historic Redmont Hotel, and excitedly set my alarm for early enough to get to the convention center to get my registration packet before heading to my first session.

The first session I attended was entitled “Forensic Science: The New Interdisciplinary Science”. I expected it to be an overview of all the different things forensic science could do for all science disciplines. In actuality, it was a hands-on lesson based on one forensic lab that could be done where students determine time of death for a “body” (really a cup of water with sodium polyacrylate) using a TI-84 and a temperature probe. The really cool things I learned from that session were that it takes very little sodium polyacrylate (which can be purchased at garden centers under the name water-tite or water-lok) to gel water, and that the entire book this woman had written, complete with forensic labs, can be downloaded for free online. Woot!

I also attended a session about teaching reading in science classrooms. This session was something I was really interested in, because I believe some of the issues facing my students in taking the TAKS are largely because of an inability to comprehend text. I knew I was in trouble when I walked in and the lady handed me a copy of all her powerpoint slides which had every word she was going to say typed on them. I was too polite to leave, but wow. Why do teachers think that’s the way to teach teachers? (I’m only hoping that isn’t how she teaches her students!)

One cool session I attended was put on by Flinn Scientific. They basically just did cool demo after cool demo and of course, I learned a lot there. The session was very entertaining, but by the time I went there, I was so exhausted from the rest of the day that I kept catching myself dozing off. I’d sat on one of the front rows so that I’d be able to see the demos and I felt bad that I kept nodding off. Still cool, though.

All in all, I’d say today was very beneficial to me. I plan on spending this evening sorting out all the sessions for tomorrow and having a firmer plan on where I want to go, along with alternatives in case something I want to go to gets cancelled (like the grant writing session I wanted to go to this afternoon).

Hurricane Awareness Week

May 20-26 is Hurricane Awareness Week in Texas. I thought I would post some resources on the blog to help you plan lessons during the week if you’d like to participate.

The Governor’s Division of Emergency Management has a website with a lot of information about how to be prepared for and safe during hurricane season.

Naturally, unitedstreaming has several good videos on the topic. My favorite is “Raging Planet: Hurricane”. It has a lot of good video and explains how hurricanes are formed, how they are monitored, and the damage they cause.

Discovery Science Connection has an interactive “Create a Hurricane” that is very informative and lets students try to make their own hurricane. There are also a lot of good video clips about hurricanes.

NOAA has all kinds of information and interesting storm trackers.

Various websites offer lesson plans and activities: Education World; National Geographic Xpeditions; Hurricane Lesson (students are mayor of Pensacola Beach, FL, and have to make decisions about evacuating residents).

Hurricane animations: fly through a 3-D model of a hurricane at Hurricanes: online meteorology guide (this one is kind of high-tech so probably not for the younger kiddoes); BBC NEWS Animated Guide to Hurricanes; Classzone by McDougal Littell; NPR: Demonstration of the Saffir-Simpson scale (this is a really nice visual for the scale).

“Living in a Material World” Grants

Just a reminder that the ASM Foundation is giving ten $500 grants to teachers in their “Living in a Material World” program.  This grant is given to teachers who develop an innovative lesson plan that educates students on the many materials that make up everything they encounter, and the possibilities that a career in materials science can bring.  The deadline to submit an application is May 25.  If you have an idea, but not enough time to submit an application, let me know and I’ll work up the application for you.  Let’s bring some of that money to The Academy!

We’ve come a long way!

On this day in 1858, the U.S. Patent Office issued the first patent for a combination lead pencil with eraser.  Imagine what it was like back then, to find something like that to be so revolutionary!  Today, we take pencils with erasers for granted (and really don’t use them much after elementary school).  In today’s technology-rich society, our lead pencils have been replaced by varying brushstroke sizes and colors on MS Paint, and erasers are tools we can click on and use with a movement of our mouse.  I can remember when I first learned to type (yes, it was called typing class, NOT keyboarding!), I learned on a manual (non-electric) typewriter and I had to use correction tape to erase my mistakes.  I thought correction tape was an amazing breakthrough in technology, and when the typewriters began to have liftoff tape in them, I nearly passed out from excitement!  Yes, we’ve come a long way — pay homage to the humble pencil today!

Web 2.0 – Something to think about

I attended an online webinar featuring Doug Johnson one evening last week, and it was very enlightening. In case you haven’t heard the terminology, Web 2.0 is a name for the “social web” — you know, the one that our students love, MySpace, YouTube, blogging, etc. An interesting point that Doug made is that we have to be sure to stress to the students how important it is for them to really think about what they are posting about themselves. I know, I know, we’ve all talked to them about this, but usually we do so in the context of some predator out there watching for their personal information. In this webinar, we discussed how important it is for the students to think about it in terms of future employers doing an internet search on them as part of considering them for a job. Do they really want their spring break pictures out there for an employer to see? Most of us have probably experienced this ourselves, I know that Eric did an internet search on me before I came in for an interview. I don’t think students really think about the fact that once they’ve posted something on the internet, unless they get rid of it, it will be there for years and years to come to haunt them as they mature into more responsible people who NEED A JOB!

Filmmaking in the classroom

I spent Friday and Saturday at the American Film Institute workshop entitled “Lights, Camera, Education!”  I have to admit, I’ve been to other video storytelling workshops before and I was a little concerned that I didn’t have that much more to learn, but the two days on the beautiful SMU campus were VERY eye-opening for me!  AFI has developed a curriculum (a comprehensive guide with masters for use in the classroom can be downloaded from unitedstreaming) which walks students through lessons designed to get them comfortable with video storytelling.  These lessons, if done at the beginning of the school year, will make it so that you can drop a video storytelling project on your students at any time throughout the year and they’ll know exactly what to do.  On day one, we learned about developing an entire video using only in-camera editing, we learned about shots vs. scenes, lighting, and effects.  On day two, we did heavier computer-aided editing and finalized our projects.  The finished project my team did can be seen here. I’ll be printing the curriculum guide and will have it available for anyone at The Academy to use if you’d like to drop by my desk and peruse it!

Nanotechnology

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has prepared a 3-minute video “Journey Into Nanotechnology”, which gives an overview of how doctors and scientists are investigating the use of nanotechnology to treat cancer.  The video is visually interesting and could be a good springboard for a discussion/debate, especially on 2nd floor, on the bioethics involved and the usefulness of such a technology.  Check it out at:  http://nano.cancer.gov/resource_center/video_journey.asp