Teaching Outside of the Classroom

Week 3: Blog post

My original view on teaching when I started had very little to do with what other teachers, or even the school were doing.   I was concerned about what was happening in my classroom and trying to have students accomplish the most learning possible.  Over the last few years I have been convinced (especially through Walden) that involvement with other teachers, the school, and the community is necessary in order to accomplish my original goal of learning in the classroom. 

I have become the head of our new teacher training program at our school which can help the new teacher assimilate into our culture and establish expectations that the school has of the teacher both in classroom management and procedures, and in teaching content knowledge.  In this role I can demonstrate the use of inquiry and reinforce the usefulness of the strategy. Before signing off on their training I also have them accomplish an inquiry lesson that is reviewed by the principle.  The biggest challenge that I have had in this role is having the new teachers buy into the process of inquiry enough to continue to use it in their classroom from year to year.  One teacher in particular came over from another school and had been teaching for about five years already.  This teacher wants to teach the students by giving students questions and having them read the textbook to answer them.  It was very difficult to break this habit since reading is often pushed in the district much more than science education.  I stressed to this particular teacher that although the strategy of reading and finding answers to questions was not a bad thing to learn, this strategy only would be successful to certain types of learners, most would not learn the information and would just copy the answers down when found.  There was no application of the concepts afterword.  This allowed me to stress inquiry a solution for his differentiation issue.  Although this is still a work in progress, he has made some strides in differentiation of his instruction through the use of inquiry.

Forget the Rally Cry

Friedman’s article (2010, January 17) was an interesting view of what we as a society are choosing to spend our money and resources on.  I really like that he focuses on where we are spending our resources versus the countries that are doing better.  The focus of our country should be on nation building and not on wars outside our borders.  After that is said, I believe that he is offering a very simplistic view of what is happening to our economy. 

My first reaction to this article is to utter under my breath that this gentlemen should revisit a general economy class.  It is fair to say that manufacturing jobs are leaving our country for cheaper areas to manufacture, but not because they are better technologically but because it is cheaper to manufacture goods in these countries due to lower labor costs and less OSHA and environmental restrictions.  If we are shipping in more products than we produce in dollars we are sending more money out of the country than is coming in.  Technology has little to do with it since we have the capabilities to manufacture these products we just do not tend to purchase more expensive items at the store.  By choosing to not purchase the US made (more expensive in general) items we create a cycle that reduces the US economy even more and forces more corporations to outsource overseas to remain competitive.   In effect this creates a system where we are “competing” with countries that do not have to follow fair labor laws or who subsidize manufacture of products.

I also do not think that the focus on alternative energies that do not exist right now is a solution to the problem.  If I were to be political about this topic I would suggest that Cheney is not the only politician to make a major mistake in focus lately.  Our focus as a country should be on education, I believe that this is the best way to provide our students with a better, more fulfilling life.  This will provide the individual student with a chance to achieve a higher level of living.  I am not sure that the correlation between the economy and education is so clear cut though.  Given we are in a world economy, the result is to level the standard of living off with the rest of the world over time (based on cost of manufacture). 

I am also not sure that Sputnik is a good example of what we would like to do in education.  The results of the cold war were millions of dollars spent, nuclear proliferation, and ruining relationships with many countries.  We do know that when Russia became “free” they had (and still have) PhD level scientists trying to get jobs at McDonalds (literally as well as the Russian equivalent).  We did increase science and STEM education but we also geared the results of this to mostly military pursuits.  Following this logic, technology does develop during wartime so the rally cry Cheney is making about the “war on terror” would therefore make a lot of logical sense.  I believe that we need to want to develop STEM personally and as a collective not because of economic pursuits but for the love of learning, problem solving, and innovation.

References

Friedman, T. L. (2010, January 17). What’s our Sputnik? [Op-Ed]. The New York Times [Late Edition (East Coast)], p. WK.8.

I am a big believer in making a model of systems.  I beleive that making models helps a student see the system and how it works much better than if you try and learn it from a book.  In my inquiry experience I had students create a model of a continental margin our of clay or by drawing it.  The margin that they created could have been one of two types (either active or passive) based on the location in the world that I gave them.  This type of activity stimulates the students thinking and makes them apply knowledge of the system while making their model, demonstrating higher forms of thinking.  I think my model project went fairly well and I think the assessment data suggests that for the most part my students learned the objectives.  I have attached a few pictures of the stduents' work for your review.

I like the idea of using natural disaters to help educate students about how they occur as well as how to become better citizens.  Here in West Palm Beach, Florida we tend to talk alot about hurricanes and flooding, the two major natural disasters that we have here.  There was a hurricane here in 1925 that caused Lake Okeechobee to overflow.  When this happened it wiped out several communities. and killed thousands of people.  The reason that this hurricane is so important to talk about is not the loss of life and destruction but the reaction of the government and people who were in charge.  They decided that the deceased minority people should be shipped here to West Palm Beach and buried in a mass grave (no coffins, etc...).  Family members of the deceased were not allowed to look for their loved ones or bury them themselves.  Deceased white people were given back to their families for burial.
The grave site is still here in West Palm Beach.  It has been built over and the bodies dug up a few times and moved around.  A few years ago the community asked to make the site a park and recreate an area for the dead to rest.  It is amazing that the disaster happened less than 100 years ago.  I like to take my Marine Science class to this park when we talk about how the ocean can affect weather.  I remind them that although we appear to be integrated these days the school district of Palm Beach County was not desegregated until 1970.  We have a long way to go when it comes to inequalities and they often become apparent when we have a disaster.  Reminding them of this and educating them on racial issues is important in preparing them to be better citizens.

Backward Design Lesson Implementation

Last week I taught a group of four "student" volunteers.  I had three ex-students and my son (an interesting combination when trying to get something done over the summer).  In my lesson I asked the students to describe the ecosystem (abiotic and biotic factors) in a part of the intercoastal waterway (the turning basin in the Port of Palm Beach).  This was a lesson based on the principle of guided inquiry, where I gave them materials but they had to plan the lab, accomplish it, and analyze the results.  Given this is during the summer, I had to forego the testing and multimedia presentation that I had planned on giving in this lesson, as it was the lesson took about 4 hours to accomplish.  Students decided to use nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, phosphates, nitrogen, potassium, temperature, salinity, secci depth, a bottom dart, and forel ule for the aboitic factors and water column description.  They used a Niskin bottle for collection.  They also accomplished a video survey at different depths for the critters and a plankton trawl for the net plankton.  They forgot the fact that many autotrophs in the ocean are too small for the plankton net and had a hard time finding the right amount of primary producers (and detritus as DOM) for the consumers present.  After I reminded them about this their data lined up pretty good.  I think I need to cover this a little better in the form of a mini-laboratory when I get to lessons on the littoral and estuary zones to help them out with this point in the future.  Overall I think the students had a good time and seemed to hit my goals: planning a experiment, accomplishing it with scientifically acceptable procedures, and communication of the results.  While doing this they were able to describe a sub littoral community in the Lake Worth Lagoon.

Project Peer Review

Hello all, I am writing for a little help with a review of my project on the West Indian Manatee (my selected endangered species for the project).  I used Prezi with Microsoft PowerPoint, MovieMaker, Paint, and Sound Recorder to complete the assignment.  It is available at http://prezi.com/n-etwly_ttxo/manatee-project/.  It is a large file and has some trouble on line (at least with my old computer), I download it to the .zip file to run it off line where it runs a little better (the sound lines up better with the presentation, and the presentation does not look "jerky").  Can you guys take some time and evaluate this for me and let me know what I need to change?  Thank you for the time and I will repay the favor.

I put my question on Ask a Scientist but have not yet heard back.  I will keep you guys posted on the results.  The question was "Why does a cell have a theoretical maximum life span upon which it must die?"