Science vs. Math

In case you were unfamiliar with my antics, I live in a cartoon world.  By this I mean to say I have a lively imagination.  I love thinking outside the box because it is like drinking hot tea with a spicy stir-fry: (resulting in hot-lava mouth) you really maximize the effect!

I pose this blog post as an imaginary and all-in-good-fun scenario of deciding which is better: teaching science or teaching math.  

What are the wonderful things about science?  Well since it's Mother's Day weekend, you could consider the science of hereditary traits, genetically altered peas in a monk's garden, genetically altered food on our tables, heirloom plants for your garden, the ecology of your dirt, how city runoff causes problems in the middle of the ocean, how the oceans hold temperature differently than land, how the temperature differentials cause jet-streams and trade winds, how the moon causes tides, how the moon orbits the Earth which orbits the sun which orbits a black hole in the center of our galaxy... 

Okay, that was fun, and it was only one little string of ideas, which could tie into the social studies focus on the effects of the industrial revolution on fabrics, the sewing machine, the zipper... but I digress...

What are the wonderful things about math?  Well since Mother's Day always lands in May, we can begin by focusing on the May-inspired number 5 or 31, both are odd numbers, both are prime numbers.  What are the unique characteristics of prime numbers?  What are even numbers?  Why is 2 a prime and even number?  How can counting by 2s (or any number) give you insight into cyclical patterns in our every-day lives?  Why does multiplication make sense as "groups of" a number as well as numbers "in a group" and what does that tell you when considering division?  If you know the area of a rectangle, doesn't the area of other shapes like triangles (half-rectangles), parallelograms, and trapezoids make more sense?  

Whew.  So many connections to be made, so little time! 

And to trump it all, I will say but one word: 

physics

Yep, science and math shake hands after a good little imaginary battle, and work together in some Captain Planet-style dream-team to make great stuff like rockets and trumpets.  Yeah.  It's like that sip of hot tea after your bite of stir-fry to fire it all up - thank goodness for capsaicin.

I think it's funny that we give standardized tests that isolate, sterilize, and therefore cheat reality, in an attempt to assign students labels of "proficient" or "not proficient" and therefore pass judgement on students' teachers and schools.  When you look at the world, you see that everything is connected.  And just as everything is connected, testing for proficiency in understanding standards within the various disciplines we teach our kids with bubble sheets is like squinting really hard to see what's in that leaf... a magnifying glass or microscope can tell you so much more - the plant itself could tell you so much more!  Inasmuch as possible, I implore society: don't rely on standardized tests to tell you much, encourage schools to allow teachers to assess through application of understanding!  It is the process, not the product so often that tells you what a kid really knows and can do.  

It is all connected, and the more ways we teach kids about any one thing, the more connections we can help kids to make between that one thing and the world of things already in their worldly understanding, the better and more truly they will learn!

Reflections on Teaching

Here's my first post in my new blog, The Dise.  I am not sure what happened to my old one, but perhaps there's a lesson in it - that this is what happens when you look away from technology!  I am taking this as an opportunity because I can start fresh, which should always be considered a treasure, not a terror.

As the first of hopefully many posts on this subject, I would like to reflect on teaching.  To keep you in the loop, I have taken this last year (and next year) off from teaching in order to pursue a second degree.  I had taught 5-12th grade band at a small school district for 6 years and decided that I wanted to teach in the elementary classroom instead.  So over the course of these 4 semesters and this coming summer, I will have the requisite courses to teach in the elementary classroom (see my bio for a more detailed account)!

This morning before church, I was doing some lip buzzing, flexibility exercises, and otherwise warming up along with our French horn player, who is a recently retired choir director.  We both talked about missing the experience of being in the classroom, and how I was looking forward to getting back in!  We also discussed how we did not miss grading.  Grading is possibly the worst thing about teaching.  It is assigning labels, which is problematic enough, but is truly one of the toughest parts of teaching!  To be objective, and authentic; to capture the position of a complex, nuanced, continually shifting situation: a student's achievement; is like identifying the position of an electron (Chem4Kids discusses it, so does Princeton); is like identifying photons as a wave or particle (Scientific American lays it all out).  In other words, impossible.  Good luck!

But we love labels and status and hierarchy and checklists.  (Actually, I do love checklists, but that may be something therapy can address...)

So the grading will continue.  I do think we're on the right track with the way many elementary schools are changing their grading scales / reports in an attempt to more accurately, and helpfully indicate how children are doing in a variety of areas (like Fairfax County, VA, and Cedar Falls, IA).  We aren't there yet, and I am certainly glad that I will be assigning NO grades as we close the Spring 2013 semester and 2012-2013 school year!

On the other hand, I cannot wait to get into my own classroom again!  To teach is not only a noble calling (that's what they say when a thing is accompanied with low pay), but it is amazing.  Soon.