msjen

Kid: Hey, are you the science lady?
Me: Um, yes, I guess so.
Kid: Well, I think you should change some things about the science unit. You should make it more challenging.
Me: Okay. What specifically would you like to be more challenging?
Kid: Well, you know all that stuff about how the Earth spins? We already know that. I think that the first part of this unit is boring for like 70 or 80% of kids. Kids my age already know that the Earth spins and what shape the Earth is and all that. If I were you, I'd start with years instead of days and talk about how planets go around the Sun. That's much more challenging. I think that would be more appropriate for fifth graders.
Me: Well, thank you for your suggestions. I'll see what I can do.



We're not changing it, obviously (that kid probably knows these things because he lives in California, where they study days and seasons in fourth grade), but hey, at least someone's honest.

"If Canada is above us, how come we don't see it when we look up?"

Whoa.

Kid: I'm done with my scientific explanation.
Teacher (reads explanation): Wow. You are really thinking like a scientist.
Kid, looking genuinely perplexed: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Teacher: Think about it. We are learning science. I am a science teacher. If I say you're thinking like a scientist, do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing?
Kid: Good thing?

The kid, however, wandered off looking seriously unconvinced. (He did write a really good explanation, though -- the teacher made him show it to me.)

So far that's the only exciting thing that has happened this week in the Continuing Adventures of the Astronomy Unit That Would Not Die.

I have just completed the first week of the research project for which I will be spending several weeks in classrooms. I am currently Somewhere In California, where I visited five schools and interviewed teachers and students. I'll write more about the whole experience in depth later, but for now you get two awesome things kids said:

Question: Why does the moon appear to change shape?

Kid #1: Well, the Moon rises and sets. It rises and sets just like the Sun because they're almost alike, except the Moon is used for darkness and the Sun is used for light.

Kid #2: It happens because it's getting nighter and nighter and then finally it's very night, like eleven o'clock.

I think I'm going to say "nighter" instead of "darker" from now on, because that is the best invented word ever.

In one of our recent studies, we posed the question: How can models help scientists understand the Solar System?

One student wrote:

"The model can get a book for the scientist to read."

(Thankfully, that was on the pretest. If I can say nothing else about our instruction, I do know that this particular confusion was almost certainly cleared up.)



Similarly, a colleague found an amusing typo in one of our teacher's guides:

"Point out to students that one of the important things scientists do is mack models."

Now I know why you science types enjoy your work so much.

For the past few days, my colleagues and I have been attempting to encapsulate and quantify the characteristics of decent fourth grade writing into one neat 4x5 grid that fits on one sheet of paper. Needless to say, this has been an exceptionally difficult and probably ultimately futile task. However, eager undergraduates are awaiting the thrilling summer job of scoring three thousand of these papers, so encapsulate and quantify we must.

The good news about this endeavor is that I have gotten the chance to read many, many samples of student writing over the past few days. Most kids in our study attempted valiantly to answer the question, albeit with varying degrees of success. For our research purposes, that's wonderful. What a rich source of interesting information. However, I instead present to you winners in categories that are not listed on the official rubric.


The question we posed was: How does light interact with materials? Describe three different examples.

Category: The Walls Are Melting Again
Winning Entry: When light goes to an object it interacts with it that means it's like talking to it. And if it wants to reflect it goes over to another object and tells it to bounce off. Then it can decide if it wants to absorb.

Category: ...And Did I Mention the Rocks?
Winning Entry: Light refracts off of rocky surfaces. Such as a rocky road, a mountain, or a pile of rocks. There are many surfaces of many rocks.

Category: Beautiful Analogy. You Still Fail.
Winning Entry: They go together like ketchup and French fries.

Category: Thanks for Letting Us Down Easy
Winning Entry: I'm so sorry, I cannot remember. But, light is something I like.

Category: When You Can't Think of Anything Else...Hamsters!
Winning Entry: I know I learned it last year but I totally lost it. I think my hamster stopped running and it died. I need to upgrade to a new one.

Category: FTW!*
Winning Entry: Scientific people are evil.


This all gives me hope that, should I ever go back to teaching, I will find that things have not changed all that much -- children will still be thinking about hamsters, imagining that inanimate things are talking, and cursing the people that are making them write these damn essays.




*This one seems to cover both meanings of that particular acronym.

This morning, I asked the fourth graders in the land far, far away to write about what they had learned about objects in the Solar System. Their teacher always makes them write a minimum of a page, so, although I hadn't planned on requiring them to write all that much, they did. The problem is, this means some of them really had to stretch things out to fill out the required lines. My favorite well-okay-you-still-get-credit sentence was: "There are moons in space RIGHT NOW."

Think about it, folks. Moons. In space. Right this minute. Technically, this is true, right? This kid is so going to be an English major. She has already mastered the fine art of bullshitting your way through an assignment.

The bulk of the responses were very good, but there was a fair amount of filler. Other stunning revelations included that the Sun is big, people do not live on Jupiter, the rocky planets are made of rock, the gas giants are made of gas, and that comets come from space. Hey, at least they weren't wrong.

Starting tomorrow, I will be testing another curriculum unit for work. This means that I will be spending time almost every day in a fourth grade classroom in a land that is a far, far BART ride away. I have to be in this faraway land at 8 AM, which sucks. But do I hope that teaching about space will prove more interesting than teaching about light was. We shall see. If I am awake enough to remember any of it, that is. I have to admit that I am a little nervous about teaching the upper grades again, but I'm just going ahead and operating on the assumption that these fourth graders will not be trying to maim each other.

Anyway, one of my coworkers started testing a different unit, which is about aquatic habitats, last week. She had something funny happen to her, so I thought I'd repeat it here: one of her fourth graders stood up in front of the class and announced, "There is an aquatic orgasm in my tank."

At least she got most of the word right?

Me: "...so, in conclusion, I do not want to pick you up at art class again to have Ms. M tell me that the boys and girls are yelling and swearing at each other and calling the opposite gender names. That behavior is not okay. Are there any questions about that?"
Pissy Boy: "I just don't like girls. In fact, I hate girls."
Me: "You need to be polite to people. Keep that to yourself, please. It's not nice."
Him: "Oh. Okay."

(ten minutes later)

Pissy Boy: "I hate this story."
Me, absentmindedly: "Please keep negative opinions to yourself."
Him: "You always say that! I'm sick of hearing it!"
Me, deciding to deal with the snarky tone later: "Well, please do it then."
Him: "Oh. Okay."

(ten minutes later)

Him: "I don't want to do this, but I'm going to keep that to myself."
Me:

(ten minutes later)

Him: "I sure hate this story, but I'm going to keep that to myself."
Me: "Um, you know, keeping things to yourself means you don't say them out loud."
Him: "Oh. Okay."

(ten minutes later)

Him: "I don't...oops...uhh...I mean I'd prefer not to..."
Me: "Okay, everyone! It's Silent Time for the last ten minutes of class!"

However, I must say that I am very, very thankful that there have been no major fits from anyone this week. No puking, either. I am keeping my fingers crossed. Perhaps we are all, in our own way, making progress.

I may be behind the times, but this was a new one for me.

It was sung repeatedly to me by Buckminster Fuller, Junior (unfortunately no longer in my class). It's to the tune of the verse part of "Jingle Bells."

The snow is turning red
I think I'm nearly dead
I'm going to the hospital
With staples in my head!

That sure beats the "Batman smells..." version any day!