A high school
friend wrote in my yearbook so many years ago, “I hope you will be able to
persuade your way through life as you have through Physics.” I never forgot that (depending on how you view
it) inspiring statement as I have happily traveled the journey of an elementary
teacher. Hating the study of science as a student, I have embraced it as a
teacher once I discovered that science done right is a hands-on, interactive
experience. I’ve never crossed paths again with that old friend since high
school, but I often think about how he might chuckle at my attitude adjustment
once I became a teacher.
For many years, I
worked on science curriculum in my district and presented at science
conferences. I taught all the science
for my grade level, no matter what grade I was in at the time because it was
fun! I even coauthored a book with a dear friend, filled with science lessons
using food. Unfortunately, many of those
lessons included peanut butter. With so many allergic children in our schools right
now, our books alas are collecting dust in our spare rooms.
When I moved to a new building in my district,
one of my grade level partners wanted to teach the science, and I stepped
aside. She did an amazing job before
resigning this year for reasons totally unrelated to science. So here I am: back teaching science and so
looking forward to it all!
I
decided to try an activity yesterday which I’ve always done first thing just to
assess kids’ attitudes about science and scientists. (Thinking if there’s a kid
or three like me, maybe the attitude adjustment could begin in fourth grade
rather than post-grad!) I asked my students in all three classes to open their
science interactive notebooks and devote one page to showing what a scientist
looks like and does. I first tried this activity in 1986. When we shared our
labeled drawings today, I was amazed at how far we’ve come in the last 27
years!
Kids in 1986
mostly drew scientists as elderly Caucasian men with unruly grey hair, wearing goggles and lab coats, and holding up a beaker
which was frothing over with an unidentifiable fun substance. Scientists to my
students today now look more like each student herself or himself, with just a
few Christopher Lloyds sprinkled in. Although most are still shown clad in lab
coats and goggles, holding or standing near bubbling beakers and test tubes,
enough to raise my hopes forever showed botanists, physicists, zoologists, geologists,
archaeologists, biologists, and even two epidemiologists and one marine
biologist.
My all-time
favorite was a sketch of scientist looking exactly like his young creator next
to an intricate display of labeled tubing and beakers combining toxic
substances with benign ones, traveling through three different stages of mixtures,
resulting in the bottom layer in “Mixture X: The Cure for Cancer”. I love my
job! I think I’ll go back again tomorrow!
(Pictures of these amazing drawings when I get permission from parents!)
Happy teaching, friends! She kinda' looks like me!
Retta
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