Sherbet, or the fizzing taste of success

I like to think that cognitive dissonance is a little like sherbet. It fizzes on your tongue or in your mind and you find yourself having to adjust to the new ideas and tastes. I am also a bit of an opportunist. I would blame it on having a bit of crow in me, but we don't really have the crow archetype as such in Aotearoa.

Leaving aside my fondness for shiny things, I love to encourage moments of cognitive dissonance. The thing is, they take time to find and set up. Then the students take time to talk through what they've observed and come up with new explanations that are consistent with both their observations and the theory you and/or the text have provided. Today, I wished for a shortcut. I wish that sometimes, me saying "it just does" was enough of a reason for students to believe.

Reports, front ends and curricula

So, I am just working on the schemes for the entire department. We teach five levels of General Science, four of Horticultural Science, and two levels of each of Chemistry, Physics and Biology. I have to check that all the schemes and units have been revised or devised with reference to the Revised New Zealand Curriculum.

This is something I enjoy doing. I have an inordinate passion for curriculum. I take the widest view of curriculum, defining it, in my head, as the total set of learning experiences within a school. It includes both the explicit curriculum, the null curriculum and the relationships and environment in classrooms and in the playground.

In my school right now, we're working on cultural capital. I think this is awesome. Unpacking teacher expectations and the ways we communicate those expectations is vitally important. However, it's not something easy to do, partly because beliefs and values about gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability are so pervasive and entrenched.

Here is an example that's really annoying me right now:



Okay, spot the only Maori in the ad.

He's driving the car. None of the clerical workers are Maori. The boss certainly isn't Maori. The only Maori shown is a (presumably) unskilled warehouse/driver/labourer.

This wouldn't be so bad if it was an isolated example. I opened up a textbook - one in which I like the explanations and questions - and turned to the first page with pictures of people. There were seven people on the page. One was clearly not Pakeha, and another was not clearly Pakeha or Maori, but the rest were clearly Pakeha or could pass as Pakeha. There was only one woman pictured. That woman was on a boat with two men - one of those men was getting ready to dive, the other was at the wheel. The implication was that the woman was a mere passenger.

I wish that was an isolated incident in that textbook. It's not.

Curriculum is the sum of all learning experiences. The textbooks we use, the examples we give, the analogies we draw: these are all learning experiences. That's how we encode our expectations, even beyond the verbal assurances we give to students that we value them.

That encoding is not okay. I want to do better. We should all do better, or we're condemning all our students to repeating the inequities we face now.

This differentiated, self-directed stuff is hard for us all

Today's class saw a bunch of students going "but what do we doooooooo?" and flapping their hands over their freedom. I was so tempted to flap my hands back and reply, "I don't knoooow!"

Part of the problem is that they have never done anything like this. When I rewrite the Y 7 & 8 units, I will be sure to include the babysteps version of this unit. Part of it is that they don't really believe that they are allowed to be self-directed, and another part is that they are unsure of exactly what the parameters of their self-direction are. So, right now, we are compromising. All students have lists of the materials they need and should have them by Wednesday, ready to start experimenting and refining their methods.

I still need to finish off my exemplar. Finding time for this sort of thing is like pulling teeth in this place.

I like to think I am a happy person

It is one of my more cherished delusions, for realz. But there are things that make me happy and I like to share with people. However, this week, I have been reminded that 'people' and 'students' can be a mutually exclusive group, for values of 'people' which mean 'people who will appreciate the happymaking of the things'.

Here are some examples.



My students said "why would anyone go to the trouble of making food look that good when all you're going to do is eat it?". My students are philistines.

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My students said "What? Why is this even funny? What is this song? Why are you laughing?" My students are young and do not recognise the juxtaposition.

The perils of trying new things, and why it's important to try

I can totally see why teachers, heads of departments and school managers and governors stick to what they know. It's just so much easier than setting fire to the past and starting from scratch (or even just hacking the past back to rubble and then trashing the useless bits).

So, one of the things about the new units we're using in junior science is that they need fine-tuning as we teach, and that is hard work. It's worthwhile work, but it's not like any of this stuff has been tested before, or even like any of the teachers have worked in schools where science is taught this way. So each lesson is a learning experience.

Today, I learned that some students are idiots. Well, that's a pretty mean way to describe it, so let me say it in a more professional way. Some students are so accustomed to being given knowledge that they find the most simple of self-directed tasks daunting - even paralysing. So they cover it up with not caring. This, then, is the most nerve-wracking part, for me. I am trying something new, and expecting students to try something new, and expecting my staff to try something new.

Sometimes, I wish we could all have a group hug.

The scientific process and other monolithic entities

So many students think of the scientific process (okay, if they think of it at all) as a set of data-in/conclusion-out, cookie-cutter, pre-made experiments. They get called investigations, but the outcome always seems pre-determined. The teacher always knows what the answer should be (even if your crappy following of directions has resulted in something quite, quite different).

One of the things I am loving on at the moment? The exemplar I am making involves me in my favourite part of the investigative process - the bit where I do some mini-tests and alter my method accordingly. I'm not recording data, just playing around within the limits of my investigation to make sure that my method is going to work. I love it.

I hope to have some success soon though - all those internet tutorials made it look easy! Here are two pics of the dismal failures so far. One was using a hot iron, one a cooler iron. I think maybe I need to let the baking paper cool before I peel it back *sadfaces*

One of the things I like about being a teacher...

Is trying things first.

Next term, the Y10 class is doing a unit based around investigations and different inquiry processes. It features self-direction, individual learning outcomes and all sorts of happytiems so-hot-right-now educational features.

But the bit I am happiest about is that there is an exemplar for the first round - for very low ability students, they can use the exemplar as a template and basically plod along in the exemplar's footsteps.

Naturally, I get to make the exemplar.

Even that wouldn't ordinarily be enough to excite me, but I am making my exemplar about using plastic bags as t-shirt transfers. Yeah, I know, exciting right?

Look at this example of what someone made with plastic bag transfers:



I was inspired by three posts on Filth Wizardry - post one, post two, and post three.

And there is lots of science behind this - like why the particle structure of plastics makes them prone to melting, not catching alight. Why some plastics are softer and more melty than others. Like where plastics come from in the first place. Even though the tutorial gives basic instructions, there is still plenty of scope for investigation and coming up with a solid hypothesis. My exemplar deals with the effects of plastic type, holding the temperature and time of fuse constant. At the moment, though, I am freeform experimenting, to get the basic range of my constants settled. I will have pictures later.

So, I'm hoping that a few other students will choose other plastic recycling topics to use for their first investigation. I have some awesome tutorials on fusing plastic bags - here, with patterns if you want to make a rain hat or bag and here, with some more crafty ideas, and even a video tutorial:



But I need more! I'm going to exercise my google-fu later and come up with as many awesome plastic recycling ideas as I can. If any readers have ideas, I'd be delighted to hear them too!

But getting back to this unit of learning. Not many students are going to grasp quite what I'm on about quickly and be able to run with it. Some will, and I am really looking forward to seeing what they and their awesome imaginations come up with. But many will need a lot of support to get through it. That's where the exemplar and some supported options come in - at least for the first round of investigations. And if I get to play round with making t-shirt transfers out of the fifty million plastic bags littering my house, that's even better.