Why is Science Important?

I’ve come full circle. Before school started last August, I asked my students to write an essay addressing the following question:

“Why is science important?”

Their responses were interesting, to say the least. But, I’ve been thinking about that question all school year. Now, with the benefit of all that extra time, here’s my answer.

Learning and applying the scientific method helps develop a framework for decision making and for analysis. The “scientific method”  provides a road map on how to figure things out. And it doesn’t have to be big things; it could be as simple as figuring out why the Christmas lights won’t go on.

People assume some general level of understanding of scientific principals. If you become a parent, you’re going to be asked questions like, “Why is the sky blue?” or “Where do vegetables come from?” and you’re going to want to be able to provide some sort of informed answer. 

It’s important to have a fundamental understanding of the world around us - how and why things happen. If you have absolutely no grounding in science, you’ll find yourself believing almost anything. Trust me, folks have been taking advantage of people’s scientific ignorance for a long, long time. If you have a basic understanding of science, you can help yourself. 

Science informs our species' fundamental curiosity. Humans are always exploring, wondering and thinking about things. Science is a method of looking at the world and understanding why things work the way they do, where our species fits in and how everything interacts with the universe as a whole. 

And that’s why science is important, as I see it.

What is Rocky Really About?

It’s about setting a goal - a goal you’re not sure you can attain, then doing all the hard work necessary to achieve it. 

When Mrs. Minaker challenged me to blog for 100 days I didn’t think I could do it. I just didn’t have the time. Between school and all my part-time jobs and my master’s program, I didn’t see how I could fit in 100 blog posts. I decided to post something on every school day.

And here we are. 

Tomorrow is the last day of school and tomorrow will mark my 95th post. It has not been easy, but I made time each day to share some thoughts with my students. Sometimes they were silly and fun and sometimes they supplemented what I was teaching in class. I hope they have been interesting and entertaining.

I feel a sense of accomplishment to have achieved my goal. It was worth the time and effort. 

Tomorrow, for my last blog post, I will answer the question that I asked all my students to write about before I had even met most of them:

“Why Science is Important.”

Don’t Leave Home Without Your Safety Goggles

This is what I said to the Hellenic American Academy graduates yesterday. I think it applies if you graduated from middle school yesterday or four decades ago...

We’ve spent a year with you and we’d like to take this opportunity to share a little of our life experience. Hopefully you will take our words to heart and save yourself a lot of time and energy.

Don’t leave home without your safety goggles.

Find what you love and do it. Even if it takes fifty years to find it. Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

Eat your vegetables, your parents were right. Actually, your parents are going to be right about a lot of stuff, but you probably won’t realize it for another ten years.

Live your life like no one’s watching. Be true to yourself even if it makes you stand out from the crowd.

Read. Have a book with you at all times. Nothing avoids wasted time like a good book.

Set goals that you’re not sure you can meet otherwise, there’s no point.

Sing, even if it’s just in the shower or your room or the car.

Have patience and avoid acting rashly. 

Recycle. You’re saving the only planet we have.

Cherish your friends and family. They’ll support you even when you don’t think you need support. 

Don’t worry too much about money. The list of problems money solves is surprisingly short.

Character matters. In the long run, it’s the only thing that matters.

Finally, remember, you don’t know everything.......and you never will.........but do keep trying.

SWBAT...

What is SWBAT?

To explain this, I have to backtrack a little and provide some background information.

I have to keep track of what lessons I teach, what resources I use, how they align with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks for math or science, and when I teach it. 

This is a requirement of the Hellenic American Academy and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. My lesson plans are a legal document. They are the proof of what I teach and how I teach it.

I created a form that provides space for all that information and more. I also keep track of what I assign for homework, what chapters and sections in the text the lesson relates to, what outside resources I use, and the objective of the lesson.

I also write the objective of the lesson on the left side of the big white board in the front of my room but I’m pretty sure no one ever reads it. 

The objective usually begins with “Students will be able to...”

Examples: 

SWBAT place fractions, decimals and percents on a number line. SWBAT compare and order fractions, decimals and percents.

SWBAT solve multi-step equations using distributive property and combining like terms.

SWBAT to whine about tests and quizzes in English, Greek and Spanish.

Oh, and by-the-way, that last example, and more crazy objectives, were posted to my white board for the past week before anybody noticed.

The Light Blocking Homework Assignments

We’re practically back to bare walls again. You can tell the year is almost over, we’ve taken down all the school work, and posters. 

The collage I created with pictures from the year is almost gone - I gave the pictures to the students. 

The only things remaining from this year are the big foam board assignments from the astronomy and chemistry units propped up in front of the windows at the back of the class. Those are staying through to next year.  

I asked the students to create big foam board reports on constellations and elements. You see, I use the projector a lot, and the room has no curtains, so it’s pretty bright in the room and that makes it difficult to see some videos.

Part of my plan, was to use the completed work as a form of window shade and it worked out very nicely.

Thank You

Ευχαριστώ όλα τα μέλη της Ελληνο-Αμερικάνικης Ακαδημίας. Ήταν μια υπέροχη και φανταστική σχολική χρονιά για μένα. Όλοι με καλοδέχτηκαν και με έκαναν να αισθανθώ από την πρώτη μέρα σαν μέλος της κουλτούρας της Ακαδημίας.

Σας ευχαριστώ για την υπομονή σας και την υποστήριξή σας. Δεν μπορώ να το πιστέψω ότι η σχολική χρονιά πλησιάζει στο τέλος της. Ανυπομονώ για την νέα σχολική χρονιά.

Do I Have Favorites?

“...must be one of your favorites,” my wife said to me a few months ago.

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

She said I mentioned a particular student more than other students and suggested I had a favorite.

I have thought about that exchange for months. 

I’ve rolled it around in my head. “Do I have favorites?” I kept asking myself. 

My students delight me, they frustrate me, they make me smile and shake my head, and laugh all the time. 

I don’t know about favorite students, but I do have favorite moments. 

Like the time I told a student I couldn’t see her work on the board behind her big head; or the time another earned a 100 on a test and literally danced around school the rest of the day; or the normally quiet student who shocked her class by screaming at the top of her lungs just before a standard testing session; or watching a student who was stumped by something, suddenly “get it” and light up like a Christmas tree.

After months of deliberation, I have concluded I don’t have favorite students - they’re all my favorites. 

It just depends on what day you ask me.

Achieving A Goal

When I bought my house many years ago, it had a very large elm tree in the front yard. As the tree aged, it began to shed branches during storms. Eventually, it became such a hazard, I had to have it taken down.

While the tree guys were doing their thing, they asked about the stump. They suggested a couple of people who could grind the stump to below ground level. Then, I could plant grass over it and no one would ever know a tree had ever been there. 

I never called those guys because I had another idea.

Fast forward six years and I still had that stump in my front yard. It was starting to rot. There were bugs living in it. I was ready to make my move.

I called my best friend over to help remove the stump. We figured we could dig this old, rotten stump out of the yard in a few hours.

Wrong. 

Our expectations were way out of line.

We made almost no progress that first day. And after that first day, I was pretty much on my own. I made very little progress in the first week. In fact, I didn’t make a whole lot of progress in the first month. My son started helping me and quickly became as frustrated as I was.

As it turns out, stumps are stubborn things. 

My stump resisted all forms of technology we brought to bear on it. Chainsaws were useless and wedges were lost in the heart of the stump never to be seen again. The only tools that proved effective were an ax and a shovel.

This was manual labor at its ultimate. It was back-breaking work. 

Nearly every day after work and all day on the weekends, My son and I were out there digging and hacking away at it.  

We must have been the talk of the neighborhood. My neighbors asked about grinding it down.

“I’ve got a guy who’ll do it for a hundred bucks,” one neighbor told me. 

I told him I had another idea. 

People walking their dogs or just strolling by all asked why I didn’t just grind it down, cover it with dirt and be done with it. They commented about how much work we were doing, how hard it was. 

“Isn’t there an easier way?” one nice lady asked.

I told her I had a plan.

Truth be told, it wasn’t a plan as much as a goal. I had a goal, a vision, and I would not be deterred.

It took six long weeks to dig out that stump. 

It took all my strength to drag it out of the enormous hole I had dug around it. We actually broke a wheel barrow moving it to the dumping area I have near the back of the house.

Finally done.

Now, I can finish my plan and attain my vision. 

You see, whoever planned out my street and built the houses, over a hundred and twenty years ago, planted scores of elm trees. In fact, my street is sort of named for those trees. Sadly, most of them are gone. There are stumps in front of many of the houses giving mute evidence to what was once a beautiful tree-lined street.

I’m going to start to change that. 

I’m going to plant an elm tree. 

I couldn’t take the easy way out and grind the stump, I needed the stump out of there so my new tree could grow and thrive without interference.

In the end, it will be worth it. 

I’ll have a beautiful, shady tree in my front yard again. And that tree will still be here, in front of my house, in another hundred and twenty years.

McKellar’s Special Theory of Relative Time

Albert Einstein told us that the speed of light is the same for all observers, no matter what their speed relative to other objects. In other words, one’s perspective made no difference - the speed of light was a constant. 

I propose a new theory - a theory of relative time. 

Einstein believed that space and time could be bent or warped by forces in the universe such as gravity. For those of us trapped on Earth, and unable to approach the speed of light, or even the speed limit on route 495 at rush hour, Einstein’s theories are pretty esoteric - they don’t seem to factor into our daily lives. 

My Special Theory of Relative Time refutes Einstein’s findings and it’s all about our daily lives. 

On Earth, at the speed of a leisurely stroll or speeding car, time is relative. Time passes at different rates at different times. 

I can prove it. 

Think about how long a school year seems during those first few days. In September, June seems so far away that we'll never get there. It stretches out seemingly forever. Now, since we’re nearly at the end of the year, think about how fast it seemed to go.

See what I mean?

Time goes slower facing forward and faster looking backward.

My theory is valid for short periods of time and for long periods of time. Two examples:

• If you’re waiting at the dentist's office for an hour and you’re bored, time passes infinitely slowly. That hour seems like two weeks, but once it’s over, it doesn’t seem so long.

• When I was in middle school, the idea of being older than my father was inconceivable to me. He was in his 40‘s. My life stretched out beyond the horizon. It was forever as far as I could tell. Now, at nearly 55 years old, I am older than my father was at that time by a good measure. I am more than half-way, and probably more like two-thirds through my life. It’s gone by so fast, looking back.

Where does the time go? 

So slow looking forward. 

So fast looking backward.

Time is relative. It’s easy to be seduced by the view looking forward into believing you have all the time in the world. In reality, time goes by so fast - too fast. Too fast to justify wasting it.

Attack of the Crab Monsters

The other day, the students of the 6th, 7th and 8th grades watched To Kill a Mockingbird together. 

It’s a wonderful movie with moving performances by a number the actors. The students had read the book and they were tracking differences between the movie and text.

After the movie I had a discussion with my homeroom about movies, and what constitutes a great movie and where certain movies rank on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest movies. My student’s know I have a real thing for bad science fiction movies from the 1950’s and 1960’s and they often ask about them.

Afterwards, I asked the 7th and 8th grades, “If we watched one movie at the end of school as a reward for your hard work, would you prefer one of the all-time greats or one of the all-time worst movies?

Nearly all of them want to watch a truly awful movie, so I made a few suggestions for them vote on:

Plan 9 From Outer Space - Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (some sort of super duper weapon). Considered by many critics to be one of the worst movies ever made. The director’s ineptitude makes the whole thing so bad, it’s good. It’s amusing in a truly awful way. In honestly, it is really bad, but I have seen worse.

Attack of the Crab Monsters - People are trapped on a shrinking island by intelligent, brain-eating giant crabs. Directed by Roger Corman, king of the B-movies, this awful picture has a certain charm. People of a certain age will recognize one of the actors as The Professor from Gilligan’s Island.

The Brain that Wouldn’t Die - A doctor experimenting with transplant techniques keeps his girlfriend's head alive when she is decapitated in a car crash, then goes hunting for a new body. Gruesomely awful. Everyone gets their comeuppance in the end.

And the verdict?

Attack of the Crab Monsters - 63 minutes of awful acting and a ten-foot papier-mâché crab.