The Domino Effect of Change at School, District, and Even National Levels

I have taken many actions beyond my immediate classroom to support other teachers, interns, and student teachers in many ways and to ensure that all the students at my school, district, and greater community are being exposed to high-quality science education. Every year I sign up to have a practicum student or a student teacher come into my classroom. I make sure to expose that teacher in training to a variety of teaching methods when it comes to teaching science. I make sure to show them the value of a balance of direct instruction versus inquiry based learning. It is of extreme importance to me that teachers use hands-on activities when teaching science and I want to instill that in all of the pre-service teachers that visit my classroom.

Also, I have taught workshops to colleagues at my school on the importance of inquiry based science lessons, as well as on the effectiveness of using a science journal to help the students learn to express scientific thinking through writing. These workshops included current research as to why inquiry based learning and science journals were being emphasized, as well as some activities that the teachers could try. For example, I had the teachers construct a straw rocket and then write in their journals about how they thought the rocket got its forward motion. This role-play of acting like the students that they teach really is important to the understanding of why these things are so important.

The past few years I have also had the opportunity to co-teach. We are departmentalized in 4th grade, so communication is the key to our success. Whenever possible, I integrate my science lessons with the math and language arts that are being taught during the other rotations. At our grade level meetings, I share with the teachers what I am doing in science and ask them to support me by giving examples of lessons they could teach in math and language arts to help to internalize the concepts in science. This cross-subject teaching allows the students to see that the subjects all relate to each other and success in one subject often depends on an understanding in another.

My contributions to educational excellence at the school, district, state, and national level are numerous. First, I am the science chair and STEM coordinator for our elementary school. I set up guest science speakers, as well as organize and run the committee meetings. Another example is that I was one of a small group of 4th grade teachers asked to write curriculum guides for science for our school district. We had to align our current textbooks and websites to the new standards to give teachers the tools that they needed to accurately teach science.

Currently, I am the Aerospace Ambassador for the Air Force Association. This title means that it is my job to coordinate professional development for teachers in the neighboring four counties where I live. This past February, I organized a teacher workshop called “Focus on the FUTURE: Furthering Teaching Using Robotics and Engineering. We had a record number of teachers attend. The workshop featured lesson plans to help teachers bring these concepts into the classroom as well as a Science Symposium where teachers could meet community members that have a tie to science and would be willing to visit their schools. It was a great thing for our local educators to develop a partnership with associations that they may not have known before. Also, I recently entered an essay contest for the American Association for the Advancement of Science on innovative ways to teach science and technology in the classroom. This essay was one of two winners in the United States and Canada and is now published on the Science NetLinks website for teachers across the nation to read and get ideas as to how to inspire future engineers and scientists.

Recently, I was also named the winner for Elementary Science in Florida for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching. This award provided me with multiple opportunities to network with other science teachers across the nation as well as to meet with various government organizations, the President’s Office of Science and Technology, as well as President Obama himself. The topic of discussion at all of these meetings and round-tables was STEM and how to best promote it in the classroom. Also, I was impressed by how many of the national level committees wanted to know the best way to help us in the classroom. The trip to Washington, DC was eye-opening and showed me that people in high positions do truly care about the education that happens in each of our classrooms. Also, I was just named the National Civil Air Patrol Aerospace Education Teacher of the Year. This prestigious award will open many doors for me to collaborate with other teachers as well. I am heavily involved in the Aerospace Connections in Education program offered by the CAP and have been editing their curriculum binders. I also travel to teacher workshops to help train other educators on how to use the program. In fact, we will be training another three schools on the use of the program to start the new school year.

As you can see, I am fully involved in many ways in promoting STEM education and high quality science experiences. Luckily, I have never really faced any challenges or obstacles with my efforts to improve science and STEM instruction. I think that it is in part due to the fact that my district is very involved in promoting STEM being the number one district in the state of Florida, Okaloosa County, and also being located next to Eglin Air Force Base. Another reason is that each time I bring up a new idea or initiative; I have pictures, proof or data to back up my request along with strong ties to the state and national standards. Using this approach, I have not encountered any hesitation from my principal or district. It is great to have such support and that is why our STEM program continues to excel.

Facing Global Competition

After reading the article, “What’s Our Sputnik” by Thomas Friedman, I really thought that he raised some very valid points. His main point of view was that the war on terror was not really helping out our situation with global competitiveness and that we really should be looking at our own nation and putting money into helping develop new technologies to compete with China, who is currently our main economic partner as well as competitor. This uprising of China as a nation is what Friedman wants Americans to look at as the next Sputnik (Friedman, 2010).

Just to provide some background, when the United States learned that Russia launched the Sputnik satellite into space, it began the “Space Race” in the United States. There was a huge effort made nationally to revisit our education system, the way that we teach science, as well as our infrastructure. This momentum from competing with Russia and other nations to gain control of space exploration continued for about 50 years and was a key component to producing the Internet, along with encouraging more students to study math and science due to the fact that people genuinely were concerned with the status of the United States when compared globally.

Some people think that the war on terror should act as our new Sputnik, however like Friedman (2010) mentions; the results of this war have been greater national debt, better body scanners, and jobs for TSA at airports. This is really not helping our nation to compete with others across the world. I completely agree with Friedman that we really need to look at our priorities within our own nation before we dump time and resources into foreign countries. I understand that the majority of our oil comes from there, but there also comes a point when we need to take responsibility and figure out how to gain access to oil using our own nation’s resources. As mentioned in the article, we don’t need to totally abandon the war on terror, but rather to change the focus to one of demanding that the leaders in these countries step up to the plate and lead and fight against the craziness that is occurring. It seems that the Middle East has gotten complacent with us being there and they really need to start taking charge, especially since the US troops are now beginning to phase out of the war on terror as per President Obama’s latest address. If nothing changes, we are going to continue to waste our money and resources on a country that has no real benefit to our economy besides oil dependency.

I think that we do need to focus on the fact that the majority of NASA’s employees are headed towards retirement and we really need to promote the need for more STEM career choices to our students. It is especially scary now that our current Space Shuttle System is facing its last launch on July 8th. We are going to be literally thumbing a ride with Russia in order to get to the International Space Station. This to me presents a huge problem in our race to innovation and technology. I think that on a local, state and national level there needs to be more publicity about what STEM stands for and why we need more students and citizens to engage in this career field. If society really understood our dire need for scientists and engineers along with the fact that other nations continue to surpass us on math and science assessments, maybe this would spark them to support an initiative to invest in science education. I think that the first step is awareness using a major marketing campaign.

The United States is trying to get on a course towards improvement and I don’t think that we necessarily need an event like Sputnik to spark our attention and commitment to science education reform. I really just think that society needs to be made aware of the cold hard facts and the statistics that show how other countries like China and India and sending their engineers to America to work and taking the jobs of our citizens due to the fact that they are more qualified. Also, I think that when our Space Shuttle Program ends many people will realize that we do need to do something next and quickly. Using Russia for transportation into space will be very limited and we will be completely at their will. This is a scary thought. I know that NASA is already in the planning stages of a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, but what will happen in the meantime if we need to get to space on our own?

Other countries have not cut funding for their space programs, especially China and Russia. Also, there seems to be much more funding for education in other countries with a high focus placed on science and math career paths. It also seems that we are one of the few nations that dabble in foreign politics. You rarely hear of China or Russia supporting another country that is having an internal war. They are instead focusing on the innovation that is occurring within the borders and supporting STEM learning in any way possible.

In conclusion, I do not that think that we need to wait around for another Sputnik-like event. Right now we need to focus on raising awareness about the state of America and the fact that we are soon to be behind the technological advances of China and Russia if we do not act quickly. President Obama has stated that he is going to be pushing STEM and STEM education, but we all need to do our part on a national level to educate society on the fate of our nation if we do not produce some more quality scientists and engineers. Also, funding to education needs to be increased and not cut, specifically to fund STEM initiatives within states and districts. The more our nation realizes the global competition that is currently occurring, the more they will be motivated to do something about it. Let’s begin with educating our children to the best of our ability and preparing them with 21st century skills for the future.

References

Friedman, T. L. (2010, January 17). What’s our sputnik? [Op-Ed]. The New York Times [Late Edition (East Coast)], p. WK.8.

A Scientifically Literate Citizen

Check out my Glog depicting my interpretation of a scientifically literate graduate of high school:

http://tuckerm1.glogster.com/scientific-literate-citizen/

Milky Way Mayhem: Using a Model for Divergent and Convergent Boundaries

Upon implementing my Modeling Earth Science lesson plan, I found that it was extremely successful. In my lesson, we were exploring the definition and difference between divergent and convergent boundaries.  I exposed my students to two short video clips to engage them and pique their curiosity.  Then I gave them each a snack size Milky Way and a data collection form.  I asked them to create a model of the Earth using the Milky Way bar and to show how a divergent boundary forms as well as a convergent boundary.  I also assigned them the title of geologist and made sure to mention that an imagination was necessary for the activity.

The students really seemed to enjoy the activity, especially since food was involved.  They quickly figured out that the key to forming a divergent boundary was to pull the bar apart slowly and steadily, much like the plates in the Earth move.  They also identified that a valley was created as a result of the movement.  This was done by self-guided discovery in pairs. I was very impressed with the conversations that I was overhearing and the questions that I asked the students as I rotated around the groups.  Every child was on task and focused.

When creating the convergent boundary, the students had to figure out that you needed to slowly and steadily push the candy bar together in order to see the ridge form in the model.  Again, this illustrates a connection to the real world in that changes happen over a long period of time on the Earth's surface.  The students also noticed that if they push harder and longer, a larger ridge would form and that sometimes it would buckle.  The fact that they decided to extend the lesson by testing this out really showed me that they were thinking as scientists and using the model in the proper manner.

The main challenge that I faced was the fact that using the chocolate bar got messy towards the end of the lesson.  This is partly due to the fact that the lesson was conducted on a very hot day in Florida and the air conditioner was not up to par.  Also, the students had just come from PE, so their body temperature was elevated and touching the bars made it melt faster.  I could have helped the situation by providing them with more napkins initially.  I only gave them one to place the model on to conduct the activity.  In order to fix this issue, I could do the activity earlier in the day and also during my actual Earth Science unit that is in the winter.

Overall, the students really enjoyed using a model and truly benefited from seeing the movement of the Earth's plates in action.  At the conclusion of the activity, we took an interactive Brain Pop quiz and the students did very well. The model helped them to internalize the concept of divergent and convergent boundaries by having the opportunity to manipulate these changes.  Modeling is a necessity when teaching for true understanding of complex science concepts.

Developing Scientifically-Literate and Caring Students through the Focus of Natural Disasters

It is of utmost importance to expose students to the current happenings in the world around us in an appropriate manner.  The students that I teach live in Fort Walton Beach, FL, so we are inherently familiar with the destruction that can be caused by hurricanes. In fact, Hurricane Ivan created mass destruction in our immediate area and it was a great opportunity to investigate the power of hurricanes in general.  The year that Ivan struck in 2004, we studied hurricanes intensely as a school to learn how a natural disaster happens and what can be done in the future to help prepare for the storm itself and the after effects. We learned together that it is very hard to bounce back from a hurricane, but that if everyone cooperates, it is a much easier process.  This was important because that next year, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.  Luckily, our area was not in the direct storm path, but the students at my school were well educated and aware of how this natural law of science could intensely impact lives.  Our school instantly wanted to help with the relief efforts, especially since we could relate so well due to our much smaller experience with Hurricane Ivan. 

We had a community connection to one of the elementary schools in Mississippi and the students really wanted to help.  At that same time, my mother, who teaches 4^th grade in Pennsylvania, contacted me and wanted to know if there was anything that could be done from her school.  We decided to team up with our two schools and raise money to take to the school for supplies.  Through working together, we raised over $3000 and collected a ton of books to give to the school in Mississippi. I was privileged enough to personally deliver it to the elementary school along with my principal and guidance counselor.  The people there were extremely gracious and the money was very much needed.  During my time there, I made a film documentary to bring back to the two schools to show the students how they had helped others.  It was not a very uplifting film to start since the devastation shown was so great.  However, the video ended with the money being delivered to the school and some interviews with the students, teachers, and principal there.  The kids were learning about the great sense of being partners in our community and in the United States.  It was rewarding for all that participated.

This past year, we had a similar experience. I had just finished teaching about tornadoes and the effects that can happen to the environment and people as a result.  We also have been doing many character lessons on being generous and caring through our school’s participation in the Civil Air Patrol Program. This was right before the devastating string of tornadoes that ravaged Alabama. When the students came to school the next day, they were determined to figure out how we could help the victims of the tornadoes, who were also our neighbors. We were about to engage in Penny Wars, a fundraiser to raise money for supplies for the teachers.  One of the teachers remembered that a former faculty member was currently teaching in Tuscaloosa. She contacted her and asked about the devastation of the tornado.  She learned that the school that she taught at in Tuscaloosa had been destroyed and that the teacher could only find and talk to two of her twenty students. The tornadoes had displaced the entire community.  The teacher that initially called to check on our former employee immediately returned to school and suggested that we use the Penny Wars funds to help the relief efforts in Alabama.  Once proposed to the faculty, it was unanimous!  We were going to dedicate this fundraiser to the students on Tuscaloosa. 

Our students were super excited to be helping others, especially having the background knowledge of the devastation that tornadoes can cause as well as what it takes to be a compassionate person.  They cleaned out their piggy banks, checked under the sofa, and did all the chores that they could to raise money towards this devastated school. As a school, we raised just over $1900 to send to the elementary school in Tuscaloosa. The experience was an awesome lesson in the power of being selfless and helping others.  Our students and faculty benefited, as well as the students and faculty in Alabama.  It was another win-win situation.

The key to developing scientifically-literate and caring students is to relate the lessons to real-life situations.  If the students can really understand the science first and how it relates to their world, they will be more inclined to help others.  We need to be sure to use the teachable moments in the face of tragedy and to encourage students to continue to find ways that they can help others, even if they are not sitting in the classroom next to them.  These real world experiences are how we help to create the next generation of a compassionate society.

Finally an Answer....See My Ask a Scientist Response!

Megan, thank you for submitting the following question to the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Ask a Scientist website:


How do stem cells decide what type of cell they are going to turn into and what type of cell is the initial one that we start out with in life? As an extension to this question: When a person is given stem cells, do the doctors decide what kind of cells they turn into in advance or does the body of the individual make that decision when the cells enter the human body system based on where there is a need?

Here is a response provided by one of our volunteer scientists:


This is a fabulous question and one that many great minds continue to investigate, because we do not yet know the complete answer. There are three general areas of biology that dictate a cell's fate. The first and most obvious is the DNA. All the information is encoded in the DNA, not only what cell type but how the cell can respond to signals it receives. The second are those signals. Signaling might be something as simple as 'inside' or 'outside'. Those first few divisions of identical cells in a developing embryo produce a ball of cells, with some facing the outside, and some completely surrounded by other cells. That difference triggers a whole new pattern of gene expression in the cells. The outside cells are now destined to become a different tissue than those inside the ball of cells. So, a simple external signal operates an incredibly complicated signal cascade that determines cell fate. The third contribution has only been appreciated recently, and that is that there are molecules carried in the fertilized egg that direct development also. These may be RNA molecules, proteins and enzymes that can alter which genes may be switched on or off, another level of regulation of cell fate.

Stem cell therapy will likely involve replacing or supplementing cells that have already undergone a certain amount of specialization. For example, our skin has many stem cells that for much of our life can constantly replace worn out cells. These skin stem cells are less differentiated than other skin cells, but are different from blood stem cells that replenish the blood. In the laboratory it is possible to take skin stem cells and revert them to an earlier developmental stage. When these stem cells are placed into the right environment they can then form many different types of cells, but not all.
Now, in the healthy person, our own tissues provide cues and support to our own stem cells naturally. The trouble is, that stem therapy is treating something that went wrong. So, the disease could be because the stem cells are all gone (attacked by the own body, they die too soon, or because of damage), the signals are not being sent to the stem cells, or the stem cells can no longer respond properly to the signals. As you can imagine, the stem cell therapy has to be carefully tailored to the specific disease so that any stem cells get to the right place, become the right cell type, they survive and start working properly. This is why to date, stem cell therapy is still only experimental. For more information try the NIH website:
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/defaultpage.asp


We welcome feedback from you about this answer to your question and
appreciate your interest in Ask a Scientist.


Ask a Scientist Coordinator

Ask a Scientist Question....but No Answer.....

My question for the Ask a Scientist website was: “How do stem cells decide what type of cell they are going to turn into and what type of cell is the initial one that we start out with in life?” As an extension to this question, “When a person is given stem cells, do the doctors decide what kind of cells they turn into in advance or does the body of the individual make that decision when the cells enter the human body system based on where there is a need?”

Unfortunately, I did not hear back from the Ask a Scientist website, so I conducted a Google Search for more information.  I did read on the website http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics1.asp that under experimental conditions, they can be induced to become specific tissue or organ cells.  It also mentioned that in other cases, the cells actually know where to go to repair and replace worn out tissue. This answers the second part of my question and tells me that doctors have a limited capability to decide what type of cell it should turn into, as well as the body making that decision.  I have a feeling that in the future doctors will develop more of a control over the decision of what type of cell it needs to turn  into.  I base this on the fact that we are advancing so far in genetic research.

As far as how stem cells decide what type of cell to turn into and when, I could not find a clear answer and am still searching.  This is also the case for the part about which type of cell we start out as.  I am assuming an embryonic stem cell, but I would love to know what they develops into eventually.

I am disappointed that I did not get the answers that I wanted from Ask a Scientist.  I would not use this particular website in my classroom because I think that my students would get frustrated and impatient waiting for answers.  I do however think that a website like this would be useful if the questions were addressed in a timely manner.  As a teacher, it would be great to have access to experts at our fingertips.  I am hoping that I will discover other websites that could be used for this purpose.  If you know of any, please send me their links.