When it comes to education, time is of the essence. Schools seek
to prepare students for the rest of their lives, and their time spent
in school is short compared to what awaits them after. A learning
session that makes no durable impression on their minds might not
necessarily be a waste of time, but it is a missed opportunity. Not every
fact, formula, and skill learned needs to stay with them into adulthood,
but those that do surely serve them well. How do we give students
experiences of lasting value?
HOW?
Teacher Caleb Boulware offers an observation that might be helpful
here. “If you aren’t struggling, if you aren’t frustrated, then you aren’t
learning. When you’re at the point where you’re just relaxed, just doing
what you’re doing, you’re a robot. Everybody can play school. The day
that you get frustrated, the day that you have anxiety, it’s because
you’re being challenged.”
Boulware teaches eighth-grade science in Pittsburg, Kansas. He
runs a lively, engaged class, but he thinks a lot about how to reach
students. That tendency has made him invaluable to the developers of
the Pitsco STEM Expeditions® , which his class is beta testing.
So far, Boulware has been impressed with the design of the
Expeditions. The challenges that he wishes for his students are exactly
what they are crafted to create.
“The Expeditions lead them through, but they leave little gaps that
make the kids draw inferences. That needs to happen,” says Boulware. It
is in those gaps, and in the leaps students must take to clear them, that
skills and knowledge are imprinted most deeply.
Rose, a student in Mr. Boulware’s class, is interested in everything
from biology to medicine to quantum entanglement. If you guess from
this that Rose is the kind of student who likes a good challenge, you’d
be correct. Asked for a memorable moment from the Expeditions, she
recalls a time working in Thermal Physics.
“When we did our lab experiment with the aluminum bars, it took
me several minutes to figure out how to set it up. It was pretty cool just
to be given the materials and to have to figure it out.”
And what is her feeling about the Expeditions’ approach versus
learning from a textbook? “I prefer the Expeditions a lot. I don’t feel I
kept as much stuff with me from my sixth-grade and seventh-grade
years as I am this year.”
All of that explains how the STEM Expeditions bring powerful
learning experiences to students. But what about the staying power
of those experiences? Of course, the Expeditions are new; there are
no anecdotes or data to draw from yet. But an indication of how far
they will reach into the students’ futures might come from a related
question: how far do they reach into their lives today?
HOW FAR?
A recent case: the students were working through the Thermal Physics
STEM Expedition, performing an experiment to test the properties of metals
when heat is applied to them. The STEM Expeditions are designed to be
customizable and flexible for teachers, and Boulware had a good idea for
expanding the activity. He added a requirement that the students create
a full lab report using the
scientific method.
As it turned out, the
quality of the student
writing in the reports
wasn’t very good.
Boulware does not teach a
writing class, but he knows
a learning opportunity when he sees one. He met with ELA teachers and
proposed an unusual team-up. They would lead his class, teaching the
correct way to write the report.
“It was kind of funny,” said Boulware. “The ELA teachers freaked
out because they don’t know thermal physics. I said, ‘You don’t have
to. What the students write is what they write. You just make sure it is
written properly.’ I said I will judge the rest.”
The cross-curricular foray in Thermal Physics didn’t end there. The
students had made a notable improvement in their writing, but their
ability to analyze and graph data was still lacking. Boulware took the
kids away from their stations for a couple days to lecture on data
analysis. But when it came to the graphing, he called in another expert:
Mr. White, one of the school’s math teachers.
“I said, ‘Mr. White, listen. They can’t graph. I know you don’t have
them all, but you have a group of them. I need you to teach them how
to graph. Here’s the data.’ He stopped everything he was doing in his
class and they graphed.”
Boulware enlisted another fellow teacher during the Optical Solutions
Expedition. It so happens that the three primary colors of light (red,
green, and blue) don’t match the more familiar three primary colors
used in painting (red, blue, and yellow). He team taught a session with
the school’s art teacher, each teacher discussing the concept from the
perspective of their field.
“It is cross curricular.
Our administration sees
it. Our kids are carrying
my books into their other
classes, so it is working.”
Emma, who really
enjoyed learning about
lenses in Optical Solutions, has definitely seen some cross-curricular benefit.
“I answered a science question on a test [because of what I learned in the
Expedition]. One of my friends has glasses. One of the lenses is thicker than the
other. It is a convex lens, which makes it more powerful. I answered a question
about that and got it right. It applies to everyday life, and I like that.”
HOW FAR WILL YOU GO?
There are probably a few memories from your education you still
treasure. Maybe you remember a challenge that you overcame and a
resulting insight. Or a fun project that steered you toward a career. Or a
remark from a teacher that awakened some curiosity in you. Most of us
don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on those memories because they seem
so far from our present lives. But in a sense they are still very much with us.
Strong learning experiences such as these serve students throughout
their lives. As an educator, the question is how far will you go to serve your
students by giving them as many of these of these experiences as possible?