Just stumbled on this old blog. I still love the title, subtitle isn’t even half bad, I aspire to be a writer, so why not?
Of course, I’ve got a lot of other things to do, especially today. Working on the NASA cit sci handbook, have to run home to help with a delivery, making plans for fall meetings (work related). But I think I’ll give this a go… Going to take me a few swings to find my feet.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and find that I’m not quite pulling ideas together as I must. I think forcing myself to write through my thinking may be useful.
I’m going to be mindful of the tension I sometimes feel about sharing ideas that are currently in development – either to protect future plans from competition (is this even a thing???) or protect my ego from having to change directions, publicly. It’s all human and fine. I’ll let it be what it is.
And hey, it’s still spring. I’m going to use the energy of this coming-back-to-life season to get started.
I’ve been writing little poems in my head as I walk to or from work over the Casco Bay Bridge. I have to memorize them as I walk – the cold has been bricking my iPhone in moments and I haven’t made a habit of bringing paper and pencil. I’ve been “publishing” them on Facebook, with lovely encouragement from lovely friends. But I don’t know if that means I’ve given them to Facebook… And I don’t have the energy to read their policies, and they might change anyway. So, it occurs to me to publish them here.
They aren’t great, they are composed in something less than the 18 minutes it takes to walk from work to home, but they are the product of a muscle I want to learn to flex and control and develop. As is my bravery!
Here’s the latest. I’ll post #1-#3 next.
Bridge commute poem #4
What is that mark in the mud?
A parallelogram of lines dragged by some departed object,
Or maybe the surface expression of something below?
I’ve watched that spot for weeks.
Why do some scars persist, and some fade?
Geography, I suppose. Location, location, location.
This scar is in the soft silt behind a granite wall,
Protected like the soft spot behind a rib.
It’s an exciting day for STEM education and citizen science at the White House!
Washington, D.C.(March 23rd, 2015)– Citizen science received some high level attention today when plans were unveiled to install a new rain gauge in the First Lady’s Kitchen Garden.
This rain gauge represents far more than just a Pennsylvania Avenue data point for the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS), a citizen science network of over 20,000 active participants who serve as the largest source of daily precipitation data in the United States. Announced in conjunction with the White House Science Fair, this commitment points to high-level recognition of citizen science as a powerful platform for science education.
CoCoRaHS founder, Colorado State Climatologist Nolan Doesken, was on hand for the White House Science Fair. Doesken, also a member of the Citizen Science Association Board of Directors, says: “This fair clearly shows how the youth of our national are exploring the frontiers of science. But…
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Please take a look at the latest citizen science association blog post. What do you think?
Students participating in Project BudBurst at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Photo courtesy of: Project BudBurst
By: Ryan Collay, Mary Ford, Sandra Henderson, Eric Jolly, Nancy Trautmann, and Sarah Kirn
Join the Education Working Group of the Citizen Science Association for the panel discussion – Developing a Framework for Citizen Science in Education – Join the Conversation – on Wed. Feb 11th at 9:55 am. You can also participate in their open conference session on Feb. 12th.
The Education Working Group has been meeting since August of 2014 with a focus of drafting a vision for the role of citizen science in science learning and a framework to help the community achieve this vision. From the outset, our intent has been to tee up ideas for our conversation with the broader citizen science community at the February Citizen Science 2015 Conference in San Jose.
The current education climate…
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I spent a couple of hours last night reading this excellent report (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12190) from the National Research Council. I made some notes in the margins, but no notes to bring to work. So this is from memory. (I’m trying to be both looser and more committed to reflecting on this blog!)
My takeaways/thoughts:
I’m only partway through the book. Thank you, Tom Keller, for giving me a copy! I should have read it long ago.
(This is the first is what I anticipate to be a moderately regular series of posts on things I need to think about for my job as the Education Programs Strategist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Ideas included are my own, put forward as much to help me get my thought ducks in a row as to share my thinking with anyone.)
I finally read the summary and first two chapter’s of the National Research Council’s report on Developing Assessments for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18409). Interesting read!
Here’s what I learned:
1. The committee concluded what one would hope – that assessing the NGSS will be challenging and time consuming and quite different from current assessment practice. I’m heartened that they did not conclude otherwise!
2. Here’s a quote from the document’s summary section (Sum-2)
Measuring the learning described in the NGSS will require assessments that are significantly different from those in current use. Specifically, the tasks designed to assess the performance expectations in the Next Generation Science Standards will need to have the following characteristics (Conclusion 4-1):
3. The authors describe three components of the assessment system required to assess the NGSS
Whatever is eventually developed to address #3 might be an interesting place for organizations like the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to start evaluating the degree to which their own programs offer rich, NGSS-aligned science learning experiences.
4. The authors call for a bottom-up development approach to start with new tools to help teachers measure and direct learning in their classrooms.
The authors also note that “Teachers will need extensive professional development to successfully incorporate this type of assessment into their practice.” Just where this money will come from is not specified, although there is a (concerning) comment that “States will need to include adequate time and resources for professional development so that teachers can be properly prepared and guided…” Oh dear.
Overall, I found the report sobering, but appropriately so. There seems to be energy around creating assessments that truly address the vision of the Framework for K-12 Science Education.
Three pieces in recent press are making me think.
First, there’s this from Tom Friedman of the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/friedman-obamas-homework-assignment.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0. His thesis is that maybe American education isn’t up to snuff because parents and students just don’t care enough. He cites teachers’ observations of the growing number of students not even passing in work as indication of growing apathy.
Then there’s this one from Hamden Rice, guest blogging for the Daily Kos today (Martin Luther King, Jr Day): http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/29/1011562/-Most-of-you-have-no-idea-what-Martin-Luther-King-actually-did. His thesis is that the thing that Dr. King and other civil rights leaders did that changed the world was to encourage the victims of racial injustice to stand up, do the thing they feared the most, suffer the unjust consequences, survive, and celebrate their freedom. (This one is well worth reading, don’t just take my summation!)
And the third, from Debra Monroe on the NY Times Motherlode blog: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/a-balanced-school-needs-a-balance-of-volunteers/ . She observes that it’s only the parents who can afford to take time away from work to volunteer who do, and their unconscious (and unconscionable?) decisions grossly favor their children over those of working class parents. For example, think about the decision regarding which and how many uniforms parents must purchase in order for their child to participate on a sports team.
There are some missing pieces still, but a picture is emerging for me. Is it that parents don’t care about their child’s education, or that they don’t have the time to express their care? Where are we paralyzed by (legitimate) fear? Which among us are paralyzed by fear? Is it the poor who are feeling the deck being stacked higher and higher against them?
I don’t have the answers, but I’m re-committing myself to this blog, wether or not I’m sure of what I say. I am sure that the act of writing will bring me a step or two closer.
Maybe I’m just falling under the influence of another online course – this one the Deeper Learning MOOC (http://dlmooc.deeper-learning.org/).
My morning commute put me right back on Hurricane Island on one of those sweet, warm, foggy mornings that makes my heart hurt with a mixture of joy at being alive, longing for days past, the urge to run away down the coast to find a beautiful spot to just be…
It was sunny and bright at my house when I pulled my bike out of my shed. I didn’t even notice the fog sitting over the river until I reached the end of D Street and saw that peculiar glow in the air. Up on the bridge, I looked ahead and saw trucks emerging from a bank of fog so thick I couldn’t see the middle of the bridge, let alone Portland. The air was full of sparkle, glowing. I felt like I was in a wormhole connecting me to one of those Hurricane mornings… I could hear the gulls, hear the waves, smell Hurricane Sound.
The right lens of my sunglasses was completely fogged up by the time I crossed the lifting spans. I had to take my glasses off and wipe them on my leg. And with that, I rolled into clear sunshine in Portland.
I love those mornings that smack me in the face and say “see! you live in one of the most beautiful places in the world! get out and love it!”
This week our Global Urban Education course is looking at Emergency Education and the good work of the International Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE, http://www.ineesite.org/en/). Our assignment was to pick a theme from the INEE toolkit, say why it spoke to us, and say what we are inspired to do about it. Here is my response to hte assignment.
I am choosing to focus on the INEE Toolkit Theme of Teaching and Learning because, by my read, it most closely connects with what for me is the most inspiring theme in emergency education – the essential, multifaceted role of impacted communities in emergency education. And it takes an activist attitude toward education, not just in working to ensure that it happens but using education to prevent violent societal disruption, to prepare for and recover quickly from disaster.
As I read Education Under Attack, the 2010 report on the scale and impact of violence directed toward education institutions, educators, and learners, I was impressed by the data on the protective power of community investment in education. In an example from Afghanistan, simply allowing local people to use the word “madrasa” instead of “school” and inviting community members to monitor schools’ curriculum contributed to 161 schools being re-opened in one year as opposed to just 35 being opened in the previous year (p. 29-30). The report referenced the Knowledge on Fire study that found a strong correlation between community involvement in schools and reduction of attacks on education (p. 114). I am excited about the potential to use education as a way to build communities and to use communities to build education that serves both immediate and longer term needs. No doubt that is harder than I can imagine!
While the topic of emergency education brings to mind war-torn, crisis-ridden countries in far corners of the globe, I am also struck by the alignment of the best practices in emergency education with the best practices in reforming schools in the United States. In 1990 the Consortium on Chicago School Research launched a longitudinal study of hundreds of elementary schools to distinguish the elements that best support effective school reform. In Organizing Schools for Improvement Anthony S. Bryk presents this research and case studies on two of the worst of these Chicago elementary schools: one that turned itself around, and one that did not.[1] Extensive analysis of the implementation of reforms identified the following as the most important, powerfully interrelated elements to turning the one school’s performance around:
These five components are strongly related to the INEE toolkit components and content. I find this sobering and affirming and inspiring. While there is a relatively robust model for education in all situations (strong leadership, student-centered approach, community involvement, well prepared and supported teachers, some degree of local autonomy, assessment systems), implementing this model is challenging almost everywhere. I think one contributor to the challenge is the inherent tension in education between short- and long-term priorities and goals. Education is by its nature a generational investment in people and countries. Crises of war, drought, poverty, and gang violence demand immediate action, often at the cost of strategic long-term goals like education. This tension between immediate need and long-term good is perennial.
I’m inspired to work to empower communities to own the outcomes of their education systems and to define education such that it meets both near- and long-term goals, addressing the immediate challenges and preparing youth for a better future. I sound like a broken record and I’m afraid I’m being naive, but I do think that citizen science and project-based learning can contribute to both short-term community needs and academic achievement for youth. In Maine, for example, Vital Signs is empowering youth and communities to steward natural ecosystems. I would like to see teachers and learners go farther and address community-identified issues and concerns. If teachers and students can address emergency needs and challenges (accessing water, sharing information, distributing resources equitably, etc.) and use these as a context for learning, students will learn their academic lessons while contributing to community safety and well-being, building protective community appreciation for the value of schools. Although of different scales, I think this could be as true in rural Maine, where school budgets are often under attack, as in refugee camps. So often on Outward Bound courses I saw the power of the authentic context of a sailboat or rock climbing work magic on (privileged) disaffected youth. In the ten times more authentic immediacy of emergency, it makes sense to me that empowering learners and teachers to contribute to their communities would be similarly impactful.
My concern that I’m being naïve comes from a suspicion that there is some minimum resource or stability requirement for project-based approach to work. Teachers and students must, for example, have access to information, or tools with which to build a network of communication to collect information and or share it. Optimistically, I think there are manual or analog means of accomplishing the things that we take for granted that technology can do today. But I’m nervous.
Our foray into emergency education has also reminded of a framework I learned almost two decades ago for working with adjudicated youth in Outward Bound programs. The model suggested that the healthy human psyche was like a car with four wheels on the ground.[2] Each wheel represented an essential component to emotional health: security (of shelter and food), love and belonging, autonomy, and a fourth that escapes me (I might even have these three wrong). If any of the four wheels were missing, the theory went, a young person couldn’t engage productively with learning or challenge. We typically well-educated, financially secure white kids were trained to engage our often poorly educated, financially insecure, often traumatized charges to understand their worlds and how many and which wheels they were missing before we attempted to challenge their behaviors. (I really should unearth those notes from that training all those years ago!). People in emergencies may not be ready to tackle challenges, however, being enabled to be proactive about addressing or improving their situation may provide important healing.
Throughout this discussion, I’m well aware (I can’t say painfully) of my utter lack of experience with what it means to be living in an emergency, or even living in poverty. By global standards, I have a hugely privileged, safe existence here in North America. Until I have walked in a refugee camp or woken up in a post-Katrina New Orleans or walked the streets of Haiti I can’t really know how plausible it is to think of integrating education with disaster recovery. Barring this, I still have much to learn from the INEE Toolkit and the wisdom of the many practitioners involved in drafting and revising it.
P.S. Did you see this article in the NY Times today (July 30, 2013)? Its’ a great twist on teacher preparation in India: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/world/asia/delivering-a-jolt-to-indias-teacher-training.html?src=rechp and a powerful example of the impact of empowering a community of people (in this case, resident low income women as leaders in education)
[1] Bryk, A. S. Abstract:
“Organizing Schools for Improvement.” In Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 91, No. 7 (April 2010): pp. 23-30. Retrieved from http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/sites/default/files/elibrary/bryk_organizing-schools_pdk.pdf
[2] Possibly from Glasser, W. (1965). Reality therapy. A new approach to psychiatry. New York: Harper & Row, although it may have been a modified version of this theory. I’m working from memory.
