I’ve taught middle level students for a lot of years. The bane of my existence is the whiney teen-ager, attitude oozing out of every pore, that go-ahead-and-try-to-teach-me look firmly in place, asking my least favorite question: “When am I ever gonna hafta use this?”
Do I paint a familiar picture?
I twist myself into a pretzel on a regular basis to make sure everything I teach has a purpose in the futures of my students. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes not so much. Take astronomy, for example. With the exception of the occasional future rocket scientist or astronaut that may be crossing the threshold of my classroom, knowing about Kuiper belt objects seems like just another multiple-choice test item. I can hear them yawning from here.
But what if I can make it their futures? I’ll admit I’m addicted to Ice Investigators…what if my students were that excited about looking for possible dwarf planets? What if I can get them to spend more time combing through data from the New Horizons space probe than they spend watching American Idol? For the rest of their lives, they would feel a tug of pride any time they heard about the latest finds in the icy space beyond Pluto. They could say they were part of that exploration from the beginning. How cool is that?
Teenagers want so much to change the world, or at least make an impact while they’re trying. Giving them opportunities to participate in authentic, real-life research feeds that feeling. They can move from the initial “Is this for real?” attitude to the place where “I’m really doing this!” is the focus. It gets them involved and excited, and makes them want more.
Citizen science is another one of those sparks that we can use to get kids jazzed up about learning. It’s the little push we can give them to get started as scientists. With enough momentum, the next generation will include informed adults who understand that science is a problem-solving tool.
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I first should say that I have much admiration for your ability to teach middle-school students. When I was of middle-school age, I was very much into science–but one of only a handful of my classmates. And to me, it seems as if possessing the ability to convey the importance of having a future to “live for” maybe just one aspect of conveying the coolness of science. I believe that the other aspect (which you mentioned) of changing the world (making a difference)–it is this aspect that maybe the most difficult.
To many teens, it is a matter of fitting-in and “hanging with peers”–and as you may well know— trying to change the world often requires one to change oneself, first. That is hard for many, not just teens–and this is probably where the bottleneck to change becomes a slippery-slope. We need better “role-models.”
Having to examine one’s own life is never easy–and all of us, to whatever extent, do take a path of least resistance. Having since participated in BAUT and (now) COSMOQuest–it has opened some the participants’ eyes–and definitely my own eyes.
And as a mentor recently pointed-out to me, “I would pour much of ‘the county’s resources’ into early childhood education”–(and they did not say)–“early education prep, but meant to say that we may have lost a part of current generation of scientists and engineers.” The mentor whom I mention is a respected college professor and dept chair—as well as a parent of two young children.
When I was an undergraduate–in the 1980s–it was rare to hear this kind of talk in academia and the tones (of the future) were “hopeful.” The situation is indeed dire–if one does examine the trends of the last twenty-five years. It would only get worse if our “current” funding gets cut. To me you are the true-role model that our middle-schoolers need and will need to cling to in the future.
In my opinion, it may take something viewed as “calamitous” for the current generation of adults to “wise-up.”
Clear skies and gratitude,
John