May is over halfway over, which means crunch time. Just a few weeks left to cram as much knowledge as we can into the brains of our beleaguered students, hoping that not too much seeps out before they take their finals. Just a few short months ago, snow was falling and May seemed so far off. And I found myself longing for the warmth and care-free times ahead. Ah, May... we'll be so close to the end; things will be smooth sailing; it'll be grand!
At present, I don't quite find myself in that situation. Rather, I continually find myself bogged down in planning, in grading, in all the details of how we will accomplish all we need to get done in the short number of school days remaining.
In times like these, it's so easy to forget my overall mission. In the grand scheme of things, I know that the vast majority of these details, the terms, the concepts, the lessons learned... in short order, they will be unlearned.
It's something that teachers don't like to think about. We tell ourselves that what we're teaching is important. These are things that you'll need in life. Of course, that's why we're teaching it to you! But as a science teacher, I sometimes hear my students talking about what they're going in their other classes, and I think to myself, "Hmmmm, that sounds vaguely familiar. I must have learned that at some point." But of course, I don't remember it. Just imagine all the things you learned throughout your secondary education. What percentage of it is still up there in your brain, ready to be pulled out for reference any time you need it? Probably not a lot.
The things that really stick with us are, of course, the things we teachers master through teaching. And the reason we retain this knowledge is because we teach it again and again in different ways, continually tweaking and refining from lesson to lesson, year to year.
Of course, we remember the definitions, the names, the dates, the theorems, the processes, the quotes, the answers to the test. And it's impressive that we can get most of our students to remember these things too, but do we really expect that they will continue to remember them?
So if they're going to forget so much of what we learn, what do we really expect them to get out of all these years of education?
Well, let's think about what we can hope our students will remember. It can't all disappear, right?
What are the broader insights? What are the big questions? What are the ways of thinking that we want to foster in children for whom adulthood isn't all that far off?
As a science teacher, my mission is not to get students to learn about science as much as it is to get them to understand how and why science works. I want them to use science as a tool... or better still, a lens to view the world, a way to pull back the curtain on everything around us and peer behind the scenes. I want every single one of my students to walk away with an appreciation for the value of science, and what science gives us. I want them to recognize what a world without science would (and previously did) look like.
In short, I want them to be scientifically literate.
Every year, on the first day of school, I play this YouTube clip from Neil deGrasse Tyson. In it, he sums up why scientific literacy matters for all of us. It's an excellent primer for the 180 school days to follow.
Scientific literacy is a necessary ingredient for success in today's world: success of our technology, success of our policies, success of our nation, success of our planet's future. Those who don't value science conveniently forget all the marvels of science they have at their fingertips virtually every second of the day.
And so, these are the takeaways I want to promote in my classroom on a regular basis. Yes, I will teach the facts, the terminology, the concepts, the equations, the history. And most students will remember some of it. But what I really hope sticks with them is the ongoing search for scientific truth, and the uncanny tendency for science to uncover new knowledge as well as new questions. It's a never-ending process.
So hopefully when they leave my classroom in a month, my students will come to see (maybe not right away) that their own learning about the world is also a never-ending process. And being scientifically literate a good way to ensure they're on the right track in whatever they pursue.
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