by editor | Mar 20, 2014 | Learning Theory
By Jim Martin
CLEARING Associate Editor
he young woman carefully pours hydrogen peroxide into a graduated cylinder, presses a key on a computer keyboard, then measures ten drops of liver homogenate into the cylinder. The surface of the hydrogen peroxide seems to leap at the first drop of homogenate, then the drop begins to froth and spin as it is carried deep into the cylinder, trailing a growing, spinning plume of bubbles. Each drop increases the frothing turbulence in the cylinder until it seems enveloped in a pulsing explosion of bubbles. Meanwhile, the young woman’s glance moves from a developing graph on the computer’s monitor to the activity in the cylinder and back again. Science is being done.
If we could see into her mind, what kind of thoughts must we find there? What must she have done and thought to get to where she is at this moment? How will her thoughts change when the reaction has gone to completion and she reviews the data? One thing is certain: this young woman has a history of doing process science. Another thing is certain; her work presents her with conceptual schemata which require filling out with specific facts; the work she does generates a need to know. This need can drive her into the books and the web to find out. Can we capture this kind of science in our classrooms? Can we accommodate her experiences into a model of science pedagogy?
How might this scenario play out in a stream, where the young woman is measuring water quality, collecting and identifying macroinvertebrates, and entering her data into an iPad? Is there any substantial difference in her experiences in the two environments? Certainly there are logistical differences, but I submit that these are an emergent phenomenon which arises from our traditional concept of what school is. Is school a journey of the mind, or is it a place with boundaries, where we learn to pass tests? In both places, she is engaging similar mental concepts, and procedural processes. Our bodies and brains are able to work in both environments. The significant thing is that what the mind and body are doing has to be meaningful. In the case of this young woman, what she is learning is related to what she knows of other knowledge; it is being learned within a familiar context. If she were learning for a test, she would learn the facts, but they wouldn’t necessarily be learned in order to understand. The kind of learning this young woman is engaging is active learning, in which she is constantly comparing her experiences with what she knows. Whether she is consciously aware of it, she has learned how to learn. That’s a powerful skill.
In school, we tend to move from one topic directly to another as if this is what education is about. Many of us do this in our personal world, racing through life, leafing through it as we would a magazine in the doctor’s office, never pausing to contemplate what it is, what it means. We should take the time to absorb life so we can live within it. The same goes for school. Instead of zipping on to the next topic as soon as we’ve covered the current one well enough to test on it, we should probe for students’ attainment of the concepts embedded in the topic to see if they’ve nailed them down. We ought to give students a chance to think about what they’re learning, and design a repeat investigation to nail down their understandings. We need to explore ways to transition what we have just learned to what we will be learning. Even though they can parrot words we’ve used, they may entertain misconceptions and may well not actually understand what we assume they know.
This applies also to teachers. Our pre-service preparation and most of our in-service learning was done with this industrial assembly line model, zipping us through a ritual that eventually placed us at the head of a classroom. About twenty years ago, I was doing a wetlands ecology institute for teachers, and a question came up among the staff about what to do after the teacher participants’ first afternoon in a local wetland. One opinion was, “Okay, they’ve done their first study. Let’s get them ready to go to the coast for their second study.” The other opinion was, “They’ve done what amounts to a casual observation, which might have raised some questions they could follow up with a second investigation.” Fortunately, the second opinion won the day; the participants asked questions which arose as they processed their observations, and they used these to design the following day’s study at the same wetland. Having done that inquiry, once at the coast they hit the beach running, the well-oiled machine, and they nailed down what they had been learning about wetland ecology. It took time, but it moved them further up the learning curve.
After their original casual observation, we could have left them where they were, some in the Acquisition phase, some entering Proficiency. This is what many in-service educators do. We assume the teacher will move to Mastery, but only a few have the self-confidence to do so. Instead, we leave them knowing that they could know, but not ready to take the next few steps. Dryas and I had a mutual friend, who was in late middle-age. Let’s call her Sarah. Sarah had decided to leave an emotionally abusive relationship, but had no idea what to do, nor did she have the confidence to try. A few of us located a place where she could stay, and I agreed to meet with her once a week to help her develop a business plan for using art to explore relationships as a way to earn a living. Over a period of three or four months, we’d meet once a week, and she’d bring out what she’d accomplished on the plan. Her Acquisition phase was long, about six weeks, but then she started accelerating into Proficiency. Sarah had been making collages to express her feelings then interpreting them. This is what she planned to teach others. After moving into Proficiency, each week her collages portrayed a bird, first totally enclosed in a sealed room becoming a bird looking out the window, seeing life outside the window, perched on the window sill, and finally freedom – soaring in the air toward the Sun. The slow but steady movement from locus of control far outside the body, to deep within and freedom to live her life. It takes time, but moves us up the learning curve. We need this in our emotional life, but also in our cognitive, conceptual life.
What’s the difference in insecurity about living in a relationship and insecurity about teaching in a content area? You could leave the relationship because the other isn’t likely to change. But, understanding the science means you’re in a win-win situation, and don’t have to leave, much as you would be in the relationship if the other decided to go into counseling. The young woman pouring hydrogen peroxide obviously understands what she is doing and why. She’ll continue this relationship. That’s what we want.
Are we adrift now? The point is that, like all things we do, they’re done by humans. We bring our small, effective human arsenal to bear on a large number of issues, all manageable with what a well-understood arsenal contains. In school, the secret is your confidence in your capacity to teach, just as in your personal life, the secret is your confidence in your capacity to manage a relationship. Likewise, a student’s confidence in the content and concepts determines her ownership of her learnings. We need to bring them to confidence, then we’re all ready to move to the next topic. How do we do that?
Working with Meredith, the middle-school teacher who takes her class out to the creek at the edge of the school yard, we’ve seen how she has learned to have her students repeat investigations to move along the learning curve. Like a booster rocket, they’ve got altitude and velocity; just need that extra push to get them into orbit. The first time through their work on the creek, they figured out how to do it. Setting up more than one station per group, one at a riffle, at a glide, and at a pool, would ensure students had ample opportunity to move to Mastery. At each trip to the creek, students might repeat their observations more quickly, and could move in to explore new curricula in the time saved. While moving their understanding of, say, macroinvertebrate collection, identification, and interpretation to Mastery, they could be moving their understanding of the roles of the rest of that ecosystem in generating a healthy habitat for the animals they are studying through Acquisition into at least initial Proficiency. That puts Meredith in charge of her curriculum. Which is where she should be; on the road to building competent, empowered minds.
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
by editor | Mar 11, 2014 | K-12 Classroom Resources
by Connor O’Malley
reprinted courtesy of Alderleaf Wilderness College
http://www.wildernesscollege.com/
oyote teaching is a phrase popularized by Tom Brown Jr. and Jon Young. Similar teaching methods however, have been used by indigenous people, philosophers, psychologists, and wise individuals all over the world. A “coyote teacher” is one who encourages the student to delve deeper into the mystery at hand, rather than ending the learning process by providing a quick answer.
This form of teaching is most effective with a student that you are in a mentoring relationship with. Trust between the student and the teacher is a crucial ingredient to success. This kind of teaching happens when a teacher is hyperaware of their student and knows their students’ knowledge base, personality, comfort zones, desires, current mood, family situation, upbringing, etc. Using this abundance of knowledge, the teacher can creatively challenge and inspire their student to look deeper. The more you know about the student, the more effective you will be as a coyote teacher. The most common failure I have seen (and caused) with this form of teaching happens when the teacher does not know the student well enough, or is not aware enough of how the student is doing in that moment.
One aspect of this kind of teaching, in certain situations, is withholding an answer from an eager student and forcing them to look closer. This can obviously cause problems with a student who is impatient, not in the mood, or has become accustomed to quick and easy answers. It is a balancing act to use this technique with students who are paying money for a class. They may feel that they aren’t getting their money’s worth if they don’t get all of their questions answered immediately. One of my great mentors, Dan Gardoqui (White Pine Programs) would navigate this slippery terrain with one simple line: “Do you want me to tell you the answer or do you want to look it up for yourself?” If I wanted the answer right there and then, he’d tell me – thus earning my trust. At the same time, he was challenging me to put in the hard work.
Let me paint a picture of a successful coyote teaching scenario:
A group of students are walking along the beach and they come across some tracks. Before anyone talks about the tracks the teacher asks them to take a minute and just look at them. Then the teacher asks someone to say what they see (but NOT what the animal is). One student says “I see 5 toes” another student says “I see long claws and a triangular heel pad”. Now before anyone can say the answer, the teacher has the students follow the trail. It leads them down the beach and to a dumpster where it chewed up a greasy paper bag. Then it leads to a small scat with blunt ends that is full of insect parts. Finally they lose the trail and discuss their findings. What was the animal? A skunk! Rather than tell everyone who made the tracks at the very beginning, the mystery was kept alive and the students were forced to remain engaged until the end of the trail.
You can see that by tactfully holding out on some answers, it can greatly enhance the learning experience.
So how does one learn to be a coyote teacher? In my opinion, it is very simple.
Step 1: Develop yourself. Practice your skills, do sit spots, look-up mysteries, expand your awareness, do the things that ignite that feeling of inspiration inside yourself.
Step 2: Have genuine relationships with people.
The majority of teaching is role-modeling. All of my favorite teachers were people who were always striving to improve themselves, always looking for answers to things, looking for creative solutions to problems with an open mind and then they “gave their gifts” to me just by being my friend. They reached out by inviting me over for a beer or they gave me a job; asked me to babysit their kids. To me this is true coyote teaching and what mentoring is all about.
Recommended Books
Coyote’s Guide by Young, McGown and Haas
by editor | Feb 13, 2014 | Teaching Science
Should they direct students’ educations, or would they be better applied to teachers’ educations?
by Jim Martin
CLEARING Associate Editor
icture this: Science teachers with a strong background in doing science, working in a collegial environment, building their own independent curricula. Will they do a better job than those who, working alone in their classrooms, implement top-down national standards? I like the collegial model. Where it describes how teachers in a school actually work, students do best. To accomplish a collegial model means science teachers must organize themselves to do a better job of overseeing their pre- and in-service educations and the way they deliver their curricula; they need to be in charge. Publishing sets of science standards isn’t how to improve science education. The people who teach science need to be comfortable with it, to know and use science, and pass this capacity on to their students. That, by itself, will do the job.
We’ve been following teachers and their efforts to look outside the classroom for their curricula. This isn’t a smooth process for most teachers. For many of us, our pre-service educations didn’t prepare us for it, the work itself entails a set of skills and knowledge we haven’t practiced, and it produces an emergent set of outcomes which generalize to all disciplinary areas. The world outside is the subject of K-12 education, but it isn’t taught as if it were. Before there were schools, we learned about the world by living it. That’s how our brains are organized to learn for understanding and empowerment. Learning by memorizing puts facts in our brains, but doesn’t empower the brain to use them to navigate the real world. If it did, we’d do a better job at the helm. In spite of perennial rhetoric about the outcome of science education in the US, it still resolves, for the most part, to specific knowledge of scientific facts. Science offers much more than this.
Photo copyright 2014 Jim Martin
One thing I noticed during my years in the classroom is that scientists who decide to become science teachers become very good science teachers. They aren’t limited by the words and illustrations in the teachers’ edition. They know, understand, and do science, and use that as their foundation to teach from. How would science and environmental education look if science teachers had also done science? What would we have to do to explore this model, decide how to use it, and begin to implement it? There have been initiatives like this that were very successful, but which died at the end of their funding. They made a big dent in the way a number of teachers teach, but made no impression on entities like state departments of education, or most school district superintendents. Because, by using the real world to generate curricula, teaching science by doing science doesn’t rely on standard publishers’ offerings, it doesn’t appear to be education. To the inexperienced.
Politicians, citizens, and educators have been addressing the use of standards and benchmarks, and standards-based tests in K-12 schools for at least two decades. While they are still on the hunt for the magical set of standards and benchmarks which will guarantee improvement in science education, to date a fruitless search, some of the words they utter may have practical use. Once in a while, words like analysis and synthesis, problem solving, reading for understanding, are spoken. Do we teach to these words? Or do we teach to memorize these words and their meanings.
While the words aren’t the customary ones we read in science text books (critical thinking, analysis and synthesis, etc.), they speak more clearly to science than acquiring a set of memorized words and facts. A checklist of standards addressed but not learned for understanding. Used in an authentic way, these words have the capacity to speak to involvement and investment in science, to empowerment as persons, to minds immersed in the real world that K-12 education is supposed to prepare us for. It’s up to us to see that this is what emerges in our classrooms and on our sites.
Here is a list of processes engaged on college campuses, and which are proposed by some for middle and high school students: critical thinking, analysis and problem solving, scientific and quantitative reasoning, writing, critical reading and evaluation, writing effectiveness and mechanics, and the ability to critique and construct arguments. Might they be goals for us to shoot for, an effective set of standards? How would you use them to teach science or environmental education topics?
While we continue to try to improve science (and all) education, we produce only words; standards and benchmarks. Just the title, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), one recent initiative to improve science education, is a clear indicator that we continue to parse words to fit what we are already doing, and call that change. It’s true that some standards proponents acknowledge that we have to do a better job of preparing teachers, but offer little to provide funding and education resources to do the job.
The intentions of the NGSS to stimulate new curricula, train pre- and in-service teachers, foster students who do science as science is done, and students who master science concepts, could be a sign of hope if you take them at face value. But if you look at the flip side, this could simply be more of the same with a newly calibrated vocabulary. A vocabulary which can be didactically taught and memorized, changing little that we actually do. And which may not be funded to supplement the necessary pre- and in-service training to implement the meat of the proposed changes. According to the National Science Teachers Association, 3.2 million teachers will be affected by the NGSS. Can we expect their real needs to be paid for?
There is a sense among people that, if you “just use the words, you’re doing the thing.” I’ve sat in in-service presentations that do this. In one, at the end of my K-12 teaching career, we were being asked to use words like “why” and “how” in multiple-choice question stems in order to induce critical thinking. How much critical thinking can you induce in a multiple-choice question stem? We need to do better than this. You have to experience the cognitive processes the words refer to. That’s how our brain learns for understanding. College teachers purport to do this. What if we explored what they do? I know that even very young children learn very well when they are allowed to use their own brains to do the learning. What would happen if you used your own brain to organize and deliver your curriculum?
Do we ask all colleges and universities to teach to the same science standards? Or, do we allow them the latitude to teach what they think ought to be taught? What emerges from this? Why? Why they and not us? What would emerge? How would K-16 collaborations work out? Would they improve education? Impoverish it? Make no difference? For instance, college courses often involve students in critical thinking, analysis and problem solving, scientific and quantitative reasoning, writing, critical reading and evaluation, writing effectiveness and mechanics, and the ability to critique and construct arguments. In other words, they know that brains can learn for understanding, and those thought processes use the parts of the brain that are engaged during learning for understanding. Or, at least, one would hope that they did. The standards remind us of conceptual areas we need to address, but we must do a good job of giving our students quality time to engage them, to reflect on what they experience, and learn for understanding and empowerment. There is no teachers’ manual on this, but the process can be learned and used. It’s up to us to learn how to do it.
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
by editor | Feb 5, 2014 | K-12 Classroom Resources, Questioning strategies
Rivers reveal their secrets to Idaho students researching water quality through rigorous scientific inquiry
Photos and story by Suzie Boss
Squiggly blue lines cover the map of Idaho, a state with more than 2,000 lakes and hundreds of miles of rivers. From the perspective of veteran science teacher Bob Beckwith, all that water means that nearly every Idaho student has easy access to a creek, a stream, or a lake. “Probably 95 percent of the state’s population lives along a watershed,” he estimates. And where there’s water, Beckwith can promise you, there’s a science project worth pursuing.
On an early winter morning, for example, Beckwith and fellow Eagle High School biology teacher Steve DeMers loaded three classes of warmly dressed sophomores and armloads of scientific gear onto a school bus and headed off on an all-day investigation of water quality along the Boise River. By the day’s end, students had made four stops to gather data between the mouth of the river and headwaters in the mountains west of Boise. They waded midstream to collect invertebrates and dipped their hands into icy currents to test ph and oxygen levels. They checked and rechecked their measurements, keeping careful track of resulting numbers for future analysis.
Despite the frosty weather and the high spirits that come with escaping the classroom, students resisted the urge to hurl snowballs. And all day long, there was no whining. Every student participating in the trip was there by choice, doing what Beckwith calls “real science.”
Since he began teaching in 1972, Beckwith has been using projects to introduce his students to the scientific method. There’s no shortage of evidence that it’s an effective strategy. Beckwith himself is a past recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in teaching secondary science. Several of his students have won regional and national honors in elite science competitions, and many have gone on to launch careers in engineering, biology, medicine, and other fields that require a deep understanding of science. Even students who aren’t destined for technical careers, Beckwith points out, gain the benefit of “learning to ask a question and figure out the answer. That’s how I define science literacy.”
On the banks of the Boise River, three girls from Eagle High interrupted their fieldwork to explain the appeal of project-based learning. “We learn so much more this way compared to reading a book,” said one. “You get to experience it yourself, so you really understand what something like turbidity means,” added another. “This applies to me,” explained the third girl. “This is a river where I might want to swim or go fishing. The quality of this water matters. It’s important. And I have the tools right here to find out whether or not it’s clean,” she said, holding up a vial of river water she was evaluating for the presence of nitrates. Although she knew there would be more analysis to be done later, back in the classroom, she had already gained one insight from taking snapshots along different parts of the river: “Upstream, away from the city, the water gets cleaner.”
photo, kids gathering specimens from the river bottom
photo, examining a screen for macro invertebrates
photo, testing water quality
photo, giving the results to the teacher
During a winter day spent collecting data along the Boise River, students in hip waders used a kick screen to gather specimens from the river bottom (at top); examined the screen for macro invertebrates; tested water quality; and, finally, reported their numbers to teacher Bob Beckwith (bottom, right, with clipboard).
Sharing Skills
Through an ambitious effort he launched several years ago, Beckwith also helps other Idaho teachers acquire the skills, equipment, and confidence they need to incorporate project-based learning into their classes. Project SITE—which stands for Students Investigating Today’s Environment—engages students and teachers across the state in projects involving scientific inquiry into water quality, noxious weeds, and other real-world concerns.
Beckwith co-directs SITE with David Redfield, dean of health and science at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa. Support for the project has come from a variety of sources, including several Idaho colleges, school-to-work partnerships, the state department of education, Idaho Rangeland Commission, and private funders such as the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation.
More than 200 teachers have gone through SITE training, which immerses them in the same kind of project-based learning they will later orchestrate with their own students. The core of training is an intensive, five-day summer workshop that reminds teachers why science is best understood through active learning. Little time is spent listening to lectures or reading texts. Instead, teachers do real fieldwork, rafting the Salmon River to collect data that relate to water quality or surveying plant life to assess the spread of noxious weeds.
“It’s not lecture/read/do a canned experiment,” Beckwith says. “We might talk for short periods about things they don’t understand very well, then provide them with an experience where they can pose questions and do research to figure out the answers. So it’s a steep learning curve. We model how science works. Science is not a textbook—that’s a history book of facts that scientists have already learned by asking questions. Those facts are an important foundation,” he acknowledges, “but real science involves going out and answering new questions.”
Between Monday and Friday of a typical training week, “teachers learn everything they need to be classroom ready,” Beckwith says. Participants also come away with armloads of gear provided by SITE. “We don’t just train them and then expect them to find a way to buy their own equipment,” he says. “We give them all the stuff they need,” he says, such as test kits, digital cameras, and a manual he wrote in accessible language to guide students through nine scientifically valid field tests designed to measure water quality.
In return, teachers agree to take their students out on data-gathering projects at least three times during the school year. They also bring SITE students together to present their projects during an annual Idaho Student Showcase Day in the spring. By fulfilling their end of the bargain, teachers can earn a stipend.
Providing teachers with such extensive support means that the SITE organizers have had to devote considerable energy to writing grants and reaching out to potential funders. The program invests about $1,500 per teacher on training and supplies, Beckwith estimates. But the investment pays off, he says, by “freeing teachers to focus on teaching.” Water quality —which integrates biology, chemistry, and physics—continues to be a prime focus of fieldwork, but funding for research on weeds has led to new SITE projects in the area of life sciences. “As long as we can collect data, work as a team, and ask questions, then it’s a valid project,” Beckwith says.
To be sure, project-based learning puts high demands on the instructor. “This takes energy,” Beckwith admits at the end of a cold day spent outdoors with a busload of teenagers. But for teachers who enjoy being learners themselves, this style of teaching “helps prevent burnout,” he adds. “It lets teachers engage in questions, too. They have to know enough to help students figure out the answers. As a teacher, you have to allow students to go places even if you don’t know the answers.”
Some teachers need a little “nurturing,” Beckwith admits, to gain the confidence to launch students on challenging projects outside the confines of the classroom. “For others, this way of learning fits so well with their teaching style—it’s natural. They pick it right up.” When Beckwith explains SITE methods to teachers who already believe in active learning, “you just have to put the idea on the table and then run to get out of their way!”
photo, girl using water quality equipment
Students use scientific equipment to measure water quality indicators— not once, but three times. Later, back in the classroom, their numbers will be added to a statewide database. Their first field lesson: accuracy counts.
Pleasant Surprises
Shannon Laughlin was in her first year of teaching middle school science when she saw a flyer about Project SITE. She signed up for two weeks of workshops last summer, including a five-day raft trip along the Salmon River.
“You work your tail off,” she recalls, laughing. “You’re on the river nine hours a day, then talk more about science at night. It’s wonderful!” Although Laughlin holds degrees in both plant science and entomology, she had never done fieldwork. “This kind of hands-on training gives you a chance to prepare,” she says, “so you’re ready when it’s time to take your kids out.”
Last fall, Laughlin began introducing her students at Marsing Middle School to project-based learning. For students and teacher alike, Project SITE has been a journey of surprises. “My kids started by asking me, ‘What are we going to find out?'” Laughlin would tell them: “I don’t know. You’re the scientists.” Project SITE is worlds removed from what Laughlin calls “canned labs, where you can guess what the results should be. What’s neat about this is, you don’t know ahead of time what you’re going to learn. I like to do things where I don’t know the answers in advance.”
Laughlin’s students have been using SITE protocols to test water quality along the Snake River, which runs right through their community and is only a five-minute bus ride from the school. “They fish in this river and swim in it. The river is a part of their life. So they have a personal stake in asking: Is it clean?” That question has led them to others, such as: What affects water quality—agriculture? pollutants? animals?
Although Laughlin says SITE has opened the door to powerful learning opportunities that build science literacy, that’s not the only benefit she’s witnessed. Using field-tested SITE methods, she asked her students to break into teams and choose their own captains. “The ones they chose as captains are not necessarily the usual leaders. But these kids blew me out of the water,” Laughlin admits. “Natural leadership does not always show up in the classroom. These kids did a great job, and it gave them a chance they might not have had otherwise to demonstrate their leadership, their competence.” She enjoyed sharing that observation with her principal, who came along on the first field trip and has become an enthusiastic supporter of the project.
Power Of Teamwork
Beckwith knows from experience that teamwork is a valuable component of SITE projects. “The tasks are such that one person can’t do it alone,” he explains. “Students have to work in teams, and team members have to depend on each other.” Back in the classroom, teams share test results as part of their quality assurance. “If the teams get similar results,” he explains, “they know they’re on target.” Because data are entered into a SITE database that students all over the state can access for research, accuracy is critical.
What’s more, the team approach to research allows all learners to contribute, no matter how diverse their skill levels or how different their learning styles. “Out in the field, they all can be active participants,” Beckwith says. “Nobody’s sitting on the bench. When they come back into the classroom, they can share their data. Every number offers some valuable information.
David Redfield, a professor of chemistry at Northwest Nazarene University in addition to being co-director of SITE, is convinced that such projects “are not just for the elite students. It’s amazing to see kids who are not particularly strong in traditional classroom settings step up and take on a leadership role on a team. They all can use their strengths.
At the university, teamwork skills are valued, Redfield notes. The depth of science literacy that SITE fosters should help prepare students for the rigor of college-level work. “By the time they reach the university, we should be seeing students who are further along as scientists,” he predicts.
SITE not only introduces students to the process of scientific inquiry, Redfield says, but also gives them enough practice in fieldwork so they can start to become confident researchers. “It’s important for them to go out at least three times during the school year to gather data,” he explains. “The first time they do the tests, it feels like a lab exercise. They’re just learning how to use the equipment, take the measurements. But by going into the real world to gather data, then returning to the classroom to analyze results, they can start to look for patterns. They ask questions to figure out why they got the results they did. It becomes a real experience—the numbers have relevance.”
As students repeat the data-gathering process, “the repetition builds their skills,” Redfield says. “If the data seem off, they can take a close look at how they’re collecting samples. That’s a problem-solving exercise right there—to figure out how to correct their methods in the field. They start to know enough to question results if the numbers seem flawed or wrong. That takes confidence.” As students repeat the cycle of posing a hypothesis, gathering data, and analyzing results, “it takes them deeper and deeper into understanding what’s happening, and why,” Redfield says. “When they’re confident about their numbers, then they can move on to ask: What are these numbers telling us? Why did the oxygen go down? What else changed? Is there a relationship, a pattern?”
Beckwith also takes a long-term view of where Project SITE might lead. “Once they learn to use this model, students should be able to apply scientific inquiry to questions of their own. There should be some students in every class who get really excited, really curious. They can take off on their own investigations,” he says.
He’s seen it happen. One of his former students became curious about Mars, and went on to design an experiment that won a national competition sponsored by NASA. Another girl had to miss some class time because her family was traveling to India. She packed along a water quality kit and tested samples of the Ganges and other rivers, which she compared to the water quality of Idaho rivers.
Recently, Beckwith received an e-mail from a student, now a junior in college, asking for a letter of reference for graduate school applications. It was in his biology class, doing Project SITE, that she did her first fieldwork and became inspired to become a scientist. Beckwith will know when project-based learning really takes off in Idaho and transforms the culture of the classroom, “because we’ll be flooded with letters like that one. It’s far better than any test score,” he says, “for measuring success.”
What’s in SITE?
Teachers currently involved in Project SITE recently came together for an all-day workshop to share information about their classroom activities. Their experiences show that project-based teaching methods can work in a variety of settings and appeal to a wide range of learners. Among the examples:
At Kuna High School, students can start participating in SITE activities as freshmen, in Ken Lewis‘s ninth-grade biology class. “We focus on ecology, and use SITE to explore biotic indicators like macro invertebrates. Working in groups, they come up with some great hypotheses,” he says. Later, when students take chemistry and physics, they use SITE inquiry methods again. “I see a bump in their understanding,” says teacher Mike Weidenfeld. “They have better techniques, deeper understanding.” In chemistry, for example, he uses SITE “as a springboard.” Collecting water samples “gets kids to ask questions like, Why is ph important?”
Roy Gasparotti teaches a yearlong projects class for seventh-graders at New Plymouth Middle School and says SITE “fits right in. Interdisciplinary projects are part of our curriculum.” He asks students to assess whether water samples “are good or bad. Then they develop PowerPoint presentations with their data. It’s more fun for kids to work with their own numbers, to graph data they have collected. It’s more meaningful to them.” Fellow teacher Craig Mefford works with the same students on writing their hypotheses and making carefully worded observations.
Will Zollman, who teaches agricultural science at Midvale Junior-Senior High, took a SITE training session on weeds last summer, along with his superintendent and a school board member. So district support for project-based learning is a given. “This has added to my teaching,” he says. “It’s made me look at weeds in a different way—how do they affect rangeland? What can we do about them?” Those are questions he hopes to have his students exploring through fieldwork this spring.
Steve DeMers, who teaches at Eagle High School, has been involved with SITE for three years. “I want to take it a step further,” he says, to get students to consider deeper questions after they have gathered data. He has students use their test results to create graphs with Excel software. “Then I ask them to look for trends. What should a graph look like? Can they explain what’s happening, and why? I’m trying to get them to recognize patterns.”
John Pedersen, a middle school teacher in Nampa, took a SITE workshop early in his teaching career and has been using project-based methods ever since. This year, students are doing water and weather studies. “One student trains the next to enter data,” he explains.
Chad Anzen at Fruitland High School is starting to see students who have had the benefit of project-based learning as early as middle school. “We have a middle school teacher who does SITE, and I’m getting those kids now in high school. They take off so much faster. They act like teachers themselves,” he says, “helping their classmates understand how to do field tests.” By the time the same students take advanced biology, he adds, “they’re ready to go to the step of analyzing. It’s exciting.”
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
