We have a new principal. She doesn’t seem to understand what it’s like to be a science teacher. For example, she wants to schedule non-science classes in the labs during our planning periods. One of my colleagues wants to give her a list of what she should do for us, but I’m not sure that would be the best solution.
— DeAnn, North Charleston, South Carolina
In all fairness to our principals, they are expected to be both building managers and instructional leaders. If their own science backgrounds consisted of lectures with an occasional demonstration, they may not understand the concept or the value of inquiry-based learning. They may be unaware of the teacher’s responsibility for safety in the labs or security in the storage areas. They may have never considered how much behind-the-scenes work science teachers do (especially when we make it look easy). Giving her a list could put her on the defensive, so you might want to help her see what your challenges are.
Ask your principal to observe lab classes (for the whole period, not just a walkthrough). In your debriefing meeting, describe what students learn from these activities (perhaps with examples of student work) as well as the amount of time it takes to set up and put away the materials and read a report from each student, the safety and cooperative learning procedures you help students learn, and the fact that the students could not have done the activity in a “regular” classroom without running water, lots of electrical outlets, flat tables, and appropriate safety equipment.
All teachers use their planning time for writing lesson plans and evaluating assignments. But science teachers have additional demands. Sometimes principals see how organized you are and don’t realize how much time and effort it takes. Keep a log of the amount of time you spend setting up your labs, including time before and after school. Also log the time spent inventorying and maintaining the storage areas, repairing or servicing equipment, and complying with local and state regulations. Show her the inventory of equipment and materials you have to keep up-to-date, including the Material Safety Data Sheets.
Invite your principal to attend a department or team meeting to discuss some of your concerns. Frame your suggestions in terms of student benefit and safety rather than teacher ease and convenience. For example, describe the hazards (and possible liability) of scheduling non-science classes or study halls in lab classrooms. If you think homeroom students would interfere with your lab setups, suggest you could take on a different duty in lieu of a homeroom class. If you ask for more planning time, emphasize it would be used for the additional responsibilities that come with teaching science (and then be sure that it is).
Share some resources with your principal. The website Understanding Science has a section called “Everything You Need to Know About the Nature and Process of Science” that could bring her up-to-date on what good science teaching includes. Your question implies you’re in a secondary school, so you could share copies of NSTA’s position statements Learning Conditions for High School Science and Safety and School Science Instruction. NSTA’s newsletter for elementary principals, Scientific Principals, may also be of interest. You don’t have to be a principal (or a member of NSTA) to subscribe. NSTA also has several publications on safety that should be part of every school’s professional library.
If you treat her as a professional colleague and focus on student learning and safety, she may become your science department’s best advocate.

It used to be that a unit on the polar regions focused on historical explorations or cute stories about polar bears and penguins. But with the Internet, students can get involved themselves in real-time explorations and studies, such as the ones featured in this month’s issue. In case you erased your copy of NSTA’s Science Class, this month’s issue had a list of links for On the Web: Polar Science and the International Polar Year . Other resources are available from the organizations such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: Polar Research and Polar Discovery. Other relevant website can be found on the SciLinks site with the keyword polar marine ecosystems.
A colleague tuned me in to Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, an online magazine designed for K-5 teachers. But don’t scoff at this – there are no dancing cartoons here, and when I looked at the online versions for grades 4-5, this could be perfect for older students who have challenges reading high school level materials. These nonfiction books are serious science in them and the site itself is not childish.
It seems that just about every topic in science has engaging projects and resources for the classroom. But one refrain keeps coming up: “I’d love to do these, but I have too much to cover.” If we assume that “cover” means to transmit information, the lecture is how this is often accomplished. The latest issue of Learning and Leading with Technology has an interesting point/counterpoint discussion on the topic Should Podcasts Replace Lectures? One of the participants makes a strong case for the value of interactive lectures, while the other notes that if a lecture is simply a one-way transmission of information, why not take advantage of the medium that has become an integral part of our students’ lives.
Our students are already wired for sound! I had to stop for a school bus recently, and just about every student who got off had a cell phone and/or an iPod attached to his or her ears. I wonder if the students who frequently forget their homework or textbooks ever leave home without their electronics? This same issue of Learning and Leading also had an article Remixing Chemistry Class that describes how two chemistry teachers make “vodcasts” (videos with lectures and demonstrations) to free up class time for lab investigations and other activities. Unfortunately, the article is available online only to members of ISTE, but your school’s technology coordinator may be a member and can get you the article.
If you’re not as familiar with podcasts as you’d like to be, many organizations have daily or weekly podcasts (which you can also listen to on your computer – you don’t need to walk around with earbuds). Scientific American and AAAS have brief podcasts on a variety of topics. If you Google science + podcast,, you get a lengthy list. And don’t forget NSTA’s Lab Out Loud (check out episode 23 on the Period Table of Videos).
If you’d like to take the plunge and try to create a podcast, your students can probably show you how, or you can check out the Resources section of the EdTech Innovators website. These two science teachers have embraced the way current technologies can engage students. Their resources include free downloads of the software and step-by-step directions for creating a podcast. Wouldn’t it be interesting to have students create podcasts – for review or make-up work or for younger students?

Does it seem to you that the pigeons and seagulls that roost and circle the grocery parking lot are more active in winter? I wonder if they are really more active or just more noticeable as there is less action on the street with fewer people walking by. Winter wonderings like these make me realize how dedicated to finding out scientists must be, to persist in difficult conditions.
Talking about persistent—read how Michael Beecher, who leads the research on song sparrows at the University of Washington, and his colleagues tracked song sparrows in the November 8, 2008 issue of Science News. Reporter Susan Milius writes, “Now Beecher and Templeton are analyzing results from their Seattle field project tracking young birds out listening to music. The experimental demands were “insane,” Beecher says. Starting in spring 2006, Templeton and his tracking team equipped young male birds with little radio tags. Thanks to the miracle of modern electronics, tags weighed only about 4 percent of the weight of a song sparrow. At that size, the batteries lasted only five or six weeks, necessitating trapping the youngster at the right time for a switch.
For a year, the crew went out every day to find young birds and record the songs of nearby adults. On a “perfect” day, data gathering took only five hours. The real world of evasive birds, cranky bystanders and suburban cats was far from perfect.”
In the January 2009 issue of Science and Children, the Early Years column activity tells how students examine feathers and group them by shape and size and color. Children can do the same kind of grouping with birds they see. All they need is a paper and pencil to record what they see so they can keep track of their data. Grouping and counting are part of a young scientist’s everyday math tasks. Where can your class observe birds?
Peggy

My school wants to encourage more parental involvement. Any suggestions?
—Madeleine, Lafayette, Louisiana
“Parental involvement” is a term we think we all understand, but it might help to discuss what “involved” parents are. On the one hand, they might be the parents/caregivers who come to open houses or conferences, belong to the Parent Teacher Association, read aloud to their child, volunteer in the school, call with questions about their child’s learning, and make sure their child does homework. On the other hand, there are the parents who do the homework for the child, question you repeatedly about grading, second-guess instructional decisions, make unreasonable demands on your time, or assume their child is always correct. And don’t forget about the parents who work multiple jobs to pay bills, have difficulty communicating in English, are experiencing their own personal or medical problems, or stay away because of negative experiences when they were students.
I prefer the term “parental support” to describe the positive things parents can do to be a part of their child’s education. Surprisingly, some parents may not know how to be supportive. Communication and positive experiences with schools can be the first steps in promoting parent support.
If we communicate only negative information (behavior issues, low test scores, missing homework), it can be understandable why parents/caregivers might not want much contact. A high school I worked in had a “Good News” project. Teachers were encouraged to send postcards (provided by the school) to parents to share positive student events: an improved grade, helpful behaviors, or an interesting activity. The school secretary would address and mail them (e-mail works, too, if parents/caregivers have accounts). Many parents would call to thank us for the good news.
Parents also should be able to find information easily on the school website. Class newsletters, webpages, or blogs could describe activities and assignments. An elementary school added a twist to the traditional school calendar. In addition to sporting events and holidays, every day had a suggestion—simple things such as “help your child write a note to a relative or friend” or “tell your child a story about when you were his/her age.” The calendar also had information about the local public library and museums. Some schools have take-home kits that include books, science mini-kits, or puzzles and games.
It may be hard to believe, but many parents get nervous when they have to visit their child’s school, and non-threatening, pleasant experiences can help them overcome their anxiety. A middle school I know switched from a teacher-centered Back-to-School Night to an Open House concept, encouraging students and other family members to come along. The students introduced their parents and teachers, showed their families where their seats were, what was in their lab notebooks, and how to open the lockers. If parents wanted to talk about their child in detail, they left their names and the teacher contacted them.
Some elementary schools are including students in the parent conferences, so students can share their work. At an elementary school in a neighborhood where many parents/caregivers walked their children to school, the principal offered coffee and doughnuts in the lobby every Friday morning and invited the parents to stay and chat with each other and some staff members.
A statement attributed to Shimon Peres may be applicable here: If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time. We can wait for external solutions to what we perceive as the “problem” of a lack of parent involvement, or we can cope by communicating with parents/caregivers, providing non-threatening opportunities for parents/caregivers to visit the school, and helping them learn how to be supportive.

Most of the time, the inside of my head feels twenty five years old. In the same way that human height seems to reach an apex at about that time, I believe our minds develop a sort of default value for our imagined age. From behind my eyes, I don’t imagine myself as much different from twenty-five. Unless, that is, I’m faced with clear evidence to the contrary.
Today is one of those days. Today I start a blog. I recently heard that the English language now has about five times the number of words it did in Shakespeare’s time, and ‘blog’ is one of them. I’m not nearly as old as Shakespeare, but ‘blog’ wasn’t around when I was growing up, either. Blog sounds to me like some dangerously dank geographical hurdle or the sound made by accidentally stepping on a bagpipe. But in either case, here I am, blogging.
So why am I blogging? Partly out of frustration. Frustration, I’ve found, is one of the major ways in which my mind is presented with clear evidence that I’m not twenty-five. But in this case, my frustration stems from trying to find a way to start a real conversation among JCST’s readers about our students, our jobs, and our lives. I know that there is much we share as college-level science instructors, and I know in my marrow that we can benefit from the experiences and the wisdom of one another. I also know that what we are doing now to make those connections isn’t working.
So here I am, blogging my heart out, still not entirely sure of what blogging should be.  Hoping that one of you—or many of you? Please? Will fill me in on where I’m going wrong (and where I’m going right) in the process. I can’t seem to find a handy rubric anywhere. I know that I’m supposed to pontificate about a topic, and that you’re supposed to reply. Unless you do your part, though, we will miss all the benefits of inquiry-based blogging. Not good.
I’ll post again soon. Like most traditionally-trained professors, the opportunity to pontificate is too great a lure. Please don’t let me do it alone.

I was in an elementary school where scientists from a nearby university visited the schools periodically to work with the students on a variety of activities and to describe their own research. The students were impressed with meeting “real” scientists and learning about their work. (One little girl asked if the scientist would autograph her notebook!) These students were learning about careers first-hand.
If there is a shortage of career role models in your community, we often have students could do “reports” on careers in science, looking at educational requirements, salary projections, etc. But I wonder how middleschoolers really relate to this activity? The Internet can bring people from around the world into our classrooms. For example, NOAA’s Ocean Explorers has archives of webcasts that include videos of scientists at work.
And I just got a recommendation from the Math-Science Partnerships’ Learning Network about the No Boundaries project from NASA. In this project, students explore STEM careers (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) within the context of NASA programs. It appears to be well designed, with rubrics, graphic organizers, cooperative learning suggestions, and other guidelines. Students can submit their projects later this year in a national competition.
If you’re not affiliated with a Math-Science Partnership project, you can sign up to join the Math Science Partnerships’ Learning Network which has a guest newsletter that is a great source of information and suggestions.

The NSTA Elementary Science List had an interesting query last week:
Steve Geresy asked if anyone has any great books on Early Learning Inquiry that have concrete examples for teachers to guide them through the process of becoming more inquiry based in their teaching.
Here’s a short, and by no means exhaustive, list of my favorites—what are yours?
Worms, Shadows, and Whirlpools by Sharon Grollman and Karen Worth (2003, Heinemann) because it includes “In the Classroom” stories with observations by real teachers who may not have science backgrounds but are implementing inquiry in their classrooms and writing about it.
What Is A Scientist? by Barbara Lehn, with wonderful photos by Carol Krauss (1999, Millbrook Press), a children’s book rather than a teacher resource book, but I use it that way to help teachers learn about what science is and use it for explaining early childhood science to the families. Teachers and children can read it together to learn about the science they may already be doing. It’s a good introduction to early childhood science, and a reminder to us all that children are very capable and we teachers do not have to tell the children what they see, understand, guess, or wonder about, but to give the children time and permission to voice their thoughts.
Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method, Over 100 hands-on science experiments for children by Sally Stenhouse Kneidel (1993, Fulcrum Publishing) has an excellent chapter on the scientific method, is especially good for in depth study, and the chapter on equipment is very helpful. It has detailed instructions on finding and maintaining small animals in captivity and good ideas for opportunities to observe. The experiments are directed toward elementary school age children.
Guppies, Bubbles and Vibrating Objects, A creative approach to the teaching of science to very young children by John McGavack Jr. and Donald P. LaSalle (1969, The John Day Company) is an oldie but goodie resource for its valuable discussion on teaching science to young children as well as many activities and experiments. Sections titled “How to begin”, “Why do it this way?” and “How to do it” are good guides, and include valuable modeling of teacher-student dialogs.  I find that teachers, who know how to use open-ended questions and how to listen to children in all other aspects of classroom learning, somehow change when they begin a science activity and start telling information. (There are so many interesting facts and ideas about the world that I am sympathetic to (sometimes guilty of!) this failing but we must allow time for children to think for themselves.)
Please add to this list and tell what you like about the resources.
Peggy

Next year there will be an opening in the middle school science department. Although I love teaching high school chemistry (my current assignment), I’m tempted by the opportunity to try something different. What should I consider to help me decide?
Mark, Phoenix, AZ
Sometimes our teaching assignments are changed for us, but taking on new subjects or grade levels can be rejuvenating professionally. Your high school colleagues many think you’re crazy for considering middle school, but I think a little insanity is just what middle-schoolers need in a teacher–someone who can do things a little differently, has a sense of humor, is flexible, and understands there are many ways of learning and doing things.
You’ll notice some differences in the students. Even though they try so hard to act like adults, most middle schoolers are still basically kids, with high levels of energy and enthusiasm. Middle schoolers love to participate in activities, and they readily engage in discussions—they love to talk. They are also physically active and prone to fidget. The challenge is to focus their energy and enthusiasm with routines and procedures, and since most of them like science this isn’t hard to do. They are emotionally needy. You’ll need a lot of patience and a thick skin–they’ll hate you one day and love you the next.
With middle schoolers, you may have to stop and teach skills you took for granted in high school, such as organizing, notetaking, graphing, and technical writing. If you’re used to teaching an “academic” level high school course, you may have to broaden your repertoire to include instructional strategies for a wider variety of student learning styles and backgrounds.
There are also some practical considerations as you make your decision. Be sure you have the appropriate credentials for the science taught at the middle school. Many states require a separate middle school certificate or endorsement.
Look over the content of the middle school science curriculum. A physical science course will include topics in physics as well as chemistry. Some middle schools have switched to integrated or general science that may also include topics in biology, ecology, earth science, and health.
Ideally, you should visit the middle school to check out the resources, including the laboratories, the technology, and the library. Being a new person on the faculty, ask if you would be expected to float or teach in a non-laboratory classroom. These situations raise a number of red flags in terms of logistics and safety for hands-on activities and for classroom management. Many middle schools use a “team” approach in which subject area teachers collaborate in team meetings and on interdisciplinary projects.
I had the opposite situation from yours, switching to a high school position after many years at a middle school. I think my middle school experience gave me an off-beat sense of humor and helped me deal with the high schoolers who needed different instructional approaches. Engaging high schoolers in spirited discussions and in high-level laboratory investigations was intellectually exhilarating, although I admit I still have a soft spot for middle schoolers. But I don’t regret taking on a rewarding challenge that enabled me to grow professionally.
And if you decide to make the switch, you’ll have the chance to clean out your file drawers!