Jeg er kemilærer.
I teach chemistry.
(Eksplosion)
(Explosion)
Okay, okay. Så udover eksplosioner er kemi alle vegne. Har du nogensinde siddet fraværende på en restaurant og gjort dette igen og igen? Nogle nikker. For nylig viste jeg dette til mine elever, og jeg bad dem bare om at prøve at forklare, hvorfor det skete. Spørgsmålene og samtalerne, der fulgte, var fascinerende. Prøv at tjekke den her video ud, Maddie fra min klasse i 3.lektion, sendte mig den aften.
All right, all right. So more than just explosions, chemistry is everywhere. Have you ever found yourself at a restaurant spacing out just doing this over and over? Some people nodding yes. Recently, I showed this to my students, and I just asked them to try and explain why it happened. The questions and conversations that followed were fascinating. Check out this video that Maddie from my period three class sent me that evening.
(Klang) (Latter)
(Clang) (Laughs)
Selvfølgelig, som Maddies kemilærer elsker jeg, at hun gik hjem og fortsatte med at nørde med den slags fjollede demonstration, vi lavede i timen. Men hvad der fascinerede mig mere, var at Maddies nysgerrighed bragte hende til et nyt niveau. Hvis man kigger inde i det bæger, ser man måske et lys. Maddie bruger temperatur til at udvide fænomenet til et nyt scenarie.
Now obviously, as Maddie's chemistry teacher, I love that she went home and continued to geek out about this kind of ridiculous demonstration that we did in class. But what fascinated me more is that Maddie's curiosity took her to a new level. If you look inside that beaker, you might see a candle. Maddie's using temperature to extend this phenomenon to a new scenario.
Spørgsmål og nysgerrigheds som Maddies er magneter, der drager os mod vores lærere og de overvinder al teknologi eller buzzwords inden for uddannelse. Men hvis vi sætter teknologi højere end elevernes nysgerrighed, berøver vi os selv fra vores bedste redskaber som lærere: Vores elevers spørgsmål. For eksempel kan det at flytte en kedelig time i klasselokalet til en mobilskærm måske spare instruktionstid, men hvis det er det, der er fokus på ved elevernes oplevelse, er det den samme dehumaniserende snak - bare i fancy tøj- Men har vi i stedet modet til at forvirre vores elever, få dem til at undre sig, og fremprovokere virkelige spørgsmål, har vi lærere, gennem de spørgsmål, information, vi kan bruge til at skræddersy robuste og informerede metoder af blandet instruktion.
You know, questions and curiosity like Maddie's are magnets that draw us towards our teachers, and they transcend all technology or buzzwords in education. But if we place these technologies before student inquiry, we can be robbing ourselves of our greatest tool as teachers: our students' questions. For example, flipping a boring lecture from the classroom to the screen of a mobile device might save instructional time, but if it is the focus of our students' experience, it's the same dehumanizing chatter just wrapped up in fancy clothing. But if instead we have the guts to confuse our students, perplex them, and evoke real questions, through those questions, we as teachers have information that we can use to tailor robust and informed methods of blended instruction.
Så 21-århundredets nonsens sat til side, er sandheden, at jeg har undervist i 13 år nu, og det krævede en livstruende situation at rive mig ud af 10 års pseudolæring og hjælpe mig til at indse, at elevers spørgsmål er frøene af rigtig læring, ikke et eller andet nedskrevet pensum, der giver dem godbidder af tilfældig information.
So, 21st-century lingo jargon mumbo jumbo aside, the truth is, I've been teaching for 13 years now, and it took a life-threatening situation to snap me out of 10 years of pseudo-teaching and help me realize that student questions are the seeds of real learning, not some scripted curriculum that gave them tidbits of random information.
I maj 2010, i en alder af 35, med en to-årig derhjemme og et andet barn på vej, blev jeg diagnosticeret med en stor aneurisme i bunden af min thorakale aorta. Det førte til en åben hjerteoperation. Det her er emailen, fra min læge. Da jeg modtog denne, blev jeg - tryk caps lock - gik jeg amok, okay? Men jeg fandt overraskende øjeblikke af komfort i min kirurgs selvtillid. Hvor fik den her fyr sin selvtillid, frækheden af det?
In May of 2010, at 35 years old, with a two-year-old at home and my second child on the way, I was diagnosed with a large aneurysm at the base of my thoracic aorta. This led to open-heart surgery. This is the actual real email from my doctor right there. Now, when I got this, I was -- press Caps Lock -- absolutely freaked out, okay? But I found surprising moments of comfort in the confidence that my surgeon embodied. Where did this guy get this confidence, the audacity of it?
Så da jeg spurgte ham, fortalte han mig tre ting. Først sagde han, at hans nysgerrighed drev ham til at stille svære spørgsmål omkring proceduren, om hvad, der virkede og ikke virkede. For det andet, i stedet for at frygte det, tog han den roede proces af forsøg og fejl til sig. Den uundgåelige proces af forsøg og fejl. Og for det tredje, samlede han, gennem intens reflektering, informationen, han behøvede, for at designe og revidere proceduren, og så med en rolig hånd redede han mit liv.
So when I asked him, he told me three things. He said first, his curiosity drove him to ask hard questions about the procedure, about what worked and what didn't work. Second, he embraced, and didn't fear, the messy process of trial and error, the inevitable process of trial and error. And third, through intense reflection, he gathered the information that he needed to design and revise the procedure, and then, with a steady hand, he saved my life.
Jeg tog en stor del af disse visdomsord til mig, og inden min tilbagevenden til skolen skrev jeg tre af mine egne regler ned, som jeg stadig medtager i min lektionsplanlægning. Regel nummer ét: Nysgerrighed kommer først. Spørgsmål kan være en dør til fantastisk instruktion, men ikke den anden vej rundt. Regel nummer to: Omfavn rodet. Vi er alle lærere. Vi ved, at læring er grimt. Og bare fordi den videnskabelige metode er placeret på side 5 af sektion 1.2 i kapitel 1 af den, vi alle skipper, okay, forsøg og fejl kan stadig være en del af det uformelle, vi tager os til hver evig eneste dag ved Sacred Heart Cathedral i rum 206. Og regel nummer tre: Øv reflektering. Hvad, vi gør, er vigtigt. Det fortjener vores pleje, men det fortjener også vores revision. Kan vi være klasseværelsets kirurger? Som ville det, vi gjorde, en dag redde liv. Vores elever er det værd. Og enhver sag er forskellig.
Now I absorbed a lot from these words of wisdom, and before I went back into the classroom that fall, I wrote down three rules of my own that I bring to my lesson planning still today. Rule number one: Curiosity comes first. Questions can be windows to great instruction, but not the other way around. Rule number two: Embrace the mess. We're all teachers. We know learning is ugly. And just because the scientific method is allocated to page five of section 1.2 of chapter one of the one that we all skip, okay, trial and error can still be an informal part of what we do every single day at Sacred Heart Cathedral in room 206. And rule number three: Practice reflection. What we do is important. It deserves our care, but it also deserves our revision. Can we be the surgeons of our classrooms? As if what we are doing one day will save lives. Our students our worth it. And each case is different.
Okay, undskyld. Kemilæreren i mig havde bare brug for at få det ud af mit system, før vi fortsætter.
(Explosion) All right. Sorry. The chemistry teacher in me just needed to get that
Det her er mine døtre. Til højre har vi lille Emmalou - sydstatsfamilie. Og til venstre, Riley. Riley vil være en stor pige om et par uger. Hun bliver fire år gammel, og alle, der kender en fire-årig, ved, at de elsker at spørge: "Hvorfor?" Ja. Hvorfor? Jeg kunne lære den her unge alt, for hun er nysgerrig omkring alt. Det var vi alle i den alder. Men udfordringen eksisterer virkelig for Rileys fremtidige lærere, dem hun endnu ikke har mødt. Hvordan vil de få den nysgerrighed til at vokse?
out of my system before we move on. So these are my daughters. On the right we have little Emmalou -- Southern family. And, on the left, Riley. Now Riley's going to be a big girl in a couple weeks here. She's going to be four years old, and anyone who knows a four-year-old knows that they love to ask, "Why?" Yeah. Why. I could teach this kid anything because she is curious about everything. We all were at that age. But the challenge is really for Riley's future teachers, the ones she has yet to meet.
Se, jeg vil sige, at Riley er en metafor for alle børn, og jeg mener, det at droppe ud af skolen kommer i mange former - fra sidsteårs-eleven, der checkede ud før året overhovedet begyndte, eller den tomme plads bagerst i en urban folkeskoles klasseværelse. Men hvis vi som undervisere ikke udfylder den simple rolle som formidlere af indhold og omfavner et nyt paradigme som kultivatorer af nysgerrighed og undersøgelser, kan vi lige så godt bringe lidt mere mening til deres skoledag og sætte gnist i deres læring.
How will they grow this curiosity? You see, I would argue that Riley is a metaphor for all kids, and I think dropping out of school comes in many different forms -- to the senior who's checked out before the year's even begun or that empty desk in the back of an urban middle school's classroom. But if we as educators leave behind this simple role as disseminators of content and embrace a new paradigm as cultivators of curiosity and inquiry, we just might bring a little bit more meaning
Mange tak.
to their school day, and spark their imagination.