What we do at the Duke School and why we do it:

We inspire learners to boldly and creatively shape their future….  We prepare the next generation of problem solvers for our complex world. 

In the seventh grade, our teaching team will be create a three-month long project in the spring.  The student projects will focus on Biodiversity.  Our intention is to focus on local actions together with the awareness of their global consequences.

At least part of the time, we will be investigating how to restore parts of the local Duke Forest on the campus, which was clear cut to construct new buildings.

Student’s will be asked to identify plant species, observe budding in the spring to collect data for Project Bud Burst.  If all goes well, we will create or join an international project to promote student conversations about their restoration work with other students around the world.

Wish us well!

Why save the world?  Because the world needs you.  Our global civilization may be on the brink of ecological collapse.  That may seem so far removed from our daily experience here in the United States.  But maybe not so far removed as we may think.  Please consider this:

Angkor Wat

The feature article in this month’s National Geographic on Angkor Wat reminds us of the frailty of a great civilization when it overstrips the life support systems that sustain it.

Angkor is the scene of one of the greatest vanishing acts of all time. The Khmer kingdom lasted from the ninth to the 15th centuries, and at its height dominated a wide swath of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar (Burma) in the west to Vietnam in the east. As many as 750,000 people lived in Angkor, its capital, which sprawled across an area the size of New York City’s five boroughs, making it the most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world. By the late 16th century, when Portuguese missionaries came upon the lotus-shaped towers of Angkor Wat—the most elaborate of the city’s temples and the world’s largest religious monument—the once resplendent capital of the empire was in its death throes.

Why?

Angkor, it appears, was doomed by the very ingenuity that transformed a collection of minor fiefdoms into an empire. The civilization learned how to tame Southeast Asia’s seasonal deluges, then faded as its control of water, the most vital of resources, slipped away.

(http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/angkor/stone-text/2)

Los Angeles

Los Angeles sits in the middle of a desert.  Yet over 12 million people live in the greater metropolitan area.  How is this possible?  Starting in 1913, the Los Angeles Water and Power Department has been draining the Owens Valley and the Mono Basin.  What will happen if Los Angeles continues to suffer from a drought?

For the latest data, see the drought monitor (http://drought.unl.edu/DM/MONITOR.html)

Two recent videos from Wired Science give pause for more reflection

Lake Powell

Southern Utah’s Lake Powell was once teeming with boaters, fishers and vacationers. But from 2000 to 2005 its water level dropped from 20 million to 8 million acre-feet, due to severe drought. Water levels have rebounded a bit, but are expected to plummet to levels even lower than those of 2005 during the next serious drought.

The Aral Sea

In the 1960s, central Asia’s Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world. As a result of irrigation and damming, it had shriveled to 10 percent of its original size (marked by the thin black line) by 2007. It is now three separate, highly salinic, lakes.

(http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/earthobservatoryvideos)

Lessons from the Aral Sea

Once the Aral sea dries up expect a dramatic increase in poverty, malnutrition, starvation and mass migration.

Mass population movement in the Aral Sea basin began as early as 1966 when a major earthquake destroyed much of Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent. From then until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, mass migration was mainly due to compulsory movement of labour from overpopulated regions to new development areas. Since 1991, ethnic and environmental factors have played increasingly important roles in shaping migration. Deteriorating environmental conditions, combined with recurring drought, have resulted in agricultural and fisheries production declining by as much as 50%, spelling economic disaster for almost 3 million people (including those in areas of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan near the Aral Sea) whose main source of income was agriculture. Aggregate losses in Uzbekistan associated with mass migration from provinces near the Aral Sea between 1970 and 2001 are estimated to be above US$20 million. Many people still living in the high-migration areas suffer protein and vitamin deficiencies resulting from malnutrition and extreme poverty. In addition, since the migrants have generally been young, the birth rate has decreased significantly.

(http://waterwiki.net/index.php/Facing_Water_Challenges_in_the_Aral_Sea,_Uzbekistan:A_WWDR3_Case_Study)

A pattern emerges?

Biologists have observed that a population grows to the limit of an ecosystem’s capacity to support it.  Individuals will continue to mate and have progeny as long as there are sufficient resources for living.  This continues up to the natural limit since individuals typically are unable to accurately monitor general ecosystem health.  Up to the limit, resources exceed the needs of the population, but once the limit is reached there is an abrupt change … the needs of the population exceed the resources.  The population overshoots the capacity of the ecosystem to sustain it.  In one generation there is a population collapse.  This has been studied in predator-prey relationships around the globe and can be applied to civilizations (Mayan, Khmer, etc).

But a similar principle can be applied to the growth of economic populations as well, consider how  it might be applied to the population of subprime mortgage brokers.  As long as individual loan agents were rewarded by the system, they continued to make bad loans.  There was no incentive to monitor the general health of the banking system, but since resources were available to continue to make loans, why not?  Individual brokers made loans right up to and beyond the capacity of the banking system to sustain them.  Once a fundamental economic limit was reached, not only were subprime lenders out of business, the entire banking ecosystem rapidly collapsed.

Could this same principle be applied to the population in Los Angeles and the water ecosystem of the Southwest?  You decide.

Einstein suggested that problems cannot be solved at the level at which they were created.  To solve the problems like water usage in the Southwest, we must think at level of larger systems.  In the old ways of thinking, an individual might decide simply to take a bath based on his/her own personal comfort.  Multiply that by 12 million people living in a natural desert and the consequences of that level of thinking will rapidly become apparent.  But if an entire society learns to conserve and monitor the larger system, then the most dire consequences can be avoided.  I have hope, because the awareness to conserve water has now spread throughout the population of the American Southwest.

The task of our generation is no less than to save the world.  Although the road ahead will require hard work and transformations in thinking, I remain optimistic.  We are an inventive, innovative, creative species with a can do attitude.  So let’s roll up our sleeves, put on our various thinking caps and save our planet for our generation and the generations to come.

Blessings.

What types of instructional experiences help K-8 students learn science with understanding? What do science educators teachers, teacher leaders, science specialists, professional development staff, curriculum designers, school administrators need to know to create and support such experiences?

Ready, Set, Science! guides the way with an account of the groundbreaking and comprehensive synthesis of research into teaching and learning science in kindergarten through eighth grade. Based on the recently released National Research Council report Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8, this book summarizes a rich body of findings from the learning sciences and builds detailed cases of science educators at work to make the implications of research clear, accessible, and stimulating for a broad range of science educators.

What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as:

• When do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child’s development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects?

• What role does nonschool learning play in children’s knowledge of science?

• How can science education capitalize on children’s natural curiosity?

• What are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning?

• How can teachers be taught to teach science?

How Students Learn: Mathematics in the Classroom builds on the discoveries detailed in the best-selling How People Learn. Now these findings are presented in a way that teachers can use immediately, to revitalize their work in the classroom for even greater effectiveness.

This book show how to overcome the difficulties in teaching math to generate real insight and reasoning in math students. It also features illustrated suggestions for classroom activities.

In a word – grades.

Grades reduces the complexities of learning and performance into one uninformative number or letter.  The only use of a grade is to compare “performance” of one student or school system to another.  It is not a true measure of performance.

The problem with any comparison system is that there are few winners.   No wonder so many students are turned off to schools.  Who wants to be a loser?

Evaluation for Growth

In real life (outside of schools), proficiency in a variety of skill results in a record of performance.  This track record of performance is what is most highly rewarded.

The level of performance for each individual skill is measurable.  In athletics, systems that measure track an athlete’s growth may lead to self-directed activities to increase performance.

My analysis is not new.  Teachers, principals, district administrators all know this.  But nothing is done.  Why?  As Einstein said, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.” And the grading problem involves layers and layers of political systems in which school are embeded.

Will we have the political will to truly change this broken system?  Only if each of us advocate for that change.  Join me.  Think about this, how can you contribute?

If you are a education researcher, study learning progressions for your subject area and develop diagnostic assessments for teachers to use.

If you are a teacher, create a performance assessment and an interim report that provides information on proficiency of skills rather than a summary of grades.

If you are an administrator, nurture innovative teaching that has relevance to the real world.

And write your representatives, include Arne Duncan.

I am convinced that this global issue is of utmost importance and requires immediate action.  My response starts with creating a vision for a science leadership academy on the theme of global sustainability. We need all hands on deck and I cannot think of a better way to reach people than by inspiring and empowering the next generation of leaders.

In my ideal school, students select a real world challenge to solve.  Each teacher is trained in both Covey’s Principle-Centered Leadership and Appreciative Inquiry methods.  Teachers facilitate student growth (completely personalized education) by encouraging students to seek positive personal change, assess their strengths, create visions for their future, “sharpen their saws,” access community resources and establish working relationships with professional mentors in their local community.

Will you partner with me to turn this vision into a reality?

Related links:

Career Academy Support Network

Appreciative Inquiry

Covey’s Principle-Based Leadership for Schools

• Innovation – Life, Inspired . Miracle Cell | PBS

  A young mother, the victim of an accident that left her paralyzed, travels to Portugal for a radical treatment. Adult stem cells will be harvested from her nose, amplified, and injected into her spine. The hope is that the cells will heal her damaged spinal cord. This episode of INNOVATION looks at regenerative medicine and follows spinal cord and heart patients undergoing stem cell treatments — the tip of the iceberg in a promising but controversial field. Find out more about this episode or get the video.

  tags: video, stem cells

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Playing for Change.

To give you a taste I’ve embedded the following two videos on Viral DNA packaging.  To get the full experience, please view both videos.