Shiva the Destroyer

There is a student in my class whom I refer to as Shiva the Destroyer. 

1. Because his name is close to Shiva, a revered but complicated Hindu god, and we live in India.
2. Because he manages to destroy every class discussion on Facebook with his resourcefulness.

Though these reasons might appear to have negative connotations, the truth is he earned this nickname out of a sign of respect.  Though he is not the top student gradewise in class, I can truly say that his information fluency/literacy skills serve as a model for all students in my class.  He is the one student who I can count on to be over prepared for class on a consistent basis.  By over prepared, I mean full of "fun facts" beyond the scope of the content defined by the curriculum.  It is a given that in any discussion, he will interject at some point with a statement that he begins with, "Fun fact..."  I call it passion.

Today we were discussion  the reproduction of angiosperms.  Now I have to confess that botany is my least favorite subdiscipline of biology.  I can't even keep an ivy alive.  So here I find myself, the possessor of a black thumb, rushing to the finish line before IB exams, attempting to cram content into my students minds that will make them old school factual experts who will pass their exams with flying colors in May and soon forget everything they ever knew about plants.  Bad teacher moment # (I think I will leave that one blank). 

Enter Shiva the Destroyer. 

Me:  Here is a picture of a dicotyledonous flower and here is how reproduction occurs in these plants.  Lalala, wind, lalala, hummingbirds, lalala, bees...

Shiva:  Fun fact!  Did you know that there is a species of wasp that has a symbiotic relationship with figs.  The females don't have wings and they mate with the males in the immature fig fruit (which is actually a flower).  While they are reproducing, pollen is transferred to the female structures of the plant where the wingless female wasp resides (facts are a little jumbled...see below).

Me:  Things just got interesting.  Could you post a link to that research on our Facebook group (that you discovered while independently researching obscure examples of pollination to prepare for our one hour class of information cramming)?  

He was a bit shaky on the details, but this article explains it all.  It is a harrowing tale of dismembered wasps and tragic death all in the name of sexual reproduction and survival of a species.  If nothing else, it will make you think twice before biting into a fig.  It is examples like these that breathe the life into learning and provide our students with vibrant imagery and curiosity that will lead the rest of them down the rabbit hole.  Is this what IB wants the kids to know about pollination?  No.  Is this what biology is all about?  Absolutely.  Is this the kind of pursuit we should be encouraging in our students?  That was a rhetorical question.

In my alternate reality, all students show up to each and every class filled with fun facts to share and discuss.  So how can we as teachers encourage even a fraction of this exploration outside of class? 

Old Habits...Don't Seem to Die Part I

Last night our school PTA hosted an 80's retro dance.  Seeing this as an obvious opportunity to channel my inner Madonna circa 1983, I joined some friends at the salon to tease the life back into our hairstyles. 

While sitting in the chair watching an Indian woman born circa "the year I graduated from high school" completely butcher the required technique to maximize both the wingspan and the staying power of the sides of my hair, I found myself growing more and more frustrated.  Then it happened.  It all came flooding back as if there had not been a 20 year interval between that moment and the last time I tortured my hair in the name of fashion.  I started issuing instructions rapid fire, and in the end I commandeered the brush, hair dryer, and extra large can of aerosol hairspray so that I could show her how to tease out hair properly.  Once I realized what I was doing, I handed the equipment back to her, the trained professional, and allowed her to finish her task...or at least that is how I wish the events would have played out.  

In any case, I find myself sitting here the next day reflecting on this incident, mostly because I just spent an hour trying to rid my hair of a bottle of hairspray and a rat's nest of tangles.  But also because of two provocative reads that have inspired this series of posts.  I recently read the Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business (a must read if you haven't already done so). 

In this book, Duhigg illustrates why habits exist using current research and narratives in neuroscience, and then proceeds to discuss their potential for transformation.  Clearly the skill set involved in destroying my hair beyond recognition was habitual.  I guess doing something daily for an unmentionable amount of time will do that.  I was then sidetracked and started to reflect on the skill sets that I focus on daily with my students.  Some, I soon realized, are also unmentionable in light of the article that popped up on my Twitter feed this morning from Forbes:  "It's the End of an Era:  Enter the Knowledgeable Networker".  In this article, Ken Perlman discusses the end of the era of the knowledge worker.  He claims, "Today, no organization can hire all the knowledge workers it needs to cover every emerging need. Companies are generating exabytes of information. In 2013 alone, we’ll generate more data than we have in the previous 5,000 years combined. An individual or self-contained group of individuals may know all the vital facts of their field in this very instant, but the speed of change can make their knowledge obsolete in the next instant." 

Ring in the era of the knowledgeable networker.  Perlman describes them as, "...very good at what they do, and at the same time, do not pretend to know it all. They consider the entire puzzle, not just their own area of expertise. They’re integrative thinkers with broad interests and connections. They see how puzzle pieces fit together without needing to know everything about each piece – instead, they KNOW A LOT OF PEOPLE and HAVE A LOT OF INFORMATION SOURCES." 

And this brings me to today's dilemma.  How are we as teachers helping to facilitate the formation of requisite habits in our students to produce a generation of knowledgeable networkers?  How many of us are continuing to foster the skills that support the habits and practices of knowledge workers instead of those that are specific to knowledgeable networkers?  And how do these skill sets differ? How many of us are guilty of checking the box of 21st century skill #159 after introducing it on only one assessment then proceeding to drill and kill to produce experts in our discipline?  What changes need to be made to our curricula to accomodate these new skill sets?  And with that I leave you with one last question that I posed to my 10th grade class the other day: 

"Ms. Newcomb had quite the hairspray obsession when she was your age. In fact, she used a bottle and a half of hairspray every week.  Each bottle contained 12 oz. of hair spray. The problem was that the hairspray caused a sticky layer of gunk to form on her bathroom sink and floor, so every 4 oz’s or so, Ms. Newcomb would have to clean the bathroom floor or her mother would threaten to stop buying her hairspray.  How many times did Ms. Newcomb have to clean her bathroom during her "big hair" years between 1988 and 1992?" 

Part II was posted on March 7.  ​