Where's My Professional Development?

Like it or not, in an era of never-ending educational budget cuts, the burden of continued professional development now falls squarely on the shoulders of teachers. Formalized, district-sponsored professional development opportunities within the school day and school year are few and far between; yet, the flood of revisions, reforms, and rollouts of new curricula and new initiatives continues at a dizzying pace. Try to keep up with the wave or be swamped by it—an unfair choice either way.

Image courtesy of Microsoft Clipart

The river flow of funds has slowed to a trickle in the drought-stricken desert of district- and school-level professional development—the oases spread further and further apart, the treks between more lonely and arduous. "When will we receive professional development on this?" and "When will we have time to talk about this?" become luxurious questions in a landscape of austerity. Our hero's journey becomes more perilous; the desire to give up and quit is often alluring.

To persist (and survive), we must look for new sources of professional sustenance and take ownership for our own growth. In a rapidly-evolving digital realm, there are endless opportunities to connect with others—we only need actively seek them out. Twitter is a vast oasis of companions and gurus eager to share their knowledge and wisdom: NASA, NOAA, NSTA, ISTE, ASCD, and countless other organizations and individuals serve up a wealth of information and resources via the Twitter stream to quench our professional thirst. Google Reader and Google+ offer an endless buffet of subscriptions to some of the most engaging and intriguing minds on the planet; again, we must seek this nourishment ourselves, but once found our appetite is sated.

In the maelstrom of shifting educational paradigms and draconian budget cuts, it is easy to become lost and disillusioned. As stewards of our children's education, the burden of assuming our own professional development seems overwhelming and unjust to us. But waiting for a miraculous rescue is a fatal mistake; clinging to a halcyon past is a fool's errand. We must assume our own journey, one step at a time, and continue seeking out the professional oases…

To Boldly Go...

A sampling of student-built spacecraft from our Astronomy Research Project...

To Boldly Go...

50 Years of Space Exploration
by National Geographic

Year after year I find that students know very little, if anything, about space exploration (which is personally very troubling). However, this lack of awareness provides a great opportunity to delve into the human exploration of space. Our 50+ years of interplanetary investigation is writ with both stunning discoveries and monumental failures, yet it is imperative that we keep traveling, keep searching, keep asking, keep discovering.

In a traditional "pick a planet" project, students are focused on finding facts about an object in our solar system. I like to turn the process around so that it reflects more of an inquiry-based, process-of-science research project. Our essential research question becomes, "What has human space exploration taught us about our solar system?" The emphasis of the project is placed on how we humans struggle to design, build, launch, navigate, and operate spacecraft to investigate the mysteries of our solar system. Instead of just looking up a bunch of facts, I ask students to create a system of research questions to ask about their chosen spacecraft and its mission target, then embark on their research utilizing a variety of incredible primary resources (mainly from NASA, and for which I create a classroom project web page as a launching area).

An excellent research project includes the following elements:

• Name, date, scientific purpose, and major scientific discoveries of the spacecraft mission
• Realistic, three-dimensional model of the spacecraft (using Earth-friendly materials) 
• Basic information about the scientific instruments on the spacecraft: what they are, what they do, how they work, what they measure, etc. explained in plain language
• Scientific data, information, and details about the solar system object visited: position/location in the solar system, distance from Sun, diameter, mass, composition, rotation/revolution data, atmosphere/temperature data, moons/rings data, etc. explained in plain language and using the metric system
• Other unique, interesting data and information about your object: can include non-scientific things such as stories, folklore, mythology, poetry, artwork, etc.
• A caption and credit next to every image borrowed from the internet as well as a complete list of scientifically diverse references in a bibliography (so that we respect others and their copyrights)

I am rewarded each year by the enthusiasm for this project and the overall depth of learning that occurs. Students gain a much better appreciation about the science and engineering challenges involved when exploring the cosmic frontiers beyond the safety of our tiny planet. And some of them even grow up to become rocket scientists themselves...  :)

Pursuit of Light

"NASA tells stories about big things: big places, big data, big ideas." The Pursuit of Light reminds us why scientific literacy is vital to our future.

Who are we, and what is our place in the universe? These are the really big questions that scientists ask. NASA is one of many science organizations that pursue answers to these fundamental questions. But the pursuit of light, and knowledge, and curiosity, and wonder, and excitement begins much earlier — in our classrooms. Passionate educators, passionate students, and passionate learning today create and nurture the literate citizens of tomorrow.