Art & Science

In 1957, when the Soviet Union tossed Sputnik around the globe, some U.S. Military scientists figured it would probably be giving off a signal. Within a few minutes they were able to receive Sputnik’s transmission. Then they figured they should be able to figure out how to track it using nothing but a radio signal and some math. When they were successful, they showed their work to their boss. A little while later, the U.S. Government asked: if we can track a moving object in space from a fixed location on earth, could we also find a fixed location on earth from a moving satellite in space?

The answer was yes. Roughly 30 years after this idea germinated, GPS became a handheld, inexpensive household (or car-hold) device. In fact, much of our technology today is based on the creativity and ingenuity of the past: DVD burners, flat screen tvs, 3D weaving, etc.

We seem to be losing an essential part of ingenuity in America: the integration of art and science. More and more, it seems, education is teaching subjects in isolation, and Americans are buying it. We now have the idea that we are either left-brained or right-brained and that art and science should be separate. We live in a world now where it is common to believe that Scientists are not creative and Artists are not analytical or logical. Apparently, we can’t be creative and logical at the same time.

If we give in to this—if we let this kind of thinking underlie our decision-making—then we are setting ourselves up for a system of limited innovation. And it doesn’t have to be this way.

“The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they are manifestations of the same thing. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It’s our attempt as humans to build an understanding of the universe, the world around us.” (Mae Jemison - Astronaut)

As we set up our STEM lab, you’ll notice it is designed to foster thinking in all its forms, analytical and creative. Also, literacy is thinking. When we are reading, writing, creating a video, we are exercising high orders of thinking. Our STEM lab is not just about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math; it’s about thinking, communicating, problem-solving, learning, exploring, creating, asking.

Who knows what future innovations are being set in motion right now?

School Needs to be Transformed -- Not Reformed

When I meet new people, I like to ask: "What do you do for fun?" I have been criticized for this; some have said that this is a mark of immaturity. Apparently, lobbing such a question is something that only my generation would do, and it is probably a result of the gradual stretching of adolescence over the past 60 years.

I do not ask "What do you do?" because the answers largely depress me. Most people, I've discovered, do not "do" what they enjoy doing. Most people, it seems, work for a paycheck. Have you thought about this? What did you want to be when you were young? Are you that now? If not, why not?

At some point in your formation, someone probably told you that you could not make a living doing what it is that you found delightful. And maybe that seemed true at the time. But now, the people that will rule the world (according to Dan Pink) are the right-brained, curious, artistic, innovative, out-of-the-box thinkers who desperately want to create and apply their learning.

And this is an area in which I think schools can always do better. How much are we teaching our students how to think? How often do we require them to think with endurance--to persist through a problem? To what degree do we ask our students to apply what they know and can do?

In saying that children can do more than we require of them, I am not at all speaking about pushing academic content further down the grade levels. Children can exercise more analytical thinking, creativity, innovation, and curiosity than we give them credit for. Have you seen Jack Tucker's YouTube page? How often is he required to exercise the level of ingenuity and creativity that he freely delievers each week on his YouTube channel?
http://www.youtube.com/user/claymate47?feature=chclk and http://www.youtube.com/user/JackTuckerProduction


As an educational system, we can do better than the panicky policies made by politicians who do not really understand what is at stake--decisions that make it difficult for teachers to incorporate creativity and real thinking in daily learning. I know we need accountability. We also need to acknowledge that the education of children is much more complex than a bubbled-in test.

Abraham Lincoln addressed the Congress in 1862, in part, with this:

"It is not 'can any of us imagine better?' but, 'can we all do better?' The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

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I take a great deal of pleasure from my job. I love working with students. It is truly "fun". And it is fun because of what I believe and know about children and teachers and learning.

Here's another TED talk from Sir Ken Robinson on the same topic (and from which I derived the Lincon quote).

Kindergartners vs. Business Graduates

Did you know that every person is fully creatively expressed by age three?

This is true across cultures, continents, socioeconomic variables, and time. By age three, children are inventing songs, stories, and skits; they are drawing – even if it is with a stick in the sand. By age three, you were fully creatively expressed. By age 18, most people have lost 90% of their creative expression.

I think that’s interesting.

Tom Wujec (see the TED talk posted earlier on this blog) leads an engineering competition in which teams are given a certain amount of spaghetti, tape, a marshmallow, and 18 minutes to create the tallest structure to support the marshmallow. Among the worst performers in this exercise are recent graduates of MBAs. Among the best performers are recent graduates of Kindergarten. (In fact, the group that consistently outperforms Kindergartners is architects, which is a relief, really.)

Why? Why do Kindergartners tend to do so well with this? First of all, Kindergartners naturally collaborate. No Kindergartner is trying to be the CEO of the spaghetti company. Second, they tend to begin with the marshmallow and then incrementally build up a structure under the marshmallow. This process gives Kindergartners immediate and descriptive feedback as to how well they are doing. (MBAs, on the other hand, argue a lot, jockey for leadership, draw out plans, and select a plan. In the remaining minutes, MBAs assemble their structure and then plop their marshmallow on top. In this case, they’ve had no feedback along the way and they also have no time left to adapt once the structure fails.)

What I’m getting at is this: As young children, we are fully creatively expressed and we are naturally collaborative. And, creativity, curiosity, and collaboration are some of the skills or traits that are deeply essential to being successful, competitive, and innovative in the “real world” – not to mention how these ideas affect the quality of our own lives!

We also know that most children/people are not naturally good thinkers. Thinking—real critical and analytical thinking—is a skill that needs to be learned. There are ways of thinking, habits of thinkers, strategies to be utilized.

So what? (This is my favorite question.) So what?

As teachers and parents, we are in a unique position to foster the real and natural strengths of children: creativity, curiosity, and collaborative skills. We also are here to help them learn how to think. Not what to think, but how to think. As much as possible, we should be encouraging creative responses, solutions, and ideas, questions of curiosity, and opportunities for collaboration. And within all of this, we teach strategies and habits of mind that help students develop the capacity to think. We model problem-solving protocols. We help children develop the endurance to think through a complex issue.

Picasso commented that every child is an artist and that the challenge is remaining an artist into adulthood. What if we raise children that enter adulthood as artists and thinkers?

Sometimes Curiosity Isn't Cool

Well, it has been crazy hot lately. Texas has reported its 32nd day over 102 degrees. Now, it seems to be cooling a little, but we all know how August and September goes.

Question: When does a person start to boil?

Three curious English gentlemen some 200 years ago decided to find out. They heated a room to 210 degrees and then went inside it. They brought with them a raw steak, a couple eggs, and a dog. Then they began to increase the temperature to see what would happen. Did curiosity kill the dog? What about the gentlemen? Are you curious?

Click here to hear Robert Kulrich tell the story (5 min.) on NPR.

The Why, the How, and the What

Welcome back to a new school year!

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Careers and career fields are always in a state of flux (including education). Content is always changing; the careers our students will be applying for have not been invented. Yet, the skills required are always the same: we need people that can be curious and creative, communicate effectively in speaking and writing, think critically and analytically, collaborate, take initiative, and adapt. This blog is designed in part to explore these timeless human skills and how we can teach our elementary content in a way that allows us to teach these skills to our students.

And, it is my hope, that while we are learning how to teach these skills to our children, we are developing them in our own lives as teachers and parents.

Below is a video of Simon Sinek explaining his very basic idea that people don't care what we do--they care why we do it. He says that most people and organizations and businesses know what they do, and some know how they do it. Very few know why they do what they do. He argues that all the great inspiring leaders and innovators (he cites Apple, the Wright Brothers, and Martin Luther King, Jr.) think and communicate in the same way: they begin with the "why" and move on to the "how" and the "what". Sinek demonstrates how this is completely opposite from the rest of the world--and he does it in an engaging and well-organized way.

This has very simple and profound implications for us as teachers, employees, bosses, parents, and spouses. Listen to this:

Why Summer Reading is Important

At the Hamilton County’s Literacy Institute a few years back, News Channel 12 rolled in and put a camera in front of me. I felt like a cockroach caught in a corner; I didn’t know which way to run. I dreaded being asked a question on camera, because I’ve found that I often don’t know what I think about something until I’ve written about it.

“What is your name and position in Hamilton County Schools?” The microphone swiveled from the interviewer’s mouth towards mine.

“Jeff Paulson, and I teach literacy at Thrasher Elementary School.”

“And…” the interviewer pulled the microphone back, “Why is literacy important?” Again, the microphone.

Why is literacy important? Why is literacy important? My mind wasted precious seconds in bafflement at a question with such obvious answers. One of my many character flaws occurs when I hear a question with an obvious answer—my mind immediately generates a list of sarcastic answers. (Sarcasm, I feel, is one of the lowest forms of humor or thinking, and I would like to train my mind away from it.) But, why is literacy important?

“Um…” I said. “Uh…gosh…I’m sorry.” Didn’t I just tell this woman that I teach literacy, and I apparently can’t explain why literacy is important? My mind pulled up some research I had seen recently: 

• Students that score in the 95th percentile read 90 minutes a day.
• Students that score in the 90th percentile read 60 minutes a day.
• Students that score in the 75th percentile read 20 minutes a day.

But, school isn’t about standardized testing, so I didn’t want to cite that. Also, I had read a report that showed the top 100 indicators of successful schools. The three most important indicators were:

• 3. amount of reading done in school.
• 2. amount of reading done at home.
• 1. amount of parental involvement.

As the sand ran through the timer and the video camera spent digital memory on my blank face, the news anchor shifted from her right foot to her left. I was out of time, so I started in on the obvious answer.

“Literacy is important…because…it’s everywhere. It’s on the internet. Literate people make more money than those who are illiterate. The number of skilled jobs in this country is increasing, and if we’re going to compete in a global marketplace, we need literate citizens.” Annnnnnd cut.

Rats. I gave the math answer to a literacy question.

As the news anchor walked away, I realized within ten seconds that I believe literacy is important for entirely different reasons. Sure, literate people are essential to a national workforce in a global economy. So what? I didn’t decide to be a teacher because I want to enable students to read menus and write memos. I want students to have the ability to get lost in a really good book. I want students to step into the minds and emotions of characters. I want them to go out and discover the world around them, and when they come home at night, I want them to be fascinated by what other people have learned about the world and shared in the pages of a book. Literature—especially in its broadest sense, encompassing whole fields of arts—is important because it increases the quality of life.

And, it’s free.

Maybe it’s not that I don’t know what I think about something until I write about it; maybe I just don’t know how to articulate it until I write about it. I’ll have to think about that.

Did You Hear What Chopin Said?

This is probably one of my favorite TED talks of all time.

Since you had the chance to conduct an unusual orchestra in my last post, listen to a phenomenal conductor/pianist (Benjamin Zander) teach 1600 people how to hear. If you do not enjoy classical music, then this video is especially for you, because you will get the most pleasure from it. And your thrill will come from how you have learned and changed in less than 20 minutes.

The second wonderful nugget here is specifically for teachers. Listen to Zander's role in the orchestra and why his job is so powerful and magical. His question at the end: "Who are we being as we go out into the world?"

Your Chance to be an Instant Composer

In 1964, a composer named Terry Riley sort-of composed a piece called "In C". He set up some rules for a group of musicians (up to 35 of them) to follow, but each musician has a lot of autonomy in what to play--largely in the key of C. Consequently, no two renditions of "In C" will ever be the same.

Now, you can do it, too. Darren Solomon has made a web page called "In B flat" in which several musicians have put up minimalist compositions in the key of B flat via YouTube videos. You, the conductor, can select as many videos as you want to play, you choose when they start, and you can pause them along the way. What comes out is a unique composition.

The wild thing about this work of creativity is the collaborators in the music (including you) have never met each other. Darren Solomon hasn't met them either. The not-wild thing about this is: increasingly, this is the way in which work or play is done in the world.

And, lest you think that I advocate a purely digital life, most of these musicians quite obviously exist, live, create, and thrive in the real world (I'm not sure about the one that uses the Nintendo DS as her instrument of choice.)

This reminds me of a story: A little over ten years ago, I bought The Sims -- the very first edition of the game for PC. I spent a year playing that game every free moment I had. At the same time, my wife, Marcy, was learning the fiddle. Near the end of that year, we were with some friends, and Marcy had the opportunity to pull out the fiddle and play some music with them. I watched as she pulled the bow over the strings and others strummed and picked guitars--everything vibrating together to make music for its own sake.

All I could play was The Sims.

I took the video game to McKays and dusted off a banjo that Marcy had given me for Christmas a few years back. (Of course, since I chose the banjo, people wish I would play video games.)

While technology allows us to do more than we've ever done before--collaborate, create, and communicate in ways unimagined 10 years ago--I think it's also important to keep it as a tool in the tool box. It's just as essential that we learn to collaborate with the people around us, to create with the tangible, to talk over the fence, and to listen to our neighbors.

NPR article
The In B Flat web page

David Holt's Education in Mountain Music

Well, now, this one's just for fun! Good stories and good music! (4th Grader Ella Grant: keep up that banjo practice!)

The Science of Motivation

Some of you may have read Daniel Pink and his work in creativity. He has some very interesting ideas and research presented here. Not all of it could work in a classroom.

Or could it?