Ethics in the Science Classroom

I can only talk about what I've seen in my country (Mexico), here there's no talk about ethics associated with the behavior or effects of science in society. If the children are by some chance in private school chances are the school it's going to be catholic so yes there'll be some talk about values but never associated with science class.

The problem I see with this is, besides the obvious one of not having ethical grown ups, is that science is not seen as something social. And recently a horrid piece in the Telegraph brought me back to this thoughts.

First of all the article talks about why girls don't like science, according to the author and I quote: "I also think he’s probably right in suggesting that females, as a whole, are not hugely engaged by science. The problem with science is that, for all its wonders, it lacks narrative and story-line. Science (and maths) is about facts, and the laboratory testing of elements. It is not primarily about people. Women – broadly speaking – are drawn to the human factor: to story, biography, psychology and language."

But science is SOCIAL, science it's not only about the facts it's also about the impacts of those facts. Maybe there was a time when we could make science and let others worry about the impacts of our discoveries, think Hiroshima and Nagasaki (When the decision of dropping the atomic bomb was made Oppenheimer thought they as scientists didn't have enough information to take the decision it was something that should have been left to the military experts, of course after Hiroshima and Nagasaki he changed his mind but that's another story). Another example are the Thalidomide babies, though in this case the effects were not foreseen and when we realized what was happening it was too late for some people.

There's a lack of discussion in the science classroom about the times science has been wrong, about when science should have done better, and when scientists should have been better men and women. I believe one of the many problems we have with getting the public's trust has to do with the fact that people don't know when is right to believe what we are saying. And maybe the fact that we are always presenting science in the classroom as an absolute truth, to later on hear that a study was falsified by some scientist can be one of the many reasons general public distrust science. How can they really know this time is for sure and we are deliberately not lying for grant money, or media or anything else?
Can it be that sometimes people feel betrayed by us?

But there's also another feature of ethics in science classroom that we don't talk about and that is the values of the scientists, well a more appropriate word would be ethics. How can we expect to have scientists with strong ethics if we never ever mention it. To this point in my life (before being admitted to a PhD program in the US) I've never had a values/ethics lesson associated with my career. The closest thing I ever had were my organic chemistry lab teachers asking me to report the real yield of my experiments in class. Now that I am about to start a PhD the closest thing I've had are ethics trough online modules. Again I cannot talk about the education given in the US. But the more I spend time with teenagers, the more is obvious for that the changes in their education that we don't make today, will be very hard changes to do in the future when they are grown up.

How to discourage the few women that choose STEM careers.

I am not going to pretend I know a lot about Richard Feynman. Yes I knew he was one of the major contributors and figures of modern physics. And yes I have heard he was kind of sexist that's it. So this is not going to be a post about him, rather a post about things that came to my mind while reading all the activity on my Twitter TL the last few days. This was specially inspired after reading Janet D. Stemwedel's: Heroes, human “foibles”, and science outreach.

There's a lot of discussion about how very few women chose STEM careers. People like +DN Lee are great advocates about what we can do to keep girls interested in science through their middle school and high school years. There is no way to deny that we have a lot of work on this front and there are still way to many things we can do to change the constant discouraging of young girls towards STEM careers.  But I want to dedicate this post to the women that DID CHOSE A STEM CAREER. 

As I mentioned in my last post I don't come exactly from the kind of background that promoted a science career. Despite that, I studied Chemical Engineering and even though I had several discouraging experiences with the opposite sex I kept telling myself that was not the REAL SCIENCE WORLD it was just my bad luck that I happened to meet bad men that happened to be scientists. But the more I read on twitter and experience academia the more I have to admit it IS THE REAL SCIENCE WORLD and that is time to speak up. Maybe the more of us that tell our stories the more people will realize we haven't made that much of a breakthrough regarding leaving sexism as just a part of society's past. 

There was a professor at college that the first day of class chose two people. The most beautiful girl in the classroom and the ugliest guy. The beautiful girl would be called  "Miss Chalk" for the rest of the semester and the ugly guy "Mr. Eraser", also the girl would get an A+ no matter what she did the rest of the semester and they guy would have to run errands and erase the blackboard the rest of the semester. The professor's logic behind this, as he explained semester after semester at his class, was that on the one hand the girl was beautiful and therefore all her life she would get ahead and get benefits wether she deserved it or not just because she was beautiful. On the other hand the guy was so ugly that he will have to struggle the rest of his life even if he was smart and good. I did not take class with this professor but my experiences were not better than Miss Chalk. 

I happen to have a C on Physics I, the reason was that the professor I had always gave women C's and only if AND ONLY IF you begged, flirt or wore a mini skirt he changed your grade to an A. So he abused his position of power to boost his ego. I also had a professor that once told me I was too pretty to study a SMART CAREER that was only for ugly girls I shouldn't try so hard. During a group project our male classmates asked my friend and I to wear a miniskirt or really tight leggings the day of the presentation so the professor would give an A to the whole team. Needless to say that the opinions we had during the development of the project weren't taken in account and they only wanted us on their team to give the final presentation. Finally once I came to class and one of my male classmates told me I got the classroom wrong that was a engineer's class and I certainly didn't belong there.

I got trough all that with my head high. It was Mexico, a traditionally macho country. It was an engineer major there has always been a struggle for women to prove they are worthy engineers I just had to hold on to and someone would notice I was truly good not just a pretty face. But semester after semester the amount of girls that stayed engineers diminished. 

Suddenly it happened, I started working for a PI that gave a damn, that treated me seriously and that seemed to look beyond my face. Long story short to this day after I found out he had a romantic interest (if we can call it that) in me I don't know if he accepted me in his group because I was smart and good or because from the very beginning he thought he could get into my pants. And that is the real problem.

I said no, he didn't treated me bad, he didn't force me, he just went after the next girl that would say yes. So according to many of the comments I have read the last few days, not only was I lucky, he was a bad man but not a bad scientist and his actions didn't hurt science. He was just a man with the manliest hobbies of all: chasing skirts. The problem is this: He had a type. He didn't went after every girl in his group, but all the girls he ended up chasing had physical and personality traits in common. I fit the type perfectly. So to this day I don't know if he really thought I was good at my job. And it affected me. I did consider not studying a Ph.D because of that experience. And I did have to do a lot of personal job to overcome it. 

Yes, here is the part where women everywhere and even some men will tell me that a man or a series of men don't define what we women are. That part of the problem is exactly that, that we women allow men to define if we are good or not. And I do agree I shouldn't be wondering if I'm good or not. I should be confident enough to know that I was good I just happened to fit his type.  I'm not playing the victim here BUT I WAS ONE, I just happened to go on with my life after that. 

The problem is that once again the responsibility lies on women and not on the men we face. Like #yesallwomen we wore the short skirts or danced provocatively or were too pretty for our own good. If we get discouraged to keep our STEM majors is because we let men get to us. Because we weren't strong enough and we let men define who we were. But is not like that. Those situations, the ones I lived, the ones lots of women face everyday shouldn't be happening on the first place. And things are not going to change until we make men in science and academia responsible for their actions.

Few women chose STEM careers and fewer get STEM majors,  even fewer stay in Academia. If we keep doing the same things, justifying behaviors, making us totally responsable of the situation and protecting important men because of their scientific value we are going to keep getting the same results.

Things I learned as a Rookie Teacher ! Part 1

After a looong hiatus I'm back writing :) I apologize, I've had a couple of crazy months with the end of the school year here in Mexico and all the things you have to do in order to move to the US in August (I thought the difficult part was applying)

This year as a rookie teacher I learned so many things that I want to dedicate a post to all the big lessons, maybe later on i'll write a post on some of the things. Also here I'll make a list about the things I'll do in a different way but only to delve deeper into it in later posts. I truly believe that the things I want to change are the ones that deserve more reflection and discussion. Specially I want to talk about all this things before I start my PhD because that will mean the nature of this posts will change a little bit. I want to keep writing about #chemed but this time about the things I am going to learn as a gradstudent and how this program deeply focused on the learning sciences, policy and psychology will clash with everything I think and know about chemed. I am truly excited about my new life and can't wait to write about it here.

Now to the subject of this post:

1. You will never be completely and absolutely prepared to every possible question that your students can ask in class.

Trust me. Everytime I prepared for class I mad a list of all the things they could ask and prepare a simple answer and there wasn't a class where that list was enough. The imagination of this girls never stopped to surprise me. Also this girls were 15 (10 years younger than me) and they were born with the Internet. I know it may seem like if it wouldn't be a problem but there's a big difference !! Even though the internet has been present most of my life I learned to use it over the years this girls truly have been using it since they have memory and I truly believe they are wired differently. The amount of things they already know, heard of, etc makes them very imaginative when making questions.

2. Never underestimate the influence the background has on the learning process. Specially when it comes to girls.

This is where things from my personal life helped me relate to my students but not in a scientific way. So here comes the context. I come from a very confortable lifestyle. I've been blessed with a hardworking father and a good financially stable life that has allowed me to live things that are not so normal to the country I live in. With that I mean I belong to that little percentage of the population that in Mexico we refer as upper middle class and my students were from a private school that ranged from upper middle class to really rich girls. And I am not saying this to sound presumptuous but I think is worth telling that girls like them and me are not expected to do something from our lives. My parents bless them have supported me every step of the way but I have broken the status quo of what society expected of my from the moment I decided to study chemical engineering and made the choice to attend to a public college (BEST COLLEGE IN MY COUNTRY but still public) We grow with very specific family models. A dad that works really hard, beyond 9 to 5 and a loving mom that maybe went to college but hasn't worked a single day of her life. And before I go on I respect full time moms and I admire what they do but I think is a VERY PERSONAL DECISION and is not and ideal that should be imposed on little girls. Most of the things I remember from my childhood are the lessons of how to be a good girl. How to impress your future boyfriend's parents. How to be the kind of girl that a boy introduces to his parents. What is an appropriate conversation for a woman (no politics, soccer, etc) enough to create a good impression and never so much that it looks like you know more than your man. And this whole rant comes to the point that private schools in Mexico are good for marketing, business, etc. but there's nothing like UNAM to study a STEM career problem is UNAM is 90% working class kids not the kind of place you go looking for a husband (And yes that's the argument they gave so I wouldn't study at UNAM. I know this all seems like a poor rich girl thing to say and I can't pretend to know the things girls from other backgrounds have to face. Though thanks to twitter I have learned a few things. But this girls arrive defeated to the STEM classroom. They are already predisposed that STEM is a guy's thing, and that is something you have to fight against day after day after day in the classroom. It may sound totally silly but this girls are very afraid that they are not going to marry the good way and they are only 15.

Related to this I found the other day this amazing ad about how we don't encourage curiosity in little girls.

3. It will always feel like the first day of class.

Points one and two are things that may not change over the years of teaching. This one maybe not. You will always feel like the first day of class because every class you are teaching something you haven't taught before, a homework you have never graded a test you have never applied. When it came to tests I always was afraid that I did it to long or to difficult and every class I was afraid I would give a sucky explanation. That was also part of the fun but everyday was new and that was a good feeling, I never felt like I was stuck in a routine.

4. Teenagers are resilient to change

For kids that were born in the information age they are resilient to change. They come from a very specific education from elementary school and from some of the middle school teachers so the moment you do something completely different they tend to freak out. But changing their traditional education I think is fundamental in order to develop STEM skills.

5. Sometimes they just need someone to believe in them

There will always be people that struggle with STEM, and that is ok we need artists and people that study different things, but I discovered that sometimes kids that have always struggled with STEM think that is because they are not good enough. Taking special attention with this kids making sure they don't let the "I CAN'T" be the reason they don't succeed in some cases proved to be enough to get them from the F's to a C.

Here's part 1. I hope you liked it :)

Why should we scientists tweet?

I love tweeting. It has helped me connect with lots of chemists, learn from them and discover topics that I've never wondered about.

As you know I have been focusing more and more on education to the point of deciding I'm going to do a PhD in science education or chemical education. That led me to take some education courses this semester and in both of them I have to write a term paper on a subject I find interesting and relevant for chemical education.

In one of them I decided to talk about twitter and how it can help educate people about topics on chemophobia and more. From what I've learn and thought while doing this and by petiton of Joaquin Barroso (‏@joaquinbarroso) I'm writing this post about why should we tweet, ways we tweet and somethings I believe we could do to be better communicators to non-scientists. (though I consider myself far from being an expert on the subject) I’ll divide this in two. First post would be abput why should we… and the second one about how can we…

First of all lets talk a little about the trust people have on us as scientists. The GSS (General Social Survey)(Davis & Smith, 1991) is a sociological interview used to collect data about the demographic characteristics y thoughts of the residents of the US. This survey is done every year and it's widely used in sociological research. According to data collected in 2012 of 1259 people only 43% claimed to have complete confidence in the scientific community. 50% has some confidence and 7% no confidence. That means 57% of people would be very likely to not listen to a scientists and search their answers elsewhere.

This survey also asked " We are interested in how people get information about  science and technology. Where do you get most of your  information about science and technology (­ newspapers,  magazines, the Internet, books or other printed materials, TV,  radio, government agencies, family, friends, colleagues, or some  other source)?”

56.1% answered their first source would be the internet, where information is not necessarily trustful. And according to the information of the first question most people wouldn't look necessarily for a scientific source.

I remember a Nature Chemistry piece by Michelle Francl(Francl, 2013) where she talks about “ho to counteract Chemophobia.” In this article she says and I quote: “Cultural cognition theory builds on the established notions of biased assimilation and the availability heuristic: people are biased not only in the information they retain, but find it easier to recall information that supports their position. The theory goes even further and posits that the process of selecting credible sources can reinforce these biases…….instead we search out experts whose broad world view matches our own, liberal or conservative, hierarchally inclined or community minded.” Meaning people won’t trust us because we have a degree on science but because they feel we are similar to them, we share the same beliefs etc.

It’s obvious we scientists probably don’t strike as very relatable people. I believe that has to do a lot with the stereotypes surrounding scientists (PhD comics makes a great discussion here http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1549).  But people don’t know we are not like that, I mean I’m a girly girl I love clothes and shoes and makeup and more shoes, it’s not only me though, Dr Isis (@drisis) loves tweeting about her shoes (which I love) and she also posts about her daily thoughts. Meaning we are not Amy Farrah Fowler. Most of us besides tweeting about what we do at work tweet when we are angry, when we are happy, when we are in trouble and when just whan to share something silly. I don’t know about other areas but we chemists have created a truly wonderful community on twitter and if outsiders read our tweets they would find out we are just like any of them. Yes we don’t have a 9 to 5 job (here we call those people Godinez) but we are not so different.

So the first answer I would give to “Why should we tweet” is because people can feel more related to us if we do, and that could help raise their trust in what we say.

Second point, people are not coming for us at least we could go to them. If we see a magazine or paper or people making wrong assumptions tweeter makes it very easy for us to raise our concerns or why they are wrong (although they may not listen).

Having also only 140 characters to tweet we are forced to be concise, if something short in 140 catches your attention you may feel the need to follow the link, ask the tweeter further questions and even do a little research on your own.

Putting the scicomm thing apart, tweeting inside a scientific community helps you meet new people (cheaper than going to a congress) and specially people you wouldn’t have met because they belong to a research area very different than yours. We can share information, discuss topics of importance, hear different opinions. Researchers can use tweeter to find potential students and to put their research out there.

I’ll write more on another post.. but I would really like to hear some feedback or opinions about what I just said. See you on twitter (@pinkyprincess :) )

Davis, J. A., & Smith, T. W. (1991). The NORC General Social Survey. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.

Francl, M. (2013). How to counteract chemophobia. Nature Chemistry, 5(6), 439–440. doi:10.1038/nchem.1661

Values in the Science Classroom

I recently read an article about teaching values on the science classroom. I wanted to share with you somethings that came to my mind while reading it.

The first thing that came to my mind was here in Mexico middle school teachers are either people who studied what we call a "Teacher School" where you take the focus on the subject you are going to teach (math, sciences, spanish, etc) These teachers take pedagogy and teaching related subjects plus the theory about the things they are going to teach. So their knowledge is not really deep talking about chemistry, biology etc.. is only enough to teach the subject. And people who studied a major in any science and want to teach. In high schools only a major in chemistry can teach chemistry and so on. But in order to teach you don't need a license or anything you just need an undergraduate degree.

So when the article started talking about teaching science with a focus on values I stared thinking in my own experience as an undergrad in a chemistry related major, and I couldn't remember not even one class where we discussed values in science. So... how can I expect that that person who never saw science as a value driven thing in his/her undergraduate years could have the tools to create that kind of discussion on his/her science classroom. So as a teacher who wants to do this you first have to research read a lot from all points of view and generate your own conclusion even though during class you can't be biased. the first question would be: Are teachers willing to do this extra work?. In my country unfortunately the answer would be no (at least for the most part of people)

And the other thing I wanted to comment is I believe creating this kind of science and values discussion is super important. Because I think we all know most of the students in a science classroom won't become scientists. But they'll become who one day will be home watching and infomercial and listening that organic sillicium is the fountain of youth... or that some politician says climate change doesn't exist. And some of the will be the kind of people who influence policies and big decisions, and they won't remember the Aufbau principle or the bernoulli equation but maybe they will remember that even though science are facts their application in the world will have consequences and wether you agree with it or not will depend on the ability to listen to all sides of the story and pick a side... not matter what side as long as you know you had a choice to chose where you stood.

We have to realize as teachers in all education levels that teaching the facts is no longer enough. Maybe once it was... But in a world where more and more people have to have sciencitific literacy is super important we have to make sure scientific literacy doesn't become just a collection of facts but also create conciseness about how those facts can be used to hurt others, and that science can be thought as pure... but in the hands of men can be a wonderful or terrible thing 

An atom is the thousandth part of... Or how many atoms are there on a roll of aluminum foil (Part 3)

In order to finish the whole how big is the atom week, I decided to challenge my students.

Adapted from "Avogadro goes to Court" http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/avogadro.pdf

and without the storytelling I gave each of my students a chemistry textbook, a small piece of aluminium foil and the size and price of a roll of aluminium and asked them to calculate the number of atoms in it. 

They begun asking lots and lots of questions and I ignored them, telling them they knew more than they thought and they should try to figure it out with the aid of something called AVOGADRO'S NUMBER.

I know I gave them close to zero information and that the assignment was really really complicated for 15 year olds but I wanted to see them try. And they did for a whole our in groups of four they read about avogadro's number, they discussed ideas, concepts and challenged each other. 

Of the 12 groups that engaged in this problems 4 groups solved it by themselves without my help (YES I WAS REALLY AMAZED BY THIS!!) They only told me they needed to know the weight of their piece in aluminium in order to give me the exact number. Three groups just needed a little push, either making them realize they needed to weight the piece of aluminium first or by helping them understand what their textbook was saying about avogadro's number.  The other groups were as clueless at the end of the class as how they have started. 

I told everyone that the next day we would meet at the lab and they would have to give me a solution to the problem. 

I was surprised that the next day the same groups that were clueless didn't have an action plan for the lab. I couldn't believe they were honest enough or lazy enough to not ask their other classmates about how to solve it. Were they really lazy?? Or they were afraid of being seen as dumb or not capable of solving the problem? I know it sounds maybe unimportant but I really believe there's something to be analyzed here.

 

One reason might be they were really not interested in solving the problem, or the class so they really didn't care if they had an action plan or not. That's a sign that the problem wasn't engaging enough to everyone and that might be true. This problem didn't have any relationship to anything they could care about. Although there are kids and persons that the idea of solving a problem is enough to make it interesting. 

Another thing to ponder is why their discussion within the group was fruitless when other groups proved to be successful. Groups were made ordering everyone in alphabetic number and making groups of four, so they were not chosen by grade or friendships. What I can conclude is that there's something going wrong on this conversations. And it's really important to say so. 

This kids can spend hours talking and discussion about wether Justin Beiber is better than One Direction but five minutes after discussing a scientific problem they give up. And I don't think is only the engagement part that's causing this. This kids that gave up and didn't care might have tried a little longer if their chemistry language was better, if the patterns the other groups saw were as clear to them. But for them everything looks foggy. 

Making science relies as much on the discoveries made as on the discussions generated within the scientific community. We tend to teach this kids to memorize data and information, sometimes we are successful in teaching them how to apply it, but we rarely make them discuss and challenge each other.

The question is how to create discussion when they are barely learning the language of science. How can they have meaningful learning conversations when the language of science is not learnt yet? And that's something we are not doing. We are not teaching them the language, and making them learn formulas and the complete periodic table is not the answer. 

No matter how clearly one explains the concepts, creates meaningful activities in the classroom and makes them do hundreds of exercises, there's still a loss in translation. And there's something we are not seeing. I know this post might be confusing because I don't see it myself. Has it something to do with the language of science being so different from the language they are speaking in the real world? I don't know I'll sleep on this and probably keep musing about this in future posts.

PVR

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I want to thank everyone reading for their patience (specially in this post) I know my posts need polishing. I've never written something trying to communicate my thoughts. I usually speak. English is not my mother language and yes I think so many things at the same time that even when I speak it's confusing and hard to understand me sometimes. But I believe the only way of getting better is keep writting, and there's an english composition course in coursera coming soon that I'm going to take, and probably an essay workshop for the GRE. So all I can promise is I'll get better don't give up on my just yet.

An atom is the thousandth part of... Or what is really the size of an atom (Part 2)

After a complicated week I'm back ! :)

So last time we talked about the atom I pointed out some of the preconceptions my students had before staring the class.

What I learned was that even though they knew the atom was really small when it cam to sizes. So maybe if small was difficult to grasp maybe big sizes would be easier.

So I asked "What do you think is 10^18 m" Some said

1) The size of the state
2) The size of the continent
3) From here to my house

So big distances were also difficult to see.

WHAT MY CLASSED LOOKED LIKE

The first thing I did was help them see how much bigger is 10^1 to 10^2 and so on....
I showed them a video probably most of you have already seen "Powers of Ten"

They were really fascinated by it !!!!!!

After that we discussed a little bit about what they used to think and how the video changed their minds and it was pretty enriching.

Then we watched another video this time about the atom and its size

This video was created by TedED and I think they did a wonderful job at trying to explain how small an atom is. They video is also really fun to watch.

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QUESTION: Learning by watching videos in class counts as informal education???
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After the video more discussion followed specially to make some clarifications on the density of the atom explanation, but overall they seemed to finally start to have an idea of how small the atom is.

I'll write the third and last part of this class over the weekend, but I hope you have enjoyed it so far :)

PVR

The three basic rules of my classroom

Second part of How tiny is the atom will come next week. I just haven't finished grading a question I made them that was related to the subject (grading one of the many #joysofteaching....NOT!)

This week's post will be smaller, I had a crazy week but I wanted to share this with you :)
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People have different skills, I can't draw even if my life depended on it, while there's people that find math really really difficult. I can accept that, I can accept that not everyone os going to find chemistry easy but there's a difference with struggling and something really different saying I can't. (I shouldn't be saying "I can't draw even if my life depended on it" for example)

Taking a group in the middle of the semester meant they were kind of used to another teacher, his/her rules, way of working, etc. Everyone told me I had to be very firm or they'd eat me alive (That will be a subject for another post) and that I should state clear rules from the very beginning. So yeah I talked about discipline, late homework, how much value everything was going to have. etc.

But the first day of class I dedicated it to three basic rules:

1) It's OK to ask questions - Any question as long it has to do with the subject we are studying in class (The only time I broke this rule was to talk about diets and eating disorders but I have a classroom full of 15 year old girls if they were asking I couldn't say no ! It's a very very very important subject) I don't mind explaining the same thing over and over or if the ask what does this have to do with my life. If asking questions means they are interested and paying attention BRING IT ON !

2) THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS - Ok yes there are... and over the last months I have heard a few... but they are 15 year olds, they are not supposed to know chemistry, not supposed to know how this thing really works and I'm not supposed to think their questions are stupid becuase they are kids, they are learning, they are growing. If they don't ask stupid questions now they'll never do. That's why I treat all questions with the same importance, respect and that's why I do my best to answer all the questions the best way possible.

3) You can't make fun of your classmates - This is very dear to me... I've been bullied all my life so I know how it feels and at least in my watch is not going to happen. If I see you making fun of one of your classmates specially because of a question they asked then you are kind of death to me and you lose your chance of doind the monthly exam. Bullying is no joke.

My students are not beakers, not experiments, they are people and being used to spend 12 hours a day in the lab makes it difficult not to see them as experiments, but THEY HAVE FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS AND THEY CAN BE WONDERFUL.

The hardest realization I've had this months is that I'm part of their formative stage. I'm not only teaching them chemistry, whatever I say can affect the way they see themselves or the world. The responsability is quite big. so my biggest lesson so far STUDENTS ARE NOT BEAKERS, so if I them fixing it will not as easy as purchasing a new one.

An atom is the thousandth part of...Or what my students believe is the size of an atom (Part 1)

This week my syllabus got to a part I was dreading... Periodic Properties. Why? First of all because according to Mexican curriculum I shouldn't be teaching them and still somehow manage to make them get why there are covalent and ionic bonds, but at the same time like just don't tell them to much because they might learn something (seriously I'm going to dedicate a post to Mexican science curriculum and why they think 15 year olds are stupid) 

Point is.. I really felt electronegativity is basic to understand ionic and covalent bonding so teaching it for me is a must, but then well maybe atomic radii wouldn't hurt either. So here I am embarking on something  where I might be wrong (maybe it's not pedagogical incorrect to teach this to my students). 

So I began preparing my class about atomic radii and i realized something. I haven't discussed with my students anything about the size of an atom. We have covered, yes, everything is made of atoms and well yes they must be very tiny because nobody has ever seen them... but really how tiny is the atom? Like if I said the atomic radii of Mg is 150 pm... How do I expect them to imagine 150 pm ? Or to understand that's really really really really tiny. 

So I decided to make a series of questions and asses the ideas they were arriving with (this questions were hidden in a surprise test to make sure they remembered the key concepts we studied last semester). 

First question was "All atoms are the same size" True or False

And besides answering  true or false they had to answer: a) I'm sure of my answer b) I'm not sure c) I have no idea. Why? Because I wanted to asses the confidence they had for answering this kind of statements.

The results were the following:

• Of 47 students 13 (27.6%) said it was true and 34 (72.3%) false. So that means most of them get a sense that more electrons mean more size. I believe that's a reasonable. Then how to explain the minority? Well I believe we spend so much time telling them most of the size is in the nucleus that they start to think... "well if the electron has almost no mass it shouldn't affect size" though I don't know why they think protons don't affect that much either. 
• I teach two groups, first group only 4 girls said it was true so in the other group it was the double that thought all atoms were the same size. 
• First group: of the four persons that thought all atoms were the same size 3 said they were sure of their answer the other one not so sure. 
• Second group: 4 said they were sure all atoms were the same size 5 said they weren't sure.
• From the 34 that answered "false" we can forget 7 that said they didn't know the answer so they just guessed, that leaves 27 (16 from group one 11 from group 2) roughly half of them in both groups said they were sure of their answer

Second question was "How would you explain the size of an atom?" They were a little baffled by it but when they got tired of me not giving them any clues about how to address the question they started writing.

The most interesting answers from the first group were:

Student 1: I think an atom is the size of a marble divided in five

Student 2: Like when you are looking at the window and there's light coming from it and you can see the dust in the air. I believe that's kind of the size of an atom

Student 3: We could say an atom is a million time smaller than the tip of a pencil

Student 4: I think the size of an atom can be compared to the fourth part of a lemon

Student 5: The thousandth part of a rheum

Student 6: Anything divided in a million parts

Student 7: The hundredth part of a grain of sand

Student 8: The millionth part of a centimeter

Student 9: The thousandth part of dust

Student 10: The size of an atom is 1x10-18 mol of the size of a cat

Student 11: Fifteen times smaller than a cell

Student 12: Thousandth part of an ant

Student 13: It depends on what it is made of

Student 14: Too small to see it at plain sight

Second group most of the answers were:

- Depends on how many protons, electrons and neutrons it has

- Depends on the kind of element or material

- They are just so small you can't see them

- The smallest thing that can exist

Not a single one of them made an analogy

I'm just so surprised at how different both groups reacted to the question. First group was so imaginative even if their answers were wrong, on the other hand the other group is like they understood the question in a completely different way (I have a feeling that there's a research topic in here)

And even though second group seemed to get better at least what it takes to have atoms of different sizes truth is first group had more girls with the correct answer. Still all this analysis gives us enough information to know what ideas they are bringing and now we can work from them in order to get to a better idea of how small is the atom.

Next post will deal with teaching how small is the atom, and how to help them grasp big numbers and small numbers and a version of "Avogadro goes to court" for middle school students.

Greatest misconception of the week: Mol is a measure of the size of an atom (more on that later)

Comment if you have any thoughts about this post and thanks for reading :)

Losing touch with the subject you are teaching

I often wonder about the teacher's that have been doing it for their whole careers, how do they keep in touch?. Yes, they are excellent teachers, yes they studied their majors and ever since they have taken probably a couple of courses in pedagogy but what about the science they are teaching how do they keep in touch?

I begun to question this after one of my courses this semester. The subject was called "Structure of Matter" and it was kind of hybrid between studying yes structure of matter but also an introduction to theoretical calculations and all that stuff. The twist here was a great deal of the semester was about the concept of bonds and bonding, and how we are supposed to create a broader definition for bonding (I thought those kind of discussions only existed for things like the definition of life) 

That was like an eye opener for me. Of course I knew science is not a finished thing, everyday hundreds of chemistry articles are published with new findings, but those things we see as changes in academia are not so perceptible for the people outside. In the end the great definitions the ones we have to teach middle schoolers have not changed in a while so why bother? But what would happen if definitions like the ones we have for bonds were to change ? How would we explain it to science teachers around the world about it? And how easy would be for them to truly understand those changes if the haven't been in touch with the field in a while?

If we were to change the definition of bond for example to the way Vader proposed it (I know there a lot of people that disagree or agree with it) would it be worth it to inform science teachers about it ? Or it would be preferable to keep the centurial definitions alive and teach the new ones only to chem undergrads even if it carries a lot of misconceptions with it?

I finally decided that instead of pursuing a PhD in Chemistry I will be doing one in science education in order to focus in chemistry education towards kids and middle schoolers. But one of the things that scares me is losing touch with the field, forgetting this side of me, the organic researcher. 

I'm not changing because I don't love organic chemistry.  I do love it ! I enjoy it so it hurts me a little bit to take this decision. And the idea of losing touch with the feel really scares me.

Will it be my responsibility as educator to keep in touch with the field ? Or researchers will need to find a way to keep in touch with me?

I do believe things like twitter or keep reading the blogs I read will be part of the answer.

I would love to read your thoughts about it. Thank you for reading !!!
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I wrote this post throughout the week I just wanted to make an additional comment regarding the discussion we had on twitter (@Chemjobber @sciencegeist @JessTheChemist @TheCollapsedPsi) that started with @deborahblum 's blog post http://t.co/2neu7gghht  about the chemical spill in West Virginia. I plan to do a post about teaching values in the science classroom (and I think this situation gives a good start for having that kind of discussion) but I think it's very important that we realize saying "we don't know the effects this chemical will have on the environment" won't help #chemophobia. And how to have this kind of discussion about #chemophobia in the classroom?

I usually try for every subject I teach to relate to something in their everyday lives so they see chemistry is useful for anything but should we mention chemophobia or as  @sciencegeist said is better to not label it and teaching chemistry adequately will be enough? 

Why are you here?

Three months ago a friend called me with a job offer. He worked in a school, and suddenly in the middle of the semester this little middle school was in the need of a Chemistry teacher. He knew I had zero experience but still he said he had a feeling I would be good at it, so I went to the interview.

During the interview the headmistress was not only surprised by my age but by the fact that I looked so young (common joke in the teacher's lounge is that I could pass as a student) It was the month of October and her first question was:

- When did you gradaute?

- May

- May? Like in last May? Like 5 months ago May?

- Yes

- And your teaching experience is..?

- Zero

- So why are you here?

Why was I there? That was a fair question, I was recently graduated, with zero experience and I was doing a master in organic chemistry that relied heavily on research. My background was way off. I only knew a few things. I knew I hated chemophobia, I hated the way news talk about science and I hate when someone says "ugh chemistry it's horrible" or "it's only for super smart people. 

So why was I there? Because science specially chemistry is beautiful, because we need scientific literacy among non scientific people and because I felt I could do something about it. So my answer was: Because my lack of experience is my best asset, I'll bring fresh ideas to the table for everytime I step into that classroom. My age is an advantage because I'll get my students, and my masters only shows I love chemistry and I'm prepared to show them they can love it too.

Yes I know what you are thinking what amount of change could I do in a little middle school? I know it's only a small start but if this 50 girls I'm teaching become literate in science they'll be 50 more scientifically literate persons in the world. It's a start isn't it?

So that's why I'm here writing this blog, to tell my adventures in teacherland as I show them the world of chemistry. It's a brave new world for me where I'll rant, or question or ask, and I hope someone reads this to know their opinion. My goal is to achieve a balance between the hard scientist I've been and the humanist inside me that decides to focus on education.

Wish me luck,

PVR