Pro D-Day

For pro-D, I attended Catalyst virtually. One of the sessions involved testing tap water for different minerals and chemicals. The idea was to demonstrate how this process of testing water content could be done as a lab in a science classroom. On one hand, it did seem like a bit of a sales pitch for these water testing kits. But on the other hand, I appreciate how such a lab might do well in engaging students because of its real world implications on our daily lives. Were I to teach general science, or chemistry, or environmental science, I think that a lab based around this idea is an excellent idea.

Another one of the sessions involved a conversation between high school teachers and university professors. Unfortunately, there were some technical difficulties at the beginning of the session which made me slightly rethink attending this session. However, the lion's share of the discussion surrounded the issue of math and science skills of students first entering into both high school and university. I've heard about this quite a bit recently, especially with regards to high school students, that they seem to lack a lot of the basic skills required to keep up in upper year math and physics classes. There were some ideas being floated as to why this might be the case... For instance, it's interesting to think about COVID-19's role in setting things back, but I personally believe it had been tending in this direction for some time before then. Other developments in education, such as the de-emphasis on homework, I think are worth considering in making sense of the current situation. Many of the teachers in the session were expressing frustration over needing to slow down their grade 10, 11, and even 12 classes in order to have time to cover relatively basic topics like working with integers and fractions. It was enlightening to hear so many teachers essentially vent about the difficult situation they've been put in, with regards to feeling pressure from parents and administrators to pass students, but then also having to spend extra time working with students who should, in their eyes, not belong in the more advanced math classes. This appears to especially be an issue in a class like Pre-Calc. 11, where students and parents are still hoping for the best, despite the fact that those students may have only passed the previous year thanks to a generous teachers/administrators. Anyway, it's good to be aware of these things going into the teaching profession, to know what to expect, and perhaps steel myself for the reality of a classroom full of students at vastly different stages in their math education.

My favorite session of the day was "Science through Time: Using Archaeology to Bring Local Content into your Science Classes" presented by Nicole Smith. I really really enjoyed listening to Ms. Smith. She covered a wide range of topics relating to archeological surveys being done in the local region, and Haida Gwaii especially, and her passion and interest in the subject matter very much came through in her presentation. Apart from the subject matter being extremely interesting anyway, it was worth noting the fact that it was research being done (relatively) locally. This served to enrich and better understand the history of the region and made the lesson very appealing. One of the intentions of this workshop was to demonstrate how powerful it can be to design lessons and select topics which allow us and our students to connect with the land and history of the surrounding area. While a lot of the presentation tied-in directly to history of Indigenous Peoples, I think even without that, this practice of teaching the science being done locally is in line with my understanding of FPPL, especially when it's related to the environment. And while archeology specifically isn't offered as a class in BC high schools (as far as I know), Ms. Smith did an excellent job of showing how this research could be tied into many different classes, including physics. This raised an excellent point of how, even if a research topic isn't a physics-specific topic, I could always discuss the methodology of the research, and the physics concepts involved in, say, carbon dating. In my experience, there is a lack of discussion about current research in science classrooms in general, and I think this is an excellent way to keep the subject matter relevant and engaging in the minds of students.