A few years ago, I read a chapter in Tina Seelig’s book called "The Upside-Down Circus" and the concept was so sticky it did what sticky things do best - it stuck. The Upside-Down Circus is a case study in creativity and design. How do we go from a generic $5 circus show with elephants and clowns to a fully-fledged, high-end spectacle like Cirque du Soleil? Much like the ideas presented in that chapter, The Upside-Down School is about questioning the traditional assumptions of schooling and education and flipping them on their heads – the same story with a different twist. In science, one of the first activities I do with my students is have them sketch an image of a scientist. That's it. The activity is simple but reveals a lot about our preconceived notions of what science is and what exactly it is that scientists do. The stereotypical image of a scientist is presented as follows: a white male with wacky hair in a white lab coat working in a laboratory with chemistry equipment. We talk about what these stereotypes mean and where they come from. We talk about why these images are problematic and what we can do about it. And then, we revise. Scientist sketches, before discussion. Scientist sketches, after discussion. The most interesting part of this activity is seeing the variety and differences in approaches that students take when drawing the second sketch. By bringing to awareness our biases and questioning those initial assumptions, we freed ourselves from the initial, rigid, locked in notions of what constitutes "scientist." I feel like this is what we need to aim to do more often in our own thinking DAILY. That's what I'm going to attempt to do more often on my blog as well.
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April SooInternational math educator who writes, occasionally. Archives
April 2020
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