Those writings raised very important issues on teacher's jobs so I'd like to
share the writings with you.
David Glaser and Laura Bashlor
Thank you for your permission to place your nice writings here.
David Glaser dlgsam@lmi.netposted to discuss-sun listhttp://passport.ivv.nasa.gov/sun/sun.html
Subject:Sun Activities at my School
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 15:22:59 -0800
Hello everyone,
We are finally moving into the astronomy and physics part of our curriculum
and I can get more involved with LFS now. Along the way, I've been doing a
variety of sun related activities with smaller groups of students at lunch
time, or after school. Since we had so much fun preparing video footage
and seeing ourselves on TV for Live From Mars, I've started video taping
all of these activities. I hope this letter isn't too long-winded. It's
really quite amazing how much sun stuff is going on.
I've been working for several months as part of a project which hopes to
build a Native American solar calendar at a local park by the shores of San
Francisco Bay (I'm in Berkeley, CA). The calendar would be a circle 90
feet in diameter with poles or columns to mark the solstices, equinox etc.
and teachers in my district would write interdisciplinary curricula for
grades 4-8 to go along with the calendar. It will be a long process to get
everything approved by the city and get the funding, but there seems to be
political support for this project.
Anyway, on a Sunday close to the equinox, I sponsored a picnic for my
students. We had about 40 students and family members and, after eating,
we watched the sunset from the proposed calendar site and the students
tried to mark the location of the sunset on a photocopied picture of the
horizon. Some ancient cultures kept track of time with a "horizon
calendar." I'm planning to do the same activity close to the winter
solstice next month, and then to get students to go down there and take
observations on their own.
On the actual equinox, I had three students measure the shadow at local
solar noon, but it took me about a month to get around to analyzing the
measurments with some students and then more time to post it on the
website. I'm going to see if our algebra teacher is interested in having
his students work with the data from the different sites.
Three summers ago, I and some other teachers built a 6 foot diameter
concrete slab next to our school garden for the purpose of observing the
sun's position in the sky. In the center we placed a threaded bolt so that
a small post could be screwed in to capture the sun's shadow. I thought
it would be useful for all sorts of data collecting (which it is), but in
fact it has mostly just sat there slowly being buried by dirt. Somehow it
has just been very difficult to get out of the classroom to use it. After
LFS was announced this year, I became determined to use it, and to
resurrect my original plan, which is to paint a mural on it with sky
symbols and designs from many different cultures.
On four other occasions since the equinox, I have had students mark the
sun's shadow on the circle at solar noon, and I hope to do that a few more
times leading up to the solstice. It's startling to see how quickly the
shadow is growing, about 1/4 inch per day right now. One can easily see
how the ancients could have used this technique to study the sun's motion
in thesky. This week, I gave them a worksheet where they had to graph the
sun's angle in the sky using our data and then try to predict how that
position would change in the next month. I also had a student make a giant
version of this graphic representation so we can keep all of our data on
the classroom wall as we watch the sun over the next 6-8 months.
Meanwhile, I've also been working with the "horizon calendar" from the
proposed solar calendar site by the bay. After hours and hours of working
with scanners and computer graphics, I have produced from a mediocre photo,
a decent representation of the horizon from that location, and I myself
have made four different observations of the sun's setting location since
the equinox. Today, I also gave that information to the students and asked
them to predict where the sun will set at some time in the near future.
Meanwhile, I we are also participating in Project Starshine (thanks to the
person who posted that info on the QUEST list back in August). Project
Starshine will use a small spherical satellite, covered with tiny circular
mirrors, to analyze the density of the upper atmosphere and hopefully to
see how that changes as we approach solar sunspots maximum. Five students
stayed after school in September to polish two of the small mirrors. One
we sent back to the PO and the other is on display in our trophy case at
school. The next phase in the project is to practise tracking the Mir
space station in preparation for tracking the Starshine satellite after it
is released by the shuttle next spring.
Meanwhile (see, I told you there's a lot!) I have students observing and
recording sunspots with a 3" telescope. I rigged it up with a small
clipboard suspended behind the eyepiece, so an image of the sun can easily
be projected. Each sunny day, a couple of students draw and count the
sunspots on a piece of paper. I started doing this last year, so we may
have data that shows the number of sunspots are increasing.
Meanwhile (I think this is the last one), the University of California at
Berkeley, our neighbors, are in charge of a NASA mission called HESSI (High
Energy Solar Spectrosopic Imager) which will primarily be studying solar
flares. The mission is due to be launched in mid 200 and the university
will actually control the spacecraft and downlink data from it. I
contacted their education outreach person a couple of months ago and met
with them a couple of weeks ago. They offered to expose our students to
the activities of the mission in exchange for some of us teachers helping
to design activities for their website. I haven't finalized any plans, but
it's an exciting opportunity.
I hope you don't mind me getting personal for a moment, but the future of
my teaching career may depend on it. I know that you other teachers out
there understand how difficult our job is. I just reread this letter, and
I think that if I were someone else reading it, I would think, "Wow, this
teacher is really thriving in his work." But, in fact, I'm highly stressed
and frustrated being a teacher and this may be my last year at this
position. Getting to do creative projects like those mentioned above is
probably my favorite thing about the job, but two things make it very
difficult for me: 1. The number of students who come from disadvantaged
backgrounds and have a lot of trouble in school 2. The workload and the
incredible amount of organization necessary to keep up with it.
In a way, my creativity may be making things more difficult for me. My
mind is adept at branching out and creating new ideas, but not particularly
gifted at keeping hundreds of papers organized or in budgeting time. Most
of these extra projects don't involve the majority of my students, yet they
do take up my time. I am not callous about the issue of lower achievment
by certain groups of students. It's something that I very much want to
help change and I am involved in efforts to do that in my school community.
But I can't continue to function at such a high level of stress and
unhappinesss with my work. I don't think there are any easy solutions, but
perhaps some of you have some thoughts that would help me.
David Glaser
Willard Middle School
Berkeley, CA
And the reply from Laura Bashlor lauralou@ili.net
Subject:Re: Sun Activities at my School
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 20:32:39 -0500
David,
I did. indeed, read your message with awe. I kept thinking, "We could
do that at our school" and my mind was planning a mile a minute.
Then I reached the last two paragraphs. How familiar it seemed! This is my
fourth year involved with Live From activities. All of my gratification seems
to come from fellow PTK participants. It is from this list that I get my
energy. Rarely has there been any recognition from the local administration,
or parents. My partners and I seem to get bogged down with minutia.
A parent who wants all of her son's homework for the next month.
If he could keep up in that way why would teachers even be needed?
Another parent is raging at one of my partners, complete with police
and an attorney. Her son tripped another student and blamed the teacher
(who was on the other side of the hallway) for pushing him.
It seems that every week we vow to quit doing the creative things we do
because of the stress caused by irresponsible students (over half have
not done homework on any given day) and their equally irresponsible
parents (it takes the policeto keep the parents from blocking the buses...
some park right under the noparking signs).
But today I found the note Aubrey wrote to me the first week of school saying
that it was her dream to become an astronaut...her life would be meaningless if
she couldn't. Would I please help her to become an astronaut. Today Rehan
came and asked me to help him figure out how to place the window on a solar
temple with 45 degree angle walls instead of the perpendicular walls
in the project directions. Today six students chose to eat a sandwich
from home and work on their temples in school rather than participate in
the ultra-social hour of lunch in the cafeteria.
Yes, Krystal is pouting and refusing to work with her teammates, but Joshua,
the quiet "invisible" boy has his teammated attention while he lays out plans
to use his mother's craft items to decorate their pyramid.
David, keep a notebook, if you must, of those little daily successes. Be
observant of those little moments. Keep every positive note and note every
positive comment.
Statistics show that kindergarten teachers can accurately predict the success
and failure of students. It seems predestined. Then what are we doing if
success and failure was set at home before we even see the students? Because
of that one miracle...that one student form a "disadvantaged" background that
succeeds. Listen to a successful person on talk shows, in print, in
conversation and there was usually a teacher who believed and gave that
student a chance. That is why we keep on keeping on.
I am 60 years old with 38 years of teaching behind me (and five more to
go)...every year filled with frustrations I can't even remember and every year
filled with successes I refuse to forget.
David, I hope to see your messages for many years to come on here.
Laura Bashlor
Shumate Middle School
Michigan
Say again arigatou (thank you) David and Laura!