I Don't Know (Week 6)

There seems to be a tradeoff between teaching students the process and skills of science versus just wowing them with cool facts and stories. I am working on balancing helping my students "love the world" and "see the world" and "wonder about the world", with seriously CHALLENGING them to think critically about HOW, through science, society comes to understand the world and discover. And also to shake free of this unfortunate misconception they have that science is cool, but science is hard. Too much thinking. If I had a dollar for every "I don't know" I got today in class, I'd be treating myself to a really nice lunch.

I feel like the expectation of students is that science should be fun. And I totally agree, but my definition of "fun" and their definition of "fun" do not often match. One of the issues that I am facing with working with the 11th and 12th grade is that there is an expectation of the world on them that they should know certain things (e.g. science facts and scientific processes) when they graduate and the time has somewhat run-out. The burden of proof lies on me.