ANITA, Iowa — Ten-year-old Kyler Jacobs exhaled quickly, blowing flour into the air. The beam of Shelby Alff's flashlight highlighted the small particles as they drifted through the air.
Michelle Harris smiled, looking at the students expectantly — this is where it happens.
Harris, a fifth-grade teacher at Anita Elementary, works and plans for these moments in science class where her students can see science for themselves. In this case, it's the path of a beam of light. Another time, it was Isaac Newton's third law of motion.
But always, it's a voyage of curiosity, hands-on experiments and debate for the fifth-graders, a voyage resulting in a new understanding of science.
If you ask Harris, she'll tell you she isn't the “typical science teacher.” She believes that is, at least in part, why she was honored with a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.
She was one of 80 to receive the award, intended to single out the best pre-college-level science and math teachers nationwide. Harris was one of two Iowans honored; the other was Mary Black of Dubuque. Nebraska had one award winner, Reenie McMains from the King Science and Technology Magnet Middle School in the Omaha Public Schools.
The award took the teachers to Washington, D.C., where they met President Barack Obama, toured the White House and collected a $10,000 award from the National Science Foundation.
But for the Anita resident, the real fun happens in her classroom, where she uses a method called “science writing heuristics” to teach her students.
The method rarely involves textbooks. Rather, each subject, such as light, is introduced as a topic. Students generate their own questions about what they want to know — How can you feel light? How does light travel? — and Harris uses those questions to create a hands-on lab.
She gives students questions and asks them how they can use the materials provided to find the answers. She asks them to make claims and use evidence to support them.
“The best part is, after that, we have a class debate,” said Harris.
That's where students offer their own claims and evidence and talk them through together, offering competing ideas.
That process was behind Harris' nomination for the award. Kim Wise, a science consultant for the Loess Hills Area Education Agency, nominated Harris, lauding her ability to encourage student opinion by creating a comfortable environment where children aren't afraid to be wrong.
“That's an art,” Wise said. “I don't think all teachers can do that.”
A decade ago, when Harris began her teaching career, she didn't imagine this as her path. She was a more traditional teacher, primarily using textbooks for science lessons. About five years ago, she attended a program offered by Iowa State University, which introduced her to the teaching method. She won't go back to the old way, she said.
“I have seen their enthusiasm for science grow,” Harris said.
That excitement was on display on a recent afternoon, when students readily told a classroom visitor about the fun things they had done in science class. Balloon rockets to demonstrate Newton's third law were a favorite.
In one instance this year, a student asked if she could go home and do some of her own research on a topic they discussed.
“Yes! Of course,” Harris remembered telling the student. “Before, kids didn't ask for homework or ask to go home and do science. There's that eagerness, that curiosity. They have to know the answer.”
Harris hopes more classrooms will go that way. But she's happy to engage her own students in the curiosities of science.
That, said Wise, is a good thing.
“Michelle has realized that through inquiry, kids do get the necessary content, but in a much more critical thinking kind of way,” said Wise. “They're learning to be learners.”
Contact the writer:
444-1310, elizabeth.ahlin@owh.com
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