It’s Monday, and we’re not together in class (weird), but we’ll fix that tomorrow on Optimistic Day. Get some rest, take your vitamins, and drink water… big week ahead! Here’s what is happening in Life Science, Environmental Science, and AP Physics!
Podcast: Friday the 13 is Coming!
Here’s what is in store for our Life Science, Environmental Science, and AP Physics classes this week at Wilson Hall! See https://harrelsonscience.com for more.
Paper Airplanes
I love incorporating paper airplanes into my classroom lessons on dynamics, flight, movement, gravity… the list goes on and on. They’re so applicable to so many scientific principles but also appeal to the curious nature inside all of us that loves to fold and learn…
History of the Paper Airplane: Paper Flight Technology Inspires Drones:
“The magic of a paper airplane is that all of these little flight corrections are happening continuously throughout its flight,” Ristroph says. “The plane is hanging under a vortex that is constantly swelling and shrinking in just the right ways to keep a smooth and level glide.”
Emotions as Constructions
Emotions are not reactions to the world. You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions.
How Emotions are Made – Lisa Feldman Barrett
Every teacher (and parent) should read this book. It’s transformative on many levels regarding our own personal development and how we should think about the emotional health and support of young people!
Thinking About Screentime
I’ve become much more of a book person as I’ve gotten older. Also, notebooks. That would seem quizzical to my younger self that reveled in every new productivity and reading app released on iOS or Android as I combed through blogs, subreddits, and Twitter lists, looking for the latest and greatest note-taking app.
Alas, getting old is interesting.
Screentime is definitely something that’s been on the front of my mind for the last few decades as I’ve welcomed children into this world (including Lily as of August 1!) and young people ranging from 12 to 18 into my classrooms.
I plan to read this book, so I’m using this as a space-saver for myself to return to when I’m done (and in the middle of the school year).
Screentime is a fascinating cultural concept. The amount of “screentime” we actually consume is lower than it’s ever been (no, really). But is the measurement of “time” really what we should be focused on or worried about?
Regardless, my students will still have their devices in the “off” mode, and we’ll focus on the great ideas with our brains, pen/cil, paper, and each other’s voices like we’ll continue to not have devices on during dinners or downstairs time here in our home…
A Different Way to Think About Screentime:
Parents have a hard time when they don’t know something. I’ve written this elsewhere, but I think one of the basic things that underlies a lot of the book bannings and pronoun panics from parent-activists on the far-right is the very simple fact that parents don’t know what their kids do all day. My daughter Maeve is 7, and I volunteered this spring to help with a field trip for her first-grade class. The bus was late, and so I ended up just sitting in her classroom for about 45 minutes while the day went on as usual. Maeve is very talkative, and she loves telling us stories about her day, but it wasn’t until I sat in that classroom that I realized how little I actually knew about what the ordinary beats of that day were like, what the social dynamics were, what kind of job her wonderful teacher — hello, Mr. Diego Fernandez — is tasked with doing.
Podcast: Thinking About the New School Year
More shortly! I just wanted to dust off the podcast. Subscribe here or via your podcast player of choice if you’d like (just search for my name).
Are highlights worth it?
One of the biggest revelations I’ve had this summer doing in-depth research on Mind Body Education (thanks to the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning and Wilson Hall for introducing me to current educational psychology research these past few months) is the value of retrieval practices in classroom learning.
A particular eye-opening part of that summer learning for me is how we process information as learners immediately and in the long-term. This quote from Willingham’s Outsmart Your Brain hit me particularly hard as someone who has been a highlighter for the last 20 or so odd years! I’ll be writing more about these topics in the next few days. Thanks to Readwise for resurfacing this quote from my readings earlier this summer!
Mr. Harrelson (Again)!
Got my classroom name plate for my new classroom and teaching position at Wilson Hall today. I’m teaching 7th grade science, Environmental Science, and Physics. All three subjects should be a blast.
I look forward to this being the last classroom name plate I collect to finish out my career here at Wilson Hall in the next few decades (I still have my others from previous schools)! So exciting!
Good Summer Science Afternoon
Reconnecting with Voyager 2
Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 and have, by all expectations, exceeded their missions and then some. I was born in 1978, so I share some sentimental affinity with these two marvels of human engineering. Glad to see we reconnected with Voyager 2 after a few scary days there as it continues its incredible journey outside our solar system.
We’ll be in touch with the two Voyagers until they run out of their power reserves sometime in the 2030s. That will be a sad day. May we all contribute a verse to humanity’s story and the cosmos, much as these robots have done during their time!
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my daughter was born on August 1, either 😉
NASA reestablishes full communications with Voyager 2:
Voyager 2 resumed communications with Earth after remaining silent for two weeks. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and remains on its expected trajectory, stated NASA.