Polymer Study

Last week, we further explored atoms and molecules.  It is fun (near impossible, if you happen to be me) to truly think on a molecular level.  Fortunately, second graders like this lofty challenge.

How many molecules are in a single drop of water?  More than a billion.  It's incredible, mind-bending stuff.

I find hands on science to be so awesome and miraculous because it is tangible.  And when you can actually witness, even FEEL, a chemical change, it's amazing.  It's visceral.  It's messy yet it makes natural sense.

It is equally awesome to watch young scientists achieve Eureka! moments.

So, polymers.  Polymers are much fun:  they are chemical compounds that are made of many, many molecules.  These molecules are strung together like long chains.

Polymers can feel different.  Some are rubbery, some are gooey, some are hard and tough.


(You can probably foreshadow that we stuck with the slimy/gooey variety here in 2nd grade.  Most mess = most fun, right?)

Teddy and James work to mix our water/glue combination together.

We take notes in our science field journals.

  


We started with tap water and Elmer's glue.  The molecules in the water and the glue mingled, a little, but they were very reluctant.  Nothing changed within the glue when it hit the water.  Nothing much changed in the water when it swirled in the glue.  Just a soupy mess.

Grace mixes in food coloring and some Borax...

And we made a polymer!

Then we added a magical ingredient.  I want to pretend to be a wizard, but I'll reveal our secret here:  it was simple Borax powder.  Borax is incredible stuff.  Just a small bit of it mixed with water and glue changed up the molecules in the Elmer's completely.  They started to bind together differently.  They gathered and bunched together until they formed a sticky, yet flexible, lump.


Homemade silly putty.  And we actually achieved it on a molecular level.

Kevin creates his polymer.

Andrew and Julia try it out, too!

We document the "recipe" and explain how it looks and feels.

Here's where the tangible, visceral, Eureka! moment comes in:  Each student was allowed to swirl their fingers in the water/glue.  When their fingers were coated with the mixture, they then dipped their fingers into the dry Borax powder.  When they returned their fingers to the water/glue, they could actually feel the molecules changing in their hands.


It's incredible.  Trust us.  We couldn't stop experimenting.

Grace, Julia, Sophia, and Gabriel work hard to analyze.

The rest of our science lesson was spent analyzing, stretching, bouncing, rolling, and measuring.



..... And by bouncing, I mean doing huge jumps in order to bounce the Silly Putty onto the ground with lots of force!

Nice air time, Andrew!!

The life of a scientist is rough.

On Rejection.

Goldman Sachs recently partnered with Stanford on an educational essay contest.

The core question centered around how it could be feasible for every child in the American K-12 system to attain the education that he or she deserved.  Parents, teachers, administrators, public policy makers, polymaths, eccentric geniuses, whoever and wherever were invited to submit concept papers.

Awesome, I thought.  Combine the two passions I love most:  education and writing.  Game, set, match.  I knew how to fix our nation's education system.  There weren't even too many components to my recipe.  Wait until the judges, lofty academics rooted deeply in their think tanks, took a shine to me.  I'd probably be asked on a speaking tour.  "No, no," I'd protest demurely.  "I am far too busy here in Maryland."

But I would probably let them talk me into it.


I took this question seriously.  I loved every second of writing that concept paper.  True change starts and ends with the teacher herself, I argued.  K-12 teachers are the only folks who truly understand how to trial, and grossly error, and achieve success from the ashes of past missteps.  We are the ones who treat our classrooms as living laboratories.  We care beyond measure about our charges.  We must push, and never stagnate, and we must also sound the siren song to others who might understand it:  other people who feel compelled to teach, and to learn, and to collaborate together.


Social media, I said.  Never before has our world had such an opportunity to unite and to share and to learn.  Teachers have to be at the forefront of this technological push.  We also must poach talent from the private sector.  Some of the coolest and most innovative educators I've met have been the people who've spent time in other careers.


I edited that paper with such love and I read it aloud, over and over, until the syllables snapped.  It was the most fun I have ever had writing.


With a mighty, mighty hope, I sent it out there to those academics and those at the top of our educational totem pole.

When the rejection came, the stages of grief went like this:

1.  Shock (a healthy 3 minutes)

2.  Gross indignation (2 hours - did they forget how to READ at Stanford?)



When I found the courage to check out the top 12 papers, my heart fell into an ugly trench of sheepishness and embarrassment.


Where I had quoted Grant Allen, they had written phrases like "focal points" and "sustainable model"


Where I had waxed lyrical about Twitter, cluttered classrooms, embracing the new Common Core and the rhetoric of Harry Truman, they had re-analyzed A Nation at Risk and thrown down every academic buzzword you could imagine.


I felt like the kid at the science fair who showed up with a homemade baking soda volcano.  And everybody else had self-built fully functioning Lear jets.



But I'm shaking myself out of it - this feeling of gross inadequacy.  My stages of grief are charging up again.  I feel indignant.  Because how do you call for concept papers asking for a new idea for reform, only to stick with the same tired models?


Those essays read like really impressive Harvard Business School case studies.  Intellectual, tactical, clean, unable to spur real change.

Mine reads like a messy yet impassioned love letter.  And that's what it is.  Do I think I can fix a country's educational system?  No.  I'm not a madwoman.  But I do believe that K-12 teachers can - and are currently doing so collaboratively.


Dear Goldman Sachs,

True educational reform will happen when we pull our heads out of the sand.  It will happen at the hands of the teachers, parents, and public policy makers who are not afraid to think differently and remain grounded in the real world.  Educational theorists are fine authors.  Yet they do not understand a second grade child.  I cannot think of a teacher who would not invite such thinkers into his or her classroom.  Step into the fray:  it is awesome, exhausting, and life-affirming here.

True educational reform is actually occurring below the ivory towers and the think tanks.  We're doing it on our own, as teaching comrades.  And there's no place I'd rather be.

Rejection makes me claw and cry.  I'm human.  This morning, my eyes are puffier than a prize fighter's.  But it's fitting:  because I'm ready to step back into the educational ring.


Sincerely,

Hilarie