What I realized throughout this week with such amazing students, is that no matter how old a person is, by creating relationships of respect, you will receive respect back. Every students ideas and thoughts are valid and deserve to be recognized, not squished. When we allowed students to come up with solutions to problems that occurred in the real world, right outside their classroom door in fact, they came up with crazy-cool solutions, and got really excited about solving them.
One scientist group decided that to clean up the stream but allow farmers to still create crops they would “create a pesticide that killed bugs, but once water hit it, it would turn biodegradable so that when it ran in the stream it wouldn’t kill the macroinvertebrates and fish that live there.” A mayor group decided they would “Make it mandatory for all citizens of Bridgeport to come out and clean the stream on Earth Day.” A logging group decided “We’re not going to log trees really close to the stream so that there won’t be a lot of soil erosion in the stream, and it will reduce mudslides. We also want the birds and animals to have a place to live, so we have to be careful about how much we cut down.”
Then, when they had to get together as a group of four, a farmer, logger, mayor, and scientist in a town-hall like setting and decide which solution they would choose, they were critical thinking like mad. Things like “How long will it take to create that pesticide? 5 years?” And “How much will that cost? We don’t have that much money, so we need to be careful about the expensive ones,” and “Why don’t we choose more than one solution? I don’t like having to choose only one, since we are choosing the least costly ones.”
At the end of the discussion, we asked them “How many of you were happy with the decision your group made?” Lots of hands stayed down. We explained “These types of decisions are being made right now about how to keep streams clean while feeding the world, housing the world, and keeping people happy. You guys came up with ideas and compromised better than many adults can. You are excellent scientists.”
I’m excited to see where these little scientists end up, because if they can come up with ideas like these as 10 year olds, then their adult selves are going to make a huge difference in the world!
Getting to know the faculty and staff at Bridgeport Elementary, Middle, and High School was great. Learning about some of their success and challenges working in a rural area were interesting, considering I want to teach in a rural area upon graduation. Their resources are extremely limited, but teachers are still doing amazing things. I hope to someday work in Bridgeport, WA! :)
-Susie Dobkins