Chapter 7B

Good Soil

“…which brings us back to the original question,” said Amy, holding up her demonstration once more for the class to see. “Is it baking soda or the vinegar that is the limiting reactant in this beaker?”
Several hands went up, and she called on the very first one. I made a note to speak with her later about wait time.
“Audrey?” She said.
“The vinegar.” A girl in the front row replied confidently.
“Good.” Amy responded. “And what is your evidence?”
Audrey’s was not the only abruptly puzzled expression in the class. But she gamely offered a more hesitant response.
“The calculation told me so?” She half-asked, half-declared.
Amy shook her head. “No, I mean what actual evidence do you have.” She stated, pointing at the beaker.
Again, the response was hesitant. “The inflated glove?”
“No.” Amy replied, lifting up the beaker again. “See the white powder left at the bottom? That is the remaining baking soda. If the limiting reactant had been it, we wouldn’t be able to see anything at the bottom; it would’ve all been consumed in the reaction.”
It was clear from the mixture of expressions that some were getting it and others were not.
“Mrs. Popp?” asked one of the girls in the rear of the room. “Why does that show it’s the vinegar that’s the limiting reactant? I mean, I can still see the vinegar in the beaker.”
Amy did a good impression of someone trying to nod and shake their head at the same time. It was clear she now grasped the source of the confusion.
“No.” She replied. “What you are seeing in the beaker is simply the liquid solution left after the acetic acid in it had completely reacted.” She paused, and I could tell she was taking stock of the time left. “I can tell that we still have a little confusion about limiting reactants, but we’re at the end of class; so we’ll come back to this next time.”
She dismissed them, then, after reminding the class about their homework, and I stood up from where I had been completing my formal observation at the back of the lab and walked up to her desk.
“Nice lesson,” I told her. “I liked the glove over the mouth of the beaker to capture the CO2. That was a nice touch.”
“Thanks.” She replied. “But the demonstration obviously didn’t work for everyone as well as I had hoped.”
“Actually, while we’ll sit down later at your next evaluation meeting to go over my formal feedback,” I said. “I have a suggestion right now about how to improve that demo that you could use in your very next class.”
Amy looked intrigued, and I continued.
“Have you ever thought of turning your demo into an investigation?” I asked her.
“How could you even do that?” She asked, puzzled but clearly open to the idea.
I motioned for us to walk over to a lab bench.
“Look, you’re already having them do the calculations, right?” I said, setting out three beakers. “Let’s say you have three set-ups, each with the same amount of vinegar and then give them three different amounts of the baking soda. One where you know all the baking soda will be consumed; one where you know all the acetic acid will be consumed; and one right there on the middle.”
“But that’s basically what I have up there on the desk.” Amy replied. “How is what you’re describing any different?”
“The difference is that each lab group has their own set of beakers.” I told her. “And instead of having them do the calculations afterwards, you have them do them before they add the baking soda amounts to the different beakers.”
I quickly poured roughly the same amount of vinegar into the three beakers, and then used three weigh boats to estimate a low, medium, and high amount of baking soda. I turned to her.
“Based on their calculations and their initial understanding of limiting reactants,” I said. “you then have them make predictions about what they will observe in the three beakers after they add the baking soda. You could even have them use pH strips before and after to see how the acidity changes.”
Amy looked excited. “I could even have them predict which one would produce the most carbon dioxide by how much the glove inflates!”
I nodded. “In fact, you could have them line the beakers up based on which glove they think is going to feel the least puffy to most puffy when squeezed.” I replied. “You can’t quantify the gas production with the gloves, but you would certainly feel a qualitative difference.”
Amy started to smile and nod vigorously, but her expression abruptly turned to one of concern.
“But won’t this take a lot longer to teach it this way?” She asked.
I paused to consider my response.
“Yes and no.” I answered. “Yes, it probably will take a little more class time to do this as a lab activity rather than a demonstration. But no, think about how much additional time you are already now going to be having to devote next class to clearing up their confusion. Which, by the way, I could tell you clearly picked up on.”
She dimpled at the compliment, but it was clear from her expression that she was both very intrigued but still slightly anxious about my suggestion.
“Look, this was your first section covering this topic, correct?” I stated.
“Yes, the other two classes don’t get this material until tomorrow.” She replied.
“Then try it out with them and see what happens.” I recommended. “The worst that happens is that it doesn’t quite work out, and since you are already going to have to devote more time on this topic to today’s class, you’re not risking putting the other two sections behind.”
“Which would keep everyone on target for the next test.” She said aloud to herself.
“And if it does work out,” I told her. “You have a cool new lab activity where they are doing the thinking, not you.”
Okay,” Amy agreed, starting to get that look she has when the mental gears start spinning. “It gives me tonight to figure out how much baking soda for them to measure out for each beaker, and I can have them make their own data tables this first time….”
“I will leave you to it.” I said. “And like I said, we’ll go over the rest of the feedback at the evaluation meeting. I’m afraid I need to run to get ready for my own class.”
I headed off for AP Biology, then, leaving Amy murmuring to herself, knowing I had planted a seed in good soil.

It’s Not Just the Parents

While I am confident that a child-unfriendly culture has indeed played a role in sabotaging efforts at the kind of educational reform discussed in this project, I also do not want to overstate its power and influence.  Underfunded schools and parental neglect may be impediments to the effectiveness of the kinds of teaching methods an authentically engaged educator employs.  But they have not been automatic impediments to instituting these more effective methods.  The simple truth is that the characteristics of our individualist-centered society are not likely to change anytime soon, and though they may hinder good teaching and learning from taking place in our schools, they do not have the power to prevent it from happening at all. 

What, then, has been preventing it? Unfortunately, here is where we as educators have also regularly failed to invest adequately in our children’s collective lives.  One of the dangers in this profession is that when we close the door at the start of every class, it is just us and the kids—for a job where you basically extrovert for a living, teaching is one of the most isolated activities there is.  But isolation, as we have seen time and again, is the very antithesis of good teaching and learning.  Therefore, it is not enough simply for us to be more authentically engaged with just our own students; we must work together to be more authentically engaged with every student. 

Parker Palmer puts it well when he says “if I care about teaching, I must care not only for my students and my subject but also for the conditions, inner and outer, that bear on the work teachers do.”¹³ For those in education already striving to be authentically engaged teachers, changing only “my” classroom is not enough.  We must seek to help change every classroom to create the conditions where children will learn, and we must change every teacher’s outlook on what those conditions are.  Every educator in this country needs to be investing as much in the educational welfare of all students as they are in their own, and they need to be risking “what is familiar, comfortable, safe, and perhaps working well for [them] in the name of better education for others.”¹⁴  Only then can we hope to prevent the current downward spiral that our society seems hell bent on riding to the bottom, and only then can our children have what they will need to try to build meaningful tomorrows. 

However, we can only make these necessary changes if all of us in this profession help each other strive for as much authentic engagement in our profession as we do in our classroom. My colleague, Amy, would go on to develop her lesson into one of the most sophisticated intellectual challenges students in my former school’s chemistry program tackle; I have been pestering her for ten years to publish it.  And I have done so because good teachers need to be writing articles for journals and leading workshops in their districts.  They need to be properly mentoring those who are new to teaching and challenging those who are not.  They need to be confronting the hypocrisy of a society that–one way or another–actually leaves every child behind, and they need to be fighting the mindless banality that so often passes for educational policy in this country.  Without such effective teacher leaders—people committed to authentic engagement in the profession, not just the classroom—schools and learning will remain stuck in their present broken rut, and our entire society will eventually pay the consequences.