Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:27 AM and sunset 8:33 PM for 15h 06m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 33.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1914, Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major League Baseball.
Link: Science-Adoption.pdf
Sunday’s post listed school-related posts at FREE WHITEWATER since March, and Monday’s post offered a sketch on the basics of a good education. Today offers a review of a middle-school science curriculum presentation at the 7.10.23 school board regular session (embedded above).
About five minutes into the meeting, for thirty-one minutes, the district’s Director of Teaching & Learning and three science teachers presented to the board on a new middle-school curriculum. Their discussion (including questions from the board) will lead to a vote on the proposal at a subsequent meeting.
A few remarks are in order.
Whitewater now has a Director of Teaching and Learning, and that’s a proper title: what does the district teach, and how are students learning? The proposal under review seeks to adopt a new curriculum with a more active, participatory student approach to middle-school science.
As it stands now, fewer than half of our middle-school students are proficient or advanced in science. When measured under an age-appropriate curriculum and teaching methods, fewer than half is too few. Almost all students — and all people, truly — are capable of proficiency. There are barriers to learning for some (illness, severe disability, deprivation) but most students will learn well if taught well.
What does Whitewater need? She needs a good curriculum, good teaching, measurement of that teaching’s effectiveness, and community awareness of what’s being taught. (This last need is lacking, and no means of communication under the district’s control is adequate to get a message out widely. District or city officials who think their own means of communication are effective are mistaken. They miss more people than they reach. This is, however, a topic for another day.)
There are costs involved in changing a curriculum and approach, but the costs of remaining enmired where we are now are incomparably higher.
British philosopher Thomas Dolby understood the adventure and romance of science:
The 80s have always been an under-appreciated decade…