Entrance Slip # 7: Permitting Creativity in Science

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I thought it was interesting that Bavelas mentioned how the ones who discover an idea may not be the first to have noticed it. It just shows how taking a chance and pursuing something that contradicts the norm is how we move forward. It struck me as not only a good illustration of how technology and ideas develop, but that it was also a mirror of activism as well; often problems are overlooked because "that's just the way things are," but certain people are able to break past that and insist on a better way or a new perspective. This program brings to light a lot of issues that I had either never heard of or turned a blind eye to in the past, but that is no longer an option when we realize that what we teach in a classroom is going to effect our students. Similar to an idea from a previous reading, what we exclude is as important as what we include. Insisting things are a certain way and enforcing that on students will absolutely kill their creativity; even if we know they are wrong, it is sometimes useful to allow them to reason their way to the correct path because there is value in the struggle as well (although a nudge in the right direction is probably a good idea if they are too far off).

The idea of not trying to find a preexisting category for our observations is one I had to learn through researching for our Inquiry project. When I initially spoke to an Indigenous Education teacher at my practicum school, I was struggling with what Indigenizing the curriculum looked like and asked him how we could avoid tokenism, because up until this program, I thought that was an acceptable way to bring Indigenous perspectives into a classroom. However, I have realized since then that I was trying to place knowledge and perspectives that were new to me into a system I already knew and how that was problematic. The Indigenous Education teacher told me one of the best ways to bring Indigenous perspectives into a math class specifically was to look at incorporating cross-disciplinary ideas. As he explained it to me, Indigenous people don't have a concept of separating subjects the way schools traditionally have done and so creating projects that don't focus solely on math is a way to achieve this Indigenization (along with recognizing the Indigenous aspects of said project). 

The idea of being opposed to multiple tests for fear of contradictory results is an interesting one. Although I agree "Fear stalks us from the beginning and continues throughout, until the results are in and checked"(p.321), I don't know that I think this way about multiple testing. On the contrary, I find myself holding back expectations until the test is complete, and keeping that same attitude for future tests. It may be a self-defense method (a, "Oh well I didn't think it was going to go well anyway so I was right," sort of thing), and generally celebrations are belated. In terms of exploring inquiry with my students, I want to try different activities and be okay if they fail. It's likely not the same thing in terms of multiple "testing" of an activity or inquiry subject because each class will respond differently so one success doesn't necessarily mean it will continue to be successful in the future, but then the opposite can also be said - failure doesn't mean the activity should be discarded completely. However, if a pattern does arise, it would be interesting to investigate why that is the case - is the subject something that seems to interest a large number of students? Or is the topic out of the students' range of abilities at the current level and should something else be tried?