My Bloody Dance Shoes:
The Biology Ballet
Let’s go back, way back, before there were Promethean and smart boards, cell
phones, and internet, circa 1975.
Hmmmm….dating myself, I know, but with age comes experience, right?
I entered the hallowed halls of New Hope
High School in Columbus, Mississippi (birth place of Tennessee Williams, by the
way), on January 6, 1976, accompanied by a new briefcase and a bucket of
enthusiasm.
“Just
wait until they hear my lectures on the life cycle of ferns!” I told myself. My
intentions were honest and lofty – to change young lives by infusing excitement
about the amazing world of biology.
That first week I encountered Gloria, the
alpha dog; Ernie, the classroom terrorist; Jon, the arsonist and
kleptomaniac, and 140 others, each with his or her individual agenda. Unfortunately, none of their agendas included
wanting to learn biology. Despite my
humorous approach to lecturing on the usual topics such as mitosis and meiosis,
monohybrid and dihybrid crosses, and recombinant DNA, students weren’t reacting
as I had planned. “This isn’t as easy as
I thought,” I admitted.
The
next year was easier, but I knew that something was missing. I was doing all of
the usual things – helping the students with note-taking, engaging them in
laboratory experiences, including all the required dissections, and assigning
the occasional out-of-class project for in-class presentation. This slow dance lasted for more than a
decade.
At the point where I was going to make an exit
off of the dance floor, Bob Tierney entered and invited me to stick around. It
was as if he was telling me that NWP would help me find comfortable dance shoes
and that I might be able to change my
dance steps all together; that I probably
could lead my biology students in their own dances of exhilaration and
discovery.
Bob Tierney was among the first group of Bay
Area Writing Project TCs who began their own dances in the summer of 1975.
Through a serendipitous series of events, I landed one of the last spots at a
local writing project mini-institution, featuring Bob, who had taught high
school science and coached inner city students in Fremont, California. Working with Sherry Swain and Sandra Burkett
at the Mississippi State University Writing/Thinking Institute, Bob shared
about 20 writing-based strategies that he had tested and used extensively in
his basic skills science classes.
Bob, Sherry, and Sandra offered me new dance
shoes, shoes which hurt my feet to the point where they bled. I was awkward and
antsy but willing to practice my moves.
The first strategy that I tested with my
students was a version of journaling called Expressive Mode notebooks. We wrote
nearly every day; I wrote with them in my own journal. (“Reflections on
Expressive Writing in the Science Class,” J. Dorroh, the Quarterly, Volume 15,
Number 3, 1993, p. 28-30.). The biggest challenge was developing a fair and
consistent manner to evaluate their written thoughts. I became a scientist in
my learning lab (classroom), manipulating as many variables as possible to find
out specific cause-and-effect outcomes. Dance practice continued.
We wrote skits about principles and
concepts, embedding the science facts into the text, often reading and acting
them out with props. (“How Enzymes Act: Skit Writing in Science Class,” J.
Dorroh, The Quarterly, Volume 18, Number 4, 1996, p. 13-17) Skits gave birth to Reader’s Theatre and
Chorale Reading.
There was a snowball effect. The more we
used writing to learn science, the more ideas we had. I found myself stepping
away from the podium and listening more to what the students had to say. They wrote and we talked; they wrote and we
danced.
My
colleagues hinted that we might be having too much fun, suggesting that I wasn’t
preparing them properly for tests.
“You’re way out of the box,” said Tim, my next-door teacher friend.
I
challenged Tim to conduct an experiment.
“You teach biology the same way you always
do,” I suggested, “and I’ll use all my writing-based strategies.” He accepted
the challenge, I think to prove his point and to make me give up my “cute
activities,” to accept and use the pre-determined blueprint for biology. We
selected two classes, each with a similar make-up, overall class average,
etc. We chose a unit on genetics and
began teaching.
My students continued to write in their
journals, create skits with talking genes and chromosomes, prepare original
interview scripts for probing into the lives of Gregor Mendel and other lesser
known geneticists, and take interactive notes.
We moved gracefully through the unit, a ballet as it were. Of course
there were blisters and bruises, but at the end of the unit, my students
expressed a sense of accomplishment, unafraid to take a test of any kind.
I felt that the results of our experiment
were significant; Tim felt otherwise.
The two class averages of the end-of-unit test were close. My students’
overall average was 85%; Tim’s was 81%. “Big deal,” he said.
But I wasn’t finished with Tim. I had asked him to keep up with all of the
“teacher duties” by minute. This
included the preparation time for lectures, preparing all assessments, grading,
returning tests, going over them with the students, filing them, etc. I did the same.
“What does this prove?” he asked. “Maybe nothing,” I said. “I want us to see
how much time each of us spends on all of the minutia. Then we can look at the end-product to see if
we feel that it was worth it.”
As it tuned out, Tim spent about 40% more
time on “tasking” than I did. During the
process, he experienced frustration, anger, and a sense of failure. I, on the other hand, was content, for the
most part, to see my students dance every day in Room 23 and the lab. That’s
not to say that everything was perfect and that I experienced no challenges.
But writing strategies had a tendency to allow students to carry the burden of
learning on their own shoulders, to make discoveries and connections. I liked
that!
“Let’s carry this another step,” I
suggested.
“What now?” he begrudgingly asked.
“Let’s give them the same test in a month
without any notice and see how they do,” I said.
“Whatever,” he said. I could tell that Tim had lost his enthusiasm
for our experiment, but he caved and we continued.
A month later we administered – without
notice—the same unit test on genetics. The students complained and ranted for a
few minutes, but after I explained the purpose, they settled down and took the
test.
The
results were astounding. My students’ original overall score was about 85%;
their follow-up was 80%. Tim’s students’
scores dipped from 81% into the 60s.
“That doesn’t prove much,” he said. I
agreed. It was, at best, an indicator, the beginnings of a classical research
set-up. So many other variables…..need more classes from other schools….other
teachers with different teaching styles, etc. But it did go to show Tim that a
writing-based biology classroom can perhaps help students learn material better
and…and retain it.
In the next couple of years after the Great
Challenge, I continued to break in my dance shoes. We began using portfolios with a mantra of
“collect, select, and reflect.” All
student work was housed in wildly decorated folders, and once a month, usually
on a Friday, students would select one piece from their collecting file for
reflection and placement into their permanent portfolios. At year’s end, each student had in his/her
possession a portfolio that contained 9-10 artifacts, which showed them
behaving and thinking like “real scientists.” That helped to tear down the
stereotype that “all scientists are nerds.”
From the portfolios, we developed a system
of “menu selection,” in which students were required to select a minimum of
three (out of seven) modes of evaluation, most of them writing-based. (The Whole Story: Teachers Talk about Portfolios,
“Evolution of a Biology Teacher,” J. Dorroh, p. 59-69, NWP). On and on.
For the remainder of my full-time teaching
career, writing became the vehicle for helping my science students become
engaged, reveling in the exhilaration of discovery. It was a dance, one that
might not have happened if I hadn’t accepted the change of shoes.
(I’d like to thank Diane Scollay and Nancy
Singer for graciously accepting me into the Gateway fold as a Mississippi transplant. I continue to grow—sharing with teachers ways
to find their own dance steps in classrooms all over the St. Louis area.)
