Memorize, memorize...

One of my students made a wonderful statement the other day. She was working on the review problems I had written for them, when she looked up at me and said, "I'm never going to be able to do Physics. I just can't memorize all the steps to solve a problem!"

She's an excellent student, who has the school game figured out. She has achieved straight A's in every subject... until Physics. She's stumped now because the method of learning that she has been taught for the last 13 years has completely failed her in this subject. Why do we wait until students reach Grade 11 to tell them that Science isn't about memorizing a whole bunch of facts and regurgitating them on a test? And now that she's learned for years to put away her creative mind, how do I teach her to put that creative thought in the drivers seat?

I remember when I met Physics in Grade 11. It was intimidating at first, and I didn't do so well at first (mainly due to my stubborn refusal to learn how to rearrange equations - a useless skill, or so I thought...), but it wasn't long before I fell in love with the subject the same way I already loved art. I fell in love because in Physics, there was finally more than one way to do things! The teacher no longer penalized me for inventing some ridiculous way of solving the problem rather than writing out all the steps they had shown me on the board. I was encouraged to look for more than one creative way to a solution, and it was so fun. But when I think about it, had I been a "good" student; had I listened to my math teachers when they just handed me formulas for permutation and combination, rather than spending hours and hours along with pages after pages of zero's and one's trying to work out those formulas on my own; had I spent my time doing all the assigned monotonous problems that were all the same and showed all those same steps for the same problems rather than writing some crazy poem; had I learned in the way we (for the most part) teach - would I have loved Physics? Or would it have been the same agony that it is for my top notch students right now?

I came across a great little video today that speaks about education and the arts, but it might as well be talking about Physics. It's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded%EF%BB%BF. He says that we nearly ALL start with a huge capacity for divergent thinking, but that decreases as we age. And he argues that many of us are educated out of this remarkable creative possibility. It's a rather sad thought, especially for the creative subjects..... Wait - are there any non-creative subjects?!?

So the most important question is: What do I do now? I'm learning how to teach high school, not elementary school, which means that I have little control over the first 8-10 years of my future students' education. I need to take these students who tell me that they "never be able to do Physics", and show them the beautiful creative gifts they've had their whole lives, but simply haven't exercised often. And then we have to work through what may be a rather challenging process of getting those creative abilities back in shape together.

I'm a little scared. And I wish I had A LOT more time with my students. But I hope in this last week of October practicum, and when I come back in December, I'll be able to give them at least a glimpse of how much fun learning can be when you don't have to "memorize the steps" - when you think conceptually about a situation, make exciting connections to what you know (and what you want to know!), draw a few colourful, helpful and pretty pictures, and then invent "steps" (which may be entirely different from your classmates, but equally correct) so that you're solution actually works and makes sense in the real world rather than the abstract academic world. Whew. That's a big job for me. I think I'll start with working on my questioning skills, keep the discussion and POE's rolling, and we'll see where it goes from there.