Parched by the universe puzzles

Thank goodness we don't have it all figured out! How boring life would be with no puzzles to solve.

And so I find myself this happy Monday, buried in grading and unable to stop thinking about the fundamentals of physics - both at particulate and astronomical scales.

We know the universe is expanding. And that it is doing so at an accelerating rate. But what is it expanding into?

We know that gravity, the attractive force between massive objects ought to counter that expansion, sooner or later, but it seems there is some other force at work here. Some kind of "dark energy" that provides a repulsive force, propelling the universe ever outward into... what?

I am reminded of the theoretical model of the tides. In this model, the Earth and its watery envelope bulges on the side nearest to the moon due to gravitational attraction. On the other side, the Earth and the oceans bulge, but for a different reason - rotational inertia, which is sometimes described as centrifugal force. Could it be that the universe has such a spin that propels it ever outward?

Others have questioned along these lines. The apparent answer does not satisfy: if we measure from different points, we should see different things based on if the universe is spinning or not or how much. This is where my ignorance of the subject becomes a liability and eggs me on to learn more.

But for now, another question: is it possible that the scale of our vantage points just isn't big enough to resolve the spin, its direction or momentum?

As for what it is expanding into, I am reminded of ripples. A minor disturbance to the surface of a calm pool of water causes the energy to propagate outward, endlessly - well, at least to the edges of the pond. Why?

Why does the energy seem to flee the center, the place of the original disturbance?

This reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a student. He envisioned this outward expansion as being limited by a tenuous connection between all particles. When everything had unraveled so completely as to only be attached in a linear way, only then would the universe begin to collapse back in on itself. An interesting notion, one worth exploring.

His description led me to envision a spherical or perhaps even toroidal universe. If the ripple model applies to an expanding universe, toroidal is the way to go. But still the question remains: what does it expand into, in an apparently edgeless, infinite 'verse?

It staggers. And leaves me with an unquenchable thirst.

Another puzzle: the double-slit experiment. I need to better understand this test - the ways its been performed, the hypotheses tested, the conclusions. I feel like I'm missing something about the resultant interference pattern.

Something tells me it has to do with energy levels.

When you blow into a penny whistle, it emits a particular pitch determined by the length of the whistle. BUT, if you blow a little harder, it emits at a much higher pitch. It is possible, if you blow just the right amount of air, that it will emit both pitches at the same time. What does this have to do with wave-particle duality? I'm not sure, but I want the math to explore it more.

So for the first time, in I don't know how many years, I am setting a New Year's Resolution. I will start here, with Tibee's playlist. From there, who knows. But there must be a way to sate this thirst.

Onward! Outward! upward! Through! Ganapati Om Jaya

The Tendency to Minimize

It has been a wisdom-colored week. Wisdom dispensed, but not not infused.

Not yet living wisdom. Expressible, yes. But radiated? Not quite. Not from me at least.

My hard head apparently has a few more knots to untie. And I will admit, wisdom merely painted on the outside rings hollow, trite. So I'll keep it to myself for now. Let it ferment until it makes a quality libation.

Here's a piece of what's fermenting.

I received an odd piece of feedback this week that got me thinking about the ways I communicate. Often the words that come out of my mouth are admittedly not always well-planned.

Mini-me shows me often how pedantic I must sound to the world, as she lectures me on the particulars of some subject.

"Dear god!" I think, "what kind of person am I? Do I really come off as such a know-it-all? Or is that her father's influence?"

It is kind of a loathsome quality. One that I have been working to remedy since I first heard my voice in my child's. Don't get me wrong, I love my daughter. And my husband. And myself.

But nobody likes a know-it-all.

First, let me ask you, how often do you preface a statement with the word "just"?

As in "only." Almost as though you were trying to excuse some behavior or circumstance. To defend it as harmless. To minimize.

About four years ago, I was visiting a friend when it was first brought to my attention that this is something I sometimes do.

Overcome with her  kindness, I offered a compliment: "You are just beautiful."

Her friend corrected me: "How about just saying 'You are beautiful'"?

I was offended. Not to have been corrected, but that I could have been so insensitive. Why had I just offered a compliment that in essence minimized her beauty? I was hurt on behalf of my friend for my thoughtless and unkind words. It was truly a back-handed compliment.

I was duly reprimanded. And I hope I had the good grace to at least apologize for the mistake. More likely, I retreated in embarrassment.

And did you notice how the feedback was delivered? With the word just? As if to minimize the sting of being corrected. Or was it to minimize...? The woman who corrected me could have given me her helpful feedback without including the word "just"

This brings us back to the odd piece of feedback I received this week. I was attempting to communicate with my husband about our daughter's behavior to offer a perspective that might help address some of the parenting challenges we've faced recently. "She's just trying to make sense of her world," I said.

Now, the written word is a terrible medium for conveying tone.  I would have described my tone as  matter-of-fact. But in fact, the way it was received was as a reprimand. As if I was pointing out something that should have been obvious - just by including the word "just"

It was a good piece of feedback, but it kind of stopped me in my tracks.

It got me thinking.

Why do we try to minimize things? Why not simply describe them as they are? Without judgement. (I will admit, I was tempted just now to use the word "just" in place of "simply" - when I probably could have left adverbs out altogether).

Without judgement. Wait. That doesn't ring true. As someone who frequently suffers from foot-in-mouth syndrome, I know all too well the damage that can be done by speaking without judgement.

Am I suggesting speaking without adverbs? No, that's just silly. Where would our purple prose be without adverbs.

I have a hypothesis that women use "just" as an adverb more frequently than men. Anybody have any statistics on that?

Why would they? Because women are socialized to be more accommodating, to minimize, to excuse. And how does that make us come off when we communicate that way- whether women or men?

People don't want excuses.

And truth is they don't want to be excused either.

When people behave badly, they appreciate being kindly called out for it. For having a boundary clearly defined.

I see it with my five-year old all the time. She protests. She negotiates. She wheedles and whines. But when I calmly give her a limit and explain its rationale she calmly accepts it. She appreciates having that boundary there. It creates a sense of safety and security.

It's the same with my students. That's why we set class norms at the beginning of the semester and revisit them when needed. It gives us clearly defined limits of expected behavior and helps foster a safe space where learning can happen.

But you don't want boundaries to be too restrictive. They can't be arbitrary or capricious.

There has to be a good reason for having a limit in place.

Maybe that's why "just" gets us in trouble - because it constricts necessarily, shrinks the space of possibility.

So I'm just going to have to be better.

Ahem,

I'm going to have to be better about communicating clearly.

That we may push the boundaries of what is known, and what can be known, in a way that is bounded with mutual respect and understanding of our full capacities as rationale human beings.

All the Lovely People...

This morning, my husband asked Alexa to play the Beatles over breakfast.The songs began to shuffle. Unconsciously, as much as I love the Beatles, I  tuned it out. About three or four down the playlist, I hear the familiar strings begin to mourn Eleanor Rigby, followed by my daugther's voice: "All the lovely people," she says, "like boys."

"Boys are lovely people."

I didn't correct her - lyrically or conceptually. What's the harm in letting her persist in this small misinterpretation? It might very well be an improvement on what Lennon and McCartney originally intended.

And many boys are, in fact, lovely people.  (I resolutely refuse to acknowledge in any way that her comment, at five years old, might suggest she is becoming boy crazy).

But it did get me thinking. About listening.

Listening is an important part of our parenting philosophy. There's a whole book about it. And while we don't subscribe to all of the techniques proscribed therein, it does help give us a framework for one crucial strategy to maintain connection with our offspring.

Indeed our entire marriage succeeds only because we strive for good, solid communication - only achievable through listening. Not the passive kind that often suffices when jamming some tunes, but the active kind (of which you've surely heard) that involves soliciting feedback to make sure that you've heard (or been heard) accurately and that you understand.

And, yes, listening is an important part of our girl's musical education (through the Suzuki method), where we know if we've played it beautifully or not by the quality of the sound.


Someday, our daughter will find out that Eleanor Rigby (and all the rest of us), while perfectly lovely, are also a lonely lot. Who will give her this feedback remains to be seen... perhaps she will read the lyrics somewhere, or a friend or relative will offer correction, or she will hear a cover in a slightly different way than she heard the original and it will send her on a quest to find out the real words.

A harmless error in listening requires no feedback.

And yet, how many times, in my classes, have I offered some guidance or insight that was misheard and I never even knew it? It begs the question of whether I am giving my students enough opportunity to practice active listening. And other questions besides: do I solicit their feedback, sufficiently and effectively? Do I know not only how well they understand, but how well they have understood through me.

Lately, I have adopted some of the metacognitive strategies from the Reading Apprenticeship framework, that emphasizes reading for understanding. As part of this, I have stressed graphicacy skills and encouraged students to develop habits that build their learning independence. But reading is just one of many ways of learning.  Perhaps I have been putting too much emphasis here while neglecting the other important modes: aural, visual, kinesthetic, social, etc...

Likewise, learning is not a solitary enterprise. One of the advantages of RA is the way it acknowledges and leverages the social aspects of learning.

So as I sit down to re-tool my classes, as I do during every intersession (but especially so in summer), my daughter reminds me of the fundamental thing that makes relationships work: listening.

Teaching and learning is the meta-relationship.

I'm going to have to open up my ears, to model active listening and thoughtfully consider how to get meaningful feedback from my students more regularly. They are all truly lovely people. And I know right where they belong: right here, right now, in relationship to where they sit in a sea of new knowledge.

Love is the Learning Space

In the same way that science is self-correcting, so too is nature. That's really what I mean when I wax theological and claim that we are all gods of a vast and incomprehensible uber-god, all working in tandem for the greater good. What that greater good is has yet to be defined, but I think it has something to do with balance, equilibrium. Of course in the end, entropy wins. What a bleak future that will be. It leads one to question whether the universe has a moral code... a question to ponder another time perhaps.

As living beings on a living world, we've got two  main jobs to fulfill: (1) to eat, thus transferring energy onward and (2) to reproduce, thus propagating genes to carry life forward through time. Anything beyond that and we enter moral territory. And I'm not sure that morals, at least in the limited way that humans tend to think of them are a concern of God-nature. You might make the claim that religions offer the basis of a good moral compass, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

So we're left with a big question - what does it mean to live a moral life?

The Hippocratic Oath comes close, but is pretty unrealistic. I think the best that we can strive for is to minimize harm. At some point, however, that becomes a subjective target - one that moves with the addition of more variables.

Recently, I was speaking with a friend, relating a story about my spawn and I remarked that my daughter is a better person than I am. There was an undercurrent of sadness in this statement, but it did not arise from inner self pity (as my friend believed), so much as reflection on control - the things within it and the things beyond.

Of course all children are better than adults - that is just as it should be - what with their curiosity, honesty and receptivity. As a mother, it is my job to nurture those qualities, to fail to quash her innate goodness. And sometimes I do. And sometimes I don't. (Thankfully, children are also resilient). She requires that I be(come) a better person. This is a good thing. But I don't always rise to the challenge. Sometimes I let the world break my spirit, to get me down, to quash my innate goodness. And when this happens, it's a chance to model for her how to climb back up out of the deep, dark hole. (Why do we fall Master Bruce?)

But all this is a bit naive because it neglects the fact that all people - especially children - are exceptionally self-centered and indeed selfish. I question every single day whether I have been selfless enough, while still standing up for and fulfilling my own needs. Because there has to be a balance - to find what serves us in our service to the world. To give and to take.

Am I a good mother? The proof is in the pudding. And most days, the answer is yes.

She learns. She grows. And she teaches me. All children do.

Last weekend we celebrated the fourth birthday of a dear friend at a local park that had the usual playground equipment: swings, slides, rock climbing wall. I was helping support my daughter against the downward pull of gravity - another force of nature that always wins - when out of the blue, we hear someone greet us: "hi." I looked around, but didn't see anyone. Then I looked up. There was a young boy smiling down at us, the blue sky a perfect frame for his cherubic face. He turned out to be nine - four years older than our girl - and not affiliated with the party. We returned the greeting and all resumed the climb.

A bit later, we were having more fun with gravity, this time on the swing. Like all good parents, I gave her a push to get her going, but then stepped back to let her have the full kinesthetic experience of pendular periodicity. And who should come along, but the little cherub.

He literally jumped into the saddle of the neighboring swing and began to pump his legs, fully aware that our daughter was watching him, wanting to go high like he was. He offered advice unobtrusively, mostly enjoying his own motion, but occasionally suggesting things to try.

I sat watching from a distance and noticed that at, some point, he closed his eyes. For a long time. Was he going to sleep? No... he began to move his hands as if conducting a orchestra. When he finally opened his eyes, you could see the wonder written across his face. After marveling for a few moments, he said to our girl "try closing your eyes for a long time. I'll tell you when to open them."

Hesitantly she did, though she opened them before he told her too. When he finally opened his eyes, he described how the colors all looked brighter, the greens more green and the blues more blues. And I was amazed at the deep wisdom that was surely growing inside them in that moment. Indeed, I was reminded of my own experiences falling in love.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that this was a playground romance. Hardly. And yet, you cannot deny that the world shines a little brighter when you are in love. It removes you from the mundane and invites you to see things in a new way. This is why I am grateful to be a parent. To be a teacher. To be alive. Everyday is an invitation to fall more deeply in love, if you can only remember to cultivate that childlike receptivity.

Surely, you have heard the story where a teacher asks a group of students to imagine they are holding a glass of water at arm's length. At first, all agree, it's easy. But after a minute or so, your muscles being to ache and burn. If you keep holding it up, pretty soon other parts of your body begin to tense in order to compensate. The analogy is of course that anything you carry for too long - even if it's not that heavy - is going to distort you with pain, agony, eventually numbness bordering on indifference. Perhaps you even forget that you're carrying it in the first place. But when you are finally free to put it down - Ah! Sweet release.

That's what this boy on the swing was doing. We don't usually think of sight as a burden, but spend four, six, eight hours in front of a computer screen, straining your eyes and you'll want to close them for a while.  Sensory deprivation temporarily relieves us of a burden. When we reawaken to those senses, they are stronger and better resolved.

It's also why I prefer to run on hilly terrain. If you run on the flat for any appreciable distance, your whole body fatigues. Changes in topography demand that you shift your burden. Different muscles have to work. Different synapses have to fire. Different parts of your body get to stretch and bend in different ways. You have to adjust.

And so I suppose that all living things have a third job that they must do. They must change.

As we age, we are slower to embrace change. The wet cement of our minds begins to harden as we become more set in our ways. Children - especially our own - are the perfect mirror to show us how we fit in the world, and how we must change if we want to continue to fit. Truth is, we're all mirrors to one another, if only we choose to open our eyes.

Affirmation of Life

intend love and send it.
don't fear love, but free it
forgive love and live it.
you are love so be it.

On Roles and Models

As a scientist and educator, I am very sensitive to the mantle of authority that is foisted upon our shoulders in the role of the teacher. Appeals to authority are a big no-no in scientific thought and discourse. While I may be the subject matter expert, like my students, I too am on a learning journey. I work hard to portray myself in such a way that students recognize we are equals - that their questions are valid and, indeed, more important than any question that I might ask to spark a discussion or solicit a response.

I strive to break down any perceived barriers in the teacher-student relationship because I want to empower my students with the recognition that they are their own best teacher, so that they may become effective life-long learners. Who better to identify the most effective learning strategies than the student herself?

More than anything else, I see my job as helping my students feel comfortable in confusion. As Brian Greene says: "Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding." Indeed, it is only by recognizing our own ignorance that we are able to relieve ourselves of that burden.  Like Houdini wrapped in chains, my students are their own liberators from the locked box of the unknown. How to undo those metaphorical chains? By asking the right kinds of questions. This takes curiosity, initiative and confidence, but it starts in a very uncomfortable place - the place of feeling confused.

On the very first day of class, as part of an "icebreaker" activity, I ask my students to write down what feelings come up when they find themselves in a place of confusion. What do they do when they are confused? After a couple of minutes, I invite them to pair and share what they've written with a partner. Then we open it up for a whole class brainstorm. Time and again students identify all the negative emotions associated with confusion: shame, embarrassment, annoyance, anger, frustration, apathy, hopelessness, isolation.  When students realize that others feel alone in their confusion, it begins to foster a little trust that maybe being confused is okay. Indeed, it is a necessary part of the learning process. Something I emphasize this throughout the semester. Doing the work means finding the right questions to ask and seeking answers to get out of the muddle.

Don't get me wrong, many students also identify positives that flow from confusion, like curiosity, motivation and opportunity. This is one of the reasons why it is SO important to leverage the social dimension of learning. These glass-half-full students can model the strategies that they use to find their way out of confusion, but this only works if all take on the shared responsibility to create a safe space for learning to unfold. Physical safety is all but assured. Emotional safety on the other hand, is a little more nebulous. It can feel very vulnerable to admit that you don't know or understand something. Students are often unwilling to put themselves into such a vulnerable position, thus prolonging their sojourn in the land of confusion. The struggle is two-fold. First, they have to be willing to admit when they don't understand. Second, they have to able to articulate the source of their confusion. This second part can be very tricky, especially when delicate egos are doubly on the line - first feeling dumb for not knowing and then dumber for not being able to express how or why they don't know. So how to cultivate emotional safety, so that all students feel safe to express themselves?

Naturally, I find myself wanting to model this confusion for my students and show them how I get out of it. To show that vulnerability is part of the process, and that it is indeed a strength, not a weakness (thank you Brenee Brown for so eloquently expounding on this). And while I have found comfort in confusion and the problem-solving process, I am not always comfortable being a role model.

When one takes the role of the teacher it comes not only with the presumed mantle of authority, but also with an assumed role to model. I fully recognize that some students (not all) view me as a role model, but it baffles me and is something I take on with reluctance. Who me? A role model? You've got to be kidding! With all my foibles and flaws? With all the mistakes that I've made. But there it is. The wisdom we gain from living is exactly what gives them cause to look up to us, to learn from our missteps that they may forge a more efficient path forward.  I've learned to share that role of model with my students, thus reinforcing the idea that we are equals in our learning journey though coming at it from opposite sides of the mirror - they learning Earth Science and me learning how best to reach this particular group of students, all of them bringing their own diverse backgrounds and biases. From this I must help them find a firm foundation upon which to build a sound structure. And every semester it is a new learning journey. And we shall let our confusion and uncertainty play the role of guide and see where the journey leads us. Onward.

The digitization of education - A Memoir

This week the Reflective Writing club invites us to consider the impact of digital technologies. For me, the best entry point to explore this topic is to consider how my experience has evolved over time. Only then will I have enough perspective to reflect on my relationship with such technologies and how they influence my learning and how I interact with students. 

As a xennial - that strange micro-generation that is not quite Gen-X, but not fully Millenniel either - I have been profoundly shaped by the advent of digital technologies over my lifetime. Unlike my students, I can remember life before the internet. However, unlike many of my colleagues and mentors, I entered the New Age of computing while my brain was not fully formed. 

At the tender age of six, I was given access to our home computer. I learned how to navigate DOS and load content from floppy disc to play fun learning games. It wasn't until much later in life that I would grapple with how I wanted to shape my relationship with computers and the larger interwebs - indeed, it is something that I am still grappling with (and perhaps will continue to do so until the end of my life).

I attended high school as the internet was entering its toddlerhood.  It was the mid-1990s and BBS were all the rage. I had dreams of becoming a hacker and enthusiastically immersed myself in the digital world whenever I had the chance... until a dear friend of mine, who was quite a bit farther down the path of being a hacker, got busted by the FBI. After that, I lost some of my enthusiasm for the nuts-and-bolts of internet protocol. 

But still I recognized the value of this new way of connecting with people, even as I failed to grasp the concept of having an on-line identity.  If I gave it any thought at all, it was to affirm that I wanted anonymity to the fullest extent possible. It is in the teen years that we forge our identities as individuals. My on-line activities would surely become a part of that process, but I was not fully cognizant of that fact until much later. Indeed I was barely aware that I was, at the same time, developing a digital identity in the on-line world.*

When AOL became a nationwide sensation, I was just making the transition from high school into college. I spent a lot of time in chat rooms and eventually started a LiveJournal account to document my college experience and my travels abroad - in all its

tumulteneity Yes, this is a portmanteau word of my own creation that combines tumult with sponteneity

.  I participated in some file sharing, but none of my college classes ever required any kind of on-line interaction - at least as an undergrad in the Liberal Arts. The greatest use my computer saw in those days was as a word processor to type essays. Sometimes I also used spreadsheets to record data for my job in the Environmental Engineering Lab.  Sure I surfed the web for fun and occasionally did a scant bit of internet research for school projects, but the vast majority of the information I needed was in my textbook, lecture notes and course packets. And of course the library. God how I loved to get lost in the stacks! What wonders I would find! (Now-a-days it is the Wiki wormhole that makes me lose track of time and space. Call me old-fashioned, but without the musty smell of old paper it just doesn't have quite the same appeal).

After I earned my B.A. in Latin American Studies, I entered the world of work as a preschool teacher. It would be about three years before I would return to higher learning and go on to complete my M.S. in Geology. In that time, the internet grew up. And how! We relied on the internet A LOT more for research. And although we did not use them in any of my classes at first, LMS were coming on the scene of higher ed. It was in my PhD program that I first encountered Blackboard. Course content was beginning to be aggregated on-line. Assignments were posted (and often completed) on-line. Web-site design became an important skill for me to develop. As a grad student, laser-focused on her research, I did not give much thought to how the increased use of digital tools was changing landscape of higher ed.

After grad school, I once again entered the world of work - this time as a consultant. It was enjoyable work, but I felt a familiar lack - I was not fulfilling my life's work. From the age of eight, I always knew that I wanted to be a  teacher. By ten, I knew that it was science I wanted to teach, so when an opportunity arose to take on a part-time teaching assignment at a local community college, I jumped on it with gusto.  Finally, I was on the path, working the job of my dreams, helping to inspire and enlighten young minds.

My mentor was not an advocate of on-line learning. He was the complete opposite in fact. Instructors had previously developed on-line classes in the discipline, but he dismantled them and brought the classes back to the standard face-to-face format. Still, I could see the value of offering on-line classes to students, so when the college offered an on-line training to learn how to teach on-line, I once again jumped at the chance. This first training was in the Moodle platform, but the very next year we switched to Canvas, so I repeated the training again in the new LMS.

As part of the class, I began to design a hypothetical class focusing on California's water resources. It was exhilarating. I was hooked. At first, I only used these LMS as a way to share resources with students: readings, lecture notes, URL's, and stuff like that. In addition to Moodle and Canvas, I also got to work somewhat with Etudes at another institution. Slowly, tentatively I began to experiment with designing low-stakes quizzes on-line and surveys to integrate with my classes. And I continued to learn about all variety of digital tools - some seemed too cumbersome to be worth implementing, but others sit on my ideas shelf, waiting for their chance to shine.

Just this past semester, my students initiated a collaborative project to build a study guide for the class in Google Docs. It was such a brilliant idea that I've adopted it as a group assignment. My students are naturals at digital collaboration. When assigned a group presentation project, they immediately began working with Google slides, all simultaneously editing and refining their work, chatting face-to-face in the computer lab, while fully aware of the on-line chat capabilities.

I offer my classes now in a light-hybridized format, but am looking forward to teaching my first fully on-line class this Spring. I fully recognize how rich the digital world has become and how much I still have to learn. I am also aware that the digitization of education continues to innovate - for better or for worse: 

• better because sometimes the innovations really do fulfill an essential need and facilitate learning in a meaningful way, 
• but worse because it adds yet another digital tool that must be learned in order to extract some marginal benefit therefrom, thereby detracting from the deeper learning higher up on Bloom's Taxonomy.

It seems like on-line education is itself still in its childhood, with still much neural pruning to take place. Each of us has a role to play in wielding our metaphorical pruning shears - and what one educator values in their garden, another will eschew. Still, it is helpful to be connected with other educators - both those who value on-line education and those who don't. For that reason,  I am grateful to be a part of the Reflective Writing Club #CCCWrite.


*Forming a digital identity is something our students have had to grapple with from the very beginning of their lives and I wonder how society's relationship with digital tools might help (or hinder) them in developing a meaningful relationship with themselves and others. This is a HUGE question that I will likely elaborate on in future posts (what with the latest research finding links between social media use and depression).