TIME IN

Make sure the paper doesn’t fit if you want to raise thinking, problem solvers. Friday is YaYa’s Science Club day. Why? Well, it isn’t for a grade, or a public checklist, or to satisfy some arbitrary list of academic requirements, or the paycheck; that’s for sure. Why? Because science is freaking awesome, that’s why. Seriously, I don’t know what they’re teaching in public schools; because it isn’t science, not when so many public school graduates I talk to all say the same thing when you mention the subject.  “I hate it. It’s so boring.” Wrong. Science is the study of . . . well . . . everything! And nothing turns kids on to learning faster—in my experience! IF you do it right. If you start with the universe and follow the science down to quarks or start with quarks and follow the logic all the way out to the universe, never forgetting to honor “the unmoved mover” along the way. In our science club we made ID badges. You can buy the sleeve at Walmart for $3.88. We took pictures and had to fill out our names and ID number. It took a lot of time. I didn’t make the badges for the team members. They had to make their own and the pictures were too big and the paper didn’t fit the slot. “It’s too big.”  “This doesn’t work.”  “I can’t do it.” Tears. Frustration. Furrowed brows. The impulse to quit. Time passing. And then one team member piped up and said, “Well, you know, that light bulb guy, Edison, he failed about a million times.” The team considered, reassessed, studied on the problem, and solved it.  The badges are really cool. They’re on a stringer, so you can pull them out and pretend to scan your way into our lab.  Do you know why glow sticks glow, or sodium acetate crystallizes so fast, or ping- pong balls float in the airstream of a blow dryer, or which planets are the gas giants, or how the sun probably works, or . . .  We do. Linda (Time to Teach) Zern