Saturday’s Discussion: Science + Communication

What’s so exciting about learning at Alzar School is that we have the opportunity to delve into interdisciplinary studies every few weeks. They come about in the form of “Saturday Classes”. This past Saturday was our 2nd of the year. In the first, the Environmental Science and Math teachers, Reed and Jonathan respectively, teamed up to teach the students about food composting and then the logistics behind making a large-scale compost site feasible… and then they did it! As an institution, we’ve been dreaming about making our campus’ food consumption more sustainable, and we did it. Semester 9’s students did to be exact.

This past Saturday, Megan and I co-taught a class combining Biology and English. To get the kids’ attention, we called it “Making Science Sexy” because the truth is that “Science and Communication” sounds down-right boring. However, -I’m getting excited here- that’s the whole point! We wanted to get the students thinking about how the words/data/images/videos that are used to convey scientific information can either bore you to death or engage you into action. On top of that, we wanted them to reflect on which formats are most engaging for them specifically. We introduced the science of Global Climate Change to them in seven styles:

1. Lecture: Meg talked about what’s happening in the atmosphere at a molecular level
2. Visual Aids: graphs, diagrams, charts, infographics, etc.
3. Photography: computer-generated and real-life
4. Videos: ranging from An Inconvenient Truth to CNN films about the Marshall Islands
5. Humor: comics, parody films, etc.
6. Non-fictional Literature: news articles, personal accounts, etc.
7. Fictional Literature: written poetry, spoken word, short stories

We showed myriad resources in each category and had the students reflect on each one, asking them how informative and engaging they found those styles of information to be.

After reviewing all of them, the students came together and discussed how scientific information can be made “sexier”. They found out that for some of them articles and diagrams were the most engaging. Others were hit hard by the spoken word poetry and photographs of real people. They talked about using a variety of formats to appeal to multiple audiences. The students saw that what most appealed to them was often very different than what the kid next to them wanted to see, hear, or read.

After our Harkness Discussion the students were asked to delve into a social and environmental issue occurring in their sending communities. They had to produce a presentation for that information that called to their style of learning. Some kids created raps, others drew comics. Many wrote articles drawing on diagrams and photographs. One prepared a power point, and a few others made a video. More than a couple wrote poems. They came up with some awesome final products.

I’d like to share a poem by one of our students who wanted to address the intersection of homelessness and disease:

“Responsibility” by Samantha Daddi

Closed eyes, run by, look away no one makes a sound
Sitting there, a man dressed as though he hasn’t a change of clothes,
Seemingly twinning with the man on his right,
The women on the bus snicker and scorn, advising distance to keep from those two, oh and all of the people over there, warning us not to go over there.

Ignored by society, pushed away to the side
Dropped to the ground from such a large high,
Drugs help to stabilize some of these guys,
Came here after loosing the game we call life.
Illness is not always apparent to the eye.
needs a clean slate, restrictions, guidelines and contributions
Outside perspectives no not responsible for their actions, they aren’t mine

Mentally ill falling down a hill isn’t that their problem?
Closed minded fragile views on social stigmas
Drugs may help this poor man’s struggles but without regulation they may just be trouble,
Ways of communicating health and wellbeing to people who aren’t being helped or well treated
One thing leads to another and that poor man is now in more turbulent trouble
Self care isn’t there, access and efforts leading to outward diseases
Respiratory infection, skin disease and even hiv
Problems snowballing into a very large set,
Without taking responsibility,
standing up to systems that aren’t met
we must never forget it is your responsibility to help one another, hard times good times, no one will know if we all contribute to a societal uphill