Mama Bear Science

One of the snakes we highlight in biology is the snail-eating snake. Pretty interesting, but don’t watch if you are tender hearted or squimish.

Dreaming Spires Summer 2020 Climate Science class created a story in one of our ice breakers. The story began…

Once upon a time, in a land far away, 15 people got together to solve all the world’s problems. Everything seemed easy, until one day one of the people saw on the horizon…

The only rule was that their part of the story had to contain a hobby or passion.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, 15 people got together to solve all the world’s problems. Everything seemed easy, until one day one of the people saw on the horizon a strange tree like creature. It started to moan crawling towards them.  As it got closer, they saw that it had a crowd of cats, perched in its branches.  The cats started to scream and came flying out of the tree on flaming arrows.  The cats had eaten candy floss and threw up everywhere.  Suddenly some dolphins came to save them. We made cakes to thank the dolphins.  As the dolphins left, a giant hamster ball made entirely of plastic almost crushed everyone. We ran out of the way, but poor Gerald was crushed! We put our running shoes on and ran after them to tell them, but the dolphins were actually Lego consuming aliens! They turned and chased us.  We ran in the other direction, suddenly we heard a noise of lasers.  It was the Death Star, but it had been captured by the rebels!  They were shooting at the Dolphins! We kept running.  Yay! the Rebels were not after us.  They were protecting us from the Dolphins!  Safe, we all sat down to eat dinner.

One of my lovely students Z.G. created flashcards for science review. I love when student’s take initiative and use a variety of resources to supplement their learning. She graciously shared her work with her fellow students. To make them easy to access I linked them here. Enjoy 🙂

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My biology class has studied prokaryotic cells and are currently reading The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. We have a project approaching where the students will begin research on contagions in the areas in which they live, they will then complete a lab about “germs” and finish by creating a Public Service Announcement about what they discovered.  The steps for this project are to:

1. Investigate what bacterial pathogen is currently being tackled in your community.  What age group does it generally affect.  How is it contracted, treated and prevented?
2. Create a digital story educating your peers and community about this pathogen.
3. Now investigate a viral pathogen being treated in your community.  What age group does it generally affect.  How is it contracted, treated and prevented?
4. Again, create a digital story educating your peers and community about this pathogen
5. Conduct Germ lab
6. Combine aspects of your 1^st two stories and the information gained from your lab to create a public service announcement for your area.

In preparation of this assignment I created a digital story about bacterial pathogens that are seen in the teen and young adult population.

A digital story about viral pathogens and another about investigating the effectiveness of hand-washing will complete the trio of stories.  These digital stories that will remind the students about past lessons and give them ideas on how to create their own stories.  My sample story featuring “Joe” bacteria from our lesson on prokaryotic cells follows.

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Today in our mini lesson, we will learn a few basic steps to create a timeline using Sutori Timelines.  For me, using a timeline such as Sutori with my Dreaming Spires General Science students, allows me to visualize what I am reading by breaking the subject down into chunks based on either the scientist being studied, or the body of work being discussed.  Additionally, it gives me an opportunity to do further research in areas I find interesting and it allows me to share my discoveries with fellow teachers or classmates.  I was recently assigned the book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.  Because I have been working with the Sutori Timeline with my General Science class, the outline in my mind is done in Sutori.  As I listen, I can picture creating a narration of the chapter and pulling out ideas Mr. Harai has discussed and that I found interesting.  Part of my assignment is to be able to share what I read and what I learned from the reading.  I will be sharing my Sutori outline 😊.  The Sutori Timeline allows you to write a narration or excerpts from the reading material and then add, photos, videos, links or quizzes that you feel will help you and your peers understand and interact with the material being covered.  I’ve been please with the connections being made by my students as they have worked on the project together.  Your first step would be to either accept the invitation you have been emailed or sign up for Sutori Timelines and use the class specific code connected with your class’ timeline.

Next, take your reading assignment of the week and add information to the timeline based on that reading.  If a classmate has added what you had in mind, how can you expand on what they added?  What other information is available to share?  Thoughts and questions the reading has prompted in you would be a great forum or discussion starter.  There are many possibilities.

I have created a quick video that shows how to add content that is written, related media and briefly touched on citing your work.  Remember to add initials only at the end of content you have added.

Below you will find the video and links to Sutori Timelines and a couple sites that help with APA citation

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One of the many benefits of attending college or university is the opportunity to learn new perspectives. My perspectives have grown and changed while being in the military, attending The University of Texas in Austin and in parenting my diverse set of children (and past foster children). As a parent of an Afro-Latina child I have been working to not only celebrate her heritage and cultures but to understand my own and the privilege afforded me by no effort of my own.  That work is always in progress.  I’m taking a class in Multicultural Teaching and Learning that is amazing.  We recently had an assignment where we were required to read an article on school to prison pipelines and watch the documentary 13^th.  Both were incredibly eye opening.  My reflections follow.

I had a basic understanding of the social justice issue of mass incarceration and school to prison pipelines, or so I thought.  Both the article and movie were incredibly informative.  Ms. DuVernay is an amazing interviewer and storyteller.  She was able to weave historical context of slavery, convict leasing, Jim Crow laws that lead to second class citizenship and policies and practices leading to our current state of mass incarceration.  As she stated, “You can’t tell the story of now without understanding the past.”. Her interviewees were leaders in the field of experience, (such as Angela Davis, Malkia Cyril, Shaka Senghor) and education and law (Baz Dreisinger, Malcolm Freely, Khalil Muhammed) and politicians (Cory Booker, Newt Gingrich and Charles Rangel).  She even interviewed politician with opposing views (Michael Hough, Craig DeRoche, Davide Keen) trying to give voice to both sides.  She said in her follow up interview with Oprah Winfrey that 40% of the people she interviewed were conservatives. I was stunned to find that 97% of the people in jail or prison have not had a trial. With the newly acquired understanding that most today’s prosecutors are white, combined with generations of fear mongering and misinformation about people of color and financial burden placed on those arrested, I am not surprised. The idea, as Bryan Stevenson state, “Wealth not culpability shapes consequences.”, is wrong and unfair on so many levels.  While reading the article on the school to prison pipelines I noticed so many similarities.  Media driven fears, no tolerance policies, high stakes testing are used to remove “troublesome” and or poor performing students from the school system.  Disproportionately, like in the adult population, this burden falls on children who are poor and or people of color.  It seems to me that many of our school children are doubly disadvantaged.  Poor and people of color rights are easily brushed aside and so are children’s rights.   Students, as victims of school to prison track are both.   Ignorance of due process, Miranda rights, unclear expectations and disciplines for misbehavior lead to a system that is difficult to fight.   I’m thankful to be part of a recently appointed equity task for the school my youngest attends.  When you know better, do better 😊

As you may know (or not), I finally accomplished my goal of returning to graduate school. It only took 18 years but who was counting {Me! I was counting!}.  I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated trying to understand why I was always feeling behind.  A recent assigned wellbeing check really gave me some perspective.  I decided to do the assignment where I would rate my day, for 10 days, on a 1-10 scale of the day being good or not.  On the scale 10 was the best day ever and 1 rated as the worst day ever. I found that I generally average a 7, it was a good day, type of day.  The few days I did not have a seven usually were days where I was rushing around making deadlines.  I found that on those days I had left things on my to do list , whether it was personal items, shopping or school related to do too close to a deadline and if anything unexpected came up I was either rushing to get them completed or staying up well past bedtime to complete them by a self or instructor  imposed deadline.  When I first started reflecting on this, I was irritated with myself.  I felt at my age I should have better time management skills.  Upon further reflection, however, I realized a lot of it was part of an adjustment.  For the past twenty years I have been available.  Available for my children, especially when they were young, available for my friends and extended family.  I was home and homeschooling so obviously I had nothing better to do. Ha! While I did have multiple things to do, they were also flexible, so I usually was able to accommodate requests for my time.  When I returned to school and added classes that I taught, my time was no longer flexible but requests for my time and attention did not change.  After twenty years I was in the habit of being available to friends, family, extended family and my communities of choice.  I have been reteaching myself the art of the judicious, “No, I’m not available currently”.  So last minute lunches, visits to my god children and random running around for my own children have decreased and I have asked my husband and children still at home to pick up the slack.  We are still adjusting.  I am still figuring out where to say yes and live with the discomfort of saying yes too often and the resulting stress of “getting it all done” while balancing the discomfort of the self-perceived rejection of my loved ones needs when I say no.  I realize not everyday can be a 7 or greater but more of them can be 7s or greater with good communication skills, reflection and a new normal of self and family care.