Knowing your stuff

One of the saddest things about the end of the year is that I won't be able to team-teach a class with Simone Uren. Simone is an amazingly perceptive woman, with a way of cutting to the heart of an issue with a single sentence. I will write more about my time team-teaching with her as the year ends, but I did want to write about one thing in particular she said recently.

As you would know if you read my blog, one of the things I have worked the hardest on and am most proud of is The North School's maths course. This course, supported by video, enables students to work at their own level in any particular topic, while still being connected to the rest of the class through a broader topic. For our higher-end kids, this means they are often working at a high school level, with our activities reaching the Victorian VELS progression of 4.5 (end of year 7/start of year 8).

As Simone discussed the impact of me leaving the classroom on the school, she said that while having these activities ready to go, and even while having explanatory videos, one thing that cannot be underestimated is the content knowledge needed to support this way of working. For example, our students that work at level 4.5 are about to learn how to write an algebraic expression to describe a linear relationship. While the site has a great activity to help them do this, and there are videos which support it, students cannot rely on video alone, and without my deep knowledge of the content, the ability to explain it quickly and confidently, the chances of it being effectively taught are decreased. While technology is a fabulous thing, there is no substitute for really knowing and loving what you're teaching.

Similarly with science. I used to be a scientist... I have a PhD in medicinal chemistry, and so I have a deep knowledge of science and of chemistry in particular. In fact, while teaching Year 12 chemistry I developed resources that enabled students to use molecular modelling to understand some basic concepts of drug design....

Again, this use of technology is only meaningful because I have the content knowledge to back it up. When we taught our seven different inquiries last term, they could have easily become 'busy work'; my knowledge of science enabled me to guide the inquiry to the deep scientific principles that underlay them. For example, the 'how to kick an AFL football' inquiry was really about experimental design, force, and trajectory.

It is with this belief in the importance of deep content knowledge that I invite schools to join us in forming an online science community, in the spirit of our successful Writers' club . Science @ The North School endeavours to create a community where students passionate about science can share their questions, experiments and ideas; and where we will share our Virtual Experts that supported our students will be able to support and inspire students from not just one school but from schools around the world. As a former medicinal chemist, perhaps I too can share my content knowledge with students from around the world.

We already have an international collaboration through Science@TheNorthSchool - Lahore American School in Pakistan have some of their passionate science students online already. It will take time to grow into a cohesive, vibrant online community, but as I've shown with the Writers' club, patience and persistence can create something special.

If you'd like to join us, email us at science@thenorthschool.com, or reply to this post.