It is now a little over two weeks ago, that on a very rainy Friday afternoon my doctorate in education was approved. I signed the last of the official graduation papers and as I began to make my way out of the Graduate Studies building at the University of California, Davis, a bell was rung and a voice from within shouted out- "Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you Dr. Brian Donnelly. Apparently the bell ringing is a long standing tradition to officially acknowledge the awarding of a doctoral degree. After many years of hard work I thought this moment would bring a sense of exhilaration- liberation from all of the nights and weekends of taking courses, reading, writing and analyzing data. Alas, it was 7:45 a.m. – there was no sense of exhilaration- and I had little time to waste. I needed to be back at my middle school Industrial Technology classroom and ready for the 150 plus students I would have the opportunity to work with that day.
Looking back, I now find my self thinking about an intriguing experience that occurred on the same day that perhaps explains what happened in the morning. Students in my second period class were excited about a new project we just started using Autodesk Inventor software and a 3D printer that has been generously loaned to us by Klein Educational Systems. After completing an Autodesk Design Kids curriculum jewelry project, I had challenged student to develop designs for rings that we could fabricate with the printer. Amidst the classroom chaos that I’ve grown to embrace, kids were running around trying to determine the proper diameter for their rings, how those dimensions related to the inner and outer circumference which in turn determined the size of the flat rectangle that they would create and sketch on prior to using the bend command. Here were some of the same kids who I often heard say they hated math – and they were whipping out the calculators, arguing about whether to use 2 Pi R or Pi R squared or predicting the mass of the finished ring and volume of material required to produce it. Well I can’t say that my emotions reached the level of exhilaration- but I certainly felt good inside.
This to me was where the rubber was meeting the road. The doctoral work lead me to investigate countless books and articles extolling the virtues of integrating academics and relevant experiential learning. Yet, here I was in a public school that based on traditional standards was considered high achieving. But there are still many students who are struggling, especially in the areas of math and science. Like the vast majority of schools, we deliver academic course content through a system that is still largely driven by an archaic 20th century model of discrete course sessions. I think I felt good for those few moments because I was reminded that my heartfelt belief in the need to dramatically change the way we “do school” was validated by the enthusiasm with which these students’ took to this “math” project. But my course is a stand alone elective- after the bell rings they will still find themselves at some point in their day sitting in a math class for another 55 minutes.
Maybe it wasn’t so important that I didn’t feel some thrill at hearing that bell ring pronouncing me “Doctor”. Maybe the exhilaration comes in sensing that I’m on the right track-- advocating for greater integration between “academics” and experiential learning- where learning isn’t dissected into neat 55 minute packages. Maybe- hopefully, the thrill will be in discovering how to use this newly minted doctorate to contribute to the groundswell of educational reform efforts where seemingly insignificant activities, like designing a ring are viewed as rich learning opportunities.
Subscribe
Comments