By Carmela Jones, MNS
“If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” -Steve Jobs
My journey to master Modeling Instruction (MI) led me to the home of the birth of the pedagogy, Arizona State University. I spent five summers procuring an MNS in physics. I took the Physics Modeling workshop all the way to the Advanced Modeling workshop. In all honesty, I felt like I was way out of my league academically. Everyone there was so experienced and intelligent compared to me, but the thing that kept me coming back was the community of educators.
The professional support in that setting was unmatched anywhere else. The people were real people that genuinely wanted to see you succeed in implementing MI. There was no envy or malice present. Everyone enjoyed each others' company and contributions inside and outside the classroom. That's what I wanted for my own classroom.
Many of us finally completed the Master of Natural Science in Physics program. We celebrated at a local, Mexican restaurant for dinner. There were about ten people, including some of our family members who came for the summer. This was my fifth and final summer at ASU. We had toiled through many different courses to complete the MNS program. The conversation that night was probably the most interesting I had experienced in any type of social event.
One colleague joked:
“The Arizona Tourism Bureau got together one day, noting that many residents abandoned the state for more temperate weather during the unbearably hot, solstice months. It feels like the old, deserted west with the tumbleweed rolling over desolate roads. Who can we get to come here during our ridiculously hot summers? I know, teachers; teachers will do it; they will come if we offer professional development.”
Laughter.
We reminisced over memories in specific classes and the talks we had attended.
“Who went to Dr. Hestenes’ Geometric Algebra Saturday session?”
“I did. Imaginary numbers, another dimension on a multidimensional graph.”
Mind blown.
“Who was at the electromagnetic fields conversation?”
“I was. Gravitational fields, electric fields, magnetic fields all behaved differently and were expressed using separate equations depending on the context. Who will create the unified field theory? That’s the next String Theory for Theoretical Physicists.”
Mind blown again.
“I wonder how Malcolm Wells would feel seeing us now? He couldn’t have known how what he was doing could spread nationally like it has.”
Mind blown trice.
That moved the conversation to the future. Everyone knew NSF funding ended after this summer. Everyone knew the findings of the MI program’s efficacy in content and pedagogy. The fly on the wall would have heard:
“What’s going to happen with the program?”
“Will there still be support to run workshops at ASU and throughout the country?”
“We could do workshops. We could ask for financial support.”
“Who in their right minds would give us money? We’re not even organized.”
“We could get organized.”
“What would we call ourselves?”
“We could affiliate with the AAPT (American Association of Physics Teachers) and the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association).”
Mind blown a fourth time.
We tossed around a variety of names: SMA (Science Modelers of America), ASM
(American Science Modelers), ASMT (Association of Science Modeling Teachers), MTA (Modeling Teachers of America), AMT (Association of Modeling Teachers), AMTA (American Modeling Teachers Association), and so on. We never settled on anything. We were pipe-dreaming, envisioning our pie-in-the-sky ambitions.
I left the dinner conflicted, feeling accomplished and simultaneously worried with a knot growing in my stomach. I hoped I wasn’t getting an ulcer. After all, none of us wanted MI to become just another great idea like ChemCom (Chemistry in the Community) that disappeared after NSF funding determined it was effective; there was no other organization to step in with funding to implement the pedagogy. Oh, the irony of it all!
Then I got a fateful phone call from my action-oriented colleague, Patrick Daisley. Find out what happened after that in the next blog entry.
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If you are a Modeling teacher, share your story by sending it to the email listed. If you know a great Modeling teacher, encourage them to send their story to the email listed. cjones.stemprofessionals@gmail.com.
If you are Modeling teacher and want to interact with other Modeling teachers with a question, an issue, a classroom experience, an announcement, or anything other MI teachers might be interested in, post it on the M2M (Modeler to Modeler) blog on the AMTA site. https://modelinginstruction.org/submit-a-blog-entry-to-m2m/
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