--Originally published at FLN Hub – nodes
flickr photo shared by bennettscience under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-SA ) license
I heard the first periodical cicada of the summer yesterday. Before I could find him, he stopped buzzing. I'll have to pay more attention this afternoon and see if I can track him down.
17 years ago, I was in my first biology class. I still remember my teacher: Mr. Brown. He was a certified master diver and knew (it seemed) just about everything. He was the one who really made science alive for me. He was just one of the teachers who made me want to eventually get my degree in biology and teach.
Science is real. Our students need to experience the world around them and have opportunities to really see that we can learn through observation and inference. Hearing a cicada that has been underground for 17 years, only to emerge for four weeks to make more cicadas is one of those experiences.
I'm teaching AP Bio next year for the first time since the redesign in 2013. I'm excited to get back to the realm of the living (chemistry is great...but...it can't really compete) and giving students a chance to be a part of the cycles happening all around us every day.
Learning is more than the cycles, charts, and facts. It's living and breathing with the rest of the world.
