, a global company responsible for inventing products like Pyrex, the gorilla glass on smartphones and the ceramic in a catalytic converter. Corning is a small, rural community with a median income of about $50,000, but Corning Inc. draws many highly educated scientists who want good local schools.
When they started the school, Frock knew they needed to teach science differently. She didn’t think the “canned experiments” many schools do, where students walk through a step-by-step process and get a predetermined result, was a good representation of what real scientists do. It’s too controlled, and doesn’t have enough room for the types of failures and setbacks that professional scientists face everyday.
Teaching this way requires small class sizes and teachers with a deep grasp of their subject matter. The teachers have to be comfortable with students pursuing their own areas of inquiry and guiding them to continue asking questions, iterating, researching and experimenting until they’ve come up with some conclusions.
“If you can create that safe environment where kids are willing to take a risk, they can present a whole experiment, even if they didn’t get an answer or didn't get the answer they were looking for,” Chervenic said. The collaboration teachers work hard to promote throughout their students’ learning is evident in the adult work at ASMS as well. Teachers regularly visit one another’s classrooms to make sure, for example, that they’re using the same language to talk about an algebraic concept in science as they are in math class. If the English teacher notices students are weak on their writing, then in science class they may also spend extra time writing strong conclusions.
KQED Great teachers and all the equipment the need to experiment.
KQED Also, coming from a high school student, an additional option is to pay the teachers well. A country that has the teachers with the highest pay will have great students and generation of educationally motivated people.
KQED I would really like to see a show on migraines