Notes from public school - Teacher Workday

In 4th grade, we study astronomy.

“Do you know the order of the planets, closest to the farthest, from our sun?” I ask my students.

Invariably they don’t.

No one has taught them.

Yet.

That’s my job!

“Let me teach you by helping you use a mnemonic device,” I say.

“A memo what?!” they ask.

“A mnemonic device. You use the first letter of the words you’re trying to memorize and make a sentence out of them.

Here.

Let me show you.

On my Promethean Board I write Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and sketch little pictures (or big ones in the cases of the gas giants) above the words.

“You see?” I ask.

“M, V, E, M, J, S, U, N - those are the first letters of the words we’re trying to memorize.

Now, let’s make a sentence out of them.

A fun sentence that we can remember.”

So we make our fun sentence.

“My Very Educated Mother Just Served Up Nachos.

Look!

We did it!

M, V, E, M, J, S, U, N

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Nachos

Now you know the order of the planets, closest to farthest, from our sun.

Congratulations!

You’re on your way to jobs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA!”

And invariably one student will exclaim, “Hey! We forgot Pluto!”

And invariably I’ll respond, “Oh, Pluto. Poor, poor Pluto. Take a deep breath, for I have to tell you a sad, sad story.

Once upon a time, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union met and stated, “Pluto is no longer a planet. It’s been demoted. It’s now a dwarf planet.”

“How can they do that?!” asks my distraught students.

“Who gave them the power to be able to do that?”

Maybe this distraughtness, this questioning of power that can demote a planet, comes because my students identify with Pluto.

Most of them come from economically poor, socially outcasted families, so they understand at the heart level what it means to be small, cold and forgotten.

What it means to have no gravity, no pull on the Earth.

So I read them Pluto’s Secret: An Icy World’s Tale of Discovery by Margaret A. Weitekamp, David DaVorkin and Dianne Kidd.

And we discover that what makes Pluto special makes them special, too.

(I’ll let you read the book so I won’t spoil the theme for you!)

And I read them a copy of a Fibonacci poem I wrote about Pluto.

I give them a copy of it as a gift, a gift to help them remember to be, to be themselves.

far

far

away

miles from Earth

small, cold, forgotten

 

you are no longer a planet

the IAU said because of your movement in space

I was a boy in my classroom at school, you were my fav’rite planet 

you had no gravity, no pull on the Earth, but you had gravity on my small heart

I loved you, felt you in the deep, deep space in my heart

New Horizons just journeyed there

found you have a heart

but I knew

pluto

loves

me

All in a day in public school.