to open the doors

Science Day ‘18

we want our middle school students

to function as scientists,

not just like scientists,

just as we want the writer, the artist, the athlete

within them to express itself,

today we celebrate the journey toward truth,

recently travelled by half the school

in their individual experiments,

and workshop 16 different paths 

of experience and understanding,

shared by gifted volunteers,

whose lives speak of the power of science

to do good, to live wonder,

to find keys that open doors,

behind which understanding has been hiding, 

our Science Day begins with Glenn Murphy

honoring Stephen Hawking, whose body left us this week,

but whose mind we followed for a time with Glenn

through centuries of figuring out

where Earth, Sun, planets, and stars

move in relationship to each other,

Glenn, the scientist at his core,

poses a problem to our students:

“Could the dinosaurs have seen the constellation Orion?”

and pushes them to call up questions

that need to be followed

so that a plausible answer to that question can be found, 

generating the right question at the heart of inquiry,

in the afternoon, Bryan Sexton enthralls us all

with the research on stress and burnout,

on the causes of energies diminished or rejuvenating,

the power of the positive, of a friend,

of seeing the stars above more than the mud beneath,

the kids rapt with their attention,

with the resonance within them to the ideas,

his orientation of self with the wholeness

that all of us know

and that we hope will be 

the driver of who we are,

the day finishes with a fun fashion show,

as group after group uses natural and recycled items

to make and share creations

that pull laughter and applause from the group,

Science Day in C.F.S. Middle School

celebrates the scientist within us all,

the scientist who loves to learn,

to ask, to risk, to joy,

to find the way forward

so that all can come closer

to the wholeness that is.

by Henry H. Walker
March 16, ‘18
(Bryan Sexton photo courtesy of Google Images.)