Science Day '24!

 the doors can be open!

I thank Mr. Rogers for impressing on me

the power of the door opening:

who might come through?

where might we go?

I teach middle school, 

a time of immense developmental changes,

when young people realize their lives

are a "choose your own adventure," 

full of choice, 

each choice potentially, shockingly, important,,

the "terribleness" of being two

comes from the imperative of making choice after choice

that are not that important, though they seem like they are,

a time of not having the wisdom yet

to know how and when to choose wisely,

and still feeling the drive to choose anyway,

now the forks in the road can really matter,

interests and possibilities in middle school

are imbued with a power that can matter 

far more than what to eat, what to wear,

what the momentary whim shouts,

in middle school mists start to clear

and possibilities can intrigue and draw,

what am I good at?

what am I interested in?

what might I be good at?

what might I be interested in?

so, for me, the charge of a middle school is to make sure

as many doors stand open to the student as can be,

today the doors were of science,

for decades CFS has had a Science Day each spring:

we start with an inspiring keynote,

this year about sleep,

and the overpowering reality of its value in keeping each of us

empowered, so that all of our systems are "go":

rebooted, revitalized, reintegrated,

then the students wound their way into classrooms

for workshops about a truth revealed by the scientific method,

asking a question and constructing a way to see how it might be answered,

can we know of snakes, actually there in person?

how can we deal with stress?

or how to make an air-propelled rocket?

how can we use chemistry and ingenuity to demonstrate what works?

how does DNA work? so let's extract it from strawberries,

will a heavier ball fall faster than a lighter one?

what's up with marijuana? with drinking water?

a popular workshop explores how engineers help us with potential danger,

we have engineering challenges with marshmallows and pasta,

with a mousetrap, a ping-pong ball, 

and the demand for a compelling story,

one grad student acknowledged my point about doors,

remembering how her path to who she is now

was powerfully influenced by a book read in middle school, 

for decades I have helped pull off middle school Science Day,

and I don't know if anyone will pick up the baton

and continue to run with it,

I do know that any middle school

should work very hard to name the doors

and help the students consider 

whether going though those doors

is what they can, maybe should, do.

by Henry H. Walker

March 15, ‘24