The museum offered me the opportunity to learn about several African cultures, Ancient Chinese dynasties, Rainforest conservation in Peru, the volcanic activity that is responsible for much of Hawaii's landscape, animal adaptations, mammoths and mastodons, insects, gems, and much much more. It was truly fascinating. One of the museum's most popular attractions is SUE, the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever. Not actually a confirmed female, she is named for her discoverer and at 42 feet long with a 600 pound skull...she was something to behold.
We made fast friends as I read the details of her discovery in South Dakota in 1990. Of course the dating process and removal of her valued bones was interesting but what caught my attention was the initial description of how she was found. Sue Hendrickson was digging...her purpose was to find bones, she had studied enough to know what she was looking for so much that she "noticed several dinosaur vertebrae sticking out of the face of the bluff." I laughed a little to myself upon reading that. I thought noticed dinosaur vertebrae? I'm not sure I could notice a dinosaur vertebrae in a bunch of rocks if it were bright pink and glittery! On some level, she must have known exactly what she was looking for. And then as I though more, and read more museum signs, and traveled to other exhibits I noticed a pattern; regardless of if it was a chunk of turquoise found in Brazil, a baby mammoth discovered in the tundra of Siberia, or a T-rex in South Dakota...everyone that uncovered these historical and scientific wonders was either informed enough to know what they were looking for, or engaged and curious enough to know that they had just stumbled onto something significant and awesome.
And then came the connection, good teaching, authentic assessment, and student centered classrooms should be about paying attention. We need to continue to grow as teachers in our ability to observe, ask questions when something is unusual, and then study those things we find to inform our teaching and better understand our students. I can't imagine all that we would have missed if Sue Hendricks never noticed those vertebrae in the bluff, or if the Siberian travelers would have ignored the little that was showing of the baby mammoth in the ice. I also can't imagine how much information we miss about our students because of the speed at which we plow through our days, the breadth we sometimes choose to cover over the depth of knowledge we could foster, and the sad truth that sometimes we don't even know enough about what we want our students to be able to do to notice it coming through authentically.
Always more to learn, always more to do. Insatiable learning and teaching is a blessing, not a curse.
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