Out of Disaster Comes Opportunity: Initial Lessons from Teacher Mentoring in Banda Aceh, Indonesia

As a science educator, I have learned that teachers sometimes feel like they can’t teach science without specialized equipment. In my experience, however, there are many science concepts that can be demonstrated with very basic tools. Building a sundial is one activity that is rich in content and requires very few materials. Building sundials had been a successful activity for me with both students and teachers in the U.S, so I was excited to share the activity with teachers in Aceh during our two-week professional development session. Comments Reprinted from Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education, Volume 4, Issue 2, 2006, 13 pages. Publisher URL: http://www.urbanedjournal.org/notes/ This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/39 Out of Disaster Comes Opportunity: Initial Lessons from Teacher Mentoring in Banda Aceh, Indonesia Joy Lesnick & Katherine Schultz As a science educator, I have learned that teachers sometimes feel like they can’t teach science without specialized equipment. In my experience, however, there are many science concepts that can be demonstrated with very basic tools. Building a sundial is one activity that is rich in content and requires very few materials. Building sundials had been a successful activity for me with both students and teachers in the U.S, so I was excited to share the activity with teachers in Aceh during our two-week professional development session. When I conducted the activity in my school in Pennsylvania, I used an existing pole near the school (often a flag pole) and outlined the shadow that the pole made each hour. Students and teachers alike became quickly engaged when within five minutes, we were all able to see that the shadow had moved. It always led to an interesting discussion about the earth’s rotation, time zones, the sun, and the larger solar system. In Aceh, with no conveniently located poles for the activity, I decided to pound a stake into the ground and draw lines in the dirt to chart the movement of the sun. I started by tracing a line created by the shadow. The participating teachers and I spoke briefly (through translators) about how sundials had been used to establish prayer times in Islam, and then went back inside the classroom for the remainder of the period. At the end of class, we returned to the sundial to examine the movement of the shadow, but to my surprise, there was no new shadow in sight. With the help of my translators, I explained my confusion to the group. I told them that I had expected to see that the shadow had moved. We checked the sun. We checked the earlier mark. People suggested that the pole had been moved, or that the line had been drawn wrong. Finally, one of the teachers took another stick and held it across the top of my stake, making a “T.” The shaft of the T was indeed along the line created by the earlier shadow, but the top of the T was closer to the stake than the original shadow top had been. Because it was close to the solstice, and we were close to the equator, the sun had been moving across the sky in a more direct east-west direction than I had anticipated. The Earth had not stood still, and neither had I. This activity was much more of a real inquiry for me than I had expected, while being equally appropriate for the participants. The shadows continued to follow the line until close to midday, when they created a tiny arc around the stake before continuing the line in the opposite direction. And we had figured it out and understood it together. -NancyLee Bergey, Science Methods Instructor The moment that NancyLee describes above is a poignant example of an opportunity that we had as U.S. professors and graduate students to teach and to learn from 100 veteran Achenese teachers for two weeks in July 2005. We came to teach and found ourselves learning more than we imagined. This opportunity arose from a terrible disaster. On December 26, 2004, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake the most Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education | Volume 4, Issue 2: Winter 2006 | Notes from the Field | Out of Disaster Comes Opportunity