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Former astronaut speaks to ESU
Former astronaut George "Pinky" Nelson was the Jones Distinguished Lecturer Friday.
Effective teachers are the key to students learning successfully, a former space shuttle astronaut told more than 30 people Friday afternoon.
George “Pinky” Nelson spoke about education reform in schools as part of the Jones Distinguished Lecture Series at Emporia State University. Nelson, who is a nationally known advocate for science and math education reform is the director of science, mathematics and technology education and associated professor at Western Washington University.
“Student learning is the highest priority,” Nelson said. “A change in student learning means a chance in schools. If we want students to learn more effectively, then we have to do things differently.”
If an effective teacher teaches each subject, students learn better. Nelson said students who have three effective teachers in a row score significantly better on tests than students who have an ineffective teacher for three years in a row.
“If you have an effective teacher teaching kids every day, you will have progress,” Nelson said while pointing to a graph that showed student progress.
Children are not meeting standards in America, Nelson said.
“The science curriculum is overstuffed, incoherent and largely inappropriate for K-6 (grade) schools,” he said. “An average of 16 minutes a day is spent teaching science in K-6 school.”
New teachers also are graduating with inadequate science and mathematics knowledge, Nelson added.
Many schools aren’t spending as much time on science as they do reading and writing, Nelson said.
“Doing good science (education) doesn’t mean you’re ignoring reading and writing,” Nelson said. “You can do both. Why can’t students write about science?”
Students learn better with effective teachers, Nelson said.
“An effective teacher engages all student in content and ensures that all students are included and have access to content,” he said.
A effective teachers also uses content that is appropriate for students, Nelson added.
“There are some things you can learn in science and there are some things you can get from a book,” he said.
Nelson also said that teaching has to be a collaborative effort rather than each teacher teaching alone.
“The idea is having these collaborative teams,” he said.
“Lets change the way we think about elementary schools. Lets think about every lesson being taught by an effective teacher,” he said. “I’m talking about radically restructuring elementary schools.”
An effective teacher has several different characteristics including deep content knowledge, the ability to address common student ideas and knowing how to teach a diverse classroom, Nelson said. An effective teacher also is willing use teaching material, but adapt it as research changes.
Nelson also talked about the No Child Left Behind Act. He said some of the elements are good, but not all of them.
“I think testing every student every year is crazy,” he said. “The tests are important if you want to know what’s going on in your system. But this focus on test requirements seems crazy to me, especially since curriculum materials don’t match well.”
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