February 17, 2025 • 24 mins
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Ever wondered about the discoveries lurking in the far reaches of our solar system? Ted Willard from Discovery Education joins us with tales from his extraordinary journey—from a high school physics teacher to a key player in the debate over Pluto's planetary status. With an impressive background in planetary science, Ted shares learnings from professor's discovery of Uranus’s rings. As we navigate through this cosmic conversation, Ted sheds light on the dynamic nature of scientific understanding and the way new evidence can reshape our educational models.
But it's not all planetary talk! Get ready to rethink science education with a focus on innovative teaching approaches that break away from traditional methods. We explore the Next Generation Science Standards alongside Pennsylvania's STEELS standards, bringing science to life through hands-on experiments like balloon-powered carts. We promise you'll come away with a new appreciation for three-dimensional learning, where practices, concepts, and ideas blend to create a lively, engaging classroom experience. And just for laughs, stick around for our humorous banter as we slip into the world of YouTube antics and chuckle over Andrew’s supposed wardrobe choices. Join us for an episode that's equal parts educational and entertaining!
Want more Ted? Attend one or all of his sessions at the 2025 NSTA Conference in Philly. Use the NSTA app and search for Ted Willard or the session titles below:
Selecting Phenomena to Motivate Student Sense-making
The NSTA Atlas of the Three Dimensions
Unpacking the Crosscutting Concepts with a new NSTA Quick-Reference Guide to the Three Dimensions
NSTA's Trilogy of Guides to the Three Dimensions
ChangED is the official podcast for the NSTA Philly Conference.
Experience more ChangED/NSTA podcasts and learn about the Philly NSTA Conference by visiting nsta.org/podcast.
Want to learn more about ChangED? Check out our website at: learn.mciu.org/changed
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome back.
Welcome back to Change Ed.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Changed, changed.
We sound so excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I am as thrilled as you are that you tuned in to
this episode of Change, Ed.
I'm your host, Andrew Kuhn,Education Consultant.
Ac from Montgomery CountyIntermediate Unit here with me.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Patrice Semecek, also an EC from Montgomery County
Intermediate Unit.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And Tony Marabito from Carbon Lehigh Intermediate
Unit, SDF.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
The IU is not Indiana University.
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
No, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I'm not that important.
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
We are super thrilled and honored to have here with
us Ted Willard with DiscoveryEducation.
Ted, welcome to the show, happyto be here.
We know that you are awell-known individual,
especially in the education andscience worlds, but now that
you've been on this podcast,look out, people are going to
(01:10):
come up to you and want selfies.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
The following is going to follow you down.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
We are super excited to have you.
If you don't mind, justintroducing yourself to the
ChangeEd Nation, so that we canknow who it is that we are
talking to today.
Changeed Nation, so that we canknow who it is that we are
talking to today Absolutely Veryhappy to do that.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
I have a degree in planetary science.
I was a high school physicsteacher for a number of years.
I got a job at Project 2061,the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, andbasically spent 12 years there
doing work aroundstandards-based reform, and they
were one of the organizationsthat was involved in the
(01:46):
previous generation of sciencestandards as opposed to the next
generation of science standards.
And then in 2012, around thetime that Framework for K-12
Science came out, I got a jobwith the National Science
Teaching Association as I wastheir sort of in-house standards
expert from 2012 to the end of2019 and basically sort of
oversaw all of NSTA's workaround implementation of NGSS or
(02:10):
other standards based on theframework for K-12 science
education.
And then in 2019, I moved overhere to Discovery Education
where I've been designingstandards based curriculum for
K-12 students, mostly focused onmiddle school, but have been
working, done work, all acrossthe K-12 spectrum.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So I'm really interested in the planetary
science.
Can you tell me about that?
What is that?
What do you study and what doesthat mean?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Astronomy is technically stars, planetary
science is technically planets,although I did a bit of both of
those things and so basicallytrying to understand the planets
.
My advisor was famous in theastronomy community of sorts
because his specialty wasstudying when a star is passing
(02:59):
behind a planet, or a planet ispassing in front of a star, and
studying carefully the lightfrom that star.
So when I better be gettingthis right that it was uranus
and not neptune, I think I'll bevery embarrassed.
When the star, the planet,passed by that star, there was
these little dips in the amountof light, dip, dip, dip, and
then a symmetrical dip, dip, dipon the other side, which led
(03:23):
him to be the first person onthe planet, as he was kind of
analyzing this data, to realizethat Uranus had rings, because
those dips in the light werefrom the rings blocking the
light from the star.
That's amazing, wow.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
To be clear, ted Patrice and I knew that.
We just wanted you to clarifyfor Andrew, that's very cool,
thank, you for explaining it tohim.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Thank you, tony, for airing my dirty line.
I appreciate you doing that.
So the big question is is howmany planets are there?
Because I know we've gone backand forth in my lifetime as a
student.
We've gone back and forth.
So now that we have a planetaryexpert with us, what is the
answer and how are we clarifyingplanets?
Speaker 4 (04:07):
I actually now you know this was my biggest moment
in the media prior to thispodcast is that I actually, aaas
, was contacted by Ed Week whenthere was this big change about
the aspect of whether Pluto is aplanet or not, and I get, and
they they had me talk to thereporter and so there's a little
(04:29):
.
There's one little quote linefrom me in, in that the way I've
said it then was the.
The aspect of it is thatplanets and all these things are
here are human labels we put onthings.
Nature isn't so nearlyclear-cut, and so it's not
surprising sometimes that it'shard to decide whether one thing
is part of this group or thatgroup.
And you know, it's all justabout of how we find things easy
(04:51):
to categorize.
Pluto is what Pluto is.
It was a case of that.
We figured out some things,that Pluto was a little bit
different than we thought it was.
We started to get to the pointwhere we had some other bodies
in the solar system that werebigger than Pluto and had a
better claim to be a planet thanPluto did, and so somebody had
to decide, a group had to decidedo we want to start talking
(05:12):
about there being 10, 11, 12planets, or do we want to say
Pluto isn't a planet?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Okay, so this is your change-it exclusive.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Well, exclusive, ladies and gentlemen, that's
right.
Well, no, but I really like thebomb out there.
I like how you explain that isthat it's really pluto has
always been what pluto hasalways been.
It's the way in which we'recategorizing it and the depth of
our knowledge to understandmore about it.
Therefore, we're shifting ourunderstanding.
That's science, though.
Right, like, exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yep, I love that and to your point, whether, it being
science, things don't alwayshave to be what they've always
been, so we are able to adjustand to make new informed
decisions about things, and thatmight change a little bit.
So I appreciate that as well.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
To connect into something I'm sure I will say
later on and says when suddenlyyou have new evidence, it means
that you sometimes need toadjust your model.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yes, and that's all we did with Pluto we adjusted
our model Right and back to whatyou said, and by we I mean
scientists.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I had nothing to do with it, Right, clearly just me.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I was the only one.
Everybody else knew that, butwhen everybody else knew that.
But to your point, pluto hasnot changed.
Our perspective on Pluto haschanged, got it?
I love that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Can I ask a little about discovery In our work?
We get to do a lot ofcurriculum work with schools.
My focus recently has been alot with elementary, but I like
that you mentioned middle schooland your design with curriculum
.
With the shift in our steelstandards that we've been
working with a lot here, wheredo you even begin with the whole
?
We were mentioning storylinesprior to the podcast beginning,
(06:53):
things like that.
There's so much to take in andwe love the shift here.
We're very excited for it.
But I couldn't even imaginetaking on a task like this.
So could you kind of walk usthrough your role and what you
do and how you do it?
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It may not surprise you in some ways, in clinics and
other things we're doing here,you start with the standards.
What are my goals?
If I, you know, if I need tothink about, where do we get
there?
And the big piece is thisaspect of phenomena, a real key
(07:34):
aspect of student learning thatthis whole shift is all about is
appreciating the idea that wewant to get away from having
students basically playing thegame of school.
You know, what am I doing inschool?
Well, I am basically figuringout what my teacher wants me to
say and then saying it.
(07:54):
I'm just going through thething here.
I'm practicing intellectualbulimia, where I take things in,
I spit them out and I do notretain them.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I love that phrase.
I'm sorry I had to jump in.
That is an awesome phrase.
Can you say that again?
They're practicing what?
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Intellectual bulimia, intellectual bulimia, wow can't
, I can't take credit for that.
I heard it actually from one ofthe people who was involved in
developing the next generationscience standards, but it's a
guy named stephen pruitt, but Idon't know where he got it from.
Maybe he made it up himself,but no, I love it I'm pretty
sure he listened to our show.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I'm sure he heard it from here there we go, or they
just basically don't care.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
You know, they've basically checked out altogether
, you know, but we want to shiftto them gaining knowledge, the
way that scientists gainknowledge.
And the way scientists gainknowledge is that they look at
some phenomenon and they're likehow the heck does that go on?
And so what I try to do, whatpeople who develop curriculum
with me try to do is we try tothink about what phenomena could
(08:53):
we show students that theywould not know how to explain
what's going on there, but theywould want to explain what's
going on there, and the only waythey're going to be able to
explain it is if they learn thescience ideas that I want them
to learn.
So we have in discoveryeducation, a unit we developed
called Rocket Sled, and becausewe're Discovery Education, we
(09:15):
have this great aspect of havingaccess to Mythbusters videos
and there's this myth that theywork in on Mythbusters.
That was this idea thatsomewhere up in Minnesota or
someplace there was a head-oncollision between a snowplow and
a car and the snowplow was notone of these, that just pushes
the side, it was the rightdividing it.
And the idea that the car couldhave been split in half the
(09:37):
triangle I saw that episode okayso.
so they do this sort of mythhere and then they find that, no
, you can't do that, but becausethey're myth busters, they go
and they find a way to do it,and that's what we focused on is
what they did is they went downto New Mexico, to a place there
(09:58):
that has rocket powered sleds,and they built a snowplow blade
onto a rocket powered sled.
That got it going at 600 milesan hour and it literally split a
car in half.
And so you show kids that videoand you want them to now think
about how the heck did they dothat?
How did they get it going thatfast?
Why was that able to split thecar in half when the other thing
(10:22):
wasn't able to split the car inhalf?
And what do you have to learnabout?
Well, you, there's littlethings there.
There's that you know that theydidn't just have one rocket on
that, there were nine rockets.
Well, it turns out that the moreforce you apply to something,
the more acceleration you get.
And they didn't have a fullfledged snowplow blade.
(10:43):
They had made this really smallone in some ways that was still
in thin, because it turns out,the more mass you have, the less
acceleration you get for agiven force.
And then why did it do so muchdamage to the car?
Well, there's this conceptcalled energy, kinetic energy,
(11:04):
and the more kinetic energy anobject has, the more damage it
does.
Kinetic energy depends uponmath and it depends upon
velocity, but it turns out itdepends more on velocity than it
does on mass.
So getting something to goreally fast is more important
than having something that isreally heavy.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
So, ted, how do you take something super exciting
like that?
They're into it, because whodoesn't want to see a car
explode?
Right, like super exciting.
But how do you take somethinglike that and the concepts that
you're talking about?
How do you take that supergreat hook and do two things
with it Extend the learning, buthow do you also make it
(11:44):
relevant to what they actuallycan do and understand in the
classroom?
Because we're not going to NewMexico to blow up cars with
rockets.
So how do we extend thatthinking, and I think you're
kind of one of the perfectpeople to talk to about this
because of what you do fordiscovery, so do you mind
walking us through?
How do you take somethingawesome like that and make it
relevant and real and continuethe learning without kind of
(12:06):
dampening their excitement?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I'm going to give you a think time, not that you need
it, but I would love to knowwhat is your street cred at
discovery ed Cause we want tohave.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Adam and Jamie on the show.
So what is it?
They're not really they don'twork for discovery anymore, do
they?
Speaker 4 (12:22):
They don't.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
And.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I have no and I have no ability to.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
You have no street cred.
Oh, ted, you know oh streetcred.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh, ted, all the lies have been fed about you, ted.
This is all lies.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I mean you guys are big names in Pennsylvania
education.
How well does that get you toget the most famous people in
Pennsylvania, Some of the mainbaseball players.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I mean, we've had some pretty stellar guests Ted.
We've got some good people here.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Saquon Barkley's on next week, so we'll go there.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Now we've got to be careful.
I'm a New York Giants fan.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
So this podcast might be over Ted your audio is
breaking up, I heard you say noone wants to listen to me
anymore.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, we just lost our entire.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
we're going to have to delete all that out, the
algorithm is going to go.
It's scrolling up and plummets,nope and we're done.
Ted's never allowed back.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
So what was the question?
No, so you have to think aboutthese sort of things here, but
it's basically working to scaledown.
No-transcript.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
balloon powered carts in the classroom so you're
talking about all the sameconcept, you're building their
understanding and you I lovethat.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I love that, and in the balloon cards, we get to the
aspect of, like what's pushingthe carts, and that leads us
into eventually newton's thirdlaw, that when the balloon
pushes the air out of it, theair pushes the balloon cart and
the balloon and the balloon cartforward.
(14:16):
So we're able to get variousideas about Newton's third law
playing from this rocket sledidea and, as I like to say, if I
can get kids caring about why,about how does the rocket push
the rocket sled, I'm gettingkids to ultimately care about
Newton's third law and as aformer physics teacher, I can
(14:37):
tell you getting kids to careabout Newton's third law is not
an easy thing to do.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
What I love.
What you're describing is reallythe mindset as I see it, of
NGSS and also of Steeles here inPennsylvania, that we are
flipping the script from goingfrom micro and, once you passed
all the flags, you get into themacro.
We're starting macro and whichis really actually where we can
make it relevant to our students.
Right, we're talking aboutthings that you would actually
care about and that now we'regoing to drill down to, like how
(15:16):
does it actually work?
So we're creating a space wherethey would be interested in the
learning by flipping it anddoing it the opposite of what we
were doing yep, we are nottelling students the science.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
That's back into the game, this game of school that I
talked about.
I know where I can saysomething to a student and that
student can say it back to me.
It does not mean that studentunderstands that.
You know, we can say thingswithout understanding those
things.
We can know terms and evendefinitions for terms without
really understanding terms,terms and even definitions for
(15:52):
terms without reallyunderstanding terms.
There's a great video I love touse in professional learning.
That is from interviews of someHarvard and MIT students years
ago being asked about here's aseed and here's a log or a tree.
Where did the stuff come from?
And these are students.
I am sure could balance theequation for photosynthesis,
could probably answer a lot ofstate tests about photosynthesis
(16:13):
, but they can't tell you wherethat material came from that
made up the tree.
And in fact, if you suggestthat carbon dioxide has
something to do with where thatmaterial came from, they reject
it at first.
They think the seed oh, it cameup from the roots of the plant.
That's because that's what theythink of as the first.
They think the seed oh, it cameup from the roots of the plant.
That's because that's what theythink of as the first.
They basically give answersvery similar to interviews with
(16:35):
elementary students about this,because they learned in a way
that basically maybe gave themsome information, but it's inert
information.
And what the steel standards do,what three dimensional
standards do, is it's about thescience in use.
It's about science is not justa body of knowledge, nor is it
(16:57):
just a practice.
It is the combination, but it'sboth of those things.
I mean trying to talk about onewithout the other.
Or actually, let methree-dimensionalize this.
I love the idea that we talkabout three dimensions because
it's like trying to talk aboutvolume, but only using length or
(17:18):
only using width or only usingdepth.
You need all three to havevolume.
If I only have practices, Ihave no depth.
If I only have cross-cuttingconcepts, I I have no depth.
If I only have core ideas, Ihave no depth.
I mean, I'm sorry, I have novolume.
So we need three dimensions.
We need all three to makevolume.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That is the clearest way I have ever heard the three
dimensions working together.
It is so easy for elementaryteachers and middle school
teachers and everyone to grab onto.
I love that.
I'm stealing that too.
Can I quote Ted Willard?
Is that a Ted Willard quote?
Speaker 4 (17:52):
You can quote.
That one is mine, that one isyours.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Good, I'm going to take it and I'm going to run
with it.
I think that is super clear.
Without one, you can't have theother.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I also love that it ties into mathematical right,
like you understand it from adifferent perspective and lens,
and I think, something that whenwe started this podcast that's
why we named it Change Ed,because it was what's good in
science is not just good inscience.
These are good teachingpractices across the board, and
so this analogy allows us toexplain it in multiple fashions.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
To say, here's how three-dimensional learning is
good for all, and this is whyand it goes back to the concept
of we can't just focus on thedcis and the content we've
really got.
We really have to incorporatethe scps and the cccs, or else
it's not.
It's just one dimension.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, it's really good the one thing I wrote down
here, ted, when you, when youwere saying this and I think
it's actually really significantand important was that you were
talking about the body ofknowledge.
And what actually reallysignificant and important was
that you were talking about thebody of knowledge and what went
to my mind is that, because thebody of knowledge keeps growing
and we're like, wait, these areimportant things that we need to
know, these are important toyour life.
We talked about that idea offlipping it, but before we
flipped it, it almost served asa second history lesson, where
(19:05):
it was like you have to know allof these things that happened
and we were focusing on what hadhappened.
And what I love is that we'remaking it relevant learning, but
almost flipping it to be likewell, what, if, what if we could
do this, and that's such asignificant.
It's a subtle but significantshift in our mindset to think
about could this be possible?
Versus well, it's already beenproven that it's this, so that's
(19:28):
not possible.
And I think you're engaging themind in a different way, to be
like could I actually create arocket-powered backpack that
could get me to the moon?
And then we're like okay, let'slean into that.
Here's what we know.
What would you need to be ableto make that possible?
And so, for me, it's flippingthe script from what we can't do
to what we could do, and thatpossibility and that mindset and
(19:51):
that creative thinking andproblem solving.
So it's.
It's we're ingraininginspiration into our students
with this mindset of of you know, let's go big and then we work
down to make it a possibilityversus you know.
A lot of times you can feellike, man, I'm looking at this
huge elephant.
Well, how do you eat anelephant?
Bite by bite, right, thenthat's how we're going about it,
versus the other way was like,well, the elephant's just too
(20:14):
big.
It feels like it's a frameworkfor us to be able to move
students through learning.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Yeah, there's two things I think I want to sort of
touch on from that.
The first is that we're alsogiving students the gift of the
aha moment, the eureka, that isso important, and it's not just
the value in it of itself ofjust that nice feeling, it's the
aspect of that stuff thatsticks with you.
(20:40):
I guarantee you that, for thethree of you and for all the
folks who are listening, you canthink of some point in your
educational journey.
It may not have been in aclassroom where something
clicked for you, the light bulbwent off, and two things about
it.
One is there's this how goodthat felt, which makes you want
to do that sort of thing more.
The other thing is is that whenyou figured it out, it stuck
(21:03):
with you.
You still know that thing thatyou figured out, whereas if I
told you something and you werejust and I handed it to you and
you did no work for I told yousomething and you were just and
I handed it to you and you didno work for it, you also don't
really hold on to it in yourbrain.
Very well, right it slides awaypretty, pretty easily.
Yep, well, I do want to pull oneother piece about.
That is the aspect of as, asandrew is kind of making
(21:27):
reference there, it isimpossible for anyone to learn
everything about everything.
Okay, there is a limit to howmuch content any one person can
learn in a human lifespan, andthere's more content out there
than can be captured, more thanwe have time for in our
classroom.
Time is our most valuableresource.
(21:48):
We talk about money as an issue, but time is the really most
valuable resource in there.
So another great thing aboutthese standards that are based
on the framework is trying toreally think about what are the
ideas that are most valuable tostudents as they go out in the
world to work on.
There are some ideas that justhave some more value.
The ideas of force and motion,the idea of energy, ideas about
(22:13):
the particulate nature of matter, natural selection,
understanding about cells,understanding about plate
tectonics all of these differentthings here are powerful in
some ways that they'regenerative, that they basically
those ideas are very useful intodeveloping new ideas, and those
ideas are really valuable in awide ranges of phenomena.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you for coming.
Make sure that you, ted, youtell the entire Discovery
Education Network, andespecially Adam and Jamie, about
our show.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Or maybe John Cena, because he did Shark Week this
year.
Oh, there you go.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
John yeah, look, you can name drop all you want, shaq
, I think I did it at some point.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I mean anybody, anybody, but for all listeners,
the sharks.
I'll talk to the sharks.
I'll talk to the sharks.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Listeners thank you for tuning in.
Be sure to like, subscribe andshare.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Wow, like, subscribe and share, you got.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I feel like a YouTuber right now.
Alright, we'll do Chad and thenwe'll hang up the spurs.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Hang up this purse.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Spurs Hang up the spurs.
What?
Who's hanging up a purse?
No one has a purse.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Who hangs up spurs?
When do you have spurs?
It's the same.
Are you from?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Texas.
Is it a Tony?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Have you ever heard this?
All I just learned was thatAndrew wears assless chaps.
That's what I just learned.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
And I'm so glad we're recording this.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh my gosh, I also wanted to say to you B-roll,
thank you.
Welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome back.
Welcome back to Change Ed.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Changed, changed.
We sound so excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I am as thrilled as you are that you tuned in to
this episode of Change, Ed.
I'm your host, Andrew Kuhn,Education Consultant.
Ac from Montgomery CountyIntermediate Unit here with me.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Patrice Semecek, also an EC from Montgomery County
Intermediate Unit.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And Tony Marabito from Carbon Lehigh Intermediate
Unit, SDF.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
The IU is not Indiana University.
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
No, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I'm not that important.
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
We are super thrilled and honored to have here with
us Ted Willard with DiscoveryEducation.
Ted, welcome to the show, happyto be here.
We know that you are awell-known individual,
especially in the education andscience worlds, but now that
you've been on this podcast,look out, people are going to
(01:10):
come up to you and want selfies.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
The following is going to follow you down.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
We are super excited to have you.
If you don't mind, justintroducing yourself to the
ChangeEd Nation, so that we canknow who it is that we are
talking to today.
Changeed Nation, so that we canknow who it is that we are
talking to today Absolutely Veryhappy to do that.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
I have a degree in planetary science.
I was a high school physicsteacher for a number of years.
I got a job at Project 2061,the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, andbasically spent 12 years there
doing work aroundstandards-based reform, and they
were one of the organizationsthat was involved in the
(01:46):
previous generation of sciencestandards as opposed to the next
generation of science standards.
And then in 2012, around thetime that Framework for K-12
Science came out, I got a jobwith the National Science
Teaching Association as I wastheir sort of in-house standards
expert from 2012 to the end of2019 and basically sort of
oversaw all of NSTA's workaround implementation of NGSS or
(02:10):
other standards based on theframework for K-12 science
education.
And then in 2019, I moved overhere to Discovery Education
where I've been designingstandards based curriculum for
K-12 students, mostly focused onmiddle school, but have been
working, done work, all acrossthe K-12 spectrum.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So I'm really interested in the planetary
science.
Can you tell me about that?
What is that?
What do you study and what doesthat mean?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Astronomy is technically stars, planetary
science is technically planets,although I did a bit of both of
those things and so basicallytrying to understand the planets
.
My advisor was famous in theastronomy community of sorts
because his specialty wasstudying when a star is passing
(02:59):
behind a planet, or a planet ispassing in front of a star, and
studying carefully the lightfrom that star.
So when I better be gettingthis right that it was uranus
and not neptune, I think I'll bevery embarrassed.
When the star, the planet,passed by that star, there was
these little dips in the amountof light, dip, dip, dip, and
then a symmetrical dip, dip, dipon the other side, which led
(03:23):
him to be the first person onthe planet, as he was kind of
analyzing this data, to realizethat Uranus had rings, because
those dips in the light werefrom the rings blocking the
light from the star.
That's amazing, wow.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
To be clear, ted Patrice and I knew that.
We just wanted you to clarifyfor Andrew, that's very cool,
thank, you for explaining it tohim.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Thank you, tony, for airing my dirty line.
I appreciate you doing that.
So the big question is is howmany planets are there?
Because I know we've gone backand forth in my lifetime as a
student.
We've gone back and forth.
So now that we have a planetaryexpert with us, what is the
answer and how are we clarifyingplanets?
Speaker 4 (04:07):
I actually now you know this was my biggest moment
in the media prior to thispodcast is that I actually, aaas
, was contacted by Ed Week whenthere was this big change about
the aspect of whether Pluto is aplanet or not, and I get, and
they they had me talk to thereporter and so there's a little
(04:29):
.
There's one little quote linefrom me in, in that the way I've
said it then was the.
The aspect of it is thatplanets and all these things are
here are human labels we put onthings.
Nature isn't so nearlyclear-cut, and so it's not
surprising sometimes that it'shard to decide whether one thing
is part of this group or thatgroup.
And you know, it's all justabout of how we find things easy
(04:51):
to categorize.
Pluto is what Pluto is.
It was a case of that.
We figured out some things,that Pluto was a little bit
different than we thought it was.
We started to get to the pointwhere we had some other bodies
in the solar system that werebigger than Pluto and had a
better claim to be a planet thanPluto did, and so somebody had
to decide, a group had to decidedo we want to start talking
(05:12):
about there being 10, 11, 12planets, or do we want to say
Pluto isn't a planet?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Okay, so this is your change-it exclusive.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Well, exclusive, ladies and gentlemen, that's
right.
Well, no, but I really like thebomb out there.
I like how you explain that isthat it's really pluto has
always been what pluto hasalways been.
It's the way in which we'recategorizing it and the depth of
our knowledge to understandmore about it.
Therefore, we're shifting ourunderstanding.
That's science, though.
Right, like, exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yep, I love that and to your point, whether, it being
science, things don't alwayshave to be what they've always
been, so we are able to adjustand to make new informed
decisions about things, and thatmight change a little bit.
So I appreciate that as well.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
To connect into something I'm sure I will say
later on and says when suddenlyyou have new evidence, it means
that you sometimes need toadjust your model.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yes, and that's all we did with Pluto we adjusted
our model Right and back to whatyou said, and by we I mean
scientists.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I had nothing to do with it, Right, clearly just me.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I was the only one.
Everybody else knew that, butwhen everybody else knew that.
But to your point, pluto hasnot changed.
Our perspective on Pluto haschanged, got it?
I love that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Can I ask a little about discovery In our work?
We get to do a lot ofcurriculum work with schools.
My focus recently has been alot with elementary, but I like
that you mentioned middle schooland your design with curriculum
.
With the shift in our steelstandards that we've been
working with a lot here, wheredo you even begin with the whole
?
We were mentioning storylinesprior to the podcast beginning,
(06:53):
things like that.
There's so much to take in andwe love the shift here.
We're very excited for it.
But I couldn't even imaginetaking on a task like this.
So could you kind of walk usthrough your role and what you
do and how you do it?
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It may not surprise you in some ways, in clinics and
other things we're doing here,you start with the standards.
What are my goals?
If I, you know, if I need tothink about, where do we get
there?
And the big piece is thisaspect of phenomena, a real key
(07:34):
aspect of student learning thatthis whole shift is all about is
appreciating the idea that wewant to get away from having
students basically playing thegame of school.
You know, what am I doing inschool?
Well, I am basically figuringout what my teacher wants me to
say and then saying it.
(07:54):
I'm just going through thething here.
I'm practicing intellectualbulimia, where I take things in,
I spit them out and I do notretain them.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I love that phrase.
I'm sorry I had to jump in.
That is an awesome phrase.
Can you say that again?
They're practicing what?
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Intellectual bulimia, intellectual bulimia, wow can't
, I can't take credit for that.
I heard it actually from one ofthe people who was involved in
developing the next generationscience standards, but it's a
guy named stephen pruitt, but Idon't know where he got it from.
Maybe he made it up himself,but no, I love it I'm pretty
sure he listened to our show.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I'm sure he heard it from here there we go, or they
just basically don't care.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
You know, they've basically checked out altogether
, you know, but we want to shiftto them gaining knowledge, the
way that scientists gainknowledge.
And the way scientists gainknowledge is that they look at
some phenomenon and they're likehow the heck does that go on?
And so what I try to do, whatpeople who develop curriculum
with me try to do is we try tothink about what phenomena could
(08:53):
we show students that theywould not know how to explain
what's going on there, but theywould want to explain what's
going on there, and the only waythey're going to be able to
explain it is if they learn thescience ideas that I want them
to learn.
So we have in discoveryeducation, a unit we developed
called Rocket Sled, and becausewe're Discovery Education, we
(09:15):
have this great aspect of havingaccess to Mythbusters videos
and there's this myth that theywork in on Mythbusters.
That was this idea thatsomewhere up in Minnesota or
someplace there was a head-oncollision between a snowplow and
a car and the snowplow was notone of these, that just pushes
the side, it was the rightdividing it.
And the idea that the car couldhave been split in half the
(09:37):
triangle I saw that episode okayso.
so they do this sort of mythhere and then they find that, no
, you can't do that, but becausethey're myth busters, they go
and they find a way to do it,and that's what we focused on is
what they did is they went downto New Mexico, to a place there
(09:58):
that has rocket powered sleds,and they built a snowplow blade
onto a rocket powered sled.
That got it going at 600 milesan hour and it literally split a
car in half.
And so you show kids that videoand you want them to now think
about how the heck did they dothat?
How did they get it going thatfast?
Why was that able to split thecar in half when the other thing
(10:22):
wasn't able to split the car inhalf?
And what do you have to learnabout?
Well, you, there's littlethings there.
There's that you know that theydidn't just have one rocket on
that, there were nine rockets.
Well, it turns out that the moreforce you apply to something,
the more acceleration you get.
And they didn't have a fullfledged snowplow blade.
(10:43):
They had made this really smallone in some ways that was still
in thin, because it turns out,the more mass you have, the less
acceleration you get for agiven force.
And then why did it do so muchdamage to the car?
Well, there's this conceptcalled energy, kinetic energy,
(11:04):
and the more kinetic energy anobject has, the more damage it
does.
Kinetic energy depends uponmath and it depends upon
velocity, but it turns out itdepends more on velocity than it
does on mass.
So getting something to goreally fast is more important
than having something that isreally heavy.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
So, ted, how do you take something super exciting
like that?
They're into it, because whodoesn't want to see a car
explode?
Right, like super exciting.
But how do you take somethinglike that and the concepts that
you're talking about?
How do you take that supergreat hook and do two things
with it Extend the learning, buthow do you also make it
(11:44):
relevant to what they actuallycan do and understand in the
classroom?
Because we're not going to NewMexico to blow up cars with
rockets.
So how do we extend thatthinking, and I think you're
kind of one of the perfectpeople to talk to about this
because of what you do fordiscovery, so do you mind
walking us through?
How do you take somethingawesome like that and make it
relevant and real and continuethe learning without kind of
(12:06):
dampening their excitement?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I'm going to give you a think time, not that you need
it, but I would love to knowwhat is your street cred at
discovery ed Cause we want tohave.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Adam and Jamie on the show.
So what is it?
They're not really they don'twork for discovery anymore, do
they?
Speaker 4 (12:22):
They don't.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
And.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I have no and I have no ability to.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
You have no street cred.
Oh, ted, you know oh streetcred.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh, ted, all the lies have been fed about you, ted.
This is all lies.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I mean you guys are big names in Pennsylvania
education.
How well does that get you toget the most famous people in
Pennsylvania, Some of the mainbaseball players.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I mean, we've had some pretty stellar guests Ted.
We've got some good people here.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Saquon Barkley's on next week, so we'll go there.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Now we've got to be careful.
I'm a New York Giants fan.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
So this podcast might be over Ted your audio is
breaking up, I heard you say noone wants to listen to me
anymore.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, we just lost our entire.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
we're going to have to delete all that out, the
algorithm is going to go.
It's scrolling up and plummets,nope and we're done.
Ted's never allowed back.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
So what was the question?
No, so you have to think aboutthese sort of things here, but
it's basically working to scaledown.
No-transcript.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
balloon powered carts in the classroom so you're
talking about all the sameconcept, you're building their
understanding and you I lovethat.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I love that, and in the balloon cards, we get to the
aspect of, like what's pushingthe carts, and that leads us
into eventually newton's thirdlaw, that when the balloon
pushes the air out of it, theair pushes the balloon cart and
the balloon and the balloon cartforward.
(14:16):
So we're able to get variousideas about Newton's third law
playing from this rocket sledidea and, as I like to say, if I
can get kids caring about why,about how does the rocket push
the rocket sled, I'm gettingkids to ultimately care about
Newton's third law and as aformer physics teacher, I can
(14:37):
tell you getting kids to careabout Newton's third law is not
an easy thing to do.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
What I love.
What you're describing is reallythe mindset as I see it, of
NGSS and also of Steeles here inPennsylvania, that we are
flipping the script from goingfrom micro and, once you passed
all the flags, you get into themacro.
We're starting macro and whichis really actually where we can
make it relevant to our students.
Right, we're talking aboutthings that you would actually
care about and that now we'regoing to drill down to, like how
(15:16):
does it actually work?
So we're creating a space wherethey would be interested in the
learning by flipping it anddoing it the opposite of what we
were doing yep, we are nottelling students the science.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
That's back into the game, this game of school that I
talked about.
I know where I can saysomething to a student and that
student can say it back to me.
It does not mean that studentunderstands that.
You know, we can say thingswithout understanding those
things.
We can know terms and evendefinitions for terms without
really understanding terms,terms and even definitions for
(15:52):
terms without reallyunderstanding terms.
There's a great video I love touse in professional learning.
That is from interviews of someHarvard and MIT students years
ago being asked about here's aseed and here's a log or a tree.
Where did the stuff come from?
And these are students.
I am sure could balance theequation for photosynthesis,
could probably answer a lot ofstate tests about photosynthesis
(16:13):
, but they can't tell you wherethat material came from that
made up the tree.
And in fact, if you suggestthat carbon dioxide has
something to do with where thatmaterial came from, they reject
it at first.
They think the seed oh, it cameup from the roots of the plant.
That's because that's what theythink of as the first.
They think the seed oh, it cameup from the roots of the plant.
That's because that's what theythink of as the first.
They basically give answersvery similar to interviews with
(16:35):
elementary students about this,because they learned in a way
that basically maybe gave themsome information, but it's inert
information.
And what the steel standards do,what three dimensional
standards do, is it's about thescience in use.
It's about science is not justa body of knowledge, nor is it
(16:57):
just a practice.
It is the combination, but it'sboth of those things.
I mean trying to talk about onewithout the other.
Or actually, let methree-dimensionalize this.
I love the idea that we talkabout three dimensions because
it's like trying to talk aboutvolume, but only using length or
(17:18):
only using width or only usingdepth.
You need all three to havevolume.
If I only have practices, Ihave no depth.
If I only have cross-cuttingconcepts, I I have no depth.
If I only have core ideas, Ihave no depth.
I mean, I'm sorry, I have novolume.
So we need three dimensions.
We need all three to makevolume.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That is the clearest way I have ever heard the three
dimensions working together.
It is so easy for elementaryteachers and middle school
teachers and everyone to grab onto.
I love that.
I'm stealing that too.
Can I quote Ted Willard?
Is that a Ted Willard quote?
Speaker 4 (17:52):
You can quote.
That one is mine, that one isyours.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Good, I'm going to take it and I'm going to run
with it.
I think that is super clear.
Without one, you can't have theother.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I also love that it ties into mathematical right,
like you understand it from adifferent perspective and lens,
and I think, something that whenwe started this podcast that's
why we named it Change Ed,because it was what's good in
science is not just good inscience.
These are good teachingpractices across the board, and
so this analogy allows us toexplain it in multiple fashions.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
To say, here's how three-dimensional learning is
good for all, and this is whyand it goes back to the concept
of we can't just focus on thedcis and the content we've
really got.
We really have to incorporatethe scps and the cccs, or else
it's not.
It's just one dimension.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, it's really good the one thing I wrote down
here, ted, when you, when youwere saying this and I think
it's actually really significantand important was that you were
talking about the body ofknowledge.
And what actually reallysignificant and important was
that you were talking about thebody of knowledge and what went
to my mind is that, because thebody of knowledge keeps growing
and we're like, wait, these areimportant things that we need to
know, these are important toyour life.
We talked about that idea offlipping it, but before we
flipped it, it almost served asa second history lesson, where
(19:05):
it was like you have to know allof these things that happened
and we were focusing on what hadhappened.
And what I love is that we'remaking it relevant learning, but
almost flipping it to be likewell, what, if, what if we could
do this, and that's such asignificant.
It's a subtle but significantshift in our mindset to think
about could this be possible?
Versus well, it's already beenproven that it's this, so that's
(19:28):
not possible.
And I think you're engaging themind in a different way, to be
like could I actually create arocket-powered backpack that
could get me to the moon?
And then we're like okay, let'slean into that.
Here's what we know.
What would you need to be ableto make that possible?
And so, for me, it's flippingthe script from what we can't do
to what we could do, and thatpossibility and that mindset and
(19:51):
that creative thinking andproblem solving.
So it's.
It's we're ingraininginspiration into our students
with this mindset of of you know, let's go big and then we work
down to make it a possibilityversus you know.
A lot of times you can feellike, man, I'm looking at this
huge elephant.
Well, how do you eat anelephant?
Bite by bite, right, thenthat's how we're going about it,
versus the other way was like,well, the elephant's just too
(20:14):
big.
It feels like it's a frameworkfor us to be able to move
students through learning.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Yeah, there's two things I think I want to sort of
touch on from that.
The first is that we're alsogiving students the gift of the
aha moment, the eureka, that isso important, and it's not just
the value in it of itself ofjust that nice feeling, it's the
aspect of that stuff thatsticks with you.
(20:40):
I guarantee you that, for thethree of you and for all the
folks who are listening, you canthink of some point in your
educational journey.
It may not have been in aclassroom where something
clicked for you, the light bulbwent off, and two things about
it.
One is there's this how goodthat felt, which makes you want
to do that sort of thing more.
The other thing is is that whenyou figured it out, it stuck
(21:03):
with you.
You still know that thing thatyou figured out, whereas if I
told you something and you werejust and I handed it to you and
you did no work for I told yousomething and you were just and
I handed it to you and you didno work for it, you also don't
really hold on to it in yourbrain.
Very well, right it slides awaypretty, pretty easily.
Yep, well, I do want to pull oneother piece about.
That is the aspect of as, asandrew is kind of making
(21:27):
reference there, it isimpossible for anyone to learn
everything about everything.
Okay, there is a limit to howmuch content any one person can
learn in a human lifespan, andthere's more content out there
than can be captured, more thanwe have time for in our
classroom.
Time is our most valuableresource.
(21:48):
We talk about money as an issue, but time is the really most
valuable resource in there.
So another great thing aboutthese standards that are based
on the framework is trying toreally think about what are the
ideas that are most valuable tostudents as they go out in the
world to work on.
There are some ideas that justhave some more value.
The ideas of force and motion,the idea of energy, ideas about
(22:13):
the particulate nature of matter, natural selection,
understanding about cells,understanding about plate
tectonics all of these differentthings here are powerful in
some ways that they'regenerative, that they basically
those ideas are very useful intodeveloping new ideas, and those
ideas are really valuable in awide ranges of phenomena.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you for coming.
Make sure that you, ted, youtell the entire Discovery
Education Network, andespecially Adam and Jamie, about
our show.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Or maybe John Cena, because he did Shark Week this
year.
Oh, there you go.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
John yeah, look, you can name drop all you want, shaq
, I think I did it at some point.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I mean anybody, anybody, but for all listeners,
the sharks.
I'll talk to the sharks.
I'll talk to the sharks.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Listeners thank you for tuning in.
Be sure to like, subscribe andshare.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Wow, like, subscribe and share, you got.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I feel like a YouTuber right now.
Alright, we'll do Chad and thenwe'll hang up the spurs.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Hang up this purse.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Spurs Hang up the spurs.
What?
Who's hanging up a purse?
No one has a purse.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Who hangs up spurs?
When do you have spurs?
It's the same.
Are you from?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Texas.
Is it a Tony?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Have you ever heard this?
All I just learned was thatAndrew wears assless chaps.
That's what I just learned.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
And I'm so glad we're recording this.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh my gosh, I also wanted to say to you B-roll,
thank you.
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