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Teachers Lounge
A new report says that more and more schools are phasing out the tradition of naming a valedictorian and salutatorian because it leads to unhealthy competition.
Chicago public schools have drastically cut back on librarians, is this a growing trend?
And one university is now allowing payment for college with Bitcoins. We’ll tell you what school, and we’ll explain what a bitcoin is.
Bright Idea
This episode’s Bright Idea segment is a rebroadcast from Episode 04- We speak with we speak with BioEYES founder, Dr. Steven Farber.
Farber’s Zebrafish research lab was the catalyst for ‘BioEYES,’ a K-12 program that provides learning in classrooms with live zebrafish.
In Episode 04, Farber explains how zebrafish can help teach grade school students about the challenging subjects of sex education and race.
When it comes to sex-ed, Farber explains…
“Because it’s fish and because they swim next to each other and you don’t have any mechanical issues to discuss, literally, no one gets upset about that curriculum topic!”
As for critical thinking about race, Farber says, “The kids have to mate a fish that does not have pigment to a fish that does have pigment.” In the high school unit, students learn about the genetics of pigmentation.
“So most kids in the urban setting, their only concept of race is a social construction”, explains Farber. “What they learn in our unit is that there’s actually one gene that was discovered in fish that explains the biggest chunk of why somebody’s skin is darker or lighter.”
Farber says that there’s one little change that happened in that gene to make skin lighter and that learning with zebrafish allow students to come away with an entirely different perspective then they had before.
