Legacy - The Tapestry of LIfe

I love Reya's interpretation of legacy... that we are all interwoven into the human race thus forming a legacy. It takes all of us from the lofty & deep, to the mediocre, to the menial thinker to make up this thing we call humanity.

Those of us who are not particularly deep or lofty thinkers are perhaps able to contribute through teaching or guiding others to be thinkers and questioners. A most important objective in the field of education is to teach children to wonder about the world and to investigate and search for answers. Most are born with the innate desire to learn, but as children enter school this innate desire must be nourished and encouraged.

When we talk to students we form open-ended questions and in return illicit extensive answers from them. We teach students to ask questions beginning with: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? We do not want a reply to contain only a Yes or No answer. We want thought put into the answer. We begin this in primary schools and continue to reiterate this throughout middle and high schools.

Recently, I participated in the judging of the Science Fair in the school where I once taught. The school is in a lower socio-economic neighborhood. English is the second language for most of the students. It is a challenging group of students and I mention all of this not as an excuse, but as an explanation. The grades were from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade. When going into this I expected to see those Open-Ended questions headlining the projects. Many of them did have those questions.

The students with the "Eye" questions had performed a little experiment in understanding how two eyes are better than one. They learned about depth perception. I asked them about peripheral vision, but they had not come across this in their research. This would have been a good place for teacher guidance.

I did not talk with the students with the "soap" project, but it appears they made their own soap and then did a comparison between it and "store bought" soap. Their conclusion was that it is less expensive to make one's own soap and is just as good as buying soap. Again, the title is somewhat misleading even though it is "eye-catching". The project was very neatly laid out. I do not know how it scored with the people who judged it.

The project below did not live up to my expectations as far as the questioning was concerned. The title was misleading. It was not about "talking", but about "tasting". I discussed the concept of open-ended questions with the students and asked them to form a better title. After a bit of prompting they came up with "How can we talk?" ... not exactly what I was looking for, so I probed more. Finally, they caught on and came up with "How do we taste?"


I was disappointed that their teacher had not caught what I perceived to be an error. I remember how it was when I taught, but I think I would have caught this. Perhaps even if the students (and perhaps teacher) were stuck on "Can We Talk?" as an eye-catcher, a sub-title (How do humans taste?) would have fixed the problem. The students knew their "stuff" about taste so they were counted off only for their mis-naming of the project.

How did I get from "Legacy" to "Science Projects"? Good question. As a teacher and librarian, I always wanted students to question, question, question. I hope that is my legacy, my part of the tapestry. We should not just blindly follow, but should question leaders, thinkers, and movers & shakers in our society. The menial & mediocre of us should question those who are the deep, intent thinkers. Perhaps it is this part of the tapestry, this legacy that contributes to our humanity.