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KILLER ASTEROIDS
Our students got a special treat on Halloween this year, thanks to the Ohio State University Office of First Year Experiences. These are the folks who organize freshman orientation and provide events and programs designed to help incoming OSU students maximize their first year by getting comfortable on campus and connecting with the university. Each year they bring in a distinguished speaker to address the new students, and this year they shared him with Metro.
This year’s speaker was Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and best-selling author and host of “NOVA ScienceNOW” on PBS. In 2000, People magazine voted him the “Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive.” Dr. Tyson came from humble beginnings in the Bronx, where he gazed at the stars from the roof of his family’s apartment building. He was educated in public schools through his graduation from high school and then went on to earn his B.A. in Physics from Harvard and his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Columbia. Quite an inspiration!
When I announced that he was going to visit Metro and speak to our students, many of them were really excited and told me stories of his antics on “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show with John Stewart” on Comedy Central. After checking it out on YouTube, I found this guy not only makes science fun, he makes it really funny!
On October 31, Dr. Tyson came in and had our students enthralled. He took a quick tour of Metro while we got everyone seated and then he held a conversation with our entire school. He didn’t lecture, but instead, chatted with everyone about things on his mind, and on theirs. He spoke about how sad it is that many people today would be very ashamed and embarrassed to say that they can’t read, but yet saying “I’m not good at math” or “I don’t understand science” is commonly accepted. He told our students that the world is watching them, whether they realize it or not, because we need a new model for education.
Then the debates started… Dr Tyson mentioned that he was the head of a science committee that made the decision to demote Pluto from a planet to a “dwarf planet” and how this has made him the object of hate mail from third graders. Pluto is entrenched in our cultural view of the cosmos, and Dr. Tyson says he is on a quest to discover why. Our students were no exception, and they let him know it. Not with hate, of course, but definitely a very spirited discussion.
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 My favorite question to him, asked by a first-year student who obviously has seen his shows, was “What are the three most interesting ways the human race might be destroyed?” His answer, complete with the gory details was, “Death by asteroid, death by black hole and death by superbug.” He had the audience eating out of his hand again. Nothing brings us all together like a little collective visualization of the end of the world!
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Students Jeff and Lya give Dr. Tyson a tour of Metro. | |
- - Posted January 13, 2009 - -
Diana Wolterman is on a special assignment at Metro High School, where she will play a key role in furthering the collaboration between the private sector and education, including special projects to connect Battelle staff with the activities in the school, assisting with tours and visits, developing and implementing new experience-based curriculum support, and helping to document the process of creating a new STEM-focused learning experience. Diana also will document Battelle’s successes and missteps at Metro to help the organization learn from the experience and make good decisions going forward at Metro and in other educational activities.
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