Mystery in Mind

The last time I wrote, I talked about an algorithm for designing experiments - I hope to write another post about the algorithm soon.  In the meantime, enjoy the prototype as a Google Doc.  If you read it, you will notice the use of the phrase “mystery question”.  This is a reference to a lesson plan, which turned into a project, which turned into a key element of my teaching philosophy.

Credit for the science/ mystery collision in my life rests in two camps: My 12th grade modern fiction teacher who taught my classmates and me the rules of a mystery novel, and the promise of $50 check for curriculum services rendered. 

In 2007 I participated in a week long training with the Maine Lakes Conservancy Institute.  At the end of the workshop we were offered payment for designing, using and submitting a lesson plan based on the week of learning.  My classmates, a motley crew of veteran science, math and technology teachers, were basically done with their planning by the time they walked out the door of the training center.  I, on the other hand, was adrift in the swirling seas that were my first years of teaching.  With the check in mind I tried to come up with a lake lesson worthy of the prize.

It was close to a year later when the wheel of fortune that is my brain click, click, clicked onto Ms. Petrovich’s mystery unit on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and P.D. James.  The rules of a mystery are simple, and they flow through every crime show that airs on TV: In the beginning you are introduced to a mystery, throughout the mystery you are introduced to a range of suspects and a set of clues, then, in the end, the investigator solves the mystery.  In my lake unit, all of the pieces were there: The crime: a fish die off; the suspects: pollutants that affect lakes; the clues: the results of experiments and other scientific investigations; the investigators: my students. 

Over the last four years I’ve honed my lake mystery into one of my favorite parts of my school year, but sadly, because I didn’t send my plan in on time, I never got that fifty dollars.  Instead, my students are motivated to learn - now drawn in by the thrill of the mystery, they’re thinking more as they sort through possible solutions and I go to work wondering what conclusions my favorite investigators will come up with next.  I guess I’ll take what I can get.