By Larry Shurilla
“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP”
This was the final tweet from the actor, Leonard Nimoy, better known as television’s Mr. Spock from Star Trek-The Original Series. The quote is also quite representative of teaching. This book is like my garden and the flowers are my teaching memories, preserved for anyone inclined to check them out! If you ask any of my students what my favorite television program of all time is, you’ll get a resounding “Star Trek!” for an answer.
As a seven-year-old boy, there I was that Thursday night in September of 1966 at 7 o’clock, eyes glued to Channel 4 on the TV, for the very first episode of Star Trek! My brothers and I were Sci-Fi fanatics. We watched Lost in Space, The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and any cheap space movie we could tune our three channels to! Star Trek, with its phasers, star ships, communicators, tricorders, transporters, and photon torpedoes, looked to be a potent cocktail for any thirsty Sci-Fi fan and it did not disappoint! We absolutely loved it and haven’t stopped loving it for over 50 years!
With about 6 years left in my teaching career, I thought it was time to try something new at our middle school. I decided to organize a Science Fiction Club! I don’t believe I ever heard of any other middle school having a Sci-Fi Club before, but having had so many conversations with kids about Sci-Fi topics in my classroom, I knew there was a niche for this sort of thing.
So, I talked to the associate principal in charge of clubs and he agreed this club just might work! I got to work and made a few morning announcements plugging the club with talk of Star Trek, Star Wars, and classic Sci-fi movies like Forbidden Planet and This Island Earth.
I believe we started out with about 6 or 7 members and by the fifth year we had about 25 with a good mix of boys and girls! I structured the club with a fair chunk of time for discussion about any Sci-Fi topic the kids were interested in followed by time to play a card game called, Star Trek Uno, and then on to the viewing of classic Star Trek TV episodes and timeless Sci-Fi movies.
My main goals as Club Advisor were: give kids opportunities to make friends with others who had the same interests, give them an outlet for group discussions about things they loved and ultimately give them a little more sense of belonging in the middle school, which can be a pretty frightening place when you’re in the tween years! It was also my job to share with the kids my personal history with and knowledge of Sci-Fi and then they could use that as a base to see how Sci-Fi has evolved and morphed over the years.
I must say, the club was a lot of fun. We had some very heated discussions over: Which was the best Star Wars’ movie?, What’s better-Star Trek or Star Wars?, Who is the best Dr. Who’ doctor?, What other plots exist in the Star Wars and Star Trek universe of books, games, and online websites? Who is the best Star Trek Captain? (Kirk, of course!) and so on!
Being a science teacher, my love of Star Trek was also useful in the classroom. How could a discussion of technological progress in the world not include Star Trek and its vision of the future? Desktop computers, view screens and cordless communicators were all present in fiction before they were in reality. Star Trek’s harmonious blend of races working together, without prejudice and stereotyping, toward a common goal was also a fine projection of what the future could become and that is as important now as it was in the 1960s! I always told the kids in my science classes, “If we can think of it, we can create it! The world needs dreamers and doers who work together to better our world. Whether we’ve made the problem ourselves, like what to do with nuclear waste and plastic in the oceans, or the problem has existed for centuries, like cancer or how to achieve sustainable powered flight (Thank you Wilbur and Orville Wright!), there is no problem we cannot overcome with persistent effort, use of the technology of the day, and vision.”
We’re often told as educators that we need to keep the minds of our children open, flexible, and trained with problem solving skills. Appropriate Science Fiction naturally leads our kids into these areas of the mind. We often get so caught up with the latest teaching technique fad that we lose sight of, what is to me, the most important component of teaching – motivation! If you have it, you can accomplish anything and without it, you will accomplish nothing. Kids can be lazy or overwhelmed. Kids can be unable or unchallenged. These are some of the problems teachers face every day with kids in the same classroom trying to learn the same material. I have no magic solution here, but I will repeat, if you have a motivated student, you can accomplish anything and if you have an unmotivated student, you will accomplish nothing. Let us work on how to better motivate students by providing a safe and interesting classroom environment. I have also found that bringing science fiction into the classroom can help motivate many of our students.
Having taught for 31 years, I get the great pendulum of education. How certain disciplinary techniques, philosophies, and teaching pedagogies come into fashion and then, not too many years later, are branded as the worst methodology in history- until the pendulum swings back and we do it all over again! I am reminded of Heidi Klum on Project Runway, a competitive fashion designing television show, and what she says each week to her fashion designers, “Designers. One week you are in, and the next, you are out!” And thus, it seems to be in education. One week, Robert Marzano, you are in, and the next week, Madeline Hunter, you are out! This swinging pendulum may be why we see more experienced teachers become so rigid in their unwillingness to change, because they’ve already been through multiple teaching fads and just want to rely on what has truly worked for them in their classrooms. Perhaps an attitude of, “Keep the best, throw out the rest!” may prove the most beneficial to teachers of all ages and experience levels.
If you’re a science teacher, try bringing a little science fiction into your classroom and see if it doesn’t amp up the motivation for a lot of your students. A two-minute movie clip showing a Star Ship extinguishing an active volcano with a cold fusion detonator, is a great way to introduce an earth science lesson on volcanology! It may not be included in a Smart Board lesson plan or textbook, but it may motivate a majority of your students to actually listen to what you’re talking about!
Finally, here’s an unexpected bonus to bringing Sci-Fi into the classroom! One of the most creative home-made cards given to me for retirement by one of my students read as follows:
(On the Cover)
What’s the
best way to say
Goodbye
and happy retirement
to your favorite
Science
teacher?
(Next page)
To Infinity and
beyond!
No that’s buzz
lightyear.
May the force
be with
yo-
No still doesn’t sound
right.
(Next page)
Larry, I am your
Fath-
No, I’m not your Father
and that’s still not
it.
I’ve got it….
(Last page)
Live Long
and
Prosper!
From: Your Awesome Student
Now that’s boldly going where no student has gone before! Truly, this card was a formative assessment indicating this student has been well taught in the annals of the purest science fiction!
A few days ago, I saw a tee shirt of a Peanuts’ cartoon with Charlie Brown, head bowed down in depression, and Violet standing a step or two behind him. The bubble caption read, “I still miss Leonard Nimoy.” My feelings exactly. Even the most magnificent of flowers seem only to last a moment in time, but therein lies part of their magic. That moment is so alive, so precious, and may live on in our memories, forever.
#LLAP, my old friend.