Picture an Astronomer

As I believe I've mentioned previously, grade 3 has begun our second unit of inquiry, surrounding how the world works.  Our focus is on the solar system and the interconnections among celestial bodies.  As part of this, my fellow grade 3 intern and I have been conducting "science lab" twice a week.  Mondays we have mixed groups with all of grade 3, and Fridays are class-by-class.  So far we've done a lesson on orbits, a lesson on gravity, and a lesson on atmosphere.

This Friday, grade 3 is taking a field trip to a planetarium.  In preparation, today's "science lab" was on astronomers.  My co-intern and I each took a small group of seven to ten students for each block and led an activity called Picture an Astronomer (courtesy of my own grade 4 science teacher, Mrs. Tux!).  In the activity, I read aloud a paragraph to students, and they were to draw and write about what they visualized.  Here's the paragraph...

"Close your eyes and picture this scene.  It is the end of a long night at the observatory and the astronomer is closing up as the first rays of dawn are seen on the horizon.  The astronomer is tired and ready for a good day's sleep.  Now focus in on the astronomer, coming toward you on the road that comes from the observatory.  Get a good close look at the astronomer, rubbing tired eyes.  Draw a picture and describe in words what the astronomer looks like."

As you can see, the paragraph carefully avoids making any reference to the age, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, or nationality of the person in question.  I had students work independently without talking to those around them, and they were asked to draw a picture and write down the name, age, nationality, and gender of their astronomer, as well as any additional information they thought of.  Out of the 26 students I had in my three groups, here are some of the statistics on the astronomers they imagined...

• 6 were female (23%)
• 4 were Asian (15%)
• 2 were Latino (8%)
• 1 was black (4%)
• 1 was mixed-race (4%)

This leaves 20 males, and 18 white.  (Side note:  of the female astronauts, only two were not white -- one (my favourite) was a mixed-race single mom, and the other was Asian.  Intersectionality, yo.)

This opened up conversations among them about why they imagined more men than women, more Americans than Koreans, more whites than any other race.  Students posed and responded to great questions -- are boys smarter?  stronger?  better at or more interested in science?  braver?  more willing to take risks?  Why do we have these images in our minds?  What does the media tell us about who scientists are and what they look like?  How does that in turn affect the way we think?  I was so sorry to have such limited time with them to dig into these big important issues, but I hope that they will continue these conversations and begin to see these issues in their daily lives.

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Currently reading:  working through The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao...but I've been distracted by a new TV show XD

Current high:  a busy but productive day

Current low:  the IRS is a maze and I wish they had everything as an online form!  Expat life is hard!!!