Host = Kristy Duggan
Guest = Michael Dunlea
S11E6 NTHF Michael Dunlea - Learning Without Walls
Host - What if your teaching could spark more aha moments? Welcome to How We Teach This, a podcast from the Teachers College at Emporia State University, where we talk with educators about topics that can help you as an educator, a parent, and as a person. In this season, we're diving in with fresh voices, real challenges, and creative solutions to help you reach every learner. So let's get started and explore how we teach this together. Welcome to how we Teach This. It's a podcast where educators, they share how they bring their ideas to life. And today we have a very special guest, Michael Dunlea, He is a dedicated elementary science teacher with experience from pre-K up through fifth grade, based out of new Jersey. Michael's career has been defined by inclusion team based teaching, making science real, relevant and deeply connected to community and student identity. His work has taken students beyond the textbook and test prep you've done activities of restoring homes after hurricane Sandy, investigating coastal ecosystems with the Alliance for a Living Ocean Building, a pen pal partnership that connect classrooms across distances. And Michael was recently recognized and inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame, class of twenty twenty five. Right.
Dunlea - That is correct.
Host - That is a tremendous honor. Recognizes your lifelong commitment to equity, innovation and student empowerment. So congratulations.
Dunlea - Thank you very much.
Host - I wanted to talk really about why science matters now more than ever. We've seen the educational priorities Authorities change over time, and I really would like to hear what your thoughts are about why science education is so important right now, especially for our youngest learners.
Dunlea - Well, I believe that for a long time you could debate as to why school exists and maybe how why it started and why is it currently. What's the main goal and focus of what schools are supposed to be doing at this day and time? And I think that why science matters so much is that when you think about preparing them for future employment, if that's one of the goals of a of a school system, there's tremendous amount of opportunities for work and innovation and invention and creation within the science fields. And with the way in which climate change is really impacting the entire world, the amount of jobs that are going to be impacted, created or linked to that is just, you know, I don't even think you could put a number on how many there are going to come from that. So we really need to have a major shift in our thinking towards science education, because we're going to be preparing all these future scientists to go out there and protect the planet to develop safer, greener energy, to build and service windmills or water, you know, hydro electric plants. So many things are going to come out of this. And in addition to that, when you just stop and think about the medical, right, all the different medicals and the diseases and the ailments, all of this is linked to science in which we need to understand and have breakthroughs. I can't think of a more important goal as a school system, to develop critical thinkers who can perform in any kind of role of function within a society. But the one that's going to protect it from, you know, its own demise and also extend life and the quality of life. I think those are very noble pursuits in which science is at the very foundation of.
Host - Oh, that's very true, very true. So you have had a lot of experiences where you do projects with your students and you engage them in hands on, real world science. And I'm curious to hear about these projects, because I'm picturing you talk about cleaning up homes after the hurricane. I'm thinking high school, but you're an elementary science teacher. Tell me what's made these projects, these hands on experiences, meaningful for you and your students?
Dunlea - I don't know if the answer to it is another explanation in that when you say, I'm a science teacher, it's very, very true. I do identify as a science teacher, but I'm also a reading teacher and a writing teacher, and a math teacher and social emotional learning and technology. As an elementary teacher, in every grade level I've taught, I've taught all subjects, okay, which I think is an advantage because you find these very organic, natural ways to combine and thread and braid all these things together. And one leads right directly into another. So if we are doing a analysis of, say, ecosystems and the way the animals and the ocean are impacted by climate change, we do a really big international climate change project in the fall every year. And having been the president of the Alliance for a Living Ocean, I have access to an organization that its main goal is to protect the sea life and the water surrounding the barrier island by where we live, called Long Beach Island. And I live on the mainland, but I live on the water, so I live on the marshes. So I have a very important interest because these marshes protect the mainland, and the barrier island protects the mainland during these these coastal storms. And we just had Hurricane Aaron go up the coast and create a whole lot of, um, distress, even though it never made landfall. But we had huge erosion of our beaches and whatnot. But having the kids be able to go into these very local environments and have a direct impact and change that's linked to the reading that they did, and it's to the writing that they did, and it's to the math that we were looking at when we're, you know, learning in fifth grade about adding and subtracting digits, digital numbers. And we're looking at rain increases and we're looking at that, I mean, bringing all of that and then taking them out into the bay and seining or in the situation where with hurricane Sandy, at that time, I was teaching second grade in a different district that was directly impacted by the storm. So we had two hundred and fifty of our students who were rendered homeless and displaced due to the loss of their homes to the storm surge. And we had fifty employees that were impacted as well. So we went out. School was already closed due to the storm. We went out and started, and then the families wanted to bring their children in. And being able to come out and help and kids did everything from cleaning and transporting stuff to the curb, which everything had to be, you know, discarded to cooking and bringing food to the volunteers, to selling things to raise money for people to get back in the house. So there was a lot of lessons learned through direct action that every person, no matter what their age, could have an impact. And so the students went out. The parents went out. It was a great way for them to show how to really help their community and and become more of a community member by doing so.
Host - Yeah. And that real world experience helps them see the value of what they're learning in the classroom.
Dunlea - Yeah, I mean, we talk about creating future leaders, but when they're out there doing it right now, they're actual leaders currently by example. I was very proud of all the children that came out. And and, I mean, it was just a tremendous amount. I mean, we had every stakeholder out there, but the young children were really impressive with their ability to work tirelessly. And some of it was just inspirational, right? Like a bunch of them worked with an art teacher to create a broken piece of fence and turned it into an American flag that had, you know, it said, start to make a difference or something on it, like they were putting motivational messages on on this artwork. So there was a tremendous way for these kids to be able to make an impact. But they went out and saw what happens when a storm of that magnitude creates a storm surge. And then they can see the lines on the homes where the water went up and the level the flooding in each of the homes. They were able to have some very valuable lessons of, uh, such importance that were applicable to so many areas of their learning.
Host - Oh yeah. Thinking about it from a perspective of someone who maybe doesn't have a natural situation to that level that they can tap into and engage with students. Where do you start for that kind of project based learning and incorporating the bigger picture into your curriculum? Where do you begin?
Dunlea - Well, I think you begin outside. That would be a very simple answer, and it's one which I think is a wonderful way to bring learning outside the classroom. I was teaching erosion, and we went outside of the school, and we found a corner from the downspout of one of the rain gutters, and I was able to show them how erosion was creating this dry riverbed that would only be wet during rainstorms, but to show them signs of erosion in reality, instead of it as a picture in a book, we go out. And again, having taught young learners parts of speech, we would go out on noun safaris where they had to go out and if they could touch it, obviously it's a noun. So whatever they were able to pick up, they were bringing back in. But we were out in nature and we were looking at leaves, and then they were like, why is this one orange? Why is that one red? And why do they change different colors? But that inquiry based learning, which is linked completely to science because they're asking science questions, was born out of a language arts lesson where I'm teaching them parts of speech, but it's outside. So there's so many opportunities that you have just outside your window that you can then pull in. And I mean, science is all around you. Math is all around you. You don't need a book with a picture of it to to teach it. It's actually a much better for them to go out and experience it and invoke more than one sense in doing so.
Host - Yeah, that's that's super cool. So I know that you have also done some collaborative projects where you work with other educators. Would you tell me a little bit about how you've organized that? How did you plan and then teach with other teachers? What does that look like?
Dunlea - So I think collaborating is really important because it brings opportunities for you to gain in your students, to gain in ways that you might not have been able to predict. It started with me basically just in kind of a teacher leadership sort of way. I was involved in a teacher fellowship, and I met teachers from across the country. It was called the America Achieves Teacher Fellowship, and it had, I think it was one hundred and seven people at the time that I became a member of it. And I think it was around thirty to seventy split about principals, and then thirty was principals, administrators, and then seventy were teachers. So there was a real diversity of people in the room. And it was a wonderful opportunity because I met people from across the country. I met people from different backgrounds, different races, different religions, different orientations, and different even like rural versus urban suburban. We have public school, non-public school. We have charter schools. It was really a wonderful group of people with a diverse background. And so in that interaction, I started to create relationships that I then later would find ways to partner with, or they would come and find me. And so it led to this opportunity to work on this international project, where it was four of us were grouped together into a kind of a pod, and we were doing climate change, and we were talking about how our climates were and how they were different. It was new Jersey, it was Vermont, it was Minnesota, and it was Memphis. And the Memphis person was a friend of mine from this fellowship. And we started to look at our classes. And of the four boxes on the zoom, three of them were primarily or predominantly white student classes, mine included. And then my friend Melissa in Memphis. Hers was primarily black students because it was urban, it was southern. And once we got off that international climate change project, we said, you know, we really ought to be working more about bringing our two groups together, like, how do we integrate our two classrooms in a way that they break down these barriers? Because I think so many problems come from just a lack of exposure, right. Not having any experience to base your your ideology on or your your feelings about somebody on until you've met someone of that whatever color, creed, religion. What we started to do is we started to partner up and we used a free platform at the time, which is no longer it was simpatico. And we had one to one pen pals, one to one reading partners. We had them send each other cards and small gifts like a five dollar Minimum or maximum for like a Christmas gift. And we send care packages to the two classrooms. And we really went out of our way to bring our two classrooms together in a very cohesive way, multiple times throughout the year. We used another product called Harmony education, which has a free cell platform for K to twelve. And so we were using they have one of these things that was called harmony goals. And it was like a pledge. And we kind of tweaked it to where we had the students in both classes come up with this statement about what they felt we should pledge as how to be better people. What would we do? So, you know, be kind to others. Always take care of your environment. A few sentences, but we came up with the same terminology and language. We wrote it on poster boards. I had all of my students sign in orange marker. Yeah. And then I folded it up and I mailed it to her in Memphis, and she did the same and had her kids sign in purple. So when it arrived, I had my kids. They signed right under their pen pals names. So it was purple, the Memphis Kid, and then orange, the new Jersey kid. But they were paired together in their little pen pal teams. So when she got my poster written in the same way, same words that her kids signed. So we had these two posters in two different rooms, but it was the same. It was like a constitution of sorts. Oh, but it was just these sorts of ways in which you can come together. And then even bringing science into it. We sent them a care package with a ton of beach sand and a whole bunch of seashells, because they're a landlocked state. And many of those kids had never been to the ocean. So we sent a whole bunch of science stuff to them that was, you know, taken right off our beaches. That partnership opens up the door to all sorts of deep learning. Oh, that is so cool. And then we were featured on NBC Nightly News on Martin Luther King's birthday, which was really moving and powerful, and I still can't believe that happened.
Host - Yeah. That's awesome. Coming back to the science piece. You've talked about how we really need to rethink how we assess science in schools. I'm guessing you're not a fan of multiple choice true false exams. Tell me a little bit more about what your vision is for science assessments.
Dunlea - Well, and I want to clarify, I am a fan of true and false and multiple because they're very easy to grade. You can do get some knowledge that you can measure from them. So it's not as if I'm completely against them. What I am wary of is how people will, in a very broad, sweeping generalization, categorize students learning based on them, and they'll make huge decisions attached to billions of dollars when it comes to curriculum and resources and decisions and changes made to the way we teach based on that. And I do think that when you think of what science is, you would not use these tests as in the real world application, to ascertain whether or not someone has a good science aptitude. And I really do think of a very simple way to do this is if you think about cooking, you know, a cooking test would never you would never hire a chef based on a quiz.
Host - Oh yeah.
Dunlea - You would hire them on they what they baked, what they cooked. Because that is where you find the true test. And so what does that involve? Well, that involves a lot of science and a lot of experiment and or creation. And that is by far no chef ever got hired. I mean, you might take a test in a culinary school to get some type of a certificate to say that you learned all these different methods and there's a lot of knowledge associated with it, and there is a lot of reading and writing that you can find within the science learning and the science explanation or I guess, the the display of your knowledge, the way in which you can present what you know can definitely be done. So through writing and reading. But as a real subject, I do not think of science as a language arts, you know, foundation. It's interaction. It's it's it's explosions. It's things blowing up. It's things changing their states of matter. You know, it's exciting, it's fun. And I don't think anyone ever thought of us, you know, a multiple choice quiz or true or false answers ever being those adjectives.
Host - I would have to agree with that. And I can't imagine anybody actually becoming good at cooking without actually burning the food. Right? And and ruining a food dishes. I mean, you have to physically do it to learn it.
Dunlea - It is really tricky. Like, I love to cook, I love to cook, and I love to bake and to making tiramisu. One of the things you have to make, that mascarpone mousse that goes in between the ladyfingers, and it requires the eggs to be cooked to a certain extent, and eggs are really fickle. If you don't cook them right, they'll curdle and they get. So there's a real finesse that happens in cooking that the more you do it, the better you become at just having that intuitive knowledge that the temperature's hitting the right level, the consistency, the texture, that there are certain things that that you just can't understand until you're doing them. Your hands are on there. And the same can be said for learning how to play an instrument. You would never test someone's piano skills with their paper and pencil test.
Host - That's true.
Dunlea - So I don't know why. And, you know, computer tests, but I just don't understand why we're able to to divorce what science is and the assessment of how it's supposed to to showcase what we measured children's science, knowledge and aptitudes. As I very much think it's a very short coming situation that needs to be fixed. And it's not an easy fix, right? Like people say, well, what's the answer? I don't know what the answer is. I don't know what the solution is, but I can tell you that I don't know why we divorce science from what science is. And then the assessments, they don't line up, they don't match up. And I find that we need to develop a better way of measuring children's science knowledge and aptitude and skills beyond what is currently being used. I think it's imperative, and I, I do think that it ought to be similar to the way you would measure someone's music skills or cooking skills, right? You would never say someone is a, you know, virtuoso pianist based on a pencil and paper test. And I just don't understand why we're willing to say, well, you're not a scientist based on this paper and, you know, pencil test. You don't have science skills or aptitude. And then, you know, we're telling very young learners at a very impressionable age that they're not good at something that they might be really good at. Um, they might be completely wired to go out there and pursue their inquiry and to discover things and to take things apart and put them back together. And, you know, I think children come to the table as natural, inquisitive scientists, and somehow we break it along the way. And sometimes it might just be the way in which we're teaching and assessing science that says, yeah, this is what you thought science is. Well, this is what we're going to say it is. And they don't match.
Host - Yeah, that's a good point. And you're right about the children coming to us. Um, most of the time, very curious, eager to learn. And somehow that changes over the years. So I, I would love to hear ideas on what we could do to fix that. Which brings me to my next question. Sure. What advice would you offer to other educators who are looking for ways to bring more hands on, inclusive science into their own classrooms? You've already said go outside.
Dunlea - Yeah.
Host - What? What other advice do you have for someone who maybe has been just teaching out of a textbook and is wanting to do more than that?
Dunlea - Well, I think it's it's funny because it's like the opposite. It's like you can go outside or you can bring outside in. And so by bringing the outside in and you stop and you think about how. So here's an example of a great way in which we brought the outside in. I have another partner, another friend that works out in Wyoming, and I met her through the NEA Global Fellowship. When we went to Peru, I guess it was twenty twenty two. We were supposed to go to 2020 with Covid. It got postponed two years. So we went to Peru together. After spending a year in a pod and a cohort learning all about global learning competencies. And ever since that time, we've partnered and we've gotten our kids together, our classes together using technology. And I was talking to her, her name is Reva Lobato, and she teaches first grade this year out in Wyoming. And I said, look, you know, you guys go back to school really early. I'm still out until my kids come in on Tuesday after Labor Day. I go back to August twenty sixth. I said, so why don't we plan to zoom while I'm off and I can take you out to the ocean and I can show you the kids the ocean. Oh, and I live right across from a barrier island. And that barrier island is eighteen miles long. It's a quarter of a mile wide, so it's really very narrow, and you've got the bay on one side and the ocean on the other. And I said, you know, I have another educator that I've partnered with in the past during Covid, and we created this digital video lesson for PBS new Jersey about Barnegat Bay. And I'm sure she would probably be happy to join me because she used to be on Arlos board as well. The Alliance for a Living Ocean. She's the one that got me on their board. And so I reached out to Doctor Amy Williams and she said, sure, I'll meet you over on the Bay side. We'll bring the scene. And we went out. So we we set my phone up on a tripod in the sand. It was during Hurricane Aaron. She was off the coast, so it was a little windy. So we chose the bay over the ocean and in the bay we went seining. And we were talking to the kids out there, first graders out in Wyoming, and we showed them a crab that was molting. It was, you know, turning into a soft shell crab because it was pushing its other shell off, which was great to catch at that moment. It's very rare. Oh, we found all sorts of fish that we show. Put them, held them up to the camera. We caught some jellyfish, some moon jellies, and we talked about bioluminescence. I mean, these are first graders. They had these amazing questions about really cool species that they had already known about, but we were able to show them sand. We were able to show them the bay. And then they said, what's written on that sign? This is that inquiry based, right? Like they have such inquisitive minds. Yeah. There was a sign out in the bay. Now the bay is super shallow. So Amy and I go, well, we'll just take the camera out there with you and we'll we'll go to the other side, the side that boaters can see, and we'll show you what's on the sign because we didn't know the answer. So sure enough, we take the kids out into the water with us. The water is probably about eighty degrees in the bay, so we walk out into the bay. The bay is only about waist deep and we get to the sign. We're about thirty forty feet from the shore, and we turn around and we show them and it says like no wake zone, where, you know, we start talking to kids what is a wake and why don't you want to wake zone? Boats create wakes, and the wakes damage the ecosystem. But here's a way in which we were bringing the entire outside into a Wyoming first grade classroom where they were seeing in real time these real animals. And it was astounding. And it was an amazing experience that they got to have. Oh, and so you can bring the outside in by by connecting with scientists, by connecting with other educators in different parts of the world that might be able to bring what would be typically out of reach. And then it becomes part of your your classroom wall. And I've done that a lot. There was one time we were zooming with a class in Italy as part of a simpatico, and they showed us Mount Etna volcano going off out the classroom window. You know, there were kids in the South who had never seen snow in the classroom in Minnesota, put them on and showed them. We also did that with the kids in Memphis. So you can bring all sorts of science into classrooms. And there's a great program called Skype A Scientist, which is completely free. They do ask for donations in order to stay afloat, but you can go on there and choose from a whole list of different types of scientists biologists, doctors, physical doctors, marine biologists. They have a whole comprehensive list of all the different sciences. And you can even ask for having if you want certain representation. So if you want female scientists to show your students women in Stem, you can choose that. If you want someone of color, because you want your students of color to see another person of color in the fields of science, you can choose that. Or if you have an all white classroom and you want them to see a person of color in science like I want them to see, you can change the narrative that way by bringing in a diverse group of scientists, but it's a great free option, and I've used it every year, multiple times, and I've built so much learning around it, and it can either be the beginning of something or it can be middle or at the end. Like you could do a lot of research and studying and then have them come on. And then there's a lot of rich questions that come from that. Or you can have them come on. And then whatever questions the kids have from the experience can drive the teaching and learning after. But there's a lot of ways you can bring the outside world in as much as bringing the kids outside. I recommend going out first because it's their immediate world, so it's their actual environment. They're seeing their yard, their trees, their school. You know, you don't need to teach erosion in a classroom. It's outside.
Host - That is so cool. And for our listening audience, you've mentioned several great resources. I'll have links to those on our website. You can go and check those out there. And one of the things we're actually we're out of time. But I wanted to ask you, you've mentioned several opportunities that you've taken advantage of. Like, um, the American achieves the, um, NEA Global Learning Fellowship. Yes. Um, how how did you learn about those opportunities in.
Dunlea - It's all very much like a staircase in a way that I was a county teacher of the year. I was up for a state teacher of the year, and I didn't get it. And I was a little bummed because one of the bonuses was that you got to meet the president. So it was Obama at the time, and I thought, wow, I really want to meet the president. So I then applied for this American Chiefs Teacher Fellowship, the first one that I got in when I met those people, some of those people had other had done other opportunities. So they introduced me to like the Henry Ford Award for Innovative teaching, which I got. And then I was able to go out to the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which was amazing and incredible learning resource. And they have a whole set of online resources as well. Then I met another person, said, oh, you want to apply for the NEA Global Fellowship? It's great. It's available. So I applied to that. It took me three times to get it, but when I got it, I met these other teachers and I've been doing all this work with them. I actually just recently got on my third try, the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms program. Cool. And I'll be starting it this year and next summer for two to three weeks. I will go for a hands on field experience in a foreign country, one of ten that they have listed, and I won't know until I think December which one I go to. But it's always because someone else has done something and said you ought to try. Or I
see someone do something, I go, that looks interesting. I ought to look into that. There's a wonderful one that I've never been accepted to, but I've always tried. It's called the Grosvenor Fellowship. It's the National Geographic. Oh, in order to apply for that, when you had to get National Geographic certified, which is an amazing experience. They've got great resources. I've been turned down three times for the gross foreigner, but I had a friend who got accepted on her seventh time. I don't know if I have that kind of persistence. I think after three, I just think they're not that into me and I move on. But, you know, I encourage everybody to to find all these different opportunities and not give up because, you know, one time you'll finally get that opportunity and it can be a life changing all of mine have.
Host - So basically you just applied.
Dunlea - Yeah.
Host - You didn't have to be nominated. You put in a request, an application.
Dunlea - Some do, some you have to be nominated. Others you could be, you know, you can apply or nominate yourself. Some of these opportunities have come and gone like America doesn't exist anymore. And I got the Presidential Award for excellence in mathematics and science teaching. And that's currently paused due to what's happening right now at the national level when it comes to certain educational funding and programs. So that programming has changed a little bit, but there's so many opportunities that I didn't even know about. The National Endowment for Humanities I went to LA last summer about the impact of World War two on the Japanese population, the Japanese American population of LA and California. And we went to Manzanar, the relocation center, the concentration camp that they had there. And that was incredible, that experience. And I brought that back to my classroom when we were talking, because I was doing a read aloud Under the Blood Red sun, which is all about a young boy living in Hawaii who's Japanese American at the time of Pearl Harbor bombing. So it was great, like all these experiences. And it's all because somebody said, hey, there's an opportunity, or you go online and you can find them, but there's a lot of opportunities for teachers to be in control of their own professional learning and development. And when you're in control, you get so much more out of it. Host - Oh, that is so cool and great advice to just keep trying and take the kids outside, I love it.
Dunlea - Take them outside first and then bring the outside in.
Host - I love it, I love it. Thank you so much.
Dunlea - All right. Thank you.
Host - This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Emporia State University or The Teachers College. Any mention of products, individuals or organizations within this podcast does not constitute an endorsement. Listeners are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with appropriate professionals before making any decisions based on information provided in this podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to like and subscribe. This podcast is sponsored by The Teachers College at Emporia State University, featuring talks with experts and educators. We release new episodes every other Wednesday. Our guests provide more information on our website. www.emporia.edu/hwtt. Follow us and share on x with @hwtt_ESU. On Facebook and Instagram, search for How We Teach This. If you would like to be a guest on our show or want to provide feedback, please send us an email at hwtt@emporia.edu. I'm Kristy Duggan, your Host and Executive Producer. You've been listening to How We Teach This. Thank you.