The sky is grey, filled with a fine mist of rain, but my students seem energized. They are huddled in groups behind Roy Thompson Hall gazing up at Bernie Miller's waterfall sculpture The Poet, the Fever Hospital. Figuring out how the sculpture works is the only thing standing between them and a Grade 11 Physics credit.
Miller's sculpture is composed of stacked granite boxes that eject a ribbon of water into a reflective pool, and my students are looking at it through the eyes of a physicist: How much water streams from the top every second? How much does the water weigh?
The water packs a punch when it splashes into the pool, but with how much kinetic energy, exactly? Once they figure this out they can dig deeper. How much energy is needed to lift it back to the top again? These are the exhausting ideas the artist considered well before any concrete was poured.
In order to review an entire semester's worth of physics, I created a guided scavenger hunt through the city, using everything from bridges to sculptures to bring concepts to life. Today, the city is the classroom.
I met one of the pioneers of this form of education at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education last year. Ron Lancaster, currently lecturing at U of T, is a math teacher and world-renowned education consultant who has developed innovative city-wide scavenger hunts in order to make his math classes sing.
"It really helps to get the kids out of the textbooks and out of their classrooms," Lancaster says. "It gets them engaged and provides a connection to the real world they don't often get." Too often our students remain cloistered inside schools modelled on the efficiency of an industrial-era factory, far from the public sphere.
His math trails take students through the TTC, up escalators, past mirrors and windows, often checking out geometric designs tucked away on doors or storefronts. "They aren't necessarily the most practical questions in the world," Lancaster says, "but the purpose is to get people to stop and look at public art and public spaces." The questions asked don't rely on prepackaged knowledge from a standard curriculum, but are designed to "foster a sense of mystery, to get kids to be curious about their surroundings."
When students explore their surroundings like this, they don't have to be cajoled into doing work. The greatest moment for Lancaster is when "they start to find things for me in the city, and start asking their own questions."
At Roy Thompson Hall, my own students figure out Miller's kinetic sculpture and move into the depths of the TTC where they begin calculating the velocity of an oncoming subway. In the windows of the Royal York Hotel, a display of martini glasses gorgeously displays the idea of a light-ray diagram.
The kids are old enough for me to pretty much leave them alone, but I told them I would be observing them from afar. My spying missions allowed me to observe them experimenting, laughing, flirting, and discovering the city through the eyes of a scientist.
This idea of public education also has the benefit of pushing the boundaries of what is considered public space and what it should be used for. The elevators at
1 Adelaide Street, for instance, are used by Lancaster's math students to measure acceleration using a bathroom scale. The businessmen riding to work are curious, and often get involved in the experiment, sometimes tagging along with the students for the rest of the afternoon. "I feel like you've helped me to wake up," said one worker.
Once they know what's going on, security guards also get involved. "They're dying for conversation," says Lancaster, "and are often a great resource on the building's history." That said, he has some colourful stories of power-tripping suits trying to thwart his project. He once marched right into the office of an executive who was being rude to his students and demanded an apology on their behalf.
The move toward greater experiential teaching and learning opportunities is catching on. Lancaster has been training teachers from as far away as Singapore on how to create their own math trails, encompassing local sites of interest and cultural traditions.
Lancaster takes the teachers on strolls through the city for completely unscripted walks, improvising math questions like a modern-day Socrates, engaging bystanders and drawing connections to public life in real time.
As the word spreads and teachers develop the confidence to take their kids into the dynamic world outside their schools, students are more likely to feel that school has something to offer them. Imagine cities filled during school hours with a vibrant three-way conversation between teachers, their pupils, and the spaces in which they live.