Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Insightful Questions, the podcast where we dive deep into the big ideas shaping Eastside Prep's community and beyond. I'm your host, Sam Uswick. Each episode, I'll be sitting down with different members of our EPS community.
Join us as we ask the insightful questions that help us lead with compassion and listen with intention. Let's get started.
Joining us today for our conversation on leading compassionately empathetic dialogue in Science are three thoughtful members of the EPS community.
First, we're excited to welcome Batu, an eighth grader who joined EPS as a fifth grader in 2021. Batu brings a wide range of interests, from soccer and martial arts to programming and debate, and currently serves on the assembly team in Leadership Lab, helping shape middle school community life through collaboration and student voice. For our listeners who are not familiar with Leadership Lab, it's a student club in the middle school focused on the art of leadership and making middle school a better place. They meet each week during middle band period. We're also joined by Audrey, another current 8th grader who has been at EPS since 2022. Audrey's interests include ballet, art, crochet and environmental advocacy passions that show up both in and out of school. In Leadership Lab, she led the launch of the Comments box initiative, giving students a direct way to share their feedback and ideas outside of class. She's working with a friend to co lead a crochet organization that will raise funds for charitable causes.
And rounding out our panel is Dr. Chrissy Russell, who has been a member of the EPS faculty since 2018 and currently serves as the science discipline lead. Dr. K has taught multiple science courses such as scientific thinking, Environmental practices, and environmental science, and has also supported independent studies focused on environmental responsibility and sustainability. Her work in the classroom and beyond helps students connect science to real world challenges with curiosity, compassion, and a strong sense of purpose. Thank you all for being here today.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Thank you for having us.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you for inviting us.
[00:02:30] Speaker D: Yeah. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Well, I am very excited to dive into this conversation. So let me start with the following.
When you hear the phrase empathetic dialogue in science, what comes to mind?
[00:02:46] Speaker C: So when I think of empathetic dialogue in science, I think of when my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer and he had to go through either surgery or chemotherapy. And it was a really stressful situation for my grandpa and for the family. But then the good thing is that we had a really nice doctor and the doctor was really empathetic and helped relieve the stress and was he was very sincere with all our questions. He said that he was doing his best to make sure that my grandpa had all the information he needed to make the decision of whether to take a risky surgery or go through chemotherapy. He felt really hurt by this doctor. He felt that he could trust him. It was very helpful to have an empathetic doctor.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Thank you for sharing that. What a story. How about you, Batu?
[00:03:42] Speaker D: So obviously science is a very intrinsically developmental field. There are new frontiers everywhere. So many things can be, like, misconstrued, interpreted differently between different people. And so in my opinion, a big part of empathetic dialogue would honestly just be accepting other people's different results, different different answers, and different ways of seeing the world. Because to be honest, that's a lot of what I see as science is so perspectives, they're going to be very different. So I think the empathetic dialogue would just most likely be accepting differences, especially in collaboration.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Wonderful. I love the varied perspectives on the question.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing. It's very interesting for the very applied situation and then also kind of the very practical. We're kind of living what Batuu said, I think right now with scientific data being out there. And do we. How do we accept that or not?
[00:04:37] Speaker A: So, Dr. K, how do you create space for empathy and open dialogue in your science or environmental classes?
[00:04:43] Speaker B: Science is all about being curious and asking questions. And we kind of set science up to be that way at the beginning of our classes. You know, putting that out there for students. It's definitely making it open to any idea being on the table. If you don't do those things, if you don't question things, you're not going to make any progress. And that's science. The purpose is sort of like to find truth. And if we leave it open to anyone to ask those questions and not be wrong, then that's how we make progress. And there's so many examples in history of people having an idea and then no one believes them for a really long time and no one wants to see their idea. And. And then later on, sometimes it's decades, they can be found to be correct. And so we don't want to shut that down. Any idea is good and you need to be open to that. I think as a teacher to hear that. And actually, just my last class, someone said an answer that I knew was quote, unquote wrong, but instead of saying, nope, that's wrong, it's like, oh, that's an interesting idea. I hadn't thought about that in that way before. Let's look at it from that lens instead. So just being open to that and being able to hear what students have to offer, because that's really where the big ideas come from.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Absolutely. How the adults in the room embrace those ideas is so key in terms of promoting the dialogue. Right. I remember when I started teaching, and I think I had a day in class where I felt like I was saying wrong, like, way too much. And I got thinking about it, and whether you're an adult or a young person, people, unless they're having fun, don't really give wrong answers on purpose. They're giving the answer they believe to be true to them in that moment.
And if you operate from that perspective, as you do Dr. K, then it's like, oh, okay, I see where you are. And here's where, as the teacher, I need you to go, how do we do that together? Instead of it just being a constant issue of me shutting you down.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: And science is a process, and we definitely teach that. It's not about right or wrong. It's not this book of answers. It's a process. And so science could be wrong for a while, and then we find out a new fact that makes a different thing true.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: And so that's what we teach. The process piece that makes it very open.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. So, Audrey, I'll start with you again for this one, and then we'll go to Batuu. Can you share an example of a science topic or a project that led to a meaningful conversation or helped you better understand another point of view?
[00:07:25] Speaker C: In fifth grade at my old school, we had reading buddies, and I was reading buddies with this second grader. She was really nice, and we were having this animal science conversation, and she was telling me about her pet caterpillar.
I think it was a caterpillar.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Yeah. So she had a pet caterpillar, and he was in class, so she wanted me to hold it. And at first I was a bit apprehensive about this, but this was, like, an important bonding moment for us, so I held it. And at that moment, my ideas about the caterpillar kind of changed, and I thought it was actually kind of cute.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. Batuu, how about you?
[00:08:11] Speaker D: So the example that I could think of was it involves my sister. She is very passionate about biology. She wants to go into that industry when she grows up. And so I remember we were at a park, and I think she was trying to Explain to me fundamentally natural selection, like, the basics of it. I really couldn't understand. It was. It sounded a bit complicated to me at first. The way she explained it, I managed to, you know, understand it a lot more quickly than I would probably otherwise. And also the next year, when we actually learned that stuff in our science class for seventh grade, it was, to be honest, a lot easier having prior knowledge. So, yeah, I saw that as a meaningful conversation at the time, and I still do. And I think that that topic was very much meaningful. And it helped me understand not only my sister's point of view, it helped me get into biology as well. It became a point of interest for me. And so I think that I better understood my sister's passion and point of view.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: What a story.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: That's really interesting how, like, in both of those cases, there's this, like, touch point that spurs something else on. Like in Audrey's case, she hadn't opened herself up to the idea that this caterpillar could be something cool, but then in order to connect with someone else, it sounds like you gave in to holding it. And then a new world was opened up. And then, similar with Batuu, it's like, oh, this little seed was planted that grew later on after you had gone into actually studying something in particular. So I love that idea of science seed planting. Just putting a little seed here, and then we'll see where it grows later on.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: So, Dr. K, what strategies do you use to help students talk respectfully about complex or even controversial science topics like resource use and all kinds of things?
[00:10:01] Speaker B: With resource use, that's one I have taught quite a bit because in any environmental application, we're talking about resources. That one's tricky because you're starting off as Americans. We all live here, and we're pretty high consumers pretty much, no matter what. Just it's the baseline. And so approaching it as like, this is a fact. We're all in this together. It's not us versus them. It's like, we have to figure this issue out. We're the ones that are maybe unknowingly doing harm to the environment or using a lot of the resources. It's facts. So I think approaching it with data often helps because often, not all the time. It's hard to argue with data. If it's been peer reviewed, you feel pretty confident about it, widely accepted. If you start with the data, it's like, okay, well, here are the facts for now. And I say for now just because I want to acknowledge that science is. Is a process so things could change, but facts for now, and what are we going to do about it? What's the solution? What's the issue here? So I think it actually helps with science to get the baseline facts down. So that's how we approach it. And then there with the problem solving. It's a lot of the things that they do in social science, kind of making sure everyone's heard. Are we putting ourselves in other people's shoes, using that empathy to understand, for example, where developing countries are coming from. You know, they, in order to gain economic prosperity, they are using fossil fuels at a faster rate than we might desire. We also were in that situation 100 years ago. We were the ones doing that. And now maybe we're on to alternative energy. You know, they might not be there yet. There has to be some compassion understanding there.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: What I hear in that, Dr. K, is that, you know, there's an empathy for where students are starting at what is their baseline. And I think not just in science, but in so many different topics across the school. We are helping students to understand the water they're swimming in culturally, just establishing that baseline so there can be that recognition of, oh, okay, this is what I'm living in. Not every place is like this. Let's examine. That is such a great end to a very important conversation.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Who is coming to the table to talk about this is the number one for our students.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Have you ever changed your thinking about a science issue after hearing someone else's perspective?
[00:12:17] Speaker C: So, yeah, that did happen once in environmental practices. So we were talking about climate change, and then we were saying how hydroelectric dams are a better electricity source. But then we started going into that topic. Someone said that they're still blocking up environment, polluting the waters. Even though they're like, helping with climate change, they're still making other problems in the world. My spirit perspective on that changed that day because I understood that it was causing problems too.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: What a great example. I've actually gone through that same perspective shift myself, but as a much older person. So that's a great story to hear about. 2.
[00:12:59] Speaker D: One that I can think of also comes from school's environmental practice class. Obviously, I think, as Dr. K said, Americans are very inside of consumerist culture. Everybody does it. Obviously. I never really looked into it. I always thought it was superficial. You know, there are farms, factories. Those could be bad for the environment, but it wouldn't really have too much of an impact on the way humanity is progressing. I thought that these things we fixed really quickly. But we watched a Video called A Story of Stuff and also held multiple class discussions on that video. The video basically talked about how things actually came to be. It wasn't nearly as systematic as I thought. It wasn't nearly, you know, get materials from, like a farm. It had a lot more to do with taking materials from others. Almost like back in the past where other lands were occupied specifically for the purpose of producing stuff. I definitely learned that this was much bigger issue than I originally thought it was. All these sources, problems, they all coalesced into the products that we see today. But very clearly, there's a lot more behind the scenes than I thought.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Now let's make some connections between science class and your leadership lab. How has what you've learned in science helped you practice leadership in leadership Lab?
[00:14:14] Speaker C: In science class, we often collaborate in our lab groups. Mr. Berger assigns us three roles. So one person is the overlord, one is the safety officer, and one is the gopher. And it rotates every week. So when I was the overlord once, I had a lab partner who was a bit louder than me since I'm an introvert. They were, like, talking and kind of tried to lead the situation. The thing I learned is some people are just going to be hard to work with, but you need to try your best to, like, cooperate with them, like, patiently.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Outstanding.
[00:14:49] Speaker D: In my science class in leadership lab specifically, I run assemblies. I've ran two this year. And I suppose that can be a bit hard to connect to science, but at the same time, I think that there are a lot of things that they have in common. So as Audrey stated, a lot of science is collaboration. So every year we've been put into lab group, which are basically groups of around three, which we work on projects put together. So in both of my assemblies, I've also worked with groups of three, which is also interesting. And so I think that a lot of what it's taught me is how to work with other people, especially in scenarios with, you know, a time frame.
And it's a lot of work. So obviously, every student is different. Every student has unique talents and, you know, weaknesses. I think that what's important is that everyone should play to their strengths. An important part of being a leader, especially assigning people roles. It's crucial, man.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: That is for both of you, those are skills that aren't going to go away. You will carry those beyond eps for sure. As discipline lead, how do you see the connection between empathy, science education, and guiding students through conflict or disagreement?
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Both of the examples that Audrey and Batu gave about Working together, that's often what teachers end up doing, is helping students work through those conflicts when they struggle. And that's part of the process too. So it's not bad at all to have a struggle. It's natural and we want you to have struggles so that you can come to some realizations like it sounds like both of you have. I think the way that many science oriented people approach things and a lot of my colleagues in the discipline is we approach any disagreement as matter of factly as we can on folks like, okay, this is a situation, let's collect some data. Even so it's kind of applying the scientific method to it a little bit. There are feelings involved and we don't want to discount those. Like scientific scientists are not just unfeeling people. Feelings are totally fine. We want to make space for the feelings, let the feelings happen, and then people take care of themselves. But we need to get through the situation that we're working with, which is usually a lab procedure in the lab or some kind of collaboration. So we work with students, give them space, and then what are we going to do to move forward? So often it's asking students what they can do because we like to put it back on the students to figure out what's best for them. As, as Batu mentioned, we gotta get through this work. But a lack of judgment overall, like this is, these are the facts. This is a normal part of teenagers growing up. This kind of stuff is gonna happen. I also think about when I think about like normal stuff happening when people break glassware.
It's always, I know in the sixth grade, it's like somebody broke something, it's a big deal and everyone's looking cause it makes a loud noise. And my approach is to be very open and accepting about it. It's like, oh, something was broken. Wow, that's only the second thing we've broken this year. That's amazing. Like, okay, we're just going to clean it up, you know, no big deal, moving on, get another one. Everybody drops things. It's okay. Doesn't always break, it happens. So just move on. No judgment.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: You're planting seeds about how we hope our students will be with other people far into the future.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's okay to make mistakes.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: These things happen.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: We're just gonna clean it up and move on.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: And move on. Dr. K, have your students ever surprised you with how they handled a difficult conversation in class?
[00:18:13] Speaker B: All the time.
I think what surprises me with the students is that they are, they almost always have like really interesting solutions that I had never thought about.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: I get inspired by them. It's why I like to doing the job, because I hear these new ideas that I never heard before and I really get hope for the future. When young people have these brilliant ideas, it's like, okay, great. It's not all on my shoulders or my generation. It's like there are other people here that might not be as experienced as me, but they've got amazing ideas that they bring to the table.
It's the truth and it's okay. And we can learn from the mistakes and keep moving on.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: You can make that observation and then you can do something about it.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: You can get involved, which is what y'all are doing. Oh, well, thank you so much to all three of you for chatting with me today. It's just always so fun to hear what you're up to, the amazing work y'all are doing across the school. So thanks for the time.
[00:19:09] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:19:11] Speaker D: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Thanks a lot.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: For more insights, be sure to check out the EPS weekly news every Friday.
