MSU Essay

Master of Science in Science Education Essay
Tom Crumrine

After I graduated from college I unintentionally took four years off. During that time I had 17 different jobs as I moved around the country. I lived as close to home as my parent’s Ohio basement and as far from home as the docks of Portland, Maine and the hills of North Carolina. I was a concrete technician, a phlebotomist, a carpenter and for one day a worker in a Nissan auto parts plant. At the auto plant I was led to a bin of identical metal parts. They were all shaped like boomerangs and I was told to use a grinder to “sand” the inside of them. I did this for eight straight hours. The next day I returned and there was nowhere to park—I left. I had loved my experience at Denison University and I had loved studying biology there, but I was not sure what to do with it. Denison truly was a liberal arts experience and I enjoyed almost every class that I took. But they did not spend a lot of time instructing us on what we might actually do with our degrees.

So I wandered. During that time there were highs and lows. Looking back on that time it does not seem like such a bad idea. I have told friends that I would encourage my own future children to do the same as long as they cut it down to two years rather than four. When I turned 25 I broke my hand and had to quit my phlebotomy[1] job because it required injecting people with needles. Working at a plasma donation center had been hard enough, I did not want to go through the learning process again with my other hand. I moved home to Tiffin, Ohio and began a teacher certification program at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. I drove the 50 miles three days a week to attend classes. In the flattest farm country of Ohio this 50 mile trip only had one turn. I drove 18 miles on a perfectly straight road, passing corn and soybeans the whole way, turned left and drove the rest of the way right into Bowling Green. I always had to park far from campus near the hockey stadium but because of the table-like quality of the landscape I could see a mile all the way to the tall campus buildings.

Every day I walked that walk, every day hating it. I so remember the wind on that campus. It is flat from Bowling Green all the way west to about the Rocky Mountains so the wind has a chance to pick up and on the campus it was very constant. I have never enjoyed wind and it would cut into me every day as I walked to class. Wind has that way of finding its way to the spot where your shirt is just a bit un-tucked and it flies up your shirt chilling your whole body. The school and the campus were actually quite nice. I just hated the wind.

For some reason writing about the wind brings to mind one of the most interesting dating experiences of my life. It happened at Bowling Green and had something to do with wind, because it had something to do with tennis, which is a sport that is often affected by the wind. During the two years that I attended Bowling Green I had several classes with a woman named Karen. I do not at this point remember her last name but it also began with a K. She had a slightly out of date bob of dirty blond hair and we had had a lot of fun talking and working together. I have always been shy when it comes to asking girls out but I figured--what do I have to loose?[2] So I was walking with Karen one day after class and I asked her if she would like to go play tennis with me sometime. I knew from previous conversations that she played tennis so I thought this was a good start. It was clear that I was asking her on a date and she immediately blanched and told me that she had a boyfriend. I scrambled and apologized hoping that I had not embarrassed her. And then she did the strangest thing, she said that we could still play tennis if her boyfriend came along too. Dear reader, whether you are conversant with the rules of tennis or not I am sure that you realize that tennis is either a 2 person game or a 4 person game. I know that she was just trying to be nice but I have always remembered that as one of the peculiar rejections I have ever been a party to.

Wasn’t this essay supposed to be something about education? Let me get back to that. After working at mostly manual labor jobs for 4 years going back to school was easy. The professors lectured, you took notes; the professors gave homework, you did it. Maybe easy isn’t the right word but having what you had to do laid out for you certainly was easier than trying to make ends meet with an hourly salary. I had always done well in school but I had never thought that it would be easier than something else. Given the perspective of trying to make ends meet in the real world, taking classes again was simple. There were many experiences at Bowling Green that shaped my later thinking but one in particular has always stood out in my mind.

One of the unique classes there was Education in a Pluralistic Society. Entering the class I was not even sure what a pluralistic society was. I learned about pluralistic societies during the class but I also learned much more about what to teach and how to teach. One of my favorite lessons from the class was entitled, “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.” In this lesson a guest lecturer challenged us to identify a mechanical device in a 20 questions type format. The device looked like a large bathroom plunger with metal at the end instead of rubber. Guesses ranged across the spectrum but none were correct. The guest then explained that the device was his washing machine. It was used before the days of electricity to plunge into tubs of clothing to mix them and wash them. He went on to explain that many people were awed by the fact that he still washed his clothes that way. In his family though, clothes washing was a family experience that they did together every Saturday morning. It was a needed chore but it was made into a fun family activity by doing it together. He went on to explain many other examples of different ways of thinking about the world. While I have continued to wash my clothes an electric washing machine I did take away his greater message that there are many ways of thinking about the world and the way that most people do it is not always the correct or the only way.

As I became a teacher this is one idea that has stuck with me. Not the idea of subversion but the idea that there are different ways to think about the world. Much of what I have done in teaching relates to opening the minds of students to new ways of thinking. I am most excited when I can help open up something that they did not know existed.

Working with biodiesel[3] has been one a way to practice this idea in my teaching. I have been making my own biodiesel since 2000 and have long been a proponent of at the very least taking a look at why we emit so much carbon and what that might be doing to our planet. In my chemistry classes we have changed a unit on organic chemistry into a unit on fuel. The same standards and goals are achieved but instead of some of the more mundane chemistry we focus on the real world application of chemistry into making fuels. Making and testing biodiesel is the final activity of the unit. As a class we obtain old deep fryer oil from a place like KFC and over a few days we turn that into a fuel. Then we actually put the fuel into an engine so the students can see it work. When I began doing this unit there were never any students who had heard of biodiesel. Now when we do it there are often some students that have not only heard of it but know its background and essentially how it is made.

In the ecology class that I teach I take students on field trips and try to show them unique ecosystems that were right in front of them all the time. I can show them a video about the Galapagos Islands or show them pictures of the interior of the Amazon but equally amazing ecosystems abound in their native New Hampshire. The best example of this is our trip to a bog at the beginning of the year. The students are all seniors and like all seniors have a feeling that they know it all and are ready for college. Smith bog, like all bogs, is a floating mass of peat on water. As the students walk on the surface it undulates like a water bed because it is literally a mass of peat moss floating on water. The bog has carnivorous plants and strange animals and the students always are in awe of what they find there. But this bog is just a few miles from the school and I have never had a student that had been there previously.

As those examples illustrate, passing along my excitement about the natural world to students is a big impetus for being a teacher. A final example where I have the chance to do this is a class called R.O.P.E. (Reaching Our Potential in Education). ROPE is an experiential education class where we take students on various trips where they learn by doing. There is a rock climbing trip, a 300 mile biking trip, fall camping trips and winter camping trips. My favorite is the winter camping trip. New Hampshire can have some harsh winters and leading a group of students on a 3 night winter camping trip has its challenges. Because the course is experiential education we teach the students everything they need to know about safe winter camping, cooking and hiking. But during the actual trip we allow them to “fail safely.” We would never let anything truly bad happen to anyone but if they make a poor winter shelter then they experience the consequences of that. One time a group of four forgot to bring their pot. As you might imagine it is difficult to cook without a pot. This group had to wait until other groups were finished cooking until they could cook their meals. Another time a group set up a tarp without a center ridgeline. It rained during the night and all the water collected in the center of the tarp making it sink down until it nearly touched their backs. They were safe just uncomfortable. They made a very good shelter on the second night.

These ROPE experiences are ones that many people in New Hampshire never have. I often tell the kids to be proud that they spent a weekend outside in the winter. I ask them to think about how many people in their entire lives have camped outside for a winter weekend. They have completed something that many life long New Hampshire residents have never done.

I remain excited about my own learning. The MSSE program is a very exciting part of formally continuing my education. I have taken 4 classes so far and have enjoyed them all. The camaraderie of the teachers that take the classes and the flexibility of instruction are a perfect fit for my busy life. I can imagine nothing better than logging in to the online library and researching microbiology at 5am on a Saturday morning. Coffee cup at my side I peruse the journals and continue educational journeys that I might never have begun without the guidance of MSU professors.

Montana State is a very important piece of my future in education. Over the years I have become interested not only in the education of students but in sharing what I have learned about teaching with other teachers. I have become particularly interested in the use of formative assessment in education. For the last 4 years I have been a member of a study group that meets weekly to discuss formative assessment. My first stab at sharing this work was to publish an article with my colleague Chris Demers on the work that the school has done with formative assessment. Another closely related area that I have been working with is grading reform. This work asks teachers to consider what they want to grade, how they grade and what they want grades to convey to students and parents. As a school district we have worked on making report cards easier to understand for parents and students. Both formative assessment and report cards come together because they are both about improved communication with students. Formative assessment helps both teacher and student understand where a student is and where they need to go. Informative report cards do the same thing and allow everyone involved to see what needs to be done.

I plan to use what I learn in the MSSE program to continue my own education, the education of my students and the education of other teachers. I saw in a recent article that when Korean and Japanese teachers retire they leave a legacy of documents about their teaching and learning. In contrast American teachers tend to leave nothing, taking all of their knowledge with them when they leave. I hope to be part of a new generation of teachers that gains knowledge over their teaching career yet spends equal energy in making sure that what they learn is passed on to less experienced teachers.


[1] A phlebotomist is a person who draws blood from people and then uses a machine to separate the blood and the plasma. The red blood cells are then returned to the patient and the plasma is used in medical research and other health fields. Phlebotomy attracts an interesting group of people because it can be done up to two times a week and it often offers a monetary inducement.
[2] A corollary to this whole tale and a subject for another essay is that guys who are always successful with women are constantly telling guys that aren’t, “What do you have to loose?” It is so unfair because it is easy to say that when women never turn you down.
[3] Biodiesel is a biofuel that has been frequently in the news in recent years. It is easily made by combining vegetable oil, methanol and a base. As its name implies it can be substituted directly for diesel fuel in any diesel engine. The simple chemistry of its construction makes it a natural choice for chemistry labs.