“Another project that's been a great success in giving students the permission and structure to slow down is the forensics unit devised by teachers John Phipps and Casey Milender and executed by the ninth-grade Hanover High School science teachers. This month-long unit metes out information over weeks, requiring students to analyze a crime scene, collect data, and think critically about that data over at least a month before they arrive at their final answers. As Milender describes it, ‘The combination of the quick answers they find in a day, such as in a luminol lab and a blood typing lab, and the more complex answers that take weeks, such as the blood spatter analysis based on geometry, give the kids gratification during the project, but they really can't draw the larger conclusions until the end, when they put all these pieces together.’ My older son has been wrestling with the challenges of this unit, and the sustained patience, engagement, and curiosity I've overheard in my carpool have been a wonder to behold. These teachers understand that science is not a field that delivers quick answers, and through this project, they arm students with both the practical skills and the intellectual patience to quiet their minds and reject quick conclusions until all the evidence is in.
If this comfort with delayed gratification and unknowns extends to their ability to embrace intellectual intangibles as imaginary numbers, dark matter, and the curvature of space, then they will be more confident and brave thinkers as they move into the world.”
— Jessica Lahey, Relearning the Lost Skill of Patience