Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash.
Dear Friends of NCSE,
Well, here it is December, finally. Or maybe “already”! I’ve heard from so many people that it’s become increasingly difficult to know what day—or even month—it is. But take it from me: it’s December, and 2020 is almost over.
Having spent several years earlier in my life poring over accounts of the 1918 influenza pandemic, it’s hard not to wonder how this year will be treated in the history books of the future. There are many possible lenses, of course: the politics, the public health response, the race for a vaccine, and many more. But I humbly submit that if the historians of the future wonder what kinds of science questions people had about the pandemic as it unfolded, they could do worse than dive into the coronavirus teachable moments that Lin Andrews and I, with the help of Paul Oh and Glenn Branch, have been sending out to teachers every week since March 2020. If you just scan a few of the titles, I think you’ll see that we’ve tried to tackle questions that were at the top of people’s minds at various stages of the pandemic. Throughout, our goal was to help teachers—and therefore their students—figure out how to navigate the flood of information, and misinformation, about the pandemic by employing their science critical thinking skills.
Writing a weekly teaching resource was not what we thought we’d be doing when 2020 began; we had big plans to hold in-person teacher learning opportunities all summer and to bring great science activities into communities year-round. Instead, we’ve moved all our programming online and invested resources in developing a comprehensive set of lessons focused on understanding the nature of science.
Why? Because just as we realized that providing coronavirus resources could give students opportunities to practice their critical thinking skills, we also saw that when faced with a public health crisis, everyone—parents, employers, journalists, and policy makers alike—desperately needs to know how science works, how to distinguish legitimate findings from conspiracy theories, and how to confidently search for answers to their questions. The next generation of students must gain these skills since, unfortunately, this is unlikely to be the last challenge that will require science to overcome. In fact, we’re already in the middle of an even greater challenge, one that NCSE has already been working on for a decade: addressing climate change.
I’m so proud of NCSE’s staff, who have responded to this dumpster fire of a year with resilience, creativity, and confidence in the power of science. The pandemic has forced us to work in new ways, and provided us with insights that we might not have had without this crisis. We are deeply grateful for all of you who support us, in particular those who have trusted us with their financial contributions this year and allowed us to keep up NCSE’s important work.
As the year closes, I hope that you and your families stay safe and find ways to connect with each other when you can’t be together in person. I so look forward to being able to travel again and hope to see many of you in person someday soon.
Best wishes,
Ann Reid
NCSE Executive Director
