USA Today honors Orono Middle School teacher

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ORONO – Seats in Richard Glueck’s science class reflect his belief that students learn from one another. Arranged around clusters of small rectangular tables at Orono Middle School, pupils face their classmates as well as the teacher.

“You don’t have to write this down, just remember it,” Glueck instructs as he darkens the room to display an overhead projector image listing steps in the scientific method.

“What’s a hypothesis? Does anybody know? It’s OK if you don’t.”

Hands fly up, competing for a chance to answer. After one week in Glueck’s class, these Orono sixth-graders know that failure can be a good thing.

“Why?” Glueck asks.

“Sometimes we get an answer we aren’t expecting, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t learn something,” his student explains.

Glueck is one of the 25 teachers in the nation recognized by USA Today for his innovation and dedication. Nominated by colleague Brook Merrow, Glueck becomes a member of the ALL-USA Teacher Team featured in the Oct. 11 edition of the newspaper and receives $2,500 for his school.

“People worry about covering content, but children are able to discover for themselves,” Glueck says. “They learn from each other.”

Each class member has made a top from a canning jar lid and a bamboo kebob stick, and has colored disks of paper with patterns that are transformed into bands of color when slipped onto the top and spun. Today the pupils must observe the behavior of their gyro-tops as they perform experiments, and write down their observations.

“I want to know how your top is like this bicycle wheel,” Glueck said, spinning a large wheel on his finger. “What causes the gyro to lose stability? How is speed related to stability?” He points to four questions on the board – things to look for as they experiment. Hands go up again. Everyone wants to answer. He redirects their energy.

“Write your answers. You need to write down your observations because next week you will have a test, and you are going to have to explain this to me as though you were the teacher and I was seeing it for the first time. Does everyone know what you’re going to do? OK. Go to work. You are your own teacher.”

Pupils jump to retrieve their gyro-tops from the class’s cubbyhole under a window. Tops spin on desktops, on notebooks, on lab sheets, on heads, in the crease of a bookbinding. They spin upside down and at an angle. A teacher’s aide helps special pupils interpret directions and stay focused on the task. Groups of three and four pupils gather tops spinning on the floor.

“This is so cool,” said one.

“I’m just good with tops. Tops just like me,” brags another.

“We’re supposed to be working, but you can play, too.”

Glueck surveys the clusters of activity.

“Success breeds success,” he said. “When one gets it, the others try. I could lecture and explain and draw pictures, but they would never understand. They are learning the physics of it. The formulas will come later, in high school.”

The room is filled with laughter and chatter and exclamations. “You actually get to do things instead of just reading from a book,” one pupil tells a visitor.

“Mr. Glueck makes it fun,” says another. But does he learn anything? “Tons,” he responds seriously.

As the decibel level rises, the teacher reiterates the importance of writing down observations. “They are totally absorbed,” he explained. “They take responsibility for their work.”

Model biplanes and spacecraft hang from the ceiling. Photos and memorabilia of previous class projects line the wall – from the exact replica of a 1902 Wright glider to a full-scale Apollo moon suit. Photos of pupils with a space capsule they constructed frame a letter from former astronaut Sen. John Glenn praising them for their achievements.

Glueck’s courses have inspired pupils to pursue lofty career goals. One parent came back to tell him her daughter was going into aeronautical engineering. A recent high school graduate who wants to be an astronaut promised, “I’m going to write your name on the moon someday.”

Though such success stories are gratifying, Glueck said, “They don’t all have to be scientists. If something in this class helps a student become the best lobster fisherman or parent or artist, you couldn’t make a more significant mark on the world.”

In the past 12 years, Glueck’s pupils have engineered and constructed full-scale replicas of Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, a shuttle flight deck and Apollo moon suits. They have built full-scale Wright and Chanute glider aircraft capable of flight, working from historic photographs to convert two-dimensional plans and test models.

“When children yell in delight, ‘We did it! We actually did it!’ I know that I, too, have met success,” Glueck said.

Class projects have drawn “Good Morning America” crews to Orono twice. In 1992, they left with a piece of the pupils’ glider wing and delivered it to the space shuttle Endeavor, where it was aboard the craft for its Sept. 2-12 flight that year.

In 1994, Glueck obtained funding for an amateur radio station in the school so pupils could talk to the space shuttle Mir, and shuttle crews, as well as to students in other countries. A full-sized Wright glider built by pupils in 2000 was shipped to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, to be used in an educational film and displayed at the National Air Show.

“He provides opportunities for discovery through hands-on learning.” said Principal Bob Lucy. “They are performing knowledge by building and making things. Knowledge comes alive – it’s real.” Lucy described Glueck’s classes as full of energy, enthusiasm, curiosity and questions, qualities that reflect the teacher’s own passion for learning.

“Many of his students will tell you that his class inspired them to want to be a scientist or an engineer and that his projects were the best experiences they had in middle school,” Lucy said, attributing such inspiration to “the fire he creates for learning.”

Glueck credits the school for fostering creativity. “This school trusts teachers as professionals,” he said. “The 1997 Learning Results define where students should be at different stages in their education. How we achieve those results is up to us.”

Glueck finds ideas for class activities everywhere, and jokes that his family sometimes begs for a vacation that is not educational.

“You don’t have to look far to find something fundamentally interesting,” he said, adding that he draws ideas from publications and broadcasts, as well as personal experiences.

“After 23 years of full-time teaching, mentoring and curriculum development, I feel I know how to engage my students in ways that make them eager to be in school, to press their abilities to the limit, and to own their knowledge,” he said.

Rewards for hard work come in moments. When a major project is accomplished, “that moment of supreme enjoyment when kids have exercised intellect and creativity blended with joy is the most powerful thing that could happen to a teacher,” he said. “I am blessed because I can experience those at least once a year.

“You don’t become a teacher for wealth or glamour,” Glueck pointed out. “You become a teacher because it is the most important job on Earth.”