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STEM Tuesday’s New Year’s Celebration 2021

2021 is in the books. It was a strange kind of year. I heard it described best a few weeks back when my wife, who is a first-grade teacher, came home on a Friday night and said that the week in her classroom had been the slowest fast week in recent history. She said looking back, the previous weekend seemed like it just happened but the day-to-day timeline at school seemed to drag on and on and on. I get that. 

100%. 

That’s 2021 to the core. 

It seems like the STEM Tuesday team was just posting the 2020 year-end celebration posts, yet the month-to-month, week-to-week, day-to-day progression of 2021 seemed like crossing an ocean pedaling a paddleboat.

There were great things in the STEM world throughout 2021. Vaccines and their logistical rollout, fantastical feats on Mars, the James Webb telescope (fingers crossed for continued success!), giant leaps in making routine space travel a thing, and the advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence were noteworthy, if not a little scary.

All in all, 2021 was a good STEM year. 

I look for STEM 2022 to be just as awesome.

STEM Tuesday Theme for 2022

Start by knowing nothing and then ask the right questions.

I’m one of the luckiest people alive. I know this and appreciate it every day. One of the things I’m most grateful for is getting to see my grandkids almost every day. The past year has been particularly awesome as my oldest grandson turned three years old. We hang out a lot which means I get to experience the world in a whole new light through his fresh eyes. 

He’s noticing the world around him more and more. Shining a flashlight under a leaf while playing outside in the dark, gathering and counting cicada molts from the front porch, planting marigolds and vegetables in the garden, eating raspberries off the bush, and figuring out what projectiles can be successfully launched from grandma’s leaf blower. He’s also blessed with a curious mind so we get a lot of questions. 

Wonder and curiosity make a magical combination. I’ve been reminded of this throughout 2021. I think the magic of wonder and curiosity might be the number one thing the human race has lost as we wade into the digital age.

Wonder and curiosity. 

Gifts from the gods.

That’s where our 2022 STEM Tuesday theme is rooted. Wonder and curiosity. Start by knowing nothing and then ask the right questions.

Museum of Trinity College Dublin, Illustration in History of the University of Dublin (1819), William B. Sarsfield Taylor, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Knowing nothing

In elementary school, they grouped our class into three divisions by levels. Group 1, 2, and 3. Although it was never outrightly expressed, every one of us knew these divisions were grouped according to level. I, for better or worse, was placed in Group 1. It was probably a coin flip of whether to put me into this group over the second group. I struggled to read. I was a left-hander in a right-handed world of parochial school. I was, without a doubt, the dumbest kid in the smart group. Right or wrong, the system was what it was in the 1970s.  The system and closed classroom environment had their consequences but at that moment, being the dumbest kid in the smart class did one thing to me. It made me feel dumb.

I had to scramble to keep up. While my classmates appeared to be leisurely strolling through the lush academic park, I was sprinting blindfolded through a dense academic forest constantly running headfirst into tree trunks. I don’t really know if this was a reality or just a version of reality that existed inside my head. It doesn’t matter because it permanently imprinted on my psyche even to this day. The default inside my head always starts with, “You know nothing, idiot.”

What may seem a curse (and at times, i.e. report card time, it was) being a default idiot inside my own head has turned into a blessing. First of all, I don’t like being an idiot. I didn’t like being the dumbest in the smart group. Not wanting to be an idiot, though, I had one choice, be curious and then do the work to satisfy that curiosity. 

So I learned to ask the right questions but, being an introvert, I mostly asked them inside my own head.

All the Right Questions

• Are we there yet?
• Is dinner ready?
• Where’s the restroom?

No, just kidding. Although these questions are vital in my own mind, they aren’t really the three important Right Questions. Those are:

• Why?
• How?
• What if?

Three good questions. Three questions that, as we start a new year, can help define the future us. We can use the Right Question to tell the story we want to tell. We can use the Right Questions to define the story of who we are and what we want to be. 

Tell the story

Being a scientist (molecular microbiologist) by trade, we incorporate the Right Questions all the time.

• We make an observation and ask why it happened.
• We attempt to define how it happened.
• We investigate what happens to the observation if a variable in the original observation was changed. 

Science moves forward when we start by knowing nothing and then asking the right questions. Why? How? What if? The stories we want to tell also start in the same place with the same questions. They form the foundation of the story, give it color and life, and then point the way to what happens next.

One final thought. Recently, as the holidays approached, my grandson awarded everyone in the family a revered spot on The Nice List. I don’t know if this was because he was struck with holiday spirit or if he was normalizing his sometimes onerous behavior to keep himself permanently established within the parameters of The Nice List. Either way, I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a part of such a prestigious and rewarding company. 

He would like to extend an invitation to each one of you to hop aboard The Nice List. It’s a pretty cool place to be.

But, like all things worth having, The Nice List is a responsibility that requires work and effort.

Accept the challenge and do everything you can to live up to the honor.

Happy New Year! The STEM Tuesday team and the entire From the Mixed-Up Files…of Middle-Grade Authors family wish you and yours the very best in 2022. We appreciate your support more than you can ever imagine.

Have a safe and productive 2022!

Start by knowing nothing and then ask the right questions.

Illustration from Scenes of wonder and curiosity in California by James Mason Hutchings, 1870.

I grew up in the Northeast United States and although I’ve lived in sunny California for over twenty years now, I still associate the winter months with cold and snow. When school let out for winter break, I relished the long days with limited sunlight because it meant most of my time could be spent tucked away with a good book. I still prize a day with no commitments where I can just read read read above almost all else.

To celebrate this season of frosty weather, even if in some places it is still bright and sunny, around up of related middle grade novels for reading late into the night.

Winterfrost, by Michelle Houts

An ordinary Danish Christmas turns extraordinary when a family overlooks an important folkloric tradition.

Christmas has come, and with it a sparkling white winterfrost over the countryside. But twelve-year-old Bettina’s parents have been called away unexpectedly, leaving her in charge of the house, the farm, and baby Pia. In all the confusion, Bettina’s family neglects to set out the traditional bowl of Christmas rice pudding for the tiny nisse who are rumored to look after the family and their livestock. No one besides her grandfather ever believed the nisse were real, so what harm could there be in forgetting this silly custom? But when baby Pia disappears during a nap, the magic of the nisse makes itself known. To find her sister and set things right, Bettina must venture into the miniature world of these usually helpful, but sometimes mischievous folk. A delightful winter adventure for lovers of the legendary and miraculous.

Prisoner of Ice and Snow, by Ruth Lauren

When thirteen-year-old Valor is sent to jail, she couldn’t be happier. Demidova’s prison for criminal children is exactly where she wants to be. Valor’s twin sister, Sasha, is serving a life sentence for stealing from the royal family, and Valor is going to help her escape . . . from the inside.

Never mind that no one has escaped the prison in centuries. Valor has a master plan and resources most people could only dream about. But she didn’t count on having to outsmart both the guards and her fellow prisoners. If Valor’s plan is to succeed, she’ll need to make some unlikely allies. And if the plan fails, she and Sasha could end up with fates worse than prison.

This exciting middle-grade debut effortlessly melds an unforgettable protagonist, a breathless plot, and stunning world-building–and is impossible to put down.

The Contest (Everest series #1), by Gordon Korman

A thrilling adventure trilogy about a number of kids competing to be the youngest person to ever reach the top of Mt. Everest

Four kids. One mountain.

They come from all across America to be the youngest kid ever to climb Everest. But only one will reach the top first. The competition is fierce. The preparation is intense. The challenge is breathtaking. When the final four reach the higher peaks, disaster strikes-and all that separates the living from the dead is chance, bravery, and action.

Breadcrumbs, by Anne Ursu

The winner of numerous awards and recipient of four starred reviews, Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs is a stunning and heartbreaking story of growing up, wrapped in a modern-day fairy tale.

Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. But that was before he stopped talking to her and disappeared into a forest with a mysterious woman made of ice. Now it’s up to Hazel to go in after him. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” Breadcrumbs is a stunningly original fairy tale of modern-day America, a dazzling ode to the power of fantasy, and a heartbreaking meditation on how growing up is as much a choice as it is something that happens to us.

In Breadcrumbs, Anne Ursu tells, in her one-of-a-kind voice, a story that brings together fifty years of children’s literature in a tale as modern as it is timeless. Hazel’s journey to come to terms with her evolving friendship with Jack will deeply resonate with young readers.

Blizzard: Colorado, 1886, by Kathleen Duey and Karen Bale