S3-05: Thinking is power

Join us as we sit down with Melanie Trecek-King, college professor and creator of Thinking is Power, to explore how much of an asset science can truly be in developing the skills students need to navigate the real world. You’ll learn about “fooling” students and the importance of developing critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy in the classroom. We’ll also share real strategies and lesson examples that help build these essential skills and engage students in learning.

And don’t forget to grab your Science Connections study guide to track your learning and find additional resources!

For more from Melanie, check out the following resources:

• Website: Thinking is Power
• Skeptical Inquirer article: “How to Sell Pseudoscience” by Melanie Trecek-King
• Assignment: How to Sell Pseudoscience
• Skeptical Inquirer article: “Teach Skills, Not Facts” by Melanie Trecek-King

Episode Transcript

Melanie Trecek-King (00:00):
We say knowledge is power, but it's

(00:01):
not enough to know things. Andthere's too much to know. So
being able to think and notfall for someone's bunk is my
goal for my students.

Eric Cross (00:12):
Welcome to Science Connections. I'm your host,
Eric Cross . On this thirdseason, we've been talking
about science's underdogstatus. And just this past
March at the NSTA conference inAtlanta, I had the chance to
speak with science educatorsfrom around the country about
this very topic.

Hermia Simanu (00:28):
Right now, there's only two teachers in
our high school teachingscience.

Shane Dongilli (00:32):
I have 45 minutes once a week with each
class. The focus is reading andmath .

Alexis Tharpe (00:38):
Oftentimes science gets put by the
wayside. And you know, I lovemath and I love my language
arts, but I also think scienceneeds to place be placed on
that high pedestal as well.

Askia Little (00:46):
In fifth grade, oh, they teach science, because
that's the only grade that it'stested.

Eric Cross (00:50):
That was Hermia Simanu from American Samoa. Her
team flew for three days tomake it to the conference. You
also heard from Shane Dongillifrom North Carolina, Alexis
Tharpe from Virginia, and AskiaLittle from Texas. All of these
teachers were excited to be atthe conference and had a lot to
say about the state of scienceeducation in their local
schools. Throughout thisseason, we've been trying to

(01:13):
make the case for science,showing how science can be
utilized more effectively inthe classroom. We've explored
the evidence showing thatscience supports literacy
instruction. We've talked aboutscience and the responsible use
of technology like AI. My hopeis that all of you listeners
out there can use some of thisevidence to feel empowered to
make the case for science inyour own communities. And on

(01:35):
this episode , we're going toexamine how science can help
develop what might be the mostimportant skill that we try to

develop in our students (01:41):
Good thinking. On this episode, I'm
joined by a biologist whoactually advocated for
eliminating the Intro to Biocourse at her college. Instead,
Professor Trecek-King created anew course focused on critical
thinking, information literacy,and science literacy skills. In
this conversation, we discusswhy the science classroom is

(02:03):
such a good environment forhelping students become better
thinkers. Now, I don't thinkthat you can make a much
stronger argument for sciencethan using it to develop the
skills that Melanie describesin this conversation. So,
without further ado, I'mthrilled to bring you this
conversation with MelanieTrecek-King, Associate
Professor of Biology atMassasoit Community College,
and creator of Thinking I sPower. Here's Melanie. Well,

(02:29):
Melanie, thank you for joiningus on the show. It's so good to
have you.

Melanie Trecek-King (02:34):
I am so happy to be here.

Eric Cross (02:35):
Now, I went to your session at NSTA in Chicago ...
I think it was two years ago. Acouple years ago. And I was
listening to your session, andas I was listening to you, I
started Reverse Engineering inmy mind what you were doing
with your college students. Istarted reverse engineering the
K–8. I was like, "This isamazing." Where has what you've

(02:57):
been doing been hiding? We needthis not just in the college,
higher ed. We need this all theway up and down. Because I
hadn't seen it before. So Ithink a good place for us to
start is gonna be like thestory of how and why you as a
biologist wound up making thecase to actually eliminate the
Intro to Biology course at yourcollege. So can you start off

(03:19):
and tell us a little bit aboutthat story?

Melanie Trecek-King (03:20):
Sure. So I started teaching at a community
college in Massachusetts. And Iabsolutely love teaching at a
community college. And I wasteaching the courses that
people who don't wanna bescientists when they grow up
have to take to fulfill theirscience requirement. And that
course was Intro Bio. And Itried every way I could figure
out to make that class beuseful ,] relevant to students.

(03:46):
I mean, the thing is, our worldis based on science and you
have to understand science tobe a good consumer of
information, to make gooddecisions. And I'm a biologist,
so it pains me to say this, butyou know, somewhere in the
middle of teaching studentsabout the stages of mitosis and
protein synthesis, I thought,"Is this really — like, if I

(04:08):
have one semester that's gonnabe the last chance that
someone's gonna get a scienceeducation, is this really what
they need?" And I just decided,"No." So, to my college's
credit, they were verysupportive. I went to them and
said, "You know, I think weshould assess the non-majors
courses. Like, why do we teachnon-majors science?" And we all

(04:28):
agreed, well, it was forscience literacy. OK, great. Do
our existing non-majors coursesdo that? And so we evaluated
each of the courses. I made acase that Intro Bio was not
doing it. And so we actuallyreplaced it with a course that
I call Science for Life. Andthe whole course is designed to
teach science literacy,critical thinking, and
information literacy skills.

Eric Cross (04:48):
And so you did this while you were looking at
mitosis. And you're looking atstudents who may or may not be
science majors. And then kindof asking that question. I know
every educator asks this, andwhether or not it's welcomed or
supported is a differentquestion: "Is what I'm teaching
actually gonna be relevant anduseful later on down the road
for this group of students?"And you actually got to run

(05:10):
with it and then create thiscourse, this new course. So,
what were the skills that youwere hoping to achieve with the
new course you developed, andand why were those skills so
important?

Melanie Trecek-King (05:21):
Well, if I just go back for a second to
what you said, 'cause it,really hit me: I remember the
actual moment — it had beenbuilding up to that point, but
the actual moment that it hitme — I was teaching students
the stages of mitosis. And Iwas applying it to cancer,
because the thought is that ifwe use issues that are relevant
to students to teach concepts,that it will be more meaningful
to them. They'll learn itbetter; they'll be able to

(05:45):
apply it. And they just lookedabsolutely deflated. They
didn't wanna be there. And Ihad this moment where I
thought, "You know, if, ifthese students ever have cancer
somewhere in their lives, iswhat I taught them going to be
something that they remember?
Is it going to be useful tothem?" And quite frankly, like,

(06:08):
no. They're not gonnaremember proto-oncogenes. And
quite frankly, is that reallywhat they need to know at that
moment? What they need to knowis, "What does this mean? Who
is a reliable source ofinformation here? If these
treatments are recommended,what is the evidence for them?
What are the cost-benefitanalyses? Where do I go to find
reliable information?" And inthat space, cancer in

(06:30):
particular, we have this wholefield of — I wanna say
charlatans, 'cause they may notactually be lying, but they're
pedaling false cures, falsehopes. And people need that
kind of hope, and so in theirtime of need, they're more
likely to fall for that kind ofthing. Which leads me to the
skills that I teach students. Icall them this tree of skills.
And the order is important. Istart — and there's a lot of

(06:52):
overlap to be fair — butcritical thinking, and then
information literacy, andscience literacy. The idea is
that students carry in theirpockets access to basically all
of human's knowledge at thismoment in time. And if they
needed to access it, theycould. The question is, do they
know what they're looking for?
Are they aware of their ownbiases that are leading them to

(07:15):
certain sources, or certainfalse hopes? Are there certain
things that are making themmore vulnerable to the people
that might prey on them? Arethey able to use that
information to make gooddecisions? There's a great Carl
Sagan quote, and it's somethinglike, "If we teach people only
the findings of science, nomatter how useful or even
inspiring they may be, withoutcommunicating the method, then

(07:37):
how is anyone to be able totell the difference between
science and pseudoscience?" Soyes, the process of science is
a process of critical thinking.
However, we do tend to presentscience most of the time. Like,
here's what science haslearned. And to be fair, those
things that we've learned fromscience are really useful and

(07:59):
inspiring. But if we don'tteach the process, so you've
got somebody now who let's sayhas been diagnosed with cancer
and is on their phone andthey're scrolling through
social media and everythinglooks the same. And of course
the algorithms learn who youare. Next thing you know,
there's all of these likepseudo-treatments popping up.
It all looks the same. Somebodywho says that acupuncture can

(08:22):
be used to cure cancer can feelthe same, from someone who
doesn't understand the processof science, as a medical fact.
And so the process is theprocess of critical thinking.
My class everything is opennote. The quizzes are open
note. The exams — and I sayopen note , they're also open

(08:44):
online, because I know for therest of their life they're
gonna have resources availableto them; I want them to be good
consumers with thatinformation, which to me
requires metacognition andcritical thinking and
information literacy and allthose skills that I'm trying to
teach them.

Eric Cross (08:58):
You're basically taking what ... we've taught
science for so long. And morerecently, it's changed to more
focusing on skills. At least inK through 12 . But a lot of it
was just memorization of a tonof different things that now we
can pull up our phone, go onthe internet. You can pull up a
lot of those facts. But thosefacts don't necessarily
translate to actual real-worldskills. When I listen to... I

(09:19):
kind of make this analogysometimes: students say ...
it's funny, I have 12-year-oldsthat say this. They go, "How
come they don't teach us how todo our taxes?" And you know
they're regurgitating what theyhear from adults, right? "Teach
us real-world skills!" And Iwas like, really, if we taught
you right now how to do yourtaxes, how many of you would
really be like, "Oh, this is anawesome lesson! We're really

(09:40):
engaged!" But their point isthat "I wanna learn something
that I could actually use lateron, that's that I'm gonna carry
on." And in your course, you'retalking about these skills that
actually can apply. Like yousaid, if I had cancer and I'm
looking at different types ofmedical procedures, do I have
the skills to really be able toevaluate and make informed
decisions on that? And that's,that's not something that I've

(10:03):
seen explicitly taught reallyanywhere. And I hadn't heard
anybody talk about it, really,until I heard your session,
where you've kind of unpackedthis, and over the last couple
of years, have created someprograms or resources for
educators, where they can takethis into their classroom. So
what were some of those skills,again? What were were some of

(10:26):
the skills that you thought, "Iwanna make sure that my
students can walk out and theyknow how to do this and apply
it to maybe several differentfields"?

Melanie Trecek-King (10:35):
Oh , that's a really good question.
Because the whole thing was aprocess for me. Like, when I
finally let go of Intro Bio, Iwas so glad to see that class
go, by the way. 'Cause I justfelt like I was beating a dead
horse. So when I let go of it,I thought, "W hat do they need
instead?" And for me, what Irealized was I was trying to

(10:56):
make the class I would'vewanted to take. I realized t he
things that I personally didn'tknow, that my own education
maybe let me down a bit. Butthings that I thought were
important. So then I took allof those, synthesized them, t
ried to figure out the bestorder. The c lass is currently
in its third iteration. And Ihope every iteration is an

(11:17):
improvement. But I'm thinkingabout the students that I
taught before the pandemic. Itwas Intro Bio. Up to just maybe
the couple years before thepandemic, and during the
pandemic, we had a new virusand we had a new vaccine and we
had new treatments. There washydroxychloroquine and there
was ivermectin and then there'smasks. Are masks effective?

(11:39):
Well, you know, in whatcircumstances? What kind of
mask? There a re all of thesequestions. And t hat whole
thing was we saw scienceplaying out in real t ime.

Eric Cross (11:50):
Absolutely.

Melanie Trecek-King (11:51):
And so were my students able to follow
that? And then what happened inthat process is that science
became politicized. And in atime where things are uncertain
and we need answers, 'causeit's scary, people want
certainty and science doesn'ttend to provide that.
Especially when it's juststarting out. And then when it
becomes politicized, peopledecide that they're going to —

(12:13):
it's not necessarily aconscious decision — but they
retreat into what people intheir camps are saying or their
groups are saying. Whichactually leads me to one of the
more important parts ofinformation literacy skills in
there , which is most of ourknowledge is shared. We tend to
have overinflated senses ofwhat we individually know. And

(12:34):
studies actually show that withGoogle, if you have access to
Google, you think you'resmarter than if you don't have
access to Google. But we allhave access to knowledge in our
communities, and that's one ofthe reasons humans are so
successful, is that we can eachspecialize in different things
and share our expertise andbecome greater than the sum of
our parts. The problem withthat, of course, is that we

(12:54):
forget what we don't know, andwe assume that we know what the
community knows. And sorecognizing the limits of your
own knowledge and how differentcommunities produce knowledge ,
like the different epistemicprocesses that communities use
to come to knowledge. When itcomes down to it, an important

(13:15):
part of knowing is knowing whoto trust, right? Knowing where
the source of knowledge lives.
And in order to do that, youhave to understand the
processes that they're using tocome to that knowledge and the
limits of your own knowledge.
And then how to find who hasthat knowledge so that you can

(13:36):
use that to make betterdecisions.

Eric Cross (13:38):
So, when I hear what you're doing with your
college students, and I thinkabout what I'm doing in the
classroom, in the middleschool, we are really focusing
on literacy as skills. Reading,writing, speaking, listening.
And then when I think of thenext step of the journey, your
information literacy and theliteracy you're teaching is
really the application of thosethings in the real world. And

(14:01):
the examples that you gave arevery critical examples.
Evaluating claims about Covid.
Making informed decisions abouta medical procedure that you
might need. And we all get thatapplied to us. We're scrolling
through social media andsomehow social media is
listening. It's figuring outexactly what I'm doing, because
all of a sudden the ads aretelling me ... how did you know

(14:22):
I was alking about KitchenAidmixers now? I just said
KitchenAid mixers and it'sgonna show up in my feed! But
I take that in the sameway from the same place that I
take in maybe an oncologist. Soit's it's coming through the
same channels. So now I kind ofwanna pivot. So we've talked

(14:44):
about what you're doing, whyyou're doing it, the connection
between "am I really teachingthe skills that my students
need in the science class? Isit really critical thinking
explicitly or is it just kindof implied?" Now I wanna ask
you how you do it. What's theannotated, abbreviated kind of
syllabus of your course?

Melanie Trecek-King (15:03):
So the course is called Science for
Life. And the premise behind itis the kinds of skills and
understanding of the process ofscience that they would need to
make good decisions to beempowered in a world based on
science. And so the very firstlecture, I say, "OK, I'm gonna
tell you a story and I justwant you to listen to the

(15:25):
story. And at the end I'm gonnaask you why I told the story."
And the story that I tell themis some of the history of the
witchcraft trials in Europe.
And I start with the MalleusMaleficarum, or the Hammer of
Witches , from the Pope, andabout how people would accuse

(15:48):
witches of causing birthdefects or storms or crops
dying. And , the best evidencethat they had to absolutely
know somebody was a witch wasif somebody accused them, and
then if they were accused, ifthey confessed. OK? But the
problem is, to get them toconfess, they would torture

(16:09):
them. Roasting over coals, orsplitting until somebody broke.
And so I tell my students, "OK,this was absolute proof that
someone was guilty ofwitchcraft. I don't know about
you; I would confess toanything, right? Make it stop!"
So this is where I get to askstudents, "Why would I ask you
this? Why would I tell you thisstory? And traumatize you on
the very first day of lecture?"And they see the reasoning,

(16:33):
right ? They thought they hadevidence. The question was, is
that good evidence? And so, youknow, I'm getting students to
have a basic understanding ofepistemology, right? Without
calling it that, or withoutgoing into all of the
philosophical background ofepistemology. Apply this to
your own reasoning. What areyou wrong about? Well, you

(16:54):
probably wouldn't know. OK, howwould you know if you were
wrong? Like what kinds ofthings do you feel that you're
so right about? How good isyour evidence for that? So what
I want them to do isinternalize the thinking about
thinking, and analyzing howthey come to conclusions, and
proportioning how strongly theybelieve. Their confidence in

(17:16):
how right they are. So I thinkstarting with that kind of
misinformation, and gettingstudents to internalize that
process is important. But Ithink the example is really
useful, because most of mystudents don't believe in
witchcraft. Right? So it's notan issue that would immediately
threaten them in some way. Sowhen, when a belief is tied to

(17:37):
identity or how we seeourselves or is really
important to us, then it's verydifficult to be objective about
that belief. And so by startingwith witchcraft, it's not
triggering. I get them to thinkabout thinking and practice
that muscle so that when we getto those more important issues,
they have the skills they needto evaluate them .

Eric Cross (17:55):
So would it be fair to say that your Science for
Life class is really appliedscientific thinking for the
real world?

Melanie Trecek-Kin (18:01):
Absolutely.
That's the idea. I mean,science is too good to keep to
ourselves, right? And it'severywhere. So how can you
understand the world through ascientific lens?

Eric Cross (18:10):
What are the nuts and bolts of how you teach your
students these strategies? Whatdo you do? What are some
strategies and techniques thatwe can maybe share with
listeners? And then where Iwant to go after that is I
wanna ask you, how early do youthink this can be started? So
lemme start off first with ,what do you do?

Melanie Trecek-King (18:28):
So I use three different strategies. One
is , I provide students with atoolkit. And the toolkit is one
that I created and it is likemy one toolkit to rule them
all. It is trying to applycritical thinking and science
reasoning all together in oneplace. So that if students are

(18:50):
met with a claim, they've gotthe toolkit with an acronym.
They can now start and havesomewhere to go. In that if I
gave you a claim and said,"Just critically think through
this claim ," I mean , that's amighty task. But if you have a
structured toolkit , then it'shopefully a systemic way that's
helpful. The toolkit issummarized by FLOATER. I have

(19:11):
published it on SkepticalInquirer. It's free. So it's
Falsifiability, Logical,Objectivity, Alternative
Explanations, TentativeConclusions, Evidence, and
Reproducibility. So I providestudents with a toolkit. The
next thing I do is I use a lotof misinformation in class.

Back to what C arl Sagan says: What I heard was we should use (19:32):
undefined
pseudoscience to teach studentsthe difference between a
pseudo-scientific process and ascientific process. So, I use
science denial, conspiracytheories, and give my students
a lot of opportunities topractice evaluating claims with

(19:54):
the toolkit. And the otherthing I do is, I use
inoculation activities. Soinoculation theory is based on
William McGuire's originalresearch in the '60s, which is
basically like a vaccineanalogy. Where you can inject a
small amount of a virus orbacterium into the body, so
that it creates an immuneresponse, so that it can learn

(20:16):
the real thing. And so in thereal world, it can fight it
off. Inoculation theory doesthe same thing, but with
misinformation. So, what we cando is, in controlled
environments, expose studentsto little bits of
misinformation so that they canrecognize it in the real world.
There's different kinds ofinoculation, but I'm a big fan

(20:37):
of what's called active andtechnique-based inoculation. S
o technique-based means thatstudents are learning not the
facts of misinformation, notfactually why this thing is
wrong, but about the techniqueused to deceive. So maybe the
use of fake experts. Or maybethe use of anecdotes. Or the

(20:58):
use of logical fallacies. Theother part of that is active,
which is where students createthe misinformation. So for
example, my students, j ustnow, we finished covering
pseudoscience. And I teachstudents the characteristics of
pseudoscience. And basically wehave fun with it. Where they
pretend to be grifters and theysell a pseudoscience product.

(21:22):
And so they have to make an adlike they'd see on social
media, using the differenttechniques. And the point there
is that it's supposed to befunny, right? And lighthearted.
But in a real way, by using thetechniques used to sell
something like pseudoscience,it's opening their eyes. You
can't unsee how everyalternative product has, "it's

(21:44):
an all-natural and used forcenturies and millions use it
and look at this person whosays, 'Wow, it worked for me!'
And it's certified by somesociety that doesn't exist, but
this doctor behind it says thatit's really great!" I mean,
it's all the same stuff. Sothey create the misinformation
using their own techniques.

Eric Cross (22:02):
That's one of my favorite things that you've
talked about, and I want todive in that a little bit more.
But when you're teaching thetoolkit, FLOATER, what does
that look like in theclassroom, when you're actually
breaking all of those thingsdown? What does it look like as
you're walking your studentsthrough this, and you're kind
of coaching them on all ofthose different things? 'Cause
I feel like some things mightbe like, "Oh yeah, I got that."
And then some of them might be,"Oh, what is that?"

Melanie Trecek-King (22:24):
Yeah, it takes me probably a good solid
lecture to get through thebasis of the toolkit. But then
over the rest of the semester,I'll spend more time going into
different parts, differentrules, a bit more in-depth. So,
for example, logical fallaciesand objectivity. So the rule of
objectivity basically statesthat you need to be honest with

(22:45):
yourself. I'm gonna quoteFeynman here, so: "The first
principle is that you must notfool yourself — and you are the
easiest person to fool." Wedon't tend to think that we can
be fooled. But of course wecan. So actually, if you wanna
talk about it, I start class byfooling my students.

Eric Cross (23:03):
Wait, what do you do? What do you do for that?

Melanie Trecek-King (23:05):
Oh, so this is really fun. Day 1 of
class , after the syllabus, Itell my ... so you're in my
class now, Eric . "So I have afriend, and she's a psychic.
She's an astrologer and she'spretty good at what she does. I
mean, she's got books and she'sbeen on TV and stuff. She knows

(23:27):
I teach this course aboutskepticism. And so she's agreed
to test how effective she is byproviding personality
assessments to students inclass. So if you wanna
participate, what I need fromyou is your birthday , your
full name, answer a fewquestions. Like , if your house
was on fire and you could takeone thing, what would it be? Or
if you could get paid foranything to do anything for a

(23:51):
living, what would it be? Um,there's a third one. Oh! If you
could have any superpower, whatwould it be?" So the next
class, it's usually over aweekend. The next class I say,
"OK, I've got your personalityassessments back, but remember,
we wanna test how effective sheis. So in order to do that, I
need you to read your profileas quietly as possible. And

(24:11):
then I'm gonna have you rateher accuracy on a scale of 1 to
5. OK? So close your eyes; rateher." Over the years doing
this, it's about a 4.3 to 4.5out of 5. They think she's
pretty accurate. OK? "So now,if you feel comfortable, get
with a person next to you. AndI want you to talk about what

(24:31):
parts of the personalityassessment really spoke to you
and, and why , and why youthought she was accurate or
not." And it takes them 5, 10minutes before they realize
they all got the same one. So ,this is not my original
experiment. It was first doneby Bertram Forer in ... I think
it was the '50s. And it's donein psychology classrooms. James

(24:53):
Randi made it famous. But thepersonality assessment itself
is full of what are calledBarnum statements. So, named
after P.T. Barnum. These arestatements that are very
generic. So, "You have a needto be liked and admired by
people. You are often quiet andreserved, but there are times
where you can be the life ofthe party."

Eric Cross (25:13):
How do you know this about me, by the way? This
is a — I feel like you know meright now.

Melanie Trecek-King (25:17):
"There are times where you've wondered
whether you've done the rightthing."

Eric Cross (25:19):
This is getting weird.

Melanie Trecek-King (25:21):
I'm just on fire, right? So these are
Barnum statements. They're thebasis of personality assessment
.

Eric Cross (25:29):
Mel , can I pause you right there? You said
Barnum. Is that the sameBarnum, like Barnum & Bailey
Circus?

Melanie Trecek-King (25:34):
Yeah. P.T.
Barnum, who didn't actually say"There's a sucker born every
minute," but we attribute himwith that kind of ethos. These
statements though, if you reada horoscope or even like
personality indicators, likethe MBTI, it is basically
pseudo-scientific. And it endsup with lots of these Barnum
statements. They produce what'scalled the Barnum Effect, which

(25:56):
is, "Wow, that's so me! How didyou know me?" I could even do
more. Like, you have a box ofphotos in your house that need
to be sorted. Or unusedprescriptions. And these can
apply to nearly everyone, butthey produce this effect where
we go, "Wow, that is so me!"Right? So by fooling them this

(26:19):
way, I get to ... well, so thenext thing is, "Yes, I lied to
you. And I'd like to tell you Iwon't do that again. But I'm
not going to, 'cause I might.
So be on your guard." But I didit for free. And why did I do
it? "I did it because I couldtell you 'I could fool you,'

(26:39):
but you wouldn't necessarilybelieve me. So I fooled you, so
that you would learn what itfeels like to be fooled." It's
not fun. But we're gonna make ajoke outta this. And students
are almost never upset aboutthis 'cause it's a fun process
and they're all fooled. Andagain, the point is, I didn't
disprove psychic powers. Ididn't just disprove psychics
with this exercise. But I didshow you how easy it was to

(27:02):
fake. So if somebody is gonnatell you that they can know
these things about you throughsome way, hopefully the
evidence they provide should bestronger than something that's
easily faked. Right?
Extraordinary claims requireextraordinary evidence. If you
claim to be able to read mypersonality based on my
birthdate, then I need morethan something that you can be
taught to do in 15 minutes. So, I fool them to convince them

(27:26):
that they could be fooled.

Eric Cross (27:27):
You're giving them a practice scenario for
thinking. And I was thinkingabout basketball. I grew up
playing basketball. And mycoach would have our own team
be the defenders of the nextteam we were gonna play, so
that we can be prepared for thedefense. We were gonna see.
Now, when I'm thinking abouteducation, and what you just
said reminded me of this, it'slike we're often just teaching

(27:51):
offense. We're always teachingthe plays. We're always
teaching what to do. But werarely teach defense. What
happens when someone comestowards you and, and they
challenge you or they come atyou with claims? How do we
evaluate this? And I think inpockets we do it. We do
claim-evidence-reasoning. Wepresent claims and evidence and

(28:13):
reasoning. But we don't alwayshave practice defending them.
And I think there's greatresources. There's
Argumentation Toolkit andthere's all these awesome
resources that do this. Butdoes that fit? You're kind of
having them practice defense?

Melanie Trecek-King (28:26):
Yeah. You know, that's brilliant. I never
considered that analogy. But ,yeah, in the real world, you
don't just get to always try toscore all the time. Someone's
gonna challenge you and giveyou a claim that maybe you
haven't heard before. So how doyou think through it?

Eric Cross (28:41):
Yeah. And you become better. So now I'm
thinking about how early couldwe start doing this? For one, I
love the idea of lying to yourstudents, because I do that.
And it's just such a funscenario. How early could we
start implementing thesestrategies or these ideas or

(29:02):
these toolkits? In your mind,what do you imagine? How early
could we start this with youngpeople?

Melanie Trecek-King (29:07):
Yeah. I'm so glad you asked that
question, 'cause honestly, bythe time they get to me, it's
almost too late. And I don'twanna say it's too late, 'cause
it's never too late. But, oh ,we need to start so much
earlier! That example that Igave about the selling
pseudoscience argument? I havea wonderful colleague , Bertha
Vasquez, who's a middle schoolteacher in Miami and the

(29:28):
director of TIES at CFI. Shedid this with her middle school
students. And quite frankly,their examples were just as
good, or in some cases better,than my college students. And
they had so much fun with it,too. And she just said that ,
you know, , theyactually are more savvy with
the kinds of things that theysee online than we — I don't

(29:50):
wanna say give them credit for.
But almost that we want tobelieve. My students give me
examples of things that arefrom corners of the internet
that I didn't know existed. Andquite frankly, that's probably
a good thing for my own mentalhealth. But students are on
there too, like middle schoolstudents, and we need to
prepare them for the kinds ofthings that they see in the

(30:12):
wild.

Eric Cross (30:13):
So in middle school , definitely. Now, you've also
done some work in high schoolas well, right? In Oklahoma?
Did you do some. ...?

Melanie Trecek-King (30:17):
Yeah.

Eric Cross (30:18):
...some work with high schoolers? What was that
like? Did you see any impactthere?

Melanie Trecek-King (30:21):
So I didn't actually do it in
Oklahoma. I have taught thecourse ... actually, you were
talking about younger kids.
I've taught the course to highschoolers in my area that are
parts of dual enrollment. Andthey absolutely ate up the
curriculum. And they werewonderful, wonderful students.
And it was completelyappropriate for ... they were
juniors, actually. But thecourse has also been taught in

(30:42):
Oklahoma, through a dualenrollment program as well. And
it was a small sample size. Butwe have pre-post testing that
showed that it improved theircritical thinking, their
acceptance of science. Butanecdotally the head of the
program there said that in hisyears doing this, he'd never
seen a course that helped themimprove in their other courses

(31:06):
so well. So , I felt veryrewarded by hearing this. But
apparently their criticalthinking skills and information
literacy skills helped themsucceed in their other courses
that they were taking. And Ilove that the students were
transferring those skills toother classes. That's the whole
point.

Eric Cross (31:23):
And that's a big ... I think that what you just
said is really the core,especially of what we've been

talking about this season (31:27):
What you're talking about and what
you're teaching can transferand supports literacy. And this
is an example of science doingthat across all other content
areas. So I think that that'shuge, that that was said. What
do people say about thiscourse? I know I went on your

(31:49):
website, and I looked at someof the comments that some folks
were saying , and I know it'sjust a snippet, but what do you
hear from the education worldabout this? Because I don't see
it in many places. I see itkind of embedded, sprinkled
into different content areas.
But you're actually teaching itexplicitly. Do you tend to find

(32:09):
positive feedback,overwhelmingly? Or do you get
pushback on on some of this?
What's it been like for you?

Melanie Trecek-King (32:16):
I think the biggest pushback — and it's
good pushback, and I wouldagree entirely — is with
inoculation activities, you doneed to be careful to , when
you debrief students, you wannatell them why you did what you
did and to use their powers forgood and not for fooling other
people. And I thinkimportantly, for not putting
misinformation out into thewild without having context

(32:40):
around it. So if you do thesekinds of inoculation
activities, like if you haveyour students create
pseudoscience ads, don't justlet them put them on social
media. Obviously, you can'tcontrol everything that they're
doing. But explain to them whyyou wouldn't wanna do that. As
far as everything else, I'veheard really great feedback.
You're referencing my website.
So , when I put together thecourse, I was trying to find

(33:04):
resources for students to read.
Textbooks are ridiculouslyexpensive and I couldn't find
anything that I really wantedstudents to buy. So I just
started writing, and I put iton my site. I have a site
that's basically the core ofthe curriculum. More in
progress. And then I've gotsome of the topics that we
explore and those are allassigned readings. My students

(33:27):
are captive, in that I knowthey want a grade, and for four
months they have to sit with mefor the entire semester, in
that I've specifically orderedthe content in a way that would
be most conducive to themlearning these things. On the
internet, though, and on socialmedia, 'cause I post on there
as well, people come in fromall kinds of entry points, and

(33:49):
so the goal would be to havethem start at the beginning and
go to the end. But people ...
I'm pleasantly surprised thatthere is an audience for
critical thinking and scienceliteracy content out there. And
so that really warms my heart.
But I am doing more and morefor educators. And so I have a

(34:09):
section for educators. I putcontent on there. I put
assignments, t he assignmentsthat we've talked about and
more, are on there. And theeducators that I've had use it
have just been reallywonderful. Like, I hear great
things. If I might, the biggestissue that I'm having is
actually reaching educators.
I've gone to — I met you atNSCA, actually, that was only

(34:29):
last summer.

Eric Cross (34:30):
Oh, wow. Wow.

Melanie Trecek-King (34:32):
Right?

Eric Cross (34:32):
Yeah, you're right.
It wasn't even a year.

Melanie Trecek-King (34:35):
Yeah, I think it was like July last
year. So , um, you've been tothe conferences. And I just
went to the last one as well.
But I have yet to figure out away to really get in front of
enough educators to share thecontent. So if anybody's
listening and is interested inlearning more, please let me
know!

Eric Cross (34:52):
Yes. And we talked about your website, but I
didn't say what the websitewas. So it's
ThinkingIsPower.com.

Melanie Trecek-King (34:57):
Yes.

Eric Cross (34:58):
And on there, there's tons of resources.
There is the toolkit. And it'sall free.

Melanie Trecek-King (35:06):
Yes.

Eric Cross (35:07):
And there's a dope t-shirt on there that I just
bought today, that Melanie'sactually wearing right now. It
says, "Be curious, beskeptical, and be humble." And
I love that. Because I thinkone of the things that we can't
forget about teaching peoplehow to think and critically
evaluating information,sometimes those conversations

(35:29):
can become very dehumanizing.
And what I mean by that is itsometimes can become, like,
intellectual sport, where weforget that there's a human
being on the other other side.
And we lose that empathy andcompassion. We can kind of see
that. It just becomes thisintellectual jousting and
arguing. And one of the thingsI know about you, and when you
talk about this or you talkabout the work that you do, and

(35:50):
even the shirt that you'rewearing, there's this, "be
humble." There's this humanthat is never lost in this. And

you said it, too (35:55):
When you're teaching your students and
you're equipping them with allof these intellectual skills
and all of these tools, to useit for good. So to maintain
your humanity, to maintain yourcharacter, and then to use it
to edify and lift people up,not to go out and do harm. That
balance, I think, is so, soimportant. So it's something
that I really appreciate aboutyou and how you teach.

Melanie Trecek-King (36:19):
I appreciate those kind words.
Actually—

Eric Cross (36:21):
Oh, of course!

Melanie Trecek-King (36:22):
—and if I might , I sometimes see people
using critical thinking like aweapon. It's like , " I have
learned fallacies and I'm justgonna use the tools of critical
thinking to tell you why you'restupid, or why you're wrong,
and why my position is right!"But real critical thinking
involves applying those samestandards to your own thought

(36:42):
processes. And even somethinglike argumentation: the goal of
our argumentation is not to BEright; it's to GET it right .
And so we're on the same team.
If we're arguing aboutsomething, if the idea is in
scientific argumentation we'retrying to find the truth, which
one of us is making a betterargument based on the evidence?

(37:04):
Can your perspective help mesee my own blind spots and vice
versa? And the more differentperspectives that we have, the
more able we are to findwhatever reality is. But we are
in this together. And so, yeah,I think ... I'm glad to hear
that that's coming through. Butif you don't have the kind of

(37:25):
humility that says, "You know,I could be wrong," then you're
never gonna change your mindanyway. So having the humility
to say, I'm wrong.

Eric Cross (37:33):
Yeah. You end up just seeing people just defend
turf, as opposed to support"look for truth." And I know
for me, my own educationjourney, I end up with more
questions than answers anyways.
So I go in trying to find ananswer for something and I end
up with 10 more questions. AndI go, "OK, this is kind of how
it is." You go down this rabbithole and you just end up with
all these different questions.

(37:54):
And it forces the humility,because you're like, "I don't
know! I think this is what itcould be, but it could also be
these other answers orexplanations. So this is just
where I'm at, based on what weknow right now, at this present
time, which might shift."

Melanie Trecek-King (38:07):
And that sounds reasonable. Yes. Which
might shift. Yes.

Eric Cross (38:11):
And especially for us as life-science biology
teachers, our content issomething that definitely
shifts. I know some of thethings I teach now are not
things that I learned when Iwas even in middle school. Just
because things evolve. Theychange. We learn, we get new
data. That's just the way itis.

Melanie Trecek-King (38:24):
And Pluto is no longer a
planet.

Eric Cross (38:26):
I know. Rest in — well, no, Pluto's still there.
Yeah. It's no longer a planet.
But that was one part of mykindergarten memorizations
is Pluto being inthere.

Melanie Trecek-King (38:36):
Gotta change your mind.

Eric Cross (38:38):
I know. Any words of advice for science educators
out there who want to focusmore on honing these critical
thinking skills and strategieswith their own students, but
they don't know where to start?
Where would you point them? Orwhat advice would you give
them?

Melanie Trecek-King (38:52):
I think start with what you want the
students to know. And notnecessarily the FACTS that you
want students to know, butstart with the skills that you
want them to know. And thenreally be honest with your
process. When I designedScience for Life, I started

(39:13):
with, "these are the skillsthat I want students to know."
And everything was in serviceof that. So this sort of
backwards design, I think,helped me follow a path that
was more likely to be useful,if that makes any sense. But it
really required doing it allover again. So don't be afraid

(39:34):
to question the things thatyou're currently doing, even if
that's all you've been taughtor all you know.

Eric Cross (39:41):
What I'm hearing is, don't be afraid to question
your own assumptions about whatyou're doing. And don't be
afraid to adapt or change ormodify. Kinda, pivot. Be
flexible.

Melanie Trecek-King (39:51):
Yes, be flexible and pivot. And this is
where I'm in a differentposition than middle school and
high school educators. BecauseI have complete freedom over
what I teach in my class.

Eric Cross (40:01):
Sure.

Melanie Trecek-King (40:01):
At the end of the semester, I always joke
with non-majors that there'snothing they have to know,
which actually gives me a lotof flexibility, because I could
teach 'em a lot of differentthings. So if there are things
that you have to teachstudents, obviously that's one
thing. But I personally thinkthat the way that we've been
teaching science needs arefresher. A rethinking. And so

(40:24):
I would say , " If you wantyour students to learn science
literacy, honestly ask, whatdoes that mean to you? And what
would that look like to get tothat point?" For me, though, it
was also keeping in mind thatmaybe I didn't already know the
best way to do that.

Eric Cross (40:43):
One of the things you mentioned earlier is trying
to reach out to educators. AndI know that when we work
together, it's a forcemultiplier. And what you're
doing is developing skills. Andthere's these skills that are
happening right now in academiathat you're doing. And then how
do we transfer that into middleand high school. Or, I'm sorry,

(41:05):
middle and elementary school,high school. We need to get
more people into thisconversation to kind of
brainstorm and figure that out.
We have a Facebook group,Science Connections: The
Community, where we haveeducators that gather. That can
be one place we start theconversation. And again, I know
on your website you've beensuper active on social media;
you've grown your presence onTwitter and all these different

(41:27):
places, engaging with folks.
Which is awesome. 'Cause I knowI see your posts and I'm saving
the things that you're postingand I'm thinking of ways that I
can do it in my classroom. I'mgonna take that product. By the
way, is that on your website,the lesson that you do with the
product?

Melanie Trecek-King (41:43):
No, actually. So the article, "How
to Sell Pseudoscience" is ... Iknow Bertha Vasquez wrote up a
version of it.

Eric Cross (41:50):
Maybe we can grab that. 'Cause we might be able
to put that into the show notesfor folks, because she's a
middle school educator. Ifthere's already something
that's been done for teacherslike us, we're like, "Yeah, let
me get that and let me remix itand make it my own!" if there's
already a exemplar out there.

Melanie Trecek-King (42:04):
Yeah, she's done it. And so I will
absolutely share that with you.

Eric Cross (42:08):
So, all season long , we've been talking about
science as the underdog. Wekind of framed it, you know,
science oftentimes takes a backseat to math and English. It's
kinda the first thing to go. Orthe first area where time can
get cut. Because of what getstested gets focused on,
oftentimes. And then inaddition to that, when you're a

(42:28):
multi-subject teacher,elementary science isn't just
one thing — it's every field.
You know, you're a biologist,which is different than a
geologist. And when you'reteaching every subject, that's
a lot. And you might not havehad a science class for years.
And the realities that we'reseeing over and over with
different researchers andpractitioners is that science

(42:50):
could actually enhanceliteracy, and building those
skills. And I think you reallytalked about it with the
critical thinking skills. Thosecan transfer. Or the
administrator that said, "Thisis one of the only courses I've
seen where it transfers toother areas." Could you share
maybe with our listeners, justany advice for advocating for

(43:10):
science in their own world?

Melanie Trecek-King (43:13):
Wow, I'm not sure I'm qualified to
answer that question! One ofthe things that comes to mind
though — because I waslistening to your last episode
and educators ... I honestlydidn't realize how little time
they had for science. And howoften science was then the

(43:34):
first to go, to allow room forother subjects. But science
overlaps with a lot of otherissues. And so I feel like
there could be a way to bringin science when teaching these
other subjects. So, for example, argumentation and logical

(43:55):
fallacies are easy to apply toreading and writing.
Information literacy, and beingable to find good information
online, teaching students howto laterally read, to be able
to check a source, or how touse Google effectively, to put
in neutral search terms to findsources, or teaching students

(44:18):
how to recognize thecharacteristics of

conspiratorial thinking (44:22):
All of these things can overlap with
so many other subjects. So thescientist in me is a little
biased towards science beingimportant enough to do this.
But try to bring it into theother subjects. It doesn't have
to be completely separate.

Eric Cross (44:43):
So integrating science into other things. And
I ... big believer. And ahundred percent agree with you.
Now I'm gonna ask a questionthat kinda like takes us
backwards. You shared an appwith me when we first met that
I thought was really cool. AndI know it's a friend or
colleague of yours. But as amiddle school teacher, I

(45:06):
thought it was great, becauseit was something that my
students could download andpractice some of the skills
that you're talking about.
Would you talk a little bitabout the cranky uncle? Is it
the Cranky Uncle app ?

Melanie Trecek-King (45:17):
Cranky Uncle.

Eric Cross (45:18):
Could you share a little bit about that?

Melanie Trecek-King (45:20):
Yeah.
Cranky Uncle is awesome. So,Cranky Uncle is the brainchild
of John Cook , who is thefounder of Skeptical Science
and the author of the 97%Consensus study on climate
change. Cranky Uncle ... sohe's also a cartoonist. And
Cranky Uncle is a cartoon gamewhere ... I don't even have to

(45:41):
explain who Cranky Uncle is tomy students. Everybody
inherently gets the, thecharacter, right? So he's like
the guy at Thanksgiving thatyou don't wanna talk to because
he denies climate change andhe's just really cranky. But
Cranky Uncle uses thetechniques of science denial,
which are summarized by theacronym FLICC: So it's Fake

(46:01):
experts, Logical fallacies,Impossible expectations ,
Cherry-picking, andConspiratorial thinking. So he
uses those techniques. Again,this is technique-based
inoculation. So they recognizethe techniques in the game, and
you earn cranky points. And asyou make Cranky crankier and
crankier because you'rerecognizing his techniques, you

(46:23):
learn the techniques of sciencedenial, and level up and open
up other techniques. This isanother one of those examples
where climate change has a lotof science behind it, right?
And if you wanted to get to thescience behind climate change
for any particular issue ... solet's say it's cold today, so
I'm gonna say there's noclimate change. OK? If I'm

(46:45):
gonna unpack that at a factuallevel, and with science, we
could be here for a while. Butif I told you, "That's like
saying, 'I just ate a sandwichso there's no global hunger.'"
OK? So that's a parallelargument. Humorous. Love to use
this kind of argumentation,'cause it makes for some ... I
mean, it's funny, but you getthe point. It's an anecdote.

(47:08):
And anecdotes aren't goodevidence. So just like that,
you could teach the techniqueof using an anecdotal fallacy
for climate-change denial. So ,I have my students play this
game. You could do it whenyou're studying argumentation.
You could do it for sciencedenial. I use an inoculation
extension with that, where Ihave my students pretend that

(47:30):
... um , actually, back up fora second. So I teach a class on
critical thinking. And at theend of semesters I would get
emails from students on, well,they're failing the class, but
they really shouldn't, for allof these reasons. And reading
these emails, I'm like, "If youthink that's a good argument,
you clearly didn't learn what Iwas hoping you would learn." So

(47:53):
I now have my students , earlyin the semester, after they
play Cranky, pretend that it isthe end of the semester and
you're failing the class andyou're failing because you
didn't do the work . Use atleast four of the fallacies
from class to argue for why youshould pass. So they have to
put it on a discussion forum ,and they'll say things like,
"Well, if you fail me, then Iwon't get into graduate school

(48:14):
and then people will die and itwill all be your fault." Or,
"My dog died, and so I wasreally sad." Or , um, "You're
just a terrible teacher. Andyou're short. So I don't like
you." Or that kind of thing.
So, oh , they love to attack mycharacter. It's really funny.
But it's supposed to be funny.
And the point is, the studentsare using those arguments,

(48:36):
they're using the fallacies, toargue for something. And so by
creating that misinformationthemselves, they learn how
those fallacies work. But takentogether, I mean, everything
that we just talked aboutthere, Cranky Uncle, and the
fallacy assignment, or whateveriteration you want that to be
in, that doesn't have to be ina purely science unit. Right?

(48:56):
That could be sociology. Itcould be argumentation. It
could be English.

Eric Cross (49:01):
Absolutely. That could be totally a prompt in an
English class. And practiced inthere. And then this could be
an interdisciplinary thing,going back and forth between
English and and science. Justhaving these discussions and
looking at it from differentangles. And you're practicing
the skills in two differentcontexts. So you get into
argumentation. And then thatapp , I know I had fun with it.
And the questions on theredefinitely resonate with people

(49:25):
in my own family. I'm like, "Ifeel like I'm talking to
exactly somebody that I'mrelated to right now."
Melanie, anything else that youwanna share, or discuss or
highlight , before we wrap up ?

Melanie Trecek-King (49:39):
So we could talk about lateral
reading, if you like. 'Cause Iknow a lot of educators use the
crap test.

Eric Cross (49:45):
Please, please, please talk about that.

Melanie Trecek-King (49:47):
So , when evaluating sources, a lot of
educators teach what's calledthe CRAP test. And I wish I
remembered what it stood for.
But basically what you do , alot of us have been taught when
you go to a website, to figureout if it's reliable, you wanna
go to the about page. Read themission; see who they are;

(50:10):
maybe read some of the content;evaluate the language. So is it
inflammatory? Are they makinglogical arguments? Are the
links to reputable sources aswell? And the problem is that
if a site wants to mislead you,they're not going to tell you
that it's a bunk site, right?
They're just gonna do a goodjob of misleading you. And so ,

(50:30):
what you wanna do instead ...
the CRAP test basically is anevaluation of a site. And
that's what's called verticalreading. So you're looking
through a site to determine ifit's reliable. Uh, I think his
name's Sam Wineberg atStanford, proposed something
called lateral reading. Where,instead of on the site, what
you wanna do is literally opena new tab and into the search
engine type the source. Youcould do the claim, too. And

(50:52):
then something like Reliabilityor FactCheck or whatever it's
that you're checking, and thensee what other reputable sites
have to say about it. So, intheir study, actually , they
did a really interesting studywhere they compared
professional fact checkers toPhD historians to Stanford

(51:13):
undergrads. And they evaluated— I wish you could ... um ,
there's two pediatricianorganizations. One's like the
American Association ofPediatrics and the American
Academy of Pediatricians,something like that. They're
very similar sounding. So yougive them to students. I do
this with my students as well,the same study. So I give my
students those two websites.
And I say, "Which one of theseis more reliable?" And they do

(51:35):
exactly what most of us do,which is spend time on the site
looking around. And most of thetime, if not nearly all the
time, they come to the wrongconclusion. And so then I tell

them what lateral reading is: "OK, instead of looking through (51:47):
undefined
the site, open a new tab,search the organization and
reliability." Something likethat. And it takes probably 30
seconds before they realize oneof them has been dubbed by the
Southern Poverty Law Center asa hate group. As opposed to the
other one, which is like ahundred year old huge
pediatrician organization thatproduces their own journals and

(52:10):
so on. But nearly all mystudents are fooled. And in the
study, none of the factcheckers were fooled. I'm gonna
get the number right. It'ssomething like 50% of the
historians and 20% of theStanford undergraduates got the
correct answer. And they spenta lot more time on it. So it's
a great way to teach studentshow to use the power of the
internet to evaluate sourcesmuch more quickly and ,

(52:33):
effectively. And yes, useWikipedia, right? Wikipedia is
not a final answer, butWikipedia is actually pretty
accurate. So if Wikipedia isthe first place you stop, then
yes, go there, see whatWikipedia says, and then follow
some of their sources.

Eric Cross (52:47):
What popped in my head was like, Yelp reviews for
websites. That almost soundslike what it was. It's like
when I search for a product, Idon't go and read the product
description marketing. 'Causethat's all designed to sell me
on something. But I'll go andlook in Reliability, if it's
like a car, or just other sitesto cross-reference. And that

(53:07):
sounds like what you weretalking about is like
cross-referencing. Seeing whatFactChecker [sic] said about
this site, versus seeing what asite says about itself.

Melanie Trecek-King (53:14):
Well, that's a great analogy. Because
if I wanted to know if aproduct was effective, what the
manufacturer says about theproduct, clearly there's a
strong chance of bias. Right?
They're going to be on theirbest , um, put their best foot
forward. Versus, what doindependent reviewers say about
this product?

Eric Cross (53:35):
Yep . And I am known to research something to
death. And I get somethingcalled "paralysis by analysis."

Melanie Trecek-King (53:42):
Ohhhh, yeah.

Eric Cross (53:44):
And it's so bad that even if I'm trying to buy,
like, towels, I need to findthe best-bang-for-the-buck
towel. I have to defer some ofthese decisions out, because
I'm on the internet for threehours now. I'll be a
pseudo-expert in towels, andthread count, and all of that
stuff. But yeah, that maybethat's just the science person.

Melanie Trecek-King (54:03):
I mean, I feel your pain. I do the same
thing. It's annoying.
Like, it's just towels. Whatdoes it really matter? But
yeah.

Eric Cross (54:10):
Coffee! It doesn't matter what it is. I just need
to go, "OK, I have to use thesepowers for good. Otherwise I'm
gonna be researching forever."

Melanie Trecek-King (54:16):
I wanna say one other thing. So ,
again, this is a college classand I have a lot of freedom.
But one of the drivingphilosophies behind the class
is a wonderful quote in a book, Schick and Vaughn, How to
Think about Weird Things. Andthey said , " The quality of
your life is determined by thequality of your decisions, and

(54:37):
the quality of your decisionsis determined by the quality of
your thinking." And I know mystudents want a grade. But I'm
really trying to teach them howto be empowered through better
thinking. That's where the name"Thinking is Power" came from.
I mean, we say "Knowledge isPower," but it's not enough to
know things. And there's toomuch to know. So being able to
think and be empowered to haveyour own agency and not fall

(55:03):
for someone's bunk is my goalfor my students.

Eric Cross (55:07):
And doing that is gonna help them through the
rest of their lives. Not beswindled, not be taken
advantage of, be able to makebetter decisions. There's so
many benefits to building thatskill. And I know your students
have definitely grown andbenefited. I'm sure you've
heard, long after you've taughtthem, heard back from them and
how they've applied that courseto their lives. Melanie, thank
you so much for being here. Fora few things. One, for

(55:32):
providing and filling thisspace where there's such a
need. Again, the criticalthinking resources, the tools
that you used, are so, soimportant. If we ever lived in
a time where they werecritical, it was really what we
experienced during the pandemicin the last few years. We
watched people's informationliteracy and science literacy
play out in real time . And weliterally saw life-and-death

(55:56):
decisions being made based offthose skills. That highlighted,
I think how important this is.
And then, taking the time togenerate resources for
educators like myself, that wecan take and adapt and put into
our classroom and startteaching our students. 'Cause
like you said, by the time theyget to you, they're , they're
so far downstream or so far ina system that, depending on the

(56:22):
teachers that they've had andthe education system they've
been in, may or may not haveeven touched on these things.
They might have learned a lotof facts, but they may not have
built their muscle to be ableto critically analyze and
interpret the world aroundthem. And you've just — even
the last year, it hasn't evenbeen a year since we talked the
first time — I've watched yourresources continue to grow, and

(56:43):
you share them. And so I , onbehalf of those of us in K–12 ,
thank you. And thank you forbeing here.

Melanie Trecek-King (56:49):
Oh , well, thank you so much for this
opportunity. Thank you foreverything that you do,
reaching out to other educatorsand for giving me a platform to
hopefully reach othereducators.

Eric Cross (57:00):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Melanie Trecek-King,Associate Professor of Biology
at Massasoit Community Collegeand creator of Thinking Is
Power. Make sure you don't missany new episodes of Science
Connections by subscribing tothe show, wherever you get
podcasts. And while you'rethere, we'd really appreciate
it if you can leave us areview. It'll help more
listeners to find the show. Youcan find more information on

(57:23):
all of Amplify shows at ourpodcast hub, Amplify.com/Hub.
Thanks again for listening.