Astrobiology Fun

October 6, 2025September 29, 2025 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Not long ago, I attended a workshop on Astrobiology for teachers. I’m not sure which of my two jobs it was more useful for—teaching or writing.

Cool swag from NASA and Blue Marble Space!

My day job, though ever changing, often involves teaching science across years 3-8. One of the strands of the New Zealand science curriculum is Planet Earth and Beyond, so I regularly teach about our solar system and various features within our galaxy. Last year, I did a fun unit with the year 7 and 8 students in which students had to design spacecraft, habitat modules, and promotional campaigns for a colonising trip to Mars.

I’ve rarely touched much on astrobiology, and the questions about life elsewhere in the universe, but the workshop made me think about all the ways that questions about life on other planets reflects on life on Earth. How these questions reflect on our actions as human beings—our treatment of other humans, our treatment of the planet and other living things on it. The presenters made a great case for using astrobiology as a way to dive into big philosophical questions about what it means to be alive on Earth today.

What are our responsibilities to planet Earth and the life on it? What if we are alone in the universe? What if we’re not? Does it change our perspective on our own actions as humans?

Sanjoy Son, from Blue Marble Science, spoke eloquently about how the teaching of astrobiology can give students valuable perspective on life, and how they can approach questions of personal differences, values, and civic responsibility. The take home message I got from his talk was that we are either the caretakers of the only life in the universe, or we are part of a vast, interstellar network of life. Either way, we are all ambassadors of planet Earth. What a great message for kids. What a great way for them to think about their roles as human beings.

As an author of fantasy and science fiction, of course I soaked up the cool facts about the gazillions of planets there are just in our galaxy, the weird ways life might have to adapt to wildly different conditions on other planets, the surprises that even our own solar system has produced in terms of planets and moons on which life could potentially survive, the physics of travel and communication through space. So many story ideas!

You’ll definitely be seeing more astrobiology creeping into my writing and teaching in the future!

Introduction to Poetry–published!

April 11, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

A couple of years ago, I wrote a poem for my students. It was an introduction to poetry that I used when I started a poetry unit, and was a response to the groans and moans I got whenever I introduced a poetry unit. The poem has been a hit–I slide smoothly into it when the kids start complaining, and when they realise I’m speaking in verse, their whole attitude changes.

I hadn’t really planned on publishing it, but when I found the perfect fit, I couldn’t resist.

It has just been published in the literary journal Teach. Write.

You can download the e-version here.

Crisis and Creativity

November 18, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but I contend that actually it’s crisis that’s the real mother of invention.

Lately I feel like I’ve hit one crisis after another—getting Covid during the busiest season in the garden, having book sales completely tank in the lead-up to Christmas, having a critical component of a week-long science lesson be unavailable anywhere last week …

In the garden, I cut corners, laying compost on top of the soil rather than incorporating it as I usually do, in order to save time and limited physical energy. It’s something I hoped to be able to start doing, but figured I still had years of breaking up clay before it would work. Surprisingly, while the soil is a little harder than I’d like it to be for planting, it’s not terrible. If the plants do okay, I may have just changed my garden routine for good, saving me lots of work.

For my books, I’ve taken a step back from the ‘usual’ marketing techniques that have been costing me more than they’ve been bringing in. I’ve analysed what I’m good at, what I enjoy doing, and how I can incorporate those things into my marketing strategy, rather than banging my head against marketing strategies I’m no good at and hate doing. It will take a while to implement my new plan, and even longer to know if it works, but I’m having a great time working on marketing at the moment, rather than dreading every second of it as I usually do.

In the classroom, with less than 24 hours until my science lesson, I launched into preparations for plan B—activities I hadn’t run in 30 years. I felt completely unprepared, and kept realising things I’d forgotten to prepare or forgotten to do—each time I looked around at the resources to hand and got creative. The result was a set of fabulous lessons that didn’t look at all like I’d planned, but which worked well and were fun for everyone.

I really hope next week isn’t as full of crisis as the past several have been, but if they are, I’m pretty sure that as long as I keep moving forward, creativity will blossom and I’ll end up in better shape than before.

Here’s to crisis and creativity!

Chameleons

March 30, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

When I picked it up on the beach, it was lichen-green. A fist-sized chunk of serpentine that looked all but translucent. It was almost alive.

I brought it back to the campground. As it dried, it lost some of its lustre. It lost its translucence, but remained green.

When we packed up to come home, I took the rock with me, nestled in a cup holder in the car. Leaving the humid, green West Coast, we drove up over the mountains, and back into dry, brown Canterbury.

When I picked the rock out of the car, it was frosty white, with a few sparkles of pyrite in the crevices. Dry and dead.

I think people are like that rock.

When we see them in their own “habitat”—in the place where they feel they belong—they are alive and vibrant. They show their depth and their colours. We see their full beauty.

But when we see a person in a place where they don’t feel like they belong—a place where they’re uncomfortable—they frost over. We see only their surface and little of their beauty. There may be hints—small sparkles in the crevices, if we look closely—but most of their beauty will be hidden.

I used to see this a lot, working at nature centres in the U.S. Teachers would regularly warn me about “problem” children. Kids who were nothing but troublemakers, according to the teachers.

I took special note of these children, because I learned quickly that they were likely to be my best students. Take them out of the classroom where they felt they didn’t belong, and put them in a place where they could shine, and they invariably did. They were often smart, funny, helpful, eager to engage with the subject, and bursting with questions—completely different from the sullen, disengaged, miscreants the teachers viewed them as.

I don’t think their transformation had anything to do with my teaching skills—it was simply that they were more comfortable outdoors, moving around, picking up sticks, throwing rocks. They were in their habitat, and could show their beauty. I wished the teachers could have seen their students’ transformations—most of the time, the teachers sat around drinking coffee while their students were out on the trails. I don’t think they believed me when I told them how marvellous their “problem” students were.

Take my word for it. This rock is beautiful.