Going through the motions

This week I received my second observation of the year and on it was the phrase "teacher and students appear to be 'going through the motions.'"  Anyone who is doing the Flipped Classroom knows that it is very difficult to simply "go through the motions."  Being the scientist that I am, I decided to test a hypothesis and start doing what the observation said I was already doing.  I discovered some interesting things about myself and the class:

1. I hate going through the motions.  When I reduced the amount of effort that I was putting in each class, I became frustrated.  I felt like I wasn't being myself and, in turn, wasn't giving my students the best version of me.  On a related note, it is really boring sitting at a desk and just watching people work, even if it was for only 5 minutes.  How do people do this on a regular basis?
2. I was far more frantic getting things ready for class when I wasn't preparing properly beforehand.  I found I needed to print out material right in class that should have been copied, the advanced students were always waiting for me to get to them and therefore wasted valuable class time, and I ended up cleaning up the lab benches after my students were done because I wasn't making sure they were doing as they went along.  In the end, I felt more overworked while attempting to do less.  This led to feeling exhausted at the end of the end; drained of energy for the wrong reasons.
3. My students are hate not going through the motions.  Whenever they encountered something that required real thought or directions that didn't clearly state every single thing they needed to do, they balked at it.  There are guided inquiry activities in each unit we do and those represented the biggest struggles for my students.  I had known this was the case already, but it was more obvious when I was spending more time behind my desk simply observing them at work.  This isn't true for all, but the majority (even many of the "A" students) kept asking for me to "just tell me what I need to do next."

This last part really disturbed me.

Why is it that students are frustrated when they have to think/problem solve in school?

So it comes down to expectations.  Is what we expect students to do during the school day too low level for them?  Do their brains really want more?  From their teachers? from the school? from the curricula?  From society?  

Somewhere along their path to my class, they learned the wrong message about what school should really be.  Now, how do we unlearn them?

The Engaged Learner

One of the reasons I like guided inquiry labs is it inspires my students to ask more 'What if...' questions. I tried a new lab this year for Stoichiometry in which the students mixed different amounts of baking soda with vinegar. A balloon was placed on the top of each test tube and the students got a great visual for the amount of gas produced.

One group finished the lab and I noticed they started to fill another balloon with a very large amount of baking soda.  When I inquired about what they were doing, they said they wanted to figure out if they could pop a balloon only using baking soda and vinegar.  With wry smile, I told them they could do it, but only if they showed, using Stoichiometry calculations, how much vinegar they would need based on the amount of baking soda they had already weighed out (28g).  

After some Internet research and a bunch of calculations later, they figured out they needed nearly 400mL (for the non-chemistry folks, that's A LOT) which is more than would fit inside their 25 mL test tube.  I happen to have a giant test tube and the experiment was off.

Here is what the face of an engaged learner looks like:

The balloon didn't pop, but it got really close.  When doing these labs, sometimes you just need to let the students' run with their ideas.  It's amazing what they will come up with and what they will learn (about science and themselves) in the process.

Yes, Man!

Ok, inspiration comes from the oddest places sometimes.  I randomly heard Jumper by Third Eye Blind on Pandora which made me think of this scene from the movie Yes Man with Jim Carrey.  The basis of the movie is that Jim Carrey gets convinced that in order to really change his life he has to say yes to EVERYTHING.  This means that he ends up going bungee jumping, taking flying lessons, learning Mandarin, and meeting the woman of his dreams.  

http://goo.gl/R964K

We talk in education about there being too many "Yes, men"; people who are only hired to agree with the boss and never contribute any meaningful ideas that are going to help move the program from Good to Great.

But maybe we actually do need more people to say "Yes, Man!"  People who are willing to try new things, to be the first to volunteer to pilot a new program, to say YES instead of maybe or that won't work here.  There are so many changes going on in education now that if we are not willing to say YES to change we are in real danger of becoming irrelevant.  

[Spoiler Alert] As Jim Carrey learns in the movie, you need to weigh your options before outright saying yes.  But when he lived his life in fear of change, he was miserable and alone.  When he took that leap of faith and put himself out there, he found a far superior version of himself.

What is happening in your school that you are going to say YES to?

Content vs Skills: refocusing our attention

When I started teaching, my philosophy was to cover, at least in some part, all of the topics taught at the college level of a freshmen chemistry class.  If I am truly teaching a college-prep course, this idea makes sense.  But, this year between the loss of time moving to block scheduling, time lost due to Hurricane Sandy, and refocusing my attention on teaching to a final exam I didn't create, I have really had to cut out what I feel is important content that is taught in college in order to get my students better prepared for the end of the year examination.  When doing all of this, I keep saying "when will my students ever need this?"  It is kind of bizarre hearing that phrase said in your own head instead of coming out of a teenager.

I have been trying to make class more focused on the activities and less on the videos.  This has occurred partially through guided inquiry and guided PBL activities.  But, as is the case with most science classes, the activities still just reinforced the content that they had to learn through the videos instead of the activities driving the learning.

I decided to make a change.  Starting in the unit on Solutions, I gave a starter activity that walked them through the process of making a solution and then walked them through calculations that are required for calculating the concentration.  Once they have the foundation, then they watch the video related to the topic. After watching the videos, the students would then come back to the lab to complete an extension to the original activity.  Here is a link to the document.

It is very much a work in progress, but I am hoping it will shift the students away from relying on the videos and myself to give them the content they need.  It also makes the class time more about DOING chemistry and the videos more about preparing for the tests and exams.

Now that I think about it, maybe part of the shift needs to be more like the structure of chemistry labs in college:  a "recitation" that is just strictly content based and a lab that actually has the students using the content.

I have to think more on this.  Your thoughts?

Be that guy

There's at least one in every school.  The one who, when he speaks, people just stare at him dumbfounded.  Wait, no not THAT guy! This guy...

What does this guy do that others don't?

• Take risks?
• Stand up and be himself when others prefer to blend in with the crowd?
• Inspire others who are just as crazy as himself, but might be afraid to show it?
• Not fear failure or ridicule?
• Show others that yes, it can be done?

Maybe.  But, more importantly, he is just being himself.  He is passionate and enthusiastic for what he does, even if what he is doing seems ludicrous to others.

Schools need more people willing to be that guy.

The chemistry sequence

My school has decided that next year they are going to remove both the math requirement and the grade requirement for students to take Chemistry.  I will tell you that this is a HUGE change.  For many years students have had to be in a "Junior level" or above math class AND had to have at least a B average in Biology to take Chemistry.  Now there are basically no requirements.  My first thought was 'Halelujah!'  Unfortunately many of my colleagues are kind of panicking.

But this got me thinking:  Should all students take chemistry in high school?

I can't believe I am going to say this, but no.  At least, not the way it is currently taught (at least the way it is taught in most schools).

The Chemistry curricula needs to change based on the needs of the students.  In my school there are  College Prep (CP), Honors and Advanced Placement (AP) classes.  AP is a 2nd year course so I am going to take it out of this discussion.  The only difference between Honors and CP is the math level of the students.  What if, instead, we redivided the class based on what the students wanted to do after HS.  Here's what I am thinking:

Honors (for Engineers)--intended for students with strong math backgrounds and the desire to pursue engineering in college.  General chemistry topics will be discussed along with chemical and materials engineering.

Honors (for science majors)--intended for students looking to pursue a career in science or medicine.  General chemistry topics will be discussed along with pharmaceutical chemistry and chemistry related to the medical field.  Students will do extensive research projects and analyze scientific studies from academic journals.  This course will be lab intensive immersing students in college-style labs and lab reports.

CP (for science majors)--intended for students who have an interest/aptitude in science, but may not pursue it as a career.  All general chemistry topics will be discussed.  This course will be lab intensive exposing students to different college-style lab techniques and equipment.  Collaboration will be expected as students will work in teams on all activities throughout the course.

CP (for the non-science major)--intended for students who may not pursue science after high school.  General chemistry topics will be discussed through a hands-on approach to the course.  The class will taught primarily through labs and projects getting students to learn chemistry through experience.  Guided inquiry activities will be incorporated and students will work on all activities in cooperative groups.  Students will be required to draw on their every day experiences to develop some of the content of the course.

I guess I am still in the academy school mindset that designs learning around specific students intended college majors.  I actually like aspects of all of these and wish they were possible in a public school.

Anyone doing a course system like this where students are taking the same course, but it is focused along different career paths?  I would love to get some examples of this taking place in public schools.

This I Believe...

When I was doing my student teaching, I was asked to make a "This I Believe" statement for the first page of my teaching portfolio.  Recently, while helping a recent college graduate prepare for an interview, I told him to do the same thing.  But I have been thinking about my own statement from 13 years ago and realize I need to get it rewritten to better reflect how my practice has changed.  I am a big fan of lists that contain five things (don't ask why. Little bit of OCD in there somewhere) so here it goes:

1.  All students can and want to learn.
--they may not want to learn what I am teaching them, but they can do it.  They also do not know the way that works best for them.  Teaching HS you get a lot of kids who will tell you their method for studying and that works best for them.  Unless you get a perfect score on everything you do, there's always room for improvement.

2. "Technology should be like oxygen.  Ubiquitous, necessary and invisible" --Chris Lehmann
--no longer is it acceptable to say "I'm not that tech-savvy." The personal computer has now been around for thirty years.  It's time to figure out how to use it.  Computers, the Internet, cell phones, none of these things are going away.  If you don't start embracing them you will become irrelevant to your students.  It is OK to ask for help, especially from the students,  to learn ways to use technology more effectively.

3.  Teaching is not a job, it's a life style choice.
--teaching is an art form.  Ever notice how artists are just a little bit different than everyone else? They see the world differently and therefore are not treated like the rest of the population. The same goes for teachers.  If you are thinking about getting into education, understand that if you do not commit yourself to the job, the art, the students, then you will never reach your full potential as an educator.

4.  School should not prepare you for the real world but rather for a world that doesn't yet exist.
--I saw a statistic somewhere that said most high school seniors will eventually accept a job that doesn't currently exist. That doesn't mean the company is expanding and adding jobs. Rather that they haven't invented the job title yet. To my father's generation this would be like saying you could become a software engineer. Or for my fellow high school graduates, telling us we could design blu-ray players. If we are preparing students for the jobs that currently exist we are preparing them to be forgotten and outdated. We need to give students the skills to be successful at any job they may have and learn how to adapt what they know to new situations. Actually just that last part.  We need students who can adapt.  Adapt their thinking, adapt their environment, adapt their mindset.

5.  Every problem can be solved with a logical, scientific approach.
--It doesn't matter if you are dealing with a scientific problem or not.  If you approach everything in your live with a clearly defined order, you will be more likely to get the result you are satisfied with.  Go back for a second to your middle school days and recall the Scientific Method.  Make an observation, develop a hypothesis, test your hypothesis and then refine your method based on your results.  (Yes that was an over simplification, but go with it)

That's my list.  It's not perfect and it is always a work in progress.  What's the #1 item on your list?