As I write this, it appears that we will have a one day week actually at school, which is almost silly considering how little snow we actually got. (Not a complaint, I understand that we have to be extra careful on the back roads, especially with buses and student drivers).
I can very safely say that it has been a true blessing for me. This semester started with some family illness that required me to be in the hospital a lot, after not really being able to get any work done on the time off, or for a month or so before. So while I had a great first week back, I was tired...so tired, as I saw one of my twitter friends tweet out...teacher tired.
A scheduled long weekend was going a long way to allowing me to regain the sleep, despite more trips to sit with a sick relative, but I wasn't getting caught up per se. Honestly I'm still not, but getting several straight days of 8 hours of sleep is so beneficial. I took some time to read, to spend some time with friends and family, to cook and eat (slowly, which I can't overstate doesn't always happen), to decompress and really think about a lot of things.
Could go on about new ideas and plans, and I may do that in a future post, but after reading about twitter friends either leaving the classroom or having near breakdowns, and feeling myself really getting burnt out, I am just really thankful for the break.
For those of you, like my friends, who mostly work in IT, who have snarky comments like "hope you are enjoying your 6 day weekend", no worries, I still put in a solid 10 hours of work yesterday and am in the midst of doing so again today. But again, working a lot doesn't make you a better teacher if you are burned out...teachers, as much or more than a lot of professions, need space and time to reflect, to reconsider what they are doing, to plan, to learn and to remember why they do what they do. Glad to have had that chance and am using it to the fullest.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
A new term, a solid start!
I teach at a school that is on year long schedule, so even though today was my first day of classes for this year, I didn't have new students today, but just a good reunion with the ones I've had all year (and a few I've had for 3 years).
To be honest, I had a pretty rough break, with the exception of Christmas itself. It was one of those breaks that I'm sure my teacher friends can relate to, 4 dentist appointments for myself and the kids, doctor visits, a 6 hour doctor trip for my mom, and then when we came back from a trip to the in-laws, several days in the hospital with my very ill grandmother.
Coming back made me a little nervous frankly because I had great plans for planning and making videos and such over the break, but instead, barely got my grading done, and that only with the help of some icy roads on Monday. But as it often turns out, sometimes it is just a joy to be in the room with young folks:
1st Block (Chemistry I)- We reviewed a few things from last semester in small groups, then I gave my usual anti-recruitment speech for AP Chem. Don't get me wrong, I want kids to take AP Chemistry, I enjoy that class a lot, but I want to make sure the kids know what they are getting into (pain, tears, and good problem solving skills). And it is not that I am trying to only get the best kids in AP Chem, I want the ones that want to be there, who aren't going to go to guidance and try to bail after the first test.
It went really well, I had a ton of questions from a lot of kids, some of whom I didn't think would be interested in crying that much, and I suspect I'll get quite a few from that group in the next couple of years, which is really encouraging after a down year this year (which I knew about).
Then we covered oxidation numbers, which can be dry, and which I lectured through briefly due to the aforementioned lack of new video production. Again, went really well, near full class participation and interest throughout, felt as though they really got it.
2nd Block (Organic/Biochemistry)- This class is my baby as I designed it myself years ago to hopefully keep a few kids from being cut down by the scythe of college Organic Chemistry. But it has never gone as I've hoped in the previous 3 iterations I've taught it. I usually have 12 students, 4 or whom might be interested, 4 who took it to take another class with me and 4 who got shuffled in there against their will. That makes it hard to really go deep as the material is not a cake walk and really requires some real thinking about how chemistry works, maybe even more than AP.
This year though I have 24 students, and while I have the same general groupings of students, the ratio is far in favor of the interested category and even better, every single kid in there is a solid science student. That being the case, I threw out almost everything from the previous years and have built it from scratch focusing on electron movements and really understanding the underlying dynamics rather than memorization of forms that played a bigger role in my classes in previous years.
Going in today, I wasn't sure if it was succeeding as I've had to do some really weird things to get them the lab experiences that I think they have to experience in Organic since I only have one fume hood (think 6 different groups of students rotating daily). Additionally, I haven't been able to really devote a ton of new time in the past month, so I had to fall back on some of my old material, much to my shame.
But then as I was asking questions today about the underlying systems and why a certain mechanism might be favored in different scenarios, they really got it...Not in the "memorized a chart of substitution and elimination reactions" sort of way, but in the, we get why a weak nucleophile would lead to this being favored, or why a polar solvent would matter. I'm not saying it was every student, I'm sure it wasn't, but so many of them really displayed a higher level knowledge of what was going on in a really complex topic that I was very heartened.
3rd Block- AP Chemistry- As I said, this is a down year in student numbers (10 compared to 43 last year), but it is a really fun and interesting bunch of kids. Handed back their Kinetics tests from before the break and then we dove into the beginning of the big gorilla for the year, Equilibrium. And they really got it, no problem with the (albeit simple) math, the concepts seemed to sink in, and for one of the few times this year, they seemed confident and unafraid. I love that, especially since they are often (most of them) very quiet.
So even though my feet feel like some hammered the bottom of them, even though I'm dead tired and drained knowing that I have another hospital shift tomorrow evening, I am encouraged. I went into the day a little defeated, doubting myself, and chastising myself for not getting 10 videos done over the break and revamping everything. Instead, I had a stand up, lecture/conversational day with the students and It...Was...Great!
To be honest, I had a pretty rough break, with the exception of Christmas itself. It was one of those breaks that I'm sure my teacher friends can relate to, 4 dentist appointments for myself and the kids, doctor visits, a 6 hour doctor trip for my mom, and then when we came back from a trip to the in-laws, several days in the hospital with my very ill grandmother.
Coming back made me a little nervous frankly because I had great plans for planning and making videos and such over the break, but instead, barely got my grading done, and that only with the help of some icy roads on Monday. But as it often turns out, sometimes it is just a joy to be in the room with young folks:
1st Block (Chemistry I)- We reviewed a few things from last semester in small groups, then I gave my usual anti-recruitment speech for AP Chem. Don't get me wrong, I want kids to take AP Chemistry, I enjoy that class a lot, but I want to make sure the kids know what they are getting into (pain, tears, and good problem solving skills). And it is not that I am trying to only get the best kids in AP Chem, I want the ones that want to be there, who aren't going to go to guidance and try to bail after the first test.
It went really well, I had a ton of questions from a lot of kids, some of whom I didn't think would be interested in crying that much, and I suspect I'll get quite a few from that group in the next couple of years, which is really encouraging after a down year this year (which I knew about).
Then we covered oxidation numbers, which can be dry, and which I lectured through briefly due to the aforementioned lack of new video production. Again, went really well, near full class participation and interest throughout, felt as though they really got it.
2nd Block (Organic/Biochemistry)- This class is my baby as I designed it myself years ago to hopefully keep a few kids from being cut down by the scythe of college Organic Chemistry. But it has never gone as I've hoped in the previous 3 iterations I've taught it. I usually have 12 students, 4 or whom might be interested, 4 who took it to take another class with me and 4 who got shuffled in there against their will. That makes it hard to really go deep as the material is not a cake walk and really requires some real thinking about how chemistry works, maybe even more than AP.
This year though I have 24 students, and while I have the same general groupings of students, the ratio is far in favor of the interested category and even better, every single kid in there is a solid science student. That being the case, I threw out almost everything from the previous years and have built it from scratch focusing on electron movements and really understanding the underlying dynamics rather than memorization of forms that played a bigger role in my classes in previous years.
Going in today, I wasn't sure if it was succeeding as I've had to do some really weird things to get them the lab experiences that I think they have to experience in Organic since I only have one fume hood (think 6 different groups of students rotating daily). Additionally, I haven't been able to really devote a ton of new time in the past month, so I had to fall back on some of my old material, much to my shame.
But then as I was asking questions today about the underlying systems and why a certain mechanism might be favored in different scenarios, they really got it...Not in the "memorized a chart of substitution and elimination reactions" sort of way, but in the, we get why a weak nucleophile would lead to this being favored, or why a polar solvent would matter. I'm not saying it was every student, I'm sure it wasn't, but so many of them really displayed a higher level knowledge of what was going on in a really complex topic that I was very heartened.
3rd Block- AP Chemistry- As I said, this is a down year in student numbers (10 compared to 43 last year), but it is a really fun and interesting bunch of kids. Handed back their Kinetics tests from before the break and then we dove into the beginning of the big gorilla for the year, Equilibrium. And they really got it, no problem with the (albeit simple) math, the concepts seemed to sink in, and for one of the few times this year, they seemed confident and unafraid. I love that, especially since they are often (most of them) very quiet.
So even though my feet feel like some hammered the bottom of them, even though I'm dead tired and drained knowing that I have another hospital shift tomorrow evening, I am encouraged. I went into the day a little defeated, doubting myself, and chastising myself for not getting 10 videos done over the break and revamping everything. Instead, I had a stand up, lecture/conversational day with the students and It...Was...Great!
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