btp is a teacher now

did you make a μsic joke bob? :P

I did actually! Not with μ though.

One or two kids began whistling/humming while I was passing out a quiz. Of course I couldn't tell where it was coming from, so I simply said: "No more whistling in this class. I hate all music."

That last statement led to an audible gasp with some students looking at me asking, "R..really?"

"What? No. No I don't hate music."

Then they took their quiz whistle-free.

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SpoilerI actually used a similar tactic when asked if I recycle. Aka, have purchased and placed bins for recycling in my classroom.

"No. I hate the earth."

END OF DISCUSSION.

Also, without fail, all six classes became very excited when I informed them that the coeffecient of friction is pronounced "mew", like the pokemon.

It's even more entertaining in statistics. The difference between the means of two populations is µ1 − µ2.

Teacher update: We had a video day today. We watched punkin chunkin to mark the start of our projectile motion unit.

Also we watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danYFxGnFxQ

After playing this I had a kid timidly ask me: "do...you know what a meme is?"

We then watched a video about Applied Force + Gravity.

As an adult, you're obligated to insist that it's pronounced "mee-mee".
Man.

Oh! Ohohohohohoh bob bob bob

you should show them Minute Physics!

Oh wow Agent those videos are great. I will have to watch all of them now.

I'm not sure I can share all of those with my students though. Most of these videos require some sort of background knowledge in physics. I have to build that background knowledge for these kids, and they aren't really eager sponges of knowledge. I mean, even after 2 weeks of studying and tests over basic motion laws, a decent portion of my class has no idea when it is okay to use v=d/t and when it isn't.

It's worth a shot. You could always show them one to engage them and then delve into the background knowledge. If they're bored, they won't learn anyway...

Engagement is a huge part of what I have to do. It's a really precarious balance that I haven't quite figured out. There's that range where students know just enough that they can still learn without being completely discouraged, but don't know so much that they feel like there's nothing to learn.

Videos, lectures, demos, and the like, all help broaden that range, but there are other things too. Knowing your students' names helps. (A feat which after 7 weeks, I have almost accomplished). If there is some sort of personal relationship, if they think that you actually care about them (and it's even better when you actually do), then they'll be much more inclined to do the work, study for the test, learn the material, and get engaged in it.

Of course being able to do that, is a skill. One which I really feel like I've been struggling with.

I've always been an introvert. Someone who never fully goes out into a crowd or a group of people - it takes a very special combination of friends and loved ones to really bring you out. Most of the time you're sitting halfway in the back of your mind, thinking about the next thing, never fully enjoying or engaged in what is going on.

No wait, I'm wrong. I'm taking this down the wrong path. Let's start over.

It's about being able to see other people. That's the skill I find lacking in myself. "Introvertedness" isn't what keeps me from watching others or sensing their levels of engagement. Many introverts pride themselves on being perceptive of other's feelings and attitudes.

No, for me it's a level of self-focus that can be detrimental at times. When I'm under stress or not up to task, I curl up like a pill-bug (mentally, and physically - I have a not insignificant hunch) and blind myself to those around me. When I'm feeling overly confident, I act like I'm on my own tv show. That I am both the star and the audience watching me. All eyes, all lights, all cameras are focused on me. Loved ones have described it as "having my head stuck up my ass".

Left to my own devices, this doesn't do much harm. I may not reach my potential, but few are adversely affected by it. But when there is a group of other people, aka not-myself, then my pomposity begins to cause damage.

There are varying degrees of it. Generally, when I'm at my worst, I'm not aware of it until someone - rightfully - calls me out. Be confident that if you have enough encounters with me, this will happen. It's when I'm in front of a classroom of 30 students, struggling to get through a lesson, that this inability to see much past myself really takes a toll.

I've told my students: "You'll get as much out of something as what you put into it." I think it's a very fair statement, and one which I should have realized sooner applies to far more than classroom physics. Hopefully, as the year goes on, I learn to invest more into my students. Learn to study them and read their reactions. To work the crowd.

Once I've mastered that, then engaging them in the lesson will be so much easier, because I've engaged myself in them.

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Spoilerwow that last line reaches sitcom levels of stupidity. Simply put - I wish all I had to do was show some rad videos, toss out a few worksheets, and run through a powerpoint. Turns out getting human beings to do things is super complicated.

I'm telling the principal that you want to get engaged to your students

You're totally gonna go to jail

Just realized that a portion of a major project I assigned to my students is based off of a formula that I derived incorrectly. So all of their answers are technically wrong.

MARK IT AS RIGHT. DONT SAY A WORD.

You should tell them you messed up and give them an extra-credit quiz on the formula. Add a maximum of, say, five points to one of their assignments.

Although to be fair, I've long since given up any pretenses of knowing what I'm doing when I'm trying to teach the AP Chem kids that I intern for.

no bobbbb you should say a worrrddddd

btp you gotta turn in your teaching badge

(You get to keep the teaching gun)

Nah, you guys don't understand how incredibly unimportant this messed up formula is, like, it has absolutely no bearing on their understanding of the material or anything. They don't even get to keep the paper I gave it to them on, it has effectively been erased from existence.

Besides, the only thing bringing it up to these kids now would do is confuse them and potentially lower their grades.

SPEAKING OF WHICH It seems I made my fellow physics teachers a little miffed by grading the aforementioned assignment a tad too leniently. Aka, nobody failed, even with lousy work. Seeing how the entirety of the assignment was 20% of their six weeks grade, I can understand how that would skew the numbers.

BUT HEY IT WAS A FUN ASSIGNMENT!

Basically, in our physics meeting, we were discussing what sort of project we should do this six weeks, and I thought: "oh hey, wheat said we should do trebuchets and such, and I really liked my old catapult project, maybe I can mention something like that". Sure enough, when I brought up the subject one of the other teachers' eyes lit up and she started pulling up old rubrics for a catapult style launching contest project.

Now, there were limitations (those being that you had to use a mousetrap as your launching force), but everything else was pretty much fair game. The students had to design "professional looking blueprints" Of which I received maybe 6, and the rest got 15 out of the 20 points for that.

Then we had a few work days, and then a launch day. During said launch day I figured: "HEY LETS DO THIS OUTSIDE".

After I dragged 30 students outside I recalled that Houston mornings are a wonderful mix of humidity and mosquitoes. So basically those students that wanted to wait indoors (all of them) did so, while I let those launching from their catapults take turns outside.

BUT ACTUALLY THE WEATHER GOT NICER AND IT TURNED INTO A GREAT PROJECT.

And then I told the students some gibberish about how this all related to F=ma and how long throwing arms give you height but cut down on your acceleration - which is what counts and then I gave them a formula to derive their initial velocity by just knowing their range and their angle (THAT FORMULA WAS WRONG AND I'M NOT CERTAIN WHY - p.s. haven't looked into it, probably wont) and then they calculated their values and talked about how they could have made it better.

THEN THEY ALL PASSED WOO!

We're doing an egg-drop project next so that should be fun.

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SpoilerMy teaching gun is actually a little dart gun that I used for projectile motion. Also to startle students.

Oh man Bob I did my sixth or seventh or something science project on dropping eggs into things. Not from things BUT I learned something cool and you could demonstrate this for shits/giggles, then make your own egg-dropper and see if it still worked.

I tested out different materials, like packing peanuts and bubble wrap, and by far the best one was peanut butter crunch cereal. Barely any structural damage to the eggs. It was really weird. (Though packing peanuts probably aren't designed to cushion falling eggs, so much, I was still surprised. I guess it might have been related to the size of the cereal allowing it to sort of "flow" because there were so many individual pieces or something??? I DUNNO)

You might want to test this at home first so it doesn't end up being a huge disappointment though.

And drop it into a frying pan, and make an omelette! A rather...shelly...omelette...

hmmm....

I think...i think, that I can sufficiently prove a good number of my students cheated on their six weeks test, which would mean I would give half of my last class zeros for a major grade. (which I would then let them retake later)



Here is the deal:

We had a difficult test, and one of the questions for this test was a fill-in-the-number type problem. I noticed that my class averages in my last two classes were significantly higher than my other 4. I looked at this fillinthenumber problem and saw that, unlike any other student in any period, 8, of my kids in my last class answered: 49.

Now this is odd. The answer is wrong. I will ask them tomorrow how they came up with this answer, because I don't see how they could have derived this given the information presented to them. If they cannot give me an answer for this or if ("well I guessed") is the predominate response, then I will have to call them out.

Of course I need to go back and check their tests, see if there is any work present on their exams that would indicate this answer. I can also check other teachers to see if they had any students make this response in other periods. (The entire physics department across the whole district took this same test.)

Barring any honest explanation, I do have one theory: Many students in my earlier periods got the answer 99 (incorrect, but an easy mistake to make if you don't know how to solve the problem). If say, one of them managed to sneak a picture of their test, and their handwriting was sloppy, it's not inconceivable that the recipient of that test would have read "49", and then told their cohorts before class: "I hear this test is hard, oh but the answer for #3 is 49"

Well, if there isn't an honest explanation, it all comes down to if the administration will let me write up almost half of my class.

Edit: oh hey same story with another class but "41" instead...hmmm...

Oh man what's the problem?

I want to answer 49 too

It turns out that the correct answer isn't a number at all.

They seem perfectly incompetent at shitting all over academic integrity. I recommend six stern talking-to's followed by 50 ccs of sincere heart-to-hearts about the severity of cheating.