We had some excitement in the remodeled biology lab this past week. Students had been working on a microbiology lab for almost two weeks. One of the basic procedures involved sterilizing an innoculation wire with a gas flame from a Meeker Burner. Unfortunately the fire control system used sprinklers installed directly over the lab tables at about a height of about ten feet (three meters). You guessed it- a sprinkler discharged during the last period of the day. The water sprayed over students, five computers and sundry books and clothing. By the time it was two inches (five centimeters) deep in the hallway, twenty plus gallons had gone through the floor into the technology computer lab immediately below the biology room. Luckily the teacher saw it coming and moved about ten computers out of the line of fire. Classes were back to normal the next day.
The fire department was a big help with controlling the water spray and replacing the discharged sprinkler head. They also pointed out that the sprinklers in the science labs appeared to be residential sprinkler heads. They have a temperature release rating of about 130 degrees fahrenheit (55 celsius). Much too low for a lab setting. Nothing like taking the lowest bidder on a construction job.
I also discovered this week that I will be having some major changes in my teaching schedule next year, I will be teaching a basic reading class using science as the conduit. To do that, I have to give something up. Right now it appears to be my two college placement nine classes. Then I will also pick up something else to replace the second cp nine class.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
What's Been Going On?
I have been busy at school so I have been truant from my blog. A few things happened at school during the past month that have kept life interesting.
One student fell asleep during a video about the moon. When the class was dismissed, he was sound asleep. When that happens, I tend to let him sleep until the next class enters. One year I had a student wake up about a half hour into the next period. He was very confused upon awakening. It was good for a chuckle and a learning experience for the sleeper. That type of thing stays with the kid for many years. He never fell asleep in class again.
The week before spring break, a ninth grade girl was suspended from school for a day. She came back on campus during her suspension to see her boyfriend and refused to leave. The police had to be called to remove her. They had to take her down to the ground twice before they got her into the patrol car. She then had her suspension extended for 58 days. Surprisingly, her mother withdrew her from school. I am sure she was immediately enrolled in her home school district. (She was an out-of-school-district student). We take these kinds of students for the state funding that comes with them. Sometimes it benefits us financially and the student educationally due to a shortened bus route. Other times we spend more money on discipline and disruptions to the educational system than we get from the state.
My ninth grade CP Science students have completed several labs during the past month. They still haven’t learned to read the lab packet before starting to work. They start right in on the procedure without having preread anything. Then when they cannot complete the different steps they think it is too difficult to do and they get frustrated.
Unfortunately this behavior does not change very much through most of high school. Students just do not want to read and follow instructions when completing lab work. The minority who do read the instructions can only follow cookbook types of procedures. If they have to read and then interpret what they read to create a hypothesis, confusion and inaccuracies reign.
Either the instructional methods for reading trains students to regurgitate what they have read with little understanding, or the mental abilities of teenagers are restricted by their immaturity. I suspect the latter is the main culprit, since I remember how much easier I could interpret complex data/information to derive inferred hypotheses or mathematical data after I entered college.
Today we began a complex multimedia research project in CP Science Nine. Every student needs individual computer access. I will be sending five students to a neighboring biology class and five to the library to use PC computers. I have 14 student computers in my own room. The fifteenth needs a reinstall of the operating system. I have been waiting for three weeks to get the work done. Our district wide, two day a week, computer tech hasn’t gotten to me yet.
The first day of school the superintendent gave his welcome back speech and told us we have the best technology available for us and our students to use. Then he eliminated the district computer tech position and contracted with the local educational service district for a part time tech two days a week. Later all of the teachers were locked out of their computers and basically given student access levels. I can’t even correct the time of day on my computer. I have to do a work order.
In physics we are studying waves. I am spending two weeks doing lectures and labs about sound waves. One of the labs involved taking two paper cups and connecting them with 50 feet of string through their bases. The students were fascinted that they could talk to each other through the cups and that the sound waves went through the string. Then we spent two days manipulating a wave tank. Monday we work with resonance and will then be ready to study the properties of light.
Next week our sophomores will be taking the science WASL Exam. It is designed to show them how stupid they all are. Then the same students, and a large number of juniors and some seniors will take the math WASL to reinforce the idea of their stupidity. The juniors and seniors are exercising the rites of futility since they have failed it in the past and will probably continue to do so. As a trained educator, I abhor any test that is designed to punish and denegrate the intelligence and abilities of my students. It is not designed to improve education since the results are not fedback to any teacher in a way that can help that teacher improve the instructional methods in his/her classes for a better success rate. In a high stakes test having a high success rate is obtained by teaching to the test and the hell with anything else. Especially if merit pay is involved (a later blog topic).
Tomorrow I get to ride in a parade. I was selected by our school’s daffodil princess as her Educator of the Year. The Daffodil Festival is county wide and has been in place since 1933 (http://www.daffodilfestival.net/). The young lady who selected me was a ninth grade student of mine three years ago and last year took my physics class as a junior.
It is amazing what stays in kids memories. When she was in my ninth grade class, she was diagnosed with leukemia. It was during the first half of the school year. She had to leave school and do school lessons at home during the first year of treatments. During her last day in science class, she asked me if she and a few of her friends could make friendship bracelets from some wooden beads I had in a plastic box on a shelf. (I would not let kids play with the beads because I used them for a classification lab in my biology class.) I let them spend the class period making bracelets because I knew they would wear them and remember each other while she was undergoing her treatments.
When she surprised me with my selection as Educator of the Year two months ago, she gave me a copy of what she wrote about me. It was the bracelet story. I like to think that what I allowed her and her friends to do may have helped her just a little through her ordeal. She is a beautiful Daffodil Princess. She placed sixth out of twenty-two princesses. And most importantly, her leukemia treatments ended a few months ago (she had monthly chemo treatments while in my physics class) and now she will just be doing regular checkups as she lives a fairly normal life. Her college plans include training to be a pediatric nurse.
This is the kind of a story that makes me proud to be a teacher.
One student fell asleep during a video about the moon. When the class was dismissed, he was sound asleep. When that happens, I tend to let him sleep until the next class enters. One year I had a student wake up about a half hour into the next period. He was very confused upon awakening. It was good for a chuckle and a learning experience for the sleeper. That type of thing stays with the kid for many years. He never fell asleep in class again.
The week before spring break, a ninth grade girl was suspended from school for a day. She came back on campus during her suspension to see her boyfriend and refused to leave. The police had to be called to remove her. They had to take her down to the ground twice before they got her into the patrol car. She then had her suspension extended for 58 days. Surprisingly, her mother withdrew her from school. I am sure she was immediately enrolled in her home school district. (She was an out-of-school-district student). We take these kinds of students for the state funding that comes with them. Sometimes it benefits us financially and the student educationally due to a shortened bus route. Other times we spend more money on discipline and disruptions to the educational system than we get from the state.
My ninth grade CP Science students have completed several labs during the past month. They still haven’t learned to read the lab packet before starting to work. They start right in on the procedure without having preread anything. Then when they cannot complete the different steps they think it is too difficult to do and they get frustrated.
Unfortunately this behavior does not change very much through most of high school. Students just do not want to read and follow instructions when completing lab work. The minority who do read the instructions can only follow cookbook types of procedures. If they have to read and then interpret what they read to create a hypothesis, confusion and inaccuracies reign.
Either the instructional methods for reading trains students to regurgitate what they have read with little understanding, or the mental abilities of teenagers are restricted by their immaturity. I suspect the latter is the main culprit, since I remember how much easier I could interpret complex data/information to derive inferred hypotheses or mathematical data after I entered college.
Today we began a complex multimedia research project in CP Science Nine. Every student needs individual computer access. I will be sending five students to a neighboring biology class and five to the library to use PC computers. I have 14 student computers in my own room. The fifteenth needs a reinstall of the operating system. I have been waiting for three weeks to get the work done. Our district wide, two day a week, computer tech hasn’t gotten to me yet.
The first day of school the superintendent gave his welcome back speech and told us we have the best technology available for us and our students to use. Then he eliminated the district computer tech position and contracted with the local educational service district for a part time tech two days a week. Later all of the teachers were locked out of their computers and basically given student access levels. I can’t even correct the time of day on my computer. I have to do a work order.
In physics we are studying waves. I am spending two weeks doing lectures and labs about sound waves. One of the labs involved taking two paper cups and connecting them with 50 feet of string through their bases. The students were fascinted that they could talk to each other through the cups and that the sound waves went through the string. Then we spent two days manipulating a wave tank. Monday we work with resonance and will then be ready to study the properties of light.
Next week our sophomores will be taking the science WASL Exam. It is designed to show them how stupid they all are. Then the same students, and a large number of juniors and some seniors will take the math WASL to reinforce the idea of their stupidity. The juniors and seniors are exercising the rites of futility since they have failed it in the past and will probably continue to do so. As a trained educator, I abhor any test that is designed to punish and denegrate the intelligence and abilities of my students. It is not designed to improve education since the results are not fedback to any teacher in a way that can help that teacher improve the instructional methods in his/her classes for a better success rate. In a high stakes test having a high success rate is obtained by teaching to the test and the hell with anything else. Especially if merit pay is involved (a later blog topic).
Tomorrow I get to ride in a parade. I was selected by our school’s daffodil princess as her Educator of the Year. The Daffodil Festival is county wide and has been in place since 1933 (http://www.daffodilfestival.net/). The young lady who selected me was a ninth grade student of mine three years ago and last year took my physics class as a junior.
It is amazing what stays in kids memories. When she was in my ninth grade class, she was diagnosed with leukemia. It was during the first half of the school year. She had to leave school and do school lessons at home during the first year of treatments. During her last day in science class, she asked me if she and a few of her friends could make friendship bracelets from some wooden beads I had in a plastic box on a shelf. (I would not let kids play with the beads because I used them for a classification lab in my biology class.) I let them spend the class period making bracelets because I knew they would wear them and remember each other while she was undergoing her treatments.
When she surprised me with my selection as Educator of the Year two months ago, she gave me a copy of what she wrote about me. It was the bracelet story. I like to think that what I allowed her and her friends to do may have helped her just a little through her ordeal. She is a beautiful Daffodil Princess. She placed sixth out of twenty-two princesses. And most importantly, her leukemia treatments ended a few months ago (she had monthly chemo treatments while in my physics class) and now she will just be doing regular checkups as she lives a fairly normal life. Her college plans include training to be a pediatric nurse.
This is the kind of a story that makes me proud to be a teacher.
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