blogging that is!
So it's been a few days and not a whole lot to note. Well there is plenty to note, but not stuff that I'm comfortable sharing with the web at large. Suffice to say I have a few students this year that are EXTREMELY anxiety prone with helicopter parents. I like for parents to be involved. I like for students to care about and take pride in their work. However, I'm fairly sure this is excessive involvement on both sides and it's going to end up with me being stressed to the hilt; defending my teaching practices and spending time that I literally don't have making extra extra contact with the parents. I mean it's only the end of the 3rd week of school and I've got a whole littering of parent conferences scheduled over grades that aren't anywhere near failing. (And all of my parent conferences are about grades, none about behavior issues....I'm starting to miss those a bit.)
I've done the whole, going over how to answer questions on a test. I give them exam reviews to help them focus their studying efforts. We do on average 3-4 graded exercises on *each* tested concept and a handful of exercises where there is no grade. I make every use of technology possible, but throw back regularly to "old school" techniques. I seriously try to hit it all. I spend the vast majority of my time up at work, getting there an hour before I have to and regularly staying as much as 2+ hrs after when I technically can leave. There genuinely is not much more that I could possibly do.
What my students tend to fail to recognize is that chemistry is unlike anything they've ever seen before. Science in general is its own language. Then there's the focus on vocabulary terms. And in Chemistry there's LOADS of math, but not any math; math where your focus is not on just the numbers themselves, but the units and labels that go along with said numbers. And as if that weren't enough, the kiddos still need to grasps the chemistry concepts themselves. The way I liken it to my students is that a chemistry course is like 4 courses at once. It's a LOT of work! If you're used to not having to do much work to get your A in another class, expect to get a C or a B in Chemistry if you're not willing to up the time you personally spend on grasping the concepts in the course.
Of course they belly-ache about this, a lot. But that's how it is and I can't change that. Chemistry doesn't care if you're a regular ed student or an honors student -- the concepts don't change. And while my expectations of mastery are different between my regular ed kids and the honors kids this class still tends to demand more effort on the part of the student to keep their grade at a level they deem appropriate.
Pretty much just a pain in the butt.
In light of me trying to end things on positive notes: (1) I'm pretty sure I figured out how to get my ActivBoard and ActiVotes configured for use on my work computer. This was a HUGE accomplishment as the other day everything went to hell in a handbasket *while* I was teaching. (2) I had major break throughs with my Advance Integrated Science class today as we went over the test they just took. They're finally starting to learn logical processes of elimination and how they should approach any sort of summative assessment. (3) In my last class of the day I had a couple of kids -a- express that they were *finally* interested in science -b- voice that they were understanding how to take tests and -c- a (science) teacher's greatest dream: that a few of them are now wanting to consider a future in science. I've had kids say this last one before in years past, but today's comments to that effect seemed extremely genuine. Yay for bringing kids to science! [That last line sounds a little evangelistic, and the really cool thing was that I was able to garner this unsolicited interest from the students without contradicting religion. "We've" learned that religion and science don't have to be mutually exclusive!]
Ah... Chemistry... My HS Chemistry teacher was seriously crazy, but in a good way :) He growled at us if we didn't do our homework, and he had many crazy jokes that he'd tell constantly (lame) but it helped you remember stuff (good). :) I wish I could remember some of the jokes. Some of them, I seem to remember, had to do with moles? Mol? Is that Chemistry? lol (We are talking like 12 years since I've taken Chem)
ReplyDeleteI hope you have a really great year!!!