Day 2 rainy day in LA
“Mr. Joseph, I cried this morning.”
Why?
“I didn’t want to get up and go to school.”
That’s funny, I had a nightmare last night that I had to wake up and go to school and then I woke up and it was real.
How have I been teaching for 13 years, has it always been this hard? It was a rare rainy day in LA today, so rare that it’s a little of a distraction for students. I kicked off the GEMS OSS unit with the 6th graders but barely scratched the surface of the lesson. In the morning I converted the first lesson into different Google Docs but the lesson required “drawing” and “labeling” the drawing and Google Docs doesn’t do that yet. So I had to make real copies. But then I wanted to make them the size that they could be glued into the notebooks without folding. So they had to be printed two per page, then cut. And I did all that and then didn’t have time to get to that activity.
The first demo/experiment doesn’t really work well anyway.
I think my lamp doesn’t get hot enough, I’m not sure what I do wrong but the water doesn’t go up the tube the way it’s supposed to so it’s a bit frustrating. When it works it’s a good demo of thermal expansion and it sets a foundation for understanding the effect of heat on water.
There are simulations that help to visualize the chemical movement of the water molecules and at least that definitely works. I do really like to do a physical activity that is combined with a simulation and then compare/contrast them. That’s how VR is going to work for science instruction. I’m still obsessed with VR, even more so after geeking out on so many games over the holiday break.
Anyway, I’ll stretch it out over tomorrow and hopefully it will go better. It took some time to explain how to do the notebooks and the Google Doc and then teach the “turn and talk” technique. Somehow I hadn’t done it before with this group. Basically it’s posing a question but instead of whole class discussion where the same people always answer, have table partners talk for 60 seconds first. It’s a common sense and very effective technique, I was embarrassed that I hadn’t done it more often.
The 8th grade class went surprisingly well. Somehow the unruly class of 35 has been whittled down to 20 (with about 5 absences, but still thats a nice size) and I’m getting used to their mentality. I wouldn’t say that I understand it, but I do seem to have their respect. I had them examine the magnetic canon and then write some questions for the “Driving Question” board. The idea is to use those questions to shape the unit. I’m very nervous about this IQWST business but I’m going to give it a try. Doing 2 major preps is very difficult, and in reality my 6th grade classes are all wildly different and at different levels so my mind is strained to adjust every period.
We had our science department meeting today but it was wonderfully short. I have to clean up my backroom, put away extension cords and chemicals (vinegar?) for an inspection next week. Our district has some vague NGSS PD on offer and I floated the possibility of doing the SNAP program but I’m not expecting any enthusiasm around that. I’m happy to survive the day, take a nap and hopefully be able to wake up and prepare the lessons for tomorrow for the 8th grade. I’m using the student books that were included in the training so no copies to make.
I need a few days off to process what happened today but that’s time we don’t have. The 8th graders make fun of me because I say “I hate Tuesdays” because my lessons are never completed on time. I also choked on my oatmeal which turned into a ridiculous mini lesson on the epiglottis and the awesomeness of steel cut oats over instant oatmeal. Somehow I also segued into “alternative music” (whatever it is your parents like, it is an alternative to that), how they will raise their future children, how to be a good friend (listen, duh) and anything else that comes up. I do get a thrill when they realize that every subject and problem can be triangulated to science.
In the 6th grade the concepts may be kind of easy for some, I have to find ways to differentiate. Even the well trained students had trouble defining “climate” or “density” or explaining some of the basic questions, so there’s ample room for new learning.
It has to get easier. When you know what you’re going to do and you have all the materials it’s easier. If you see a student lightbulb go off or the discussion gets interesting, the weight gets lighter. I hope today that my students’ time was not miserable in my classroom. I admitted to my later classes that I was crabby yesterday and was just struggling to get through the day. They basically yawned collectively as if to say “you have no idea how zombied out we are right now.” But I do, I do!
I asked if there were any gamers… the hands shot up. So have you ever got stuck in a game and then had to go to a youtube tutorial to figure out what to do next? This is not a discussion I could have had a year or two ago- the world of the intellect is changing very fast. School feels like it’s getting harder, maybe because it is getting more and more irrelevant.
