So it has been awhile-- lots to report.
In the meantime, check out this movie some colleagues and I made-- great team work Bob, Mike, and Susan!
30 October 2009
21 October 2009
Something I won't forget for a long time...
So it has been a long time since I've posted, and so much has happened. I feel a bit like this right now:
I have started student teaching. WOW is that different from working with college students.
Biggest thing: you can tell college students to not come to class if they don't want to. And it's ok because it's their tuition money.
This is sure an adventure in learning and understanding that I am "teaching students science", not "teaching science to students."
Today I was reminded of this in a new way. Mondays and Wednesdays I facilitate discussion sections for chem. 210 (orgo 1). It's a blast, but it can be tough both in and out of the class (A very tired me grading last night: "Didn't they do this exact problem in lecture about a gazillion times? Why are so many people getting it wrong?") Today, I had 2 chemistry discussion sections, but they all had an exam last night, so today, I had a total of 4 students show up over 2 sections, and they ended up staying most of the time. Yes, there were a few chemistry questions, but the rest of the time we had a chance to get to know one another and talked about chemistry, its relevance to life, which bridged to a really cool conversation about learning/how we learn. One of my students is considering studying chemistry, but he's concerned that if he doesn't get an A in orgo 1, he shouldn't pursue it at all even though he likes it. We then talked about how it takes time and talked about how I see things so differently than I did four years ago, and how we continually learn and assimilate new information, and that it's how we tweak our prior knowledge (or at least recognize that something's amiss) to grow is what's important as we learn in life. It was cool. It's weird to think about the impact we have on people, for better or worse (and this is true no matter what we do with our time in this life, but I'm realizing it more and more every day). Hopefully today was a "for the better" type of interaction, because opportunities like this I am realizing can be few and far between.
I have started student teaching. WOW is that different from working with college students.
Biggest thing: you can tell college students to not come to class if they don't want to. And it's ok because it's their tuition money.
This is sure an adventure in learning and understanding that I am "teaching students science", not "teaching science to students."
Today I was reminded of this in a new way. Mondays and Wednesdays I facilitate discussion sections for chem. 210 (orgo 1). It's a blast, but it can be tough both in and out of the class (A very tired me grading last night: "Didn't they do this exact problem in lecture about a gazillion times? Why are so many people getting it wrong?") Today, I had 2 chemistry discussion sections, but they all had an exam last night, so today, I had a total of 4 students show up over 2 sections, and they ended up staying most of the time. Yes, there were a few chemistry questions, but the rest of the time we had a chance to get to know one another and talked about chemistry, its relevance to life, which bridged to a really cool conversation about learning/how we learn. One of my students is considering studying chemistry, but he's concerned that if he doesn't get an A in orgo 1, he shouldn't pursue it at all even though he likes it. We then talked about how it takes time and talked about how I see things so differently than I did four years ago, and how we continually learn and assimilate new information, and that it's how we tweak our prior knowledge (or at least recognize that something's amiss) to grow is what's important as we learn in life. It was cool. It's weird to think about the impact we have on people, for better or worse (and this is true no matter what we do with our time in this life, but I'm realizing it more and more every day). Hopefully today was a "for the better" type of interaction, because opportunities like this I am realizing can be few and far between.
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