Day 47: Dropping the Ball

For various reasons, including a senior trip to visit colleges, my classes were fairly light today.  I finished giving notes for the section on nuclear fusion with hydrostatic equilibrium.

I know I've said it before, and I will say it again, but MAN! I'm learning a ton.

Rather than lecturing for the whole class, I covered a topic and give them an activity to work on.

I've been worried about Physics.  More specifically, I've been worried about the sequencing.  I've been following two different curricula that SORT of coincide, but not completely.  I'm finding myself covering topics (inclined planes) that I think could be explained better with free-body diagrams, but we haven't done those yet.  One sequence wants me to talk about vectors while the other doesn't.\

This is something I need to fix.  Pick a sequence and go with it, Justin!

I worry that I'm creating confusion, and probably because I'm confused myself.  I've been relying on my own abilities and knowledge of physics to get me though and I think that was a bad choice.

I'm going to go back and look more heavily at the sequence, plan my topics better and have a more consistent set of scaffolds.  I think I was planning for this class to be populated with students of a certain level of requisite knowledge and skills and that's simply not the case.

Rather than letting them flop and flail, I need to meet them where they are to move them to where I want them to be.

I know they are capable, but I also think I need to be providing more of a structure and clearly identifying my expectations.

Two students have dropped the class already.