Day 44: Swedish Fusion

I'm starting to think that rather than "today my students learned ...," I should begin my posts with "today, I learned..."

I am constantly amazed at how much Astronomy I'm learning each day.  By the time I get to my fifth iteration, I feel like an Astrophysicist!

Today, I learned about the different layers of the sun and its atmosphere.

I explained how fusion works by shaking, and then crushing together, two Swedish fish.  Then I ate them.


The physics class worked on another 2 dimensional kinematics problem.  I am starting to realize that I've really been missing doing math this year.  I find so much comfort in it, especially in the Physics where you have to figure out multiple steps to get to a solution.

I'm still tired and don't feel like writing today.  It wasn't a bad day at all and I'll leave it at that.

Day 43: Catch-Up

With the marking period ending on Friday, the quarterly "how can I get my grade up" scramble is in full swing.

Since I am not under time pressure to cover certain topics and I'm not the kind of person who tries to use what Sarah Palin might call "gotcha" teaching, I have no problem taking a day or two to let kids turn in assignments that they owe and demonstrate that they do actually know the information.

The majority of my students spent today working on corrections to the test that they took on Friday.  They could earn back some points that they missed by writing the correct answer, an explanation of their reasoning and an explanation of what they did wrong the first time.

For those who had already completed their test corrections, or opted not to do them, I had them work on the next section of their guided notes, looking up information on the corona and chromosphere.

I couldn't help but notice a high correlation between students working on their guided notes and those who did well on this previous test.


It is a great time to be an astronomy teacher!  NASA just released a 30 minute video of high definition solar footage from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.  It is one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a long time (besides a baby's smile, a single blue flower in a field of yellow or a bald eagle soaring through the Rockies clutching an American Flag).
Since I had JUST talked about both the SDO and the photosphere yesterday, I felt justified it having this video run on loop in the background while the kids worked.  The music is gorgeous as well.


I think several students in the Honors Physics class are starting to realize how far out of their depth they are.  One of the trends that I've noticed is that students in advanced classes usually fall into one of two categories.  Either they have had enough background smarts to push them forwards, or they have great work habits and persistence.

The Physics class seems to be split about 50/50.  Many of these kids are naturally bright, but don't really know how to take notes, ask questions, or study.  When they find themselves lost, instead of buckling down, they tune out and wait for something that makes sense to them.

This is a fairly good short-term strategy, especially in classes that don't carry over topics and concepts from one section to the next.  It is, however, a terrible strategy for classes such as math and science where the topics are cumulative.

The students who only paid minor attention during the section on 1 dimensional kinematics are finding it difficult to keep up during 2 dimensional.  These are the same students who repeatedly simply don't turn in assignments.  I would care less about this if they could ace the tests, but that's not happening either.

Since "Honors Physics" is the lowest level of physics that's offered in my school, I'm wondering if I need to be changing my expectations of the students.

My issue with that is that there are several students who are working their butts off and doing amazing work and I hate to cater to those who won't work because they think they don't have to.


And after that last sentence, I feel as though I should call my parents to make sure they haven't died from the irony.

One of my coworkers stopped me in the hall today to tell me that she's been reading this blog lately.  She thanked me for my writing and what I share.  She told me that she finds it comforting to see that someone else is having the same struggles as she is, the same failures, the same questions.

When I spoke at NCTM last month, I said that I write for me.  I write to find my center, to keep myself on track.

But I would be lying if I didn't admit that I love interactions like the one I had today.  As a teacher, it warms me to know that I'm helping someone else, even if all I'm doing is sharing my struggles.

So I suppose I'll keep doing it.

Today is post number 400.

Here's to 400 more!


I'm lying! Can I be done blogging please??

Day 42: 'Sup, Sun?

I started today by playing a video.


We are starting the unit on the Sun so I thought a cool video with nice animation would be a good way to introduce the topic.

"Phil Plait speaks incredibly quickly, so don't worry about writing anything down or even catching all of it.  Just pick up what you can and we'll talk about it afterwards."

Over the 10 minutes, there were a few exclamations of "holy crap!" and "that's crazy" which I took as a good sign of engagement and interest.

Then I told stories.  I've said before that when I lecture, I do so in the form of storytelling rather than fact listing.  Telling the same story 5 times in a row also means I get more of the facts right and am able to add more details.  In talking about the photosphere (which I knew nothing about 3 days ago) for 5 periods, I now feel VERY comfortable moving away from just the basic facts and make it more of a story.

So, who wants to know about the photosphere...

Fine...


I'm feeling much better than yesterday.  One of the students with whom I had an altercation yesterday came up to ask me to sponsor the chess club today.

Sometimes it just takes a day or two to get your head right.

I helped myself to improve my mood by working on some 2-dimensional kinematics problems with the Physics class.  Hooray!

About a third of them had their heads down, waiting for us to either finish the problem, or not trying at all.  The other two thirds, however, worked VERY hard and I could actually hear brain gears grinding.  It was a glorious sound, seconded only by the cries of elation that a student gives when they have fought their way through a tough problem.

Day 41: The Good of The Many

I should have stayed home today, but I know it wouldn't have helped.

Yesterday, I started grading at 8:30 am.  When I finished at 3 pm, I had a headache, my stomach hurt, I was angry, frustrated and imagined myself as the worst teacher ever.

In my heart, I know this isn't true.  I know that my lessons are not super boring.  I know that many of the low scores are a direct result of the choices made by my students.  They CHOOSE to sleep during class, to not take notes, to not use the reviews, to not ask questions, to put their name on the test and then turn it in.

I know that when a student who was absent on Friday gets the test today, answers the first page while leaning on a locker, turns in it after 3 minutes and says she'll do the make-up, then spends the period talking to her friends, that she's making a choice.

I know that when a student calls me over to ask a question and then turns around and talk to his friend about sports while I'm standing there, he's making a choice.

I also know that part of school is helping students to make more productive choices.  I'm becoming less and less convinced that I know how to do this.

On a small scale, I can have conversations with students about their choices, but with 130, I'm not sure how to do it without having them think "he's talking about someone else."

My class is an elective science class.  Many of the kids in it are taking it because they need the science credit to graduate, and they thought it would be easier than Ecology or Chemistry.  It's not a hard course, but you do need to do more than just show up.

I KNOW that the score are a result of the choices that they make.


But that doesn't stop me from asking what else I could do.

When I start making of list of the things I AM doing to support them, I feel as though I'm making excuses.  I wonder how much of this is internal and how much is societal expectations that teachers never give up on their students.

For your own sanity, there has to come a point where you stop.  At some point, you have to do the math of how much you focus on one disruptive student instead of the 12 attentive ones.

No, you shouldn't give up any kid.  But why should one take priority over 29?  We have to serve every kid, but at what point does serving one student mean neglecting another?

These are questions that we can't ever discuss because no one wants to admit that they are giving up on a kid.

The reality, however, is that as a human being, I have a limited set of skills and there are students whose needs are beyond my abilities.

I am unwilling to sacrifice 29 for the sake of 1, especially when that 1 takes it as a personal mission to dynamite the classroom.  I know he/she has needs, that the behavior is rooted in something important, but I simply don't have the resources to cure those ills.

Spending 5 minutes on each student each day adds up to almost 11 hours each day.  So we focus our time where think it will do the most good.


Student: "Mr. Aion, I'm coming in Wednesday to retake a test."
Me: "Which one?"
Student: "I don't know which one! YOU look it up!"
Me: "I'm not doing that. It's your test that you want to retake. If you don't know which one it is, it tells me that you haven't prepared for it. That means it would be a waste of your time to take and mine to grade."
Students: "You're mad! Don't take it out on me just because you're angry."
Me: "Not at all. This is your grade and your retake, therefore is your responsibility."
Student: "STOP TALKING TO ME!"

I know that much of this response is a defense mechanism, trying to not feel stupid and lost, but that doesn't change my ability to deal with it.

I don't know how to explain that there needs to be some personal responsibility.

I called him up near the end of class and we cleared the air.  He looked up the test he needed and said he would study.  I felt better about it, but I'm wiped out.


When I told another student that he didn't know what he was supposed to be doing because he spoke over me while I was giving directions, he said something about "deez nuts."

And then something interesting and comforting happened.  While I was covering another class, a few students came from the din and asked me if I knew any math because they had some questions on their homework.

As we worked through the problems, as I explained concepts, I could feel myself calming.  By the time I had to head back to my own room, I was still upset, but in a much better frame of mind. This was aided by one of my own students also asking for help in algebra.

I find comfort and solace in the crunching and exploration of mathematics.  I love helping kids explore new methods in order to deepen their understanding.  It breaks my heart to hear a student say that a teacher requires them to use a certain method.  Math is beautiful and we our very best crush that beauty into rote procedures.  For a few brief moments today, I was able to help some students break out of that and see the beauty again.

It was glorious.

Day 40: Quotes

Student: "Mr. Aion, do I have to take this test? I don't know this stuff."

Student: "How am I supposed to know this?"
Me: "This material comes from the notes that we cover in class, the discussions that we've had and, since I know you have trouble getting up in the morning, they are up on the school website."
Student: "I'm not doing all that."

Student: "I wasn't paying attention during the review. Why do I have to take this?"

Student: "Mr. Aion, what's the answer to number 34?"
Me: "This is an assessment of your knowledge. Put down what you THINK it is?"
Student: "You're the teacher! You're supposed to tell me the answers.  It's in my IEP."

Me: "Could you please stop talking, other student are taking the test."
Student: "Everyone else is dancing and singing!" (No one was)
Me: "Will you come into the hall and talk to me for a second so we don't disturb the class?"
Student: "No." (gathers things and walks out)


None of these are atypical behaviors and I'm not sure how to address them.  I make my test expectations very clear and I ask my students politely to abide by them.  I explain that they need to respect the testing environment of other students.  We talk about how test day is NOT the day to say that you don't understand.  The reason that I do review days is so that they can ask for help then.

Responsibility is a huge issue, not just for many of my students, but everywhere.  I think I would be hard pressed to find a teacher who hasn't heard at least one of the above lines.

I've written before about the fine line between support and enabling and how I have tremendous difficulty knowing where that line is.

This, however, seems fairly clear cut to me.  If you feel unready to take an assessment, once that assessment has been handed out isn't really the best time to say so.

It seems a bit like declaring your fear of skydiving after you've already left the plane.  There was plenty of opportunity to back out before you find yourself in the air.

"WAIT! I slept through the safety demo!!"

I understand some of the causes and reasoning behind this.  I don't think we do a good enough job teaching students about how to prepare for assessments in general, study skills, how to ask questions, how to know which questions to ask, etc.

There is a pervasive fear of failure that is a huge problem.  There's a solid mentality of "if I can't do something like a pro, I'm not going to try."

It's better to have given up before you start than to look stupid in front of your peers.


As a proponent of growth mindset, I know the dangers of this, but I'm not sure how to encourage my students to keep trying.  As it is, they know that if they don't like their scores, they can retake the assessments.  The idea is that this will cause lower pressure, but it seems to translate to kids not studying, or even remembering that they have a test.

"I don't need to study. If I mess it up, I'll just take it again."

Except that they don't.  The kids who are most vocal with that strategy NEVER come to retake tests.  Or they wait weeks and forget what we talked about at all.

I can't take ownership over their decisions. I can only encourage.  I can provide support for both successes and failures.

Me: **hands out test**
**4 minutes later**
Student: "I'm done."
**2 minutes later**
Same student: "We can do retakes, right?"

Day 39: Dungeons & Disciplinarians

Test tomorrow.

"Yesterday I gave you a list of topics and concepts that will be on the test.  Today, I'll answer any questions you have, fill in any gaps you might have in your notes.  What questions do you have?"

**silence**

The majority of the students spent the class working (or not) on other things.  There were at least a few in each class who had some good questions, either about the material, or hypothetical questions about the Earth and the Moon.

In one class, I spoke with a group of young men about the benefits of game-play in general and Dungeons and Dragons in particular.  Storytelling, resource management, problem solving, teamwork, creativity and planning are just a few of the skills that are developed through games.

You know, the kinds of skills we want kids to have when they finish school and move out into reality.

"Recite the quadratic formula or I'll eat you up!"

Not for the first time, I find myself wondering if you could create a system/campaign to comprehensively teach various subjects.  I think some would lend themselves to it fairly easily, like history or literature, where others might be more complex.  I think it would take a complete restructuring of courses and sequences.  I think trigonometry and algebra would have to be integrated into other classes.

I'm not talking about gamification, just adding game elements to regular classes.  I'm talking about a game that would teach the content, allowing students to specialize and rely on teams to move forward.

MIT built a game called The Radix Endeavor that (supposedly) teaches biology, ecology and a few other ologies.  I need to look into it more, but I suspect that it's not exactly what I'm looking for.  I do know that it doesn't focus on Astronomy and Physics or math in the way that I would want.



The physics kids can't just let me do my examples...

Me: "A helicopter takes off at 35 degree with a velocity of 95 km/h.  What is the horizontal component of the velocity?"
S: "Why do we need that?"
Me: "We want to stay in the shadow of the helicopter?"
S: "Why?"

It escalated quickly...

Me: "Ok. A Bond villain escapes in a helicopter, taking off at 35 degrees and moving at 95 km/h.  As he flies, he drops kittens from the helicopter.  In order to save the kittens, James Bond drives a pick-up truck full of mattresses under the helicopter.  How fast much he drive to make sure the kittens land on the mattresses?"

"Goodbye, Mr. Bond! Give my regards to Chairman Meow!"

What jerks...forcing me to be creative...

Day 38: Retrograde

You are not the center of the universe.

Human beings have tremendous difficulty with this concept, especially younger humans.  Maturity could be defined as the ability to be selfless, recognizing that other people exist and have needs.

From a certain perspective, that of the ever-expanding universe, one could argue that EVERY point of observation is the center. In light of this view, I'll rephrase my statement.

The Earth is not the center of our solar system.  There is a good amount of evidence to demonstrate this, but much of it deals with the complex mathematics of Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion.

One way to show students that our planets orbit the sun instead of Earth is to talk about retrograde motion.

Retrograde motion is the apparent backwards motion of a planet when it passes, or is passed, by another planet in orbit.

It made more sense to the students when I talked about a car going 70 mph passing one going 60 mph on the highway.  While the slower car is still moving forward, it appears to move backwards from the perspective of the first car.

Similarly, when movies use chest-mounted cameras that face towards the person wearing them, it appears as though the person is staying still while the world moves around them.

After a brief conversation on retrograde motion, we watched a quick video on what it would be like if the Earth were flat.

Shifting perspectives is VERY complicated, but can be incredibly fun and enlightening!

A prime example of that is that I've been slowly shifting my own perspective to the mentality that I'm a teacher!


The physics students were GOING to take their kinematics quiz on Thursday, but then I found that several will be gone for sportsball stuff, so I decided to give the quiz today.  In an effort to counteract that, I let them work with a partner if they chose to.

Each student had to turn in their own work, but they could discuss answers, strategies and ideas.  Several students made excellent choices in terms of partners.  All of the groups worked fairly well and the room was filled with quiet, accountable conversations.

At the end of the period, only one pair of students had completed the assignment.  Since they weren't goofing around, I let them take the quizzes home and finish them up tonight.

One student asked if he, theoretically, went home and looked up the answers on Wolfram Alpha, would he still get the points.

I told him that doing so would only cheat himself.  I don't care about his grades.  I care that he knows the material.  A fake "A" will give him a false sense of understanding and will hurt him in the future.  I don't really have any worries about this group cheating.