Somebody is having an exciting day. This is in North Olmsted, across from St. Richards.
Category: Education (Page 5 of 7)
Twice in the last week, I’ve been asked about former students without the former student being present. As a seasoned professional, these situations are not awkward.
The first time, I was at a game night with a bunch of guys of recent acquaintance. Art mentioned that his nephew had been in my class. The name rang no bells in my head. While Art was saying that his nephew had enjoyed my class, recollection was dawning. I recall the name and may recall the kid.
This is where being a professional comes in. I made no effort to describe the student pictured in my mind, and just said, yeah, I think so, but I’d have to see a photo. Implying that I’m good with faces, not so good with names.
The second time, I was at a garage sale on my street. A woman of my vintage said that I looked familiar. I gave her a brief rundown, and she said, “That’s it. My daughter had you at Normandy.”
The daughter is now 42 years old, but I recalled her immediately. She had striking blue eyes like her mum, had a calm and imperturbable manner and was taking three science classes at the same time.
Mom was amazed at my impression of a wizened old teacher who fondly remembers every one of his former students. As we talked, she went on to mention a few other students, who I again recalled with clarity and a few anecdotes. Why did this go so well?
The daughter and friends were all high-flyers. Well-mannered, handsome, smart, congenial and motivated. That’s part of it. The other part is that I’d only been teaching for a few years, so had only taught a few hundred students. By the time I’d had the previously mentioned nephew, I’d had four or five times more students. Nearly a couple of thousand.
Seniors often ask if I will miss them after they graduate. This is going to sound bad. I tell them, “Honestly, by the 4th of July, I won’t even remember Mrs. Yappel’s name, and she’s right next door. I will miss you in the Fall, when the new students come in. They will be all mopey, boring and dumb, like you guys were when you came in. That’s when I will miss you terribly.”
Over the summer, I don’t have any reason to remember them, so those memory cells all go dormant. When I retired, I thought those memory cells were dying off. Talking to that mom, we talked about a few staff members that I hadn’t seen or thought about in 20 years. Most of it came back.
Memory seems to work like that when we get old. My mother, at 90 years old, recalled many stories from her childhood, but wasn’t great on more current events. Perhaps when we are young, events seem more intense and important. As we get older, nothing is as shocking, so not worth committing to memory.
NYT: Teachers can’t hold kids accountable.
NYT: Teachers can’t hold kids accountable.
This New York Times editorial about teaching covers real problems that are collapsing public education, but nothing here is new. These problems were evident the entire time I’ve been teaching, but Covid allowed the wreckers and degenerates to go all in. They are opposed by parent groups, but it’s a tough slog.
Kriste Smith gets $10k for North Royalton
Schools that work well, do so because they have a few teachers like Kriste. North Royalton tends to have a lot of them, even though the administration doesn’t know or care.
During my last year at Royalton, Kriste and I powered walked around the school during our 10th period free time. Superficially, I have almost nothing in common with Kriste, but we could talk for hours. She feels the same duty to her students, and is deeply committed to North Royalton.
Kriste was a counselor for years, but when the opportunity presented itself, she moved back to the classroom to teach business classes. As she built up the program, she was continually blocked by administration in her efforts to get books and resources to improve the student experience. There were times when she was on the verge of tears because of the callous way the administration ignored her requests.
Administrators like to think that they have a vision for the school, and just need to manipulate the puppets to make it a reality. It doesn’t work that way. A good administration sees the teaching staff as talent, that can be nurtured and developed. Kriste Smith is an indefatigable teacher with a huge heart. No teacher gets everything they want, but Kriste always deserves to be heard and a smart administrator would help her in any way possible.
I haven’t talked to Kriste about this grant, but it looks like the administration wasn’t giving her the support she needed to do the best for her students. She looked for other avenues to get there.
During the Covid year, the first quarter was going to be remote. and that was about all we knew. Teaching remotely, I couldn’t give students the a quality show, so I thought that I’d produce lecture videos that are good in a different way. The intent was to renovate the curriculum while producing videos that would be a resource for my remaining three or four years.
By the end of the year, NoRo management decided that I was done teaching Physics, so the videos were never edited to perfection or to be seen by anyone ever again. I decided that I’d post them here. These are the lecture videos. There were homework explanation videos, practice problem videos and quiz videos. I may post those in subsequent years.
Since this is about the time when the Chapter 2 test would be coming up, these are the “Kinematics in One Dimension” presentations.
This is our first lecture on actual physics.
Then we get to velocity.
Acceleration, and we are done. Usually, students get killed on this chapter test.
I’ve recently been conversing with a couple of students that I had during the Covid year. Both are in engineering at The Ohio State University. I had both when they were juniors in Physics, and again, as seniors in AP Physics 2. Since I knew them prior to the Covid year, I didn’t need to introduce myself. For students with whom I was not acquainted, it seemed important to produce a video that gave them some sense of Physics and how I approached the course.
Both videos were produced a couple of weeks before school started. I had time, but not much of an idea how to edit videos.
For the Physics students, I wanted to get across the fun and wonder of Physics. In an online course, it’s hard to communicate the twin virtues of fun and dangerous. For the intro video, I tried to get across the fun, my unconventional nature and that diligent effort would be expected.
For AP students, the purpose of the introduction was different. AP Physics 2 students are smart and they’ve had a year of physics. They know the score. It’s important that they believe that even if I’m not smarter than them, at least I know physics better than they do.
Cell phones banned in Dutch schools
Cell phones, tablets and smartwatches will be largely banned from classrooms in the Netherlands from January 1, 2024, the Dutch government said on Tuesday, in a bid to limit distractions during lessons.
I would not appreciate a law like this in the US.
“Because the truth is, we all know it: Discrimination still exists in America,” Mr. Biden told reporters in the Roosevelt Room.
Biden is correct. Discrimination still exists in America, and he likes it that way.
NYT: Racial Gaming in Admissions
NYT: Racial Gaming in Admissions
One of my Asian-American students asked if I believed in reverse discrimination. I told him there is no such thing as reverse discrimination, there is just discrimination, and elite colleges do it to Asian-American students all the time.
Nobody likes being told what to do or how to live. Tell a teenager how something should be done, and the mental blast shields come up. That’s one reason why vegans, environmentalists and the WOKE can be so tedious. Everyone used to know that people learn from stories. That’s why the Bible has so many of them. A story is engaging, and allows the message to slip in.
Boys need stories about heroes to learn how to be men. For those with limited comprehension, I’m not saying girls don’t, it’s just different. Boys need men to live up to. Blessed is the man who was intimidated by his dad in his teen years, but eventually hopes he can be half the man his father was.
The genre of story doesn’t matter much. Westerns, sports underdog or adventurer stories can all show a man up against the wall. He chooses to do what’s right, regardless of the cost, and there is a cost. It’s grueling, painful or dangerous. He gets his ass beat, but it works out in the end.
Rocky and the first Indiana Jones are two great examples.
Teaching Physics, telling stories and showing examples of men was part of my hidden agenda.
Furious parents marched their children across picket lines of striking teachers in Oakland, California, on Friday on the seventh day of a strike in which teachers are demanding reparations for slavery, among other demands.
Say what you want about France, but they don’t play “follow the leader”. They protect their interests and make their own decisions. On race relations, they seem to have a sensible policy. I had some idea of how they handled diversity issues, so found this Brookings Institute article to be interesting.