When I was at MIT, I used the metaphor of a treadmill to describe the progression of a semester. Someone else was controlling the speed of the treadmill. Each week, the person would turn the speed up a little faster. By the end of the semester, it was all I could do to keep myself on the treadmill and not go flying across the room and crash into the wall.
There are a lot of ways, to be sure, in which a public high school just can’t compare to an institution like MIT. However, in some measure, I’m now the person in control of the treadmills that my students are on. I get to decide how fast I want them to be going by the end of the year, and how much to increment the speed each week in hopes of getting them there.
On Monday, each of my classes will do another experiment of their own design, slightly more complex than the previous one. This should give me a pretty good indication of how well I’m gauging the treadmill speed. For this one, I’m also requiring a formal write-up. Last year and the year before, my students didn’t quite get where I wanted them to with the formal reports, so even though I’ve got more high-caliber students this year, I’m going to split the report into more manageable chunks to see if that makes it easier for them to do a really good job on each chunk.
In other notes, I think I’ve successfully unruffled the feathers of one of my students’ parents. Some teachers probably think I’m completely weird for this, but I really enjoy the process of turning angry or upset parents into allies.
