Yesterday I had prepared one of my favorite physics lessons: a lecture/discussion with demos that explains various aspects of music. My seniors (3/4 of my students) are heading into their final week of high school, and a class that’s about something many of them are interested in was the perfect way to wrap up the current topic and end the year on a high note (pun intended).
The lesson was also intended as a bit of an antidote to the deluge of final projects my students have to finish for their other classes. The lesson took a fair amount of effort to set up—bringing in my viola and a penny whistle, setting up a frequency generator and speaker, finding a pair of tuning forks that were a few Hz different (to demonstrate the beats when the two were played together), finding two 20-oz. bottles with different size tops to demonstrate the characteristics of Helmholtz resonators, and, for the grand finale, a Rubens’ tube. So when a significant number of the students (some of whom had previously expressed an interest in the music lecture) were disrupting the class by ignoring the lesson and talking among themselves and looking at each other’s portfolios that they had made for their English class, I was less than happy, and I let them know it.
In retrospect, it was selfish of me to get angry with them. I was frustrated because I had put a lot of time and effort into creating what I thought would be a great lesson that they would enjoy and get a lot out of. However, at that point in their school year, most of them needed “down time” more than they needed a fun and interesting physics lesson. At the end of the year when all of their assignments for my class have already been turned in, is it fair for me to demand that they engage themselves in a lesson “for the fun of it” when the lesson wasn’t at all what most of them wanted or needed at that moment?
There are plenty of times during the year when I reminded them that if they were taking a physics class and wanted to be successful in the class, they needed to engage themselves in each topic one way or another. (This is something most of us teachers battle with on a regular basis.) However, I intended this lesson solely for their enjoyment, as a reward for a great year. When they didn’t accept the reward, I took it personally, and selfishly forced it on them.
Mea culpa.
