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Author Archives: Mr. Bigler
Peel & Eat Kleenex: I Double Dog Dare You!
I’ve been buying Kleenex Anti-Viral tissues for my classroom lately. I have no data on whether they make a difference, but given how well diseases travel through schools, I figured it couldn’t hurt. For the record, the active ingredients in … Continue reading
Watching the Light Bulbs Turn On
Like many teachers, I live for those moments when I can watch a light bulb go on in one of my students’ heads. When it happens, even once, it can make my entire day. My organic chemistry class has been … Continue reading
Administering a Hard Lesson
One of my students turned in a science fair project that turned out to be his sister’s project from last year. I find it amazing that he thought he could get away with it. His sister’s project won second prize … Continue reading
Posted in Administrivia, Anecdotes, Challenges & Frustrations
Tagged administrivia, anecdotes, challenges
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“Worms…Eww!”
My school holds its science fair every year in March. Two of the kids in my organic chem class are doing a study on the effects of zinc on earthworms. (The motivation for the project is that one of the … Continue reading
Academic Integrity
I gave my honors chemistry II students a lab practicum for their mid-term exam on Friday. I divided them into of three students per group (assigned randomly) and gave the groups two problems to solve and write up (in a … Continue reading
Posted in Administrivia, Anecdotes, Challenges & Frustrations
Tagged administrivia, anecdotes, challenges
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Smarter Kids Are Slower
I gave my honors chemistry 2 students a lab practicum for their mid-term exam yesterday. I assigned them in groups of three and gave them two problems to solve and write up (in a format similar to the one I … Continue reading
Solving “Problem Solving” Problems
This should come as no surprise to anyone, but most high school kids have never been taught any general-purpose techniques for problem-solving. Those of you who have been reading my journal might recall that I’ve been making an effort to … Continue reading
Kids Who “Get It”
I had a frustrating organic chem class on Wednesday. The class appeared not to understand or be able to reproduce some of the reactions that we had studied in detail in recent classes. This is normal and expected behavior for … Continue reading
Please Stop Trying to Be Nice
Today was my first formal observation of the year. (For the vast majority of you out there who aren’t schoolteachers, non-tenured teachers typically get formally observed three times a year. Write-ups of those observations become part of the teacher’s permanent … Continue reading
Discipline
I was reading the book Writing New England: an Anthology from the Puritans to the Present ed. Andrew Delbanco, pub. Harvard University Press, and ran across an excerpt from The Headmaster, by John McPhee. The essay describes Dr. Frank Boyden, … Continue reading