Category Archives: Anecdotes

Today I did a quick & simple demo of the activity series of metals. I had a solution of copper chloride. Metals that are more active than the copper ions in solution (such as aluminum) react, displacing the copper ions … Continue reading →

Every teacher has at least one kid who needs the teacher’s attention for every minute of every class. Often, those are kids I really enjoy having in class, as long as they have a sense of where the line is … Continue reading →

When I found out that I wasn’t going to be teaching in Peabody next year, one of my favorite students (yeah, I know, we’re not supposed to have favorites) asked if there was anything she could do. Knowing that this … Continue reading →

I got a nice comment from one of the students in my organic chem class yesterday. She had visited Boston College and looked over several of the problem sets & answers for their intro organic chem class. She made a … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →