Last week, I asked my students to give me some anonymous feedback on my chemistry classes.
Evidently, they seem to be happy. They seem to be happy.
I have an AIM screen name that I give my students to use when they want to ask me school-related questions after hours. Some of my colleagues have expressed concerns about my doing this, but I’m careful to log everything and make sure to keep the conversations school-appropriate.
Last night, I got an IM from one of my students’ mothers. We had a wonderful 90-minute conversation about her son over IM that was in-depth, insightful, and in short exactly the kind of conversation that I wish I could have with each of my students’ parents.
The student IMed me separately to wish me a happy Thanksgiving, so I was briefly messaging with the student and his mom in separate windows. Needless to say, I took more than the usual amount of care not to mix up what I was typing to whom!
For the first time in over 4 years of teaching, I was unable to read one of my students’ handwriting. I gave a test with an essay question, and I was able to make out only about 1/3 of the words he wrote. This bothered me, because I’ve always been good at deciphering my students’ handwriting, even in cases when other teachers couldn’t.
The next day (yesterday), I handed the essay back to the student who wrote it and asked him to read it to me (with me following along) so I could grade it. He wasn’t able to read it either.
Last fall, I took a graduate course called Reading in the Content Areas. The course dealt with various ways of improving students’ reading comprehension.
The course made me realize that most students are never taught how to read anything other than a story/novel. Consequently, they read their assignments from their textbooks once through, from start to finish.
This year, before I had my students do any reading, I taught a lesson on a simple method of reading for content, based on what I learned in the course. Continue reading
This year, the introductory lab assignment I gave my chemistry students was to bake a batch of cookies without using a recipe. I’m pleased with how the assignment worked out, so I thought I’d post about it here.
One of my students from my organic chemistry class in Peabody two years ago just sent me the following:
hi mr. bigler, i don’t know if you remember me but its $FORMER_STUDENT and you taught me in organic chemistry and i just want to say thank you because i am in the class right now and i got 100s on my first 2 quizzes and i am just leaps and bounds ahead of other students in terms of understanding. so thank you again! and i hope all is well
I replied, “Of course I remember you, and you just made my day!”
Every year during my lab safety lecture, I have the kids turn on the eye wash and pull the safety shower chain with a bucket under the shower head. This year, on about the fourth or fifth kid, the valve got stuck in the “on” position, and dumped about 10 gallons of water on the floor before we finally got it to shut off. (I was the one holding the bucket at the time, which resulted in my getting rather soaked.) I managed to maintain my composure, though I was a little flustered and extremely nonplussed…
The custodians gave me a good-natured and extremely well-deserved hard time about it. :-}
Yesterday in one of my classes, I spent a few minutes talking about the results of the test I described in this post. The two kids who stayed after school for three hours both scored in the 90s on the test. (One of them got the high score—99%.) I mentioned this to the class (without naming the kids specifically—it’s up to them whether they “out” themselves), emphasizing that the difference between totally lost and solid enough to get an “A” on the test was a mere 2-3 hours. That turned out to be the key piece of information/incentive that some of the kids who have been struggling needed—three or four of the ones I had more or less written off suddenly wanted to know when they could come by after school next week to learn the material and take a re-test.
Then, after school, one of my students stayed after to make up a lab that she missed when she was absent. At one point, this student mentioned that she heard some of my other students saying some complimentary things about me in the cafeteria. This caught me by surprise—I hear a lot of griping from my students, but this was the first hint I’ve had from Belmont kids of anything positive.
The topic I just finished teaching (moles & stoichiometry) has given me a little more insight into the minds of high school sophomores.
