Life

Further research into problem solving in teams.

Pros -

Real world – team based -communicate-work together- divide labour – avoids teacher at front lecturing – like FPS. Competitive and scoring.

Cons -

Noisy, less individual accountability, no room in classroom, harder work for me to set up. No internet access.

Tools -

Set up teams – assign roles – get physical space to work in – get resources (texts, dictionary, magazine, reading, whiteboard tasks, handouts etc etc).

Decide on key tools students need in toolbox:

- have a go-mark-fix-comment.

- mindmap key points – imagery – story -concept cartoon.

- literacy – sentence – paragraph – essay.

- experiments – they have to find and research.

Set problem-challenge. Gather information. Produce response. Score points.

Next steps -

Get more info! Email/call jpaullowe.

Try photosynthesis essay.

Prepare term 4 tasks – FPS Space Travel task, Tides/Moon/Seasons data gathering, Pinhole camera….

Set up classroom – remove teachers desk to side – shift cables.

School is rugby-mad, a huge assembly and massive costumed parade through town! I wear my brown suit. More 1970′s than 1870′s!

A repeated theme this term has been students who make a poor effort, and their parents’ response. I get blamed, told what to do, encouraged, and otherwise harassed. Sometimes I wonder whether I should let the parents know at all. Does it really help? Is it too late for the kid to change? Should I have let them know earlier?  Des’s advice: “Don’t tell them anything! It’s between you and him, boy!”.

Science Fair has been left till last minute. I am becoming less and less sociable to my dear colleagues. I hope they don’t think I’m an arrogant bastard. I continue to wonder if my teaching style (Starter, Teacher at the front, Work time) is relevant any more. Sure, the kids lap up chalk and talk, and like to be told what to do. But is that really helping them? What about that happy vision of teams, working together to build and collaborate, to solve a big question!

Tennis continues to frustrate. My arm has been sore, and serving is terrible. Not enough practice. Putting a team together still. I sulk pathetically during my lesson. Then consider getting more lessons next term! 10,000 hours…….

The famous psychologist spoke today. He talked, and talked, and talked… blah blah. No question time was given. I think everyone would have been too scared anyway. He seems to have an answer to everything. He has a lame website. His budget powerpoint was complied using budget Google images. How publicity can cause fame….perhaps looking peculiar helps. Everything he said was completely obvious. Honed by years of experience. Respect to him, and good on him. He just didn’t have a huge amount of practical advice to help me as a teacher. But it made me think.

I did like how he used a slide of a small caravan, painted with a mural of the brain, as his prompt for explanation of pre-frontal cortex and amygdala. I like his enthusiasm. I like his cry to not believe everything you hear, to not believe the anti-vaccine, crystal brigade, the fake-reference books. He said, the best thing we can teach the teenager is to have Self-Control. Try saying…”Shut the fuck up.” And he likes punishment. Don’t be their friend. All common sense.

Afterwards we had a brief meeting. Work ethic, Course structure, Teaching method, Study skills. PH asked, “How noisy is your classroom?”. A very very good question. The answer is –  the quieter the better!!!

Graham Greene – “The Power and the Glory”. I want to finish this book….. Im hooked!

ESB is my favorite beer at the Free House…. and plenty gets drunk on my day after birthday celebrations. Which ends up at TB’s flying a remote control helicopter. I want one!!

What a lovely weekend! Spent gardening, as things start to grow again. Frosts have dealt to the sapotes.

Tennis has started again, along with the ups and downs. I get thrashed by A, then beat one of my students, who is 13. I will take that win! In a year, or months even, he will dominate me.

Back to school, and watching a rugby game takes up half of period 4. Let alone changing the whole timetable to suit being able to watch the game. Lame.

Recent books are:

- The Picture of Dorian Grey – a disturbing and freaky insight into 1890′s England, where the hint of impropriety was enough to cause fear. A great read, to be savoured and re-read. Classic.

- Jungle Lovers – Paul Theroux. Another disturbing book!! Weird and dark. A lot of action packed into a small novel.

Nigel Latta on Thursday. Lets hope I have a job after I hear a whisper that science will no longer be compulsory at Year 11. That means science teachers will be getting the sack….

Its great to meet the parents, and pack in as much feedback as possible into 5 minutes. Some common things I say are:

- Suggest the student organises their week, on a day by day basis, to set aside 30-40 minutes twice a week, to do homework and revise.

- Not much/no homework has been done.

- They need to use the answers to mark, fix, and comment on their homework.

- Student needs to improve written explanation.

I show my homework record, show the website with topics, show the students’ books and textbooks….. by the end of the night I have build up steam and talk too much and am the last to leave the hall. Whew!

We started our essay writing today, and I realise the value of it! The week’s worth of lessons on bacteria, fungi and viruses, are forgotten. The students ask, “how do bacteria feed?”, not realising they have written it down in their notes the day before. So the planning tempate, making a key word summary, works really well. Next is the SEX (State, Explain, eXample) method to write a paragraph, to build an essay.

The lesson on viruses was fun, a rare lesson when I get so carried away with talking (again), that I rave on, showing all kinds of graphic pictures of herpes and cool animations.

And more hilarity comes from my sneakily shining  a laser beam onto the students’ work whiloe we learn about light. Heh heh heh!

Plus its great being in Nelson, biking home in a short sleeve shirt while the rest of the country shivers in frozen snow. nice!

Well the country is snowed under. Welly looks especially bad. A great city, the funkiest by far in Aotearoa. But the horizontal sleet and howling wind, LIVE on tv while I enjoyed a fantastic sunny evening in Nelson, made me glad I don’t live there.

Today was a fun day, considering it is my busiest day with 5 classes. Speed-time graphs period 1, with some stern words. I tested my new line, “What right have you got to disrupt the learning of these other guys etc etc”. It works, for a time. They are going well, the physics topic is good. With the end of the year in sight, the class is stepping up effort. Good on them.

Period 2 is fungi. My sister reminds me after work of the line, “Isn’t this Fun, guys?” Tomorrow I’ll try that one. Instead of saying, “Infect you later, row one”, and “Incubate you tomorrow”. Ha ha!

Period 3 is chemistry, with three practicals packed into one. Cobalt chloride, Chromate/dichromate, and Copper aqua/chloride complex ions. OK, its chemistry, but the relevance of these practicals is limited to passing exams. And an understanding of equilibrium systems. I want to be a physics teacher!!

Period 4 is a simple lesson on splitting light into a colored spectrum. I cant explain why light slows down in different media. Gotta look that one up.

Last of all if Fungi again. I devise a research project for the boys – comparing similarity and differences between Bacteria, Fungi and Viruses. Essay and research time!

Interviews tomorrow. Jay has some advice- talk less, and listen more!

Its nice to have a car! Well, to borrow one… thanks Claire! I find it scary how easily I embrace speed, and become incautious at intersections. Its all too easy to be dangerous in a car, with heinous consequence. (Riding my bike almost every day I fear for my life from dangerous drivers.) The trip up the narrow, single lane Wakamarina road was fun, including the two fords and four-wheel driving.

I ran up the track and saw no-one. Up, up, into the clouds, through lovely forest. To a cosy hut, and pot belly stove, where I continued to read my favourite author, Paul Theroux. “Misanthropic”, according to his Wikipedia page. I’m reading his three African novels, written early in his career. “Fong and the Indians” is excellent, while “Girls at Play” comes to a disturbing end. I laugh for ages at his account of a conflict between characters, both women, in the form of dinner party war!

Mt Riley had been my goal, but leaving too late in the day, and a snowstorm, saw me run back down the hill to visit the Stone huts, and Doom Creek walkway, both reminders of the crazy goldmining era. (One of my long standing fantasies is to stumble across a massive gold nugget, in a riverbed.) Sore legs and a stormy drive home.

The end of week 2 was fun. Playing the students footage of “The Changing of the Guards”, marching in bearskin hats to rousing music, saw me march around the classroom singing the march music. And also made me want to go to London! Chemistry was the equilibrium experiment, with Iron thiocyanate. The day finished on a depressing note, with a tickertimer experiment that did not go so well.

Friday saw two lessons on bacteria, including the STD and condom talk. Most of the year 9s seem down with that information. Then half the class was away so we got a  great deal done on solving speed and acceleration problems.

Instead of going to the pub I enjoyed a relaxing night in. “The Kings Speech” was a nice movie, but the “Hurt Locker” was lame.

Alaister Cotteril, my tennis coach! What a treat it is to have an expert teach me how to do something right. He must get so sick of people whinging and moaning about how crap they are at tennis. I sure whinge. The ups and downs of learning a new motor skill. The satisfaction of hitting a nice shot. The depression at being constantly thrashed. Tennis has it all. After having a 4 month lull I am going to give it another go.

So thanks Alaister for having the patience to show me what to do. Ground strokes,  volley, serve. I find the serve the hardest. The adjustments, refinement, practice, technique… all appeal to me. Perhaps I find the mental game the hardest. Patience, being positive, never giving up…. all areas to improve on!

Now to practice. That takes a lot of time. And shoes.

Some are making an effort, but day by day time ticks by toward exams. What a frustration to see students waste their time and be unable to concentrate longer than about 30 minutes on simple math/formula solving problems. I guess getting credits isnt so important. I hold a ridiculous interrogation:

“Why do you have do do work?’

“To pass the exam” was the grunted reply.

“Why do you need to pass the exam?”

“To get 4 credits”

“Why do you need 4 credits?”

“To pass level 1″?”

“Why bother to pass level 1?

“To get a good job”

“Why get a good job?”

“To get money.”

“BINGO! Do you want to be a broke-assed bum your whole life? Well you will be if you dont pass level 1….” etc etc.

Its fascinating seeing the distribution of ability and effort. Good luck to all those students, they are the future!

Passing Countdown in the dark I notice the o has blown….. come and shop at Cuntdown!

The canteen boys served up a huge glob of meat nachos with cheese and sour cream for my Wednesday lunch. It sat in my stomach all day, ruining my afternoon and making tennis lethargic. Worse was waking in the night with diarrhoea, which continued for the next two days. Horrible.

Thursday had a cruisy start, checking the 1.1 investigations. A revision lesson before the test, then swabbing agar plates, chemistry full speed ahead, and tickertimers buzz.

On Friday we made yogurt. Simple experiment, but with lots of science behind it. We write a long explanation. Test period 3 brings home how little work the students are doing. Simple memorisation, of three reactions….. they have no idea. Its depressing. Or is it the bell curve? Some excellent students, some terrible, most in the middle. Fourth period the class works well with distance-time graphs. But again a huge reluctance to really do any work at all.

I get a reality check popping in to see Dave last period.  I always feel a useless inadequate teacher seeing the deathly silence which which his class runs. I feel quite uncomfortable in that silence. But the kids seem to like it, and get lots of copying down done.

Friday night sees a lot of beer drunk and laughing. I have my usual fantasies of being a prize winning author. Perhaps I should be writing stories instead of boring reality.

I finished “The end of the affair” by Graham Greene. A depressing book. But with an interesting theme- love and hate.