Chris's blog

How to Create a Penny Pendulum and a Class That Can Handle Using One

As my previous blog indicates, the first few weeks of my second year have been extremely pleasant.  My students understand my expectations, and they arrive in class everyday ready to work and learn.  This past Monday, I attempted my first hands on lab activity with my students.  While I realize that "fun activities" and probably explicitly labs are under MTC's list of things not to try during the first few weeks of school, I couldn't bypass a lesson on the scientific method without actually having the students apply the method.

In this lab, my students created pendulums out of string and pennies.  They then proceeded to determine how the length of the string affected the rate at which the pendulum swung.  They did all of this without talking, without swinging the pendulum at their neighbor, and without stealing the pennies.  Success.

What follows is a list of things that I believe have contributed to my successful classroom management this year:

1) Eye contact - Student misbehavior seems to arise out of opportunity.  Making the students feel that you are constantly watching them eliminates perceived opportunities.  I look around constantly.  If a student looks up then the teacher's eyes should be first things he or she sees.

2) Timer - I time almost all assignments.  My school district invested in a brand new computer for my classroom.  The best use I have found for it is to serve the role of a thousand dollar kitchen timer.  When the kids know there is a deadline, they work to meet the deadline.

3) Taking up work - I take up everything.  I throw most of it away.  The kids think I grade everything.  I have found this approach is key to making the students feel that their work is completed for a reason.

4) My students work - I have finally learned how to take the advice that the teacher should not be doing the work.  I talk for 5-10 minutes during the lesson.  The rest of the time is devoted to student work.  Not only do I prefer this, but my students do as well.

5) The Enforcer - I call students out on the slightest misbehavior.  It's not that I want to punish Jontavius for calling out the correct answer, nor is it that Jontavius necessarily deserves to be punished for calling out the right answer.  It simply comes down to the fact that this is the only way to prevent Teandreak from engaging in calling the girl beside him a "fat bean headed cheddar cheese burger".

Picture 2

It's not that I'm opposed...

It's not that I'm opposed to setting up a safety net to catch the trapeze artists when they fall but rather that I resent the use of such a safety net as a hammock by the clowns who never take the opportunity to get off the ground.

A Success Story

Over the course of the past school year, I had the privilege of coordinating a science club for my students.  I have spoken of this science club in previous posts and even posted pictures of some of the neon colored slime that my students created during one club meeting; however, it was not until an event at the end of the school year that I truly realized the success of my club.  I will begin with a description of some of the science club's adventures throughout the school year, my feelings about science club, and finally end with the event that made me perceive the entire undertaking as a success.

Science club was born out of a desire to interact with my students in a non-classroom setting while providing them with an opportunity for extracurricular involvement.  Originally, this desire had not resulted in the intent to create a science club.  I spent all day teaching science, and truthfully I wanted a break from the topic.  What was on my mind then was to create a Spanish club.  I felt that a Spanish club would bring something foreign to the school insofar as language is not offered at the middle school level in Greenville.  The biggest hold up to this problem... I do not speak Spanish.  Though I managed to pass the SAT2 in the subject several years earlier, my abilities to communicate in the foreign language were thoroughly eroded by this point in my life, so putting this ambition aside I went with the safer route of a science club.

We began meeting shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday and continued through the end of the school year.  Every Thursday, I spent an hour providing students with the hands on science experiences that they should be getting in their regular science class but through a combination of a failure of scalability and behavior management could not be done in the regular setting.

In the course of our meetings, we performed engineering challenges such as egg drop landers and bridge building contests, performed rudimentary titrations to learn about acid/base indicators, made slime, experimented with medicinal feeding bags, and generally had a great time.

The capstone experience for the club was the opportunity to build and launch model rockets.  As a rocket hobbyist growing up, I had acquired a number of supplies for model rocketry.  Investing a bit more money allowed the students of my club to work in pairs to build their own model rocket.  The rockets were then demonstrated throughout the following school day for all of my classes to see.  Needless to say, we had a blast.

With these experience in mind, it may seem as if science club was always something to look forward to, and I certainly hope that it was such for my students.  I have to admit, however, that the same could not always be said of my feelings towards the club.  While I enjoyed the time spent with my club members, I dreaded the days before a club meeting in which I almost always found myself frantically scrambling to devise a meaningful activity, acquire the necessary resources, and find the money to pay for said resources.  In essence, club became one more time consuming activity in a stage of my life in which time was my most precious commodity.

My feelings in this regard changed during the last week of school.  I was talking with one of my favorite students, a girl who had transferred into my class earlier in the year.  She was informing me that she would no longer be attending our school but rather would be transferring to the local private school for the coming year.  As I contemplated with regret the loss that this would be for our school and with anticipation the benefit this move would have for her future, she made a final request that quite honestly made my year.  She asked me whether I would still be running science club during the coming year and, if so, would it take place at the same time because she had every intention of coming to my school during the afternoon to continue taking part in science club during the coming year.

While I was busy stressing the experience of science club, one of my students was busy appreciating it, and that counts as a success.

Things to Improve on During Summer School

This summer I will be returning to the Holly Springs Summer School to teach 7^th and 8^th grade integrated science. In the course of the summer school, I will be attempting to put the lessons I learned as a first year teacher into a preliminary picture of what my classroom will look like next year. Three skills that I hope to improve on are as follows:

1) Animation – In the surveys I have given throughout the school year, my students have consistently ranked me lowest in the category of enthusiasm. In some part this is to be expected. I have always been a reserved individual. In fact, in high school, I was voted “Most Introverted” by my classmates. Nevertheless, a monotonous tone can be a weakness in the classroom. After all, I am attempting to get my kids to think that atoms are more interesting than the latest gossip on MySpace.

I have made advances in this field throughout the year. Recently, I have taught several lessons in which my students have questioned why I was talking in such a strange and excited manner. Last Thursday, I even had a student in my sixth period class remark that I have way too much energy. I just need to make sure that I have way too much energy every period of every day.

2) Makeup Work - One reason grades in my class are not where they could be is that my students are habitually absent from school and fail to inquire about makeup work. While my organizational skills have improved greatly this year, I have yet to find a way to provide makeup work in a manner that does not take a great amount of work on my part. I have tried having a folder with copies of each assignment and a list of students names who did not turn in each assignment. All of about five students bothered to check the list despite my constant reminders. In the last week, I have begun using butcher paper to create big lists of the week's assignment. My hope is that this will provide an easy way for students to see exactly what they missed on any given day. If I can develop a better method for providing makeup work during the summer school, I believe both my students and I will be the better for it in the coming year.

3) Closure – Throughout this first year, I have been weak at closing my lessons. It often seemed that closing the lesson was just an invitation for students to talk and spend the last two minutes getting out of hand. I preferred to keep the students in the dark as to the time and, thereby, cause them to work up until the bell. While this approach did mean that my classes were more likely to be quiet up until the end of class, it meant that I was rushed to take up materials and the students were frustrated by being held past the bell. This summer I would like to master the closure. I want to be able to collect materials, recap the lesson, and keep the students relatively quiet until the bell rings.

End of the Year Reflections

It is hard to believe that a year has already passed. I can vividly remember the end of the first 9 weeks and feeling overwhelmed that I would have to go through the same process three more times before the year was completed. Despite having moments where it seemed the bell could not come soon enough, the year as a whole has gone by extremely fast. What follows are my reflections on my first year of teaching. I am sure that these thoughts will deserve a thorough revision once I have completed a second year of teaching and have the luxury of being able to compare my first year experiences with those of a second year that I will undoubtedly be more prepared for; however, I think reflecting at this moment represents a raw view of what my first year held.

I will begin by saying that I have absolutely fallen in love with everyone of my students. Such a profession of admiration is something that I only came to be able to profess in the second half of the first year. My first two 9 weeks of teaching were filled with a level of bitterness at many of my students. I was angry that they made teaching so difficult. I was angry that they did not appreciate the work I put in for their benefit. I was angry at not all of my students but enough that it showed. My students could tell that I did not look forward to work, and, consequently, they did not look forward to working with me.

Over the Winter break, I made a commitment to changing my attitude about teaching. I did this not so much for the sake of the children as for my own benefit. I realized that yelling was not changing the behavior of the students and was only leaving me worn out, so I stopped. I realized that enough fake smiling could actually lead to real reasons to smile. I changed my attitudes, and, in doing so, changed the atmosphere of my classroom. As I became more relaxed so did my students, and the working environment became one of enjoyment.

Many of my students still struggle with severe behavior and motivational issues, and while I still detest their ill behavior, I have found a way to care for and love them as a person. The year has ended with me looking forward to seeing each and everyone of my students in the morning even if I don't look forward to dealing with their behavior. I told a veteran teacher that as much as I am looking forward to the summer break I already know that I will miss seeing my students everyday. She misinterpreted this as sarcasm and merely laughed.

A change in attitude was the first step in bettering my classroom. The second step was a change in teaching style. This year saw me improve vastly on organization and accountability in my classroom. I began the year by taking up Do Nows at the start of class. Within one week, I was flooded with ungraded and unorganized papers and decided a new approach was necessary. I began visually checking Do Nows during the start of class and marking a grade in my grade book. My students quickly learned that all that was necessary was to scribble something on a piece of paper so that I was given the appearance of some effort. As a result, the Do Nows were rarely taken seriously and my students were rarely focused at the start of class.

In the last two weeks of school, I found a solution to these problems. I began setting a timer. As soon as the bell rings, students have four minutes to complete the Do Now. The timer is visible at the front of the classroom. At the end of the four minutes, the Do Now is collected and placed in a folder labeled with the assignment name. I generally have the Do Now graded by the end of the period and entered in the grade book by the end of the day.

I have adopted this procedure not only with the Do Now but with all in class assignments as well. The result has been tremendous. Students are now silent at the start of class, focused when I begin the lesson, and completing their work with a level of accuracy that was unmatched earlier in the year. By far, the last two weeks of this year have witnessed my best teaching of the year. I am able to help individual students during in class assignments because the other students are working and quiet. In the last two weeks, I have not had to advance past a verbal warning in my consequence ladder. This is how my class should have been all year.

As I prepare for my second year of teaching, I feel that I have a clear idea of the way in which my classroom should operate. The methods that I have utilized in these last two weeks of my first year should provide a foundation for the entirety of the coming year. If I can maintain this level of structure and proper behavior in my classroom then I believe the biggest focus for the coming year will be on the improvement of the actual lessons. I recognize that I need to utilize more laboratory and hands on activities for my students. While my first year did see us shoot rockets, complete three dissections, build a catapult, and use acids and bases, I know that there is room for improvement and increased interactivity.

I have enjoyed year number one and am excited to see what year number two holds.

Rule #3: No Food in the Classroom

If the age old adage “you are what you eat” is true then I have a classroom full of flaming hot Cheetos, fruitie rolls, and granulated sugar. Insofar as I often feel that I am teaching a room full of wild cheetahs, my classroom may be a case study confirming this old wives tale. The fact is, left to their own devices, my students' diets are horrendous, and, unsurprisingly, it is diets such as theirs that tend to result in the state of Mississippi ranking number one in obesity.

From the standpoint of a teacher, obesity is one of my lesser worries. Don't misunderstand me, I desire for my students to live a long healthy life, but the fact of the matter is that I am more concerned with exercising their brains than exercising their muscles. I'll leave the teaching of leg lifts and push ups to the gym teachers so long as I can get them to add and subtract correctly.

The trouble is that food affects learning. Food's effect on learning is realized at several levels. First, there is the distraction factor. I can layer my lesson with props, discrepant events, and broadway quality acting, but all my best efforts will always fail to capture their attention so long as someone in the room is passing out cheesy puffs. If the students could act like adults with food in the classroom then perhaps snacks could be admitted, but I have yet to see any evidence that this is possible.

Besides the distraction factor, there exists an issue of quality. Our bodies react differently to various foods. I deal daily with the reaction of adolescent bodies to diets composed only of junk food, fast food, and pure sugar. Yes, pure sugar. My students are too young to deal drugs, but they push granulated sugar like it is the purest form of cocaine. There are dealers. There are addicts. Sometimes the sugar is mixed with Cool-Aid powder sometimes not, but the end result is always the same. My students' bodies are stuck in a continual cycle of highs and crashes, and I am expected to somehow catch them during that brief moment in the middle in order to impart some knowledge to them.

I have probably reached the point where most teachers would proceed to criticize the school for being the supplier of the great majority of the junk food that finds its way into my students' bodies. Instead, this is the point where I am thrilled to say that my school plays absolutely no roll in supplying junk food to students. Unbelievable right? I grew up in an upper-middle class suburb where the diets of the average student are undoubtedly far better than those of my students, but my school was littered with vending machines whereas the school in which I teach rarely even gives out dessert during lunch. There is one vending machine in my school, and its contains only water and juice. Within a laundry list of complaints about my school, food services is one area in which I take great pride.

Now, if we could only get those parents to stop supplying their children with products from the fatty and processed isle of the supermarket then we might be able to get somewhere.

Letter to Second Years

Dear 2^nd Year,

Let me begin by expressing my gratitude for all of your help over the past year. I know how busy the life of a teacher can be, so I know that it has been no small task for you to take the time out to assist all of us first years with our journey into teaching. Your teaching tips have been helpful and the sheer fact that you have survived to see the end of two years is enough to give me confidence that I can do the same. I appreciate everything you have done for us.

I want to continue expressing my gratitude, but this time not for what you have done for me but rather for what you have done for all of your students. I know that teaching is a thankless job. I know that teaching is a job that will punch you in the face for doing your best. I want to say thank you to you for taking two years out of your life to care for and guide a group of youth that need much guidance.

With that said, I encourage you to look towards the future. If you have found that teaching is your joy and that you cannot imagine doing anything else with your life then please continue in the profession. If you have found that teaching was an experience but not an experience that you ever wish to have again then take the step to go on to do whatever else you dream of. My point is that you should take the time to do something positive for yourself. Fulfill your dream of being a doctor, teach in a good school, or backpack the Appalachian Mountain range, but whatever it is do it for you. You have given two years of your time to others, and you will have opportunities later in your life to continue giving to others. Now, though, is the time to give to yourself.

I have only been in the classroom for a year, but I can already attest to the fact that this job has an uncanny ability to make you doubt your self worth. Your best lessons failed. The student you worked hardest for cursed you to your face. I am sure, like me, you have found that at times this experience has threatened to take from you some part of who you are. I want you to regain that part. Think back to confident college graduate that you were two years ago, combine that with the persistence you have developed over the last two years, and proceed to take on the world.

Congratulating You,

Chris

A Day at School From an Outsider's Point of View

This post was written by a friend who spent two days observing my classroom.  She has previously posted her perspectives on an earlier trip to the Mississippi Delta.

As a middle school student, I may not have been the best behaved child as hormones were raging and boys suddenly became an object of interest, but I always respected what the teacher told me.  Even if I groaned and complained, I would complete my homework as assigned. The school looks like your average middle school from the outside, despite the lack of play equipment or sports field.  The row of brown doors at the front of the school; however, act as a portal into a whole different world than what I experienced as a middle school student.

At 7 am when teachers arrive, the halls are quiet, the classrooms are clean and orderly and everyone seems in a relatively pleasant mood. As the kids start to enter the portal, they appear similar to a wild herd of animals as they stampede down the halls and run into everything in their path.  With fiery hot chips in one hand and fruities filling their other hand, they enter the classroom, and most wander around sitting anywhere besides their seat. Girls spend the holding period applying makeup, catching up on the latest gossip, or hitting any boy in sight. Boys run around trying to start fights with each other for no reason or try to catch the eye of the weekly girl of interest. As class starts, the teacher enters and orders all to begin the Do Now. This only fazes some of the children, whereas others feel that finishing their conversation is of more importance. 

The week I observed was 9 weeks test week so the schedule was off and periods lasted longer and shorter than normal. Testing was taken seriously by a quarter to a half of the class, dependent on the day. One day one class was well behaved.  The next day the class was wild. It is so difficult to predict what may happen. My main shock was not with their behavior with each other, but their treatment of teachers. The things said by the children to their teachers were things I could not even imagine saying to a teacher, no matter how mad at them I was. The children had absolutely no respect for authority, especially a male authority figure. Writing assignments were thrown onto the floor, children shouted curse words and several threats were made to the teachers all within a day. I can't imagine how difficult it would be for a teacher to stand there and take the onslaught of disrespect day after day.

Some children at the school were generally respectful, and I feel bad that they have to sit through this horrible situation each day. What the Delta needs is not smart individuals that can teach but disciplinarians that can get the kids to be quiet long enough to learn anything. The best teacher at the school is the previous In School Suspension teacher (an uncertified teacher), as she is the only one that the kids are so afraid of that they will not speak a word and therefore have time to learn. One of the kids said to me, "He doesn't often teach us, this is unusual..." I asked her, "How often do you listen to him" She replied, "never". In fact, brilliant things are taught every day in awesome innovative ways, yet the kids have to listen to learn.

Science Club

I have been running a science club on Thursday afternoons.  Here are a few pictures of some past activities we have done.  On top is slime, and on the bottom is a pig dissection.

How to Make iWeb and MobileMe Really Yours

I spent a portion of the evening helping a friend find a way to subvert iWeb's seemingly fortified wall of limited access.  As a former computer nerd, I am accustomed to creating websites from the ground up, dirty HTML and all.  My experience thus far on a Mac has led me to believe that iWeb is an exceptionally useful web design suite that falls short on one major front, namely that it does not provide access to the HTML code.

Of course, one can edit the HTML files generated by iWeb so long as the files are saved locally.  What I did not know how to do, and forgive me if this is simplistic for experienced Mac users, is to then upload these files to MobileMe.  As iWeb does not seem to allow users to open HTML files, an alternative means was needed.  A little research led me to the following route:

Download a program called Transmit for the Mac.  Download is available from CNET here.

Access the MobileMe server as you would a normal server save for the fact that you must use the WebDav protocol rather than FTP.

Server: idisk.mac.com
Protocol: WebDav

Enter your MobileMe login information, and connect to the server.

Navigate to the files that were previously uploaded to MobileMe with iWeb.  Drag and drop the HTML files you edited locally onto the server.

This approach allowed me to successfully embed some features that were not available in iWeb.