Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Sunday, October 08, 2006

As I enjoy our Fall Break I thought I'd say a few words about my classes as Mid-terms have come and gone.

The class that is most surprising to me is my physical science class. For the last three semesters I have had classes that have really struggled with the material. The weird thing is that I've been teaching using my present syllabus for about six semesters. Previously I had taught the course using a real world issues/solutions approach where the material revolved around considering three or four real world issues (such as global warming and colonization of Mars) and understanding the issues that are involved in finding those solutions. The experience was pretty uneven with the really good students getting a lot out of the class but also doing a lot of the work for the weaker students. So I went to a model based curriculum where we study the content through looking at the modeling process in the context of the scientific method. For the first year the students did really well with the average in the class being about an 80. Since then things have been in a slide with this year's group being the most underachieving. That's not to say that there are good students in the class; there are. It's just that there are some students who, even though this is their second year in college and who have failed classes before, still haven't figured out this isn't high school. Some students are failing the class badly and didn't withdraw by the last day to do that without taking the WF (same as an F in terms of GPA). Others are getting by with a low C/high D on basic intelligence but just don't want to work. Overhearing the conversations in class many of the students put about three times more time into their social lives than they do their academic lives. These students want to be educators. It almost makes me glad I don't have kids.

On the positive side, my engineering physics class looks pretty darn solid in a lot of ways. I've got a good group of students who seem to be truly interested in the material. My boss came in to review me during this class and they made me look great. They were engaged, they asked excellent questions and they were obviously prepared for class so I looked like the greatest teacher ever. I can honestly say I look forward to teaching this group every day. Next week is going to be applications of Newton's 2nd Law which is real nuts and bolts physics. Once we get done with this we go into the really elegant stuff of the two conservation laws but this is really where the foundation for the rest of the year gets laid. From what I'm seeing right now, I'm very, very encouraged.

The last two days have been pretty close to perfect as far as vacation days go. I've enjoyed some college football (specifically my Gators beating LSU) and an occasional strategcally placed nap. The weather Saturday was so perfect that I was both disappointed and relieved that I had taken the bike to the shop for the annual off-season tune-up. Instead of riding I lounged around in the backyard doing some reading and then catching up with my brother who was traveling back home from a trip to Ireland (yeah, some guys have it tough) and had some time to kill in New York. The big thing has been to get some rest and some re-creation so I've been reading about prayer and studying the Gospel of John. Tomorrow we have a trip to a nearby state park planned with the dogs for a little hiking and a picnic before I do my Tech College teaching gig.

Thanks for reading and I hope your week is as good as my weekend has been.

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