My friend (and fellow YPSD TA) Tiberius brought his 9th grade math students to campus today. He asked me to give them a general introduction to materials science and engineering and and engineering career choices. I have come to realize that my complaints and frustrations pale in comparison to what others are dealing with. Sometimes my students fool around, but many of these students just didn't care. The students were talking to each other and blatantly sleeping while we were presenting.
Last Friday, there were about 10 students from Mr. Mullins 10th grade chemistry class finishing a quiz. (Briefly, finishing a quiz is a situation that arises when students can't finish a test or quiz in class, and he/she is allowed to finish the quiz after school. This begs the question, "If you have already seen the quiz, why not just look up the answers between class and the time you will sit to finish the quiz?" With rules like that, I wish I was in high school again. This is a topic for another post...)
Anyway these 10th graders had questions like estimate the diameter of a baseball in centimeters. In the quizzes I looked at, nobody got this right. Another question was to calculate the volume from your diameter estimation. Almost everybody just added a zero to their previous answer!
I'm not writing this stuff to call anyone out, but these experiences led me to realize that despite my frustrations, my students are interested in the physical world, and not everyone is.
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1 comments:
Obi,
I think your presentations sparked interest in some of the students. I observed several hanging on the presenters words. One student remarked that she couldn't understand many of the ideas presented. I told her that prehaps when the ideas are presented in class she can reference back to the presentation.
For some of the students, I believe the field trip represented possibilities. Many of our students don't even begin to imagine what is possible. Also, many are entering high school without the skills they need to be successful. I know our elementary and middle school teachers are beginning to address this. It is hard to play catch up with the rest. Differentiating instruction and being respectful of a student's level and learning style is difficult. Sometimes we have to believe in the students can catch up and learn, so that the students observe this and begin to develop this attitude for themselves.
I thought your presentation was well thought out and illustrated. You do a good job of reacting to the audience and adjusting to their needs.
Carol Cramer
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