Cool teachers and good ideas

[toddjh]

I'm lucky enough to have had some truly amazing teachers during my time in public schools. I was just thinking back on it, and I thought it would be neat to have a thread for people to share some of their good school experiences.

Far and away the best teacher I had was Thomas Lenkart here in Champaign, Illinois, whom I was lucky enough to have for two years in a row, in fourth and fifth grades. His class was an absolute blast every day, and we were doing college-level algebra and chemistry by the end of the year. I never learned so much so fast, or had such a great time doing it.

He had a lot of great ideas, but I think the best was an archaeological dig. The class split into two halves, and each side created a fictional primitive culture, using things we'd learned in the history (well, prehistory) part of the class. We decided what technology level they had (stone, bronze, etc.), whether they were nomadic or agrarian, decide their economics and trade practices, etc. Then we each made some artifacts to reflect the culture: clay pots with engravings, arrowheads, tablets with writing or drawings, coins cut from copper foil, etc.

When we were done, we went out to the school grounds, dug two big holes, smashed most of the artifacts we'd made, and buried them over the winter. In the spring, each half of of the class dug up the other section's artifacts, and saw what we could deduce about the culture they had invented. To cap it all off, we finished with a field trip to a real excavation site.

It was a great idea. We got to be creative, apply our history lessons, do arts and crafts, get some practical experience excavating, and exercise out in the sun, plus we learned a good lesson about the pitfalls of trying to reconstruct something from deduction.

How about you? What were some of the good ideas your teachers had?

Jeremy

[Brown]

I too was blessed with some exceptional public school teachers (and some duds, too, but the duds were the exception). My high school math teachers went out of their way to make mathematics enjoyable by not spending all of class time solving problems. We spent time learning why it was not unusual for two people in our class would have the same birthday, or how one could deduce the color of one's own hat based upon the colors of hats that others see, or ways to construct Platonic solids. We learned how to construct magic squares. (At TAM3, when the magic square trick was performed, many people were quite impressed; but I was nostalgic, because I had learned this trick from my high school math teachers.)

[cbish]

Just a side note. I don't want to be nit-picky and I don't want to get off topic because this could be a fun thread but................whom I was lucky enough to have for two years in a row, in fourth and fifth grades. ..........and we were doing college-level algebra and chemistry by the end of the year. This is extraordinary! In fact it's unbelievable! Ten & Eleven year old children lack the abstraction ability for college level algebra and chemistry. Was everybody in your class Brian Greene?

OK, back to the topic at hand.

[toddjh]

Originally posted by cbish
Just a side note. I don't want to be nit-picky and I don't want to get off topic because this could be a fun thread but............. This is extraordinary! In fact it's unbelievable! Ten & Eleven year old children lack the abstraction ability for college level algebra and chemistry. Was everybody in your class Brian Greene?

Well, it was a "gifted and talented" class. And I'm talking low-end college math (a little trig, some logarithms, FOIL method, etc.) and chemistry (periodic table, atoms and molecules, ionic and covalent bonds) -- maybe "high school level" would be more accurate, but I definitely got a repeat of a lot of the same material in my required uni chemistry classes. Pissed me off because I missed the deadline to test out of them.

Jeremy

[cbish]

I teach high school chemistry. My philosophy has always favored scientific methodology over content. I've told my students that if they can go to university, take chem 1A, and recognize having had the content before, then I've done my job as far as the chemistry goes. The real learning, I tell them, is with the lab work. The skills learned in lab are universal to science. To some degree, they're cross curricular. So that's what I key on.

Each quarter, we focus on a different aspect of our lab work to add to our scientific papers. 1st. quarter, we focus on data collection and conclusion drawing. 2nd quarter we focus on analysis; data explanation, error analysis including cause & effect. 3rd quarter we focus on backgound research. 4th quarter, experimental design.

This all culminates at the end of the year with our "Lab Final". They work in pairs. All we give them is a purpose statement. They have to research, design an experiment, collect data, analyze, and draw a conclusion. They have to write a paper. Projects include; determining the pH of the soil on campus, determining which brand of bleach is most effective, determining which is the best antacid, among others. They have two weeks.

I've had former students come back years later and tell us that was the most influential assignment they had in high school:D

[bigred]

Originally posted by cbish
Ten & Eleven year old children lack the abstraction ability for college level algebra and chemistry. Add "some" or "many" in front of that and you may have something. I've seen "college level algebra" recently and it didn't strike me as all that more advanced than Jr High algebra.

[cbish]

bigred wrote:I've seen "college level algebra" recently and it didn't strike me as all that more advanced than Jr High algebra. It may not be. It depends on the course and the institution. Community colleges often offer courses as low as Pre-Algebra which would be 6-9th grade. College level Algebra usually means Algebra II which would be a little advanced for 10 & 11 year olds. Four year universities may not count the algebra for credit.

[bigred]

Fair enough

[cesium]

Just a side note. I don't want to be nit-picky and I don't want to get off topic because this could be a fun thread but.............


...whom I was lucky enough to have for two years in a row, in fourth and fifth grades. ..........and we were doing college-level algebra and chemistry by the end of the year.

This is extraordinary! In fact it's unbelievable! Ten & Eleven year old children lack the abstraction ability for college level algebra and chemistry. Was everybody in your class Brian Greene?


I have always been above classmates in terms of math, and with few exceptions, I found the hardest part of math classes getting my homework in on time. My middle school was a "gifted and talented" school, and they offered math up to algebra II, which I took at age 12/13, then went to high school a year early and took precalc.

[Zep]

Originally posted by cbish
I teach high school chemistry. My philosophy has always favored scientific methodology over content. I've told my students that if they can go to university, take chem 1A, and recognize having had the content before, then I've done my job as far as the chemistry goes. The real learning, I tell them, is with the lab work. The skills learned in lab are universal to science. To some degree, they're cross curricular. So that's what I key on.

Each quarter, we focus on a different aspect of our lab work to add to our scientific papers. 1st. quarter, we focus on data collection and conclusion drawing. 2nd quarter we focus on analysis; data explanation, error analysis including cause & effect. 3rd quarter we focus on backgound research. 4th quarter, experimental design.

This all culminates at the end of the year with our "Lab Final". They work in pairs. All we give them is a purpose statement. They have to research, design an experiment, collect data, analyze, and draw a conclusion. They have to write a paper. Projects include; determining the pH of the soil on campus, determining which brand of bleach is most effective, determining which is the best antacid, among others. They have two weeks.

I've had former students come back years later and tell us that was the most influential assignment they had in high school:D Now THAT is how science should be taught! You learn some stuff to get you started on the right path, but also get to try it out in the real world. Then having mastered the basic, you get to extend on that, until you are ready to be challenged by a for-real shot at something like "the pros" do it! And to a realistic timetable too - I do believe it's rare that scientists have to work to a 3-hour deadline to regurgitate all they know on their chosen subjects in order to be promoted.

[cbish]

I have to tell you that I'm so excited to be at work these next few weeks. We are in "Lab Season". Right now, we're doing chemical Tirations. If you've taken Chem 1A, then you know what I'm talking about; given standard 0.1 M HCl what is the unknown? But, I added a twist. Not only identify the unknown, but I made the bases at 0.2, 0.1 and 0.05 M. So....they also have to recognize the relationship between volume and molarity in; MaVa=MbVb. I'm trying to get them to understand the relationship of the math they are doing instead of just blindly plugging in the formula. In fact, they should be able to do it without a calculator.

Lab Final is coming up in two weeks!

[arthwollipot]

Wow. If I had a science teacher like that I would have been a lot more interested in science from an early age. As it is, I only got interested in science well after I left school.

My most memorable teacher in high school was my Latin teacher, Mrs Rose. Not only was she closely involved with the school band, but she was also way cool.

I went on record saying to her that I had learned more about English in Latin than I had in English. She was very flattered.

We used to have tremendous fun annoying the German class next door by simple counting:

"Unus, duo, tres, quattor, quinque, SEX!!!! septem octo...."

She taught us how to sing the Popeye in Latin: "Popoculus nauta sum, Popoculus nauta sum..."

I clearly remember the half-embarrassed, half-mischeivous expression on her face when she wrote on the board "ABI IN MALAM REM" like she had promised to do six months ago ("go to hell").

Yes, Mrs Rose was certainly the most interesting teacher I had in high school, and as a result I thoroughly enjoyed Latin.

[bigred]

A teacher who can make Latin fun. Now that's impressive.

[cbish]

Thanks arthwollipot. I'm with bigred, though. Making Latin fun!? I stand down. I bow down. I'm not worthy!!

[LostAngeles]

Originally posted by cbish
bigred wrote: It may not be. It depends on the course and the institution. Community colleges often offer courses as low as Pre-Algebra which would be 6-9th grade. College level Algebra usually means Algebra II which would be a little advanced for 10 & 11 year olds. Four year universities may not count the algebra for credit.

And some go from arithmetic to ordinary differential equations.

http://catalog.lacitycollege.edu/pages/mathematics.htm

(For the record, for transfer with the IGETC, you need Introductory Statistics at the least. For transfer by CSU's requirements, you need Principles of Mathematics or Introductory Statistics, minimum. For gradutation it's Elementary Algebra.)

[flume]

Originally posted by cbish Lab Final is coming up in two weeks!It would be fun to hear about your students' projects.

[cbish]

What's IGETC?

For the Lab Final, we have about eight different projects to choose from. We usually do about four. This is what we're going to do this year:

1) pH of Soil. They survey the campus from planters, to ball fields, to the woods. For this one, we're really looking for their design. Do they suffieciently have enough survey locations? Do they do multiple trials on each location? How do they process the samples ( do they filter it, did they use tap or distilled water) things like that. They must also do background research as to why they would see variability. This would include local geology to fertilizer use.

2) Effectiveness of Antacids. Which is the best antacid? Again, we're looking at design. They must use titration on this one. Do they have consistent amounts of AA. How many AA are they comparing? How many trials of each? How do they determine effectiveness; do they just measure volume, do they calculate molarity, do they calculate pH changes before and after? They must note the active ingrediants and variation in active ingrediants to explain their results.

3) Effectiveness of Bleach. Which is the best bleach. They must titrate this as well. This is an oxidation/reduction reaction. Bleach will cause certain halogens and metallic polyatomics to change color. So, do they use a variety of tests? Did they set up a standard? Again, multiple samples, multiple trials.

4) Oxidation/Reduction Series. Here they are to make a table comparing the Oxidation/Reduction strengths of metals with their ions. This is more research and experimental. They can simple react a metallic salt on metal strips, count the number of reactions and compare. Some students have also used Electrovolt potential.

I have to go to class, so I can elaborate later. If you have any specific questions, fire away.

[ranson]

Among the best teachers I had in school were the two from whom I learned geometry. One also coached the math team I was on.

The first, Dave Harvey, always had a daily challenge posted when you arrived in class . . . first to solve (on paper, with proper steps noted (My biggest problem, as most maths up through calculus were pretty intuitive for me)) got some reward, be it extra credit, homework exemptions, food, or anything else he managed. Combine this with a willingness to explore tangents (no pun intended) and incorporate them into lessons. Specifics are sort of hard to remember, but his class was generally regarded as one of the most educational and entertaining in the school. People worked to succeed just to please him . . . it was rare for someone not to try. I was a great loss when he passed away a few years back.

The second teacher, John Smith, took over when Mr. Harvey moved into the school's administration. He continued in much the same vein; entertaining, friendly, and constantly encouraging competiton and exploration. Mr. Smith, as I noted above, also sponsored the school's Matchcounts team, of which I was part. I always managed to find an unorthodox manner of solving our practice problems, partly because of bias I held against equations (I had one earlier teacher tell me flat out that I would never succeed in higher maths because I didn't write out steps and such). If I could do something through simple arithmetic, it was usually faster for me to work it out that way than to design an equation to do the same (again, this was because of the intuitiveness with which I pursued math. My brain was there, why bother with "x" and "y"?). He encouraged this, but also worked with me to make sure I wasn't just ignoring the reasoning behind the equations. On one occassion involving a problem discussing a candy bar that had been subdivided multple times, I was the sole person not to write an equation. When asked to explain my method, I showed my process. Aside from no equation, I had also done the problem in about half the steps (improtant because the competitions are timed).

He looked at the board for a moment, and laughed out loud. Without a word, he proceeded to walk down the hall, and bring back Mr. Harvey. I explained the process again, and not only did Mr. Harvey burst out in laughter, he rolled up his newspaper and briefly beat me over the head with it. No questions on why I had worked it that way, nothing about how it was bad theory; just a few bops on the head and a lot of good-natured laughter because I had turned their way of thinking about the problem upside-down.

They influenced me a great deal in the time I worked with them, and I hope my children can get teachers who instill that kind of joy into their jobs.

[LostAngeles]

Originally posted by cbish
What's IGETC?


D'oh! I keep forgetting to type that out. It's the "Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum." Generally I think all public universities in CA and maybe USC will accept the completion of it for general education classes when you transfer.

[cbish]

Just to finish a couple of thoughts:
On the bleach lab, we don't tell them what molecules will work. They have to experiment. Sometimes you have to experiment to design an experiment. Metal polyatomics such as Chromate and Dichromate work well. Manganates don't. They have to figure that out. Then, the bleach is strong. It works better if they dillute it. And, you get varying shades of color. They have to decide on a constant.

We don't give them alot of information. We tell them if we want them to use titration or not but generally it's up to them to decide how they're going to do their research.

They can work in pairs. They can choose their partner but they draw their project out of a hat. We give them two weeks. We make their design due after about three days to reward those who actually came up with a good test (we know kids talk and will copy those with similar projects).

Other projects we've used include; water quality studies and which is the best battery.

I think the students are a little intimidated at first, but as the project starts to come together, they get into it. It's my pride and joy. I keep the real good ones as samples of my teaching. Every once in a while, I get a good, creative new work. The thing I like is they are actually doing honest to god science.

Edit to add: I just wished more administrators and science teachers understood that last sentence.

[CBL4]

Derail of a sort.

When I was in high school in the late 70s, the best math and science teachers were either ex-military officers or quite intelligent, older women who were denied the oppotunities in industry. All my older brothers and sisters had great teachers for the AP biology, AP chemistry and Calculus. Unfortunately, the chemistry and calculus teachers retired before I got there and the biology teacher was in her 60s.

Are these types of teachers being replaced? If so, how?

I got to learn biology from "Mama" Morton who was a suburb teacher. I never found anyone in my class who did worse than a 4 on the AP test and the vast majority got 5.

The calculus teacher I got had actually been named state math teacher of the year and, was in fact, a very good and enthusiastic teacher of geometry and pre-calc. In the 4 years I was there, he led our math team which won the county and state math team every year and twice finished top on national competitions. But he was lost in calculus and computer science which I unfortunately had the displeasure of learning from him.

The AP chemistry teach was the same. Good teacher of introductory chemistry but out of his knowledge zone in AP chemistry.

CBL

[cbish]

CBL4 wrote: I never found anyone in my class who did worse than a 4 on the AP test and the vast majority got 5. I don't think you would see this today. Not because of the teacher, though. We are in a different era. More people are desirous of college than in the 1970's. Therefore, the talent pool is dilluted. IMO, this is one of the major changes in education in the past twenty years, and it's also one of the major problems. We have people taking AP courses now who would never have dreamed of taking it in your day. So, we have 1's and 2's in our AP courses as well and there would be nothing Mama Morton could do about it.

Of course, no one will admit that. It's not politically correct. 'Everybody can do anything if you just try hard enough.' And, if you're not talented, blame someone else.

BTW, ex-military people typically don't make good teachers! (being very general).

[CBL4]

We have people taking AP courses now who would never have dreamed of taking it in your day. So, we have 1's and 2's in our AP courses as well and there would be nothing Mama Morton could do about it.I knew of scores of 2 in both math and chem but not one 3 in biology.

I would guess they "her" scores were a point higher than chem and one and half point higher than math. Of course, my memory would be biased by my scores of 5, 4 and 3. I should not that these were exactly opposite of my perceived skill in the subjects. I have a math degree despite only getting a 3.

CBL

[CBL4]

Cbish,

I hope this is not too personal a question but what is your background? I very rarely hear of good high school science teachers.

BTW, ex-military people typically don't make good teachers! (being very general).That was not my experience in high school. I can think of 4 in my high school. Three were in math and science. One of them was superb and the other two were good - until they started teaching AP classes.

The 4th teacher was a history teacher who I did not particularly like at the time but with, more maturity, I now appreciate. I did not like his views but he was perfectly happy to let me disagree with him. He always gave essay tests. If I had not done any studying, I would parrot his answers and get an A. If I knew anything about the subject, I would give an opposing viewpoint and still get an A because I backed up my answers.

CBL

[cbish]

I graduated from University California at Davis. I have a degree in Biology. I began working in a lab as a dishwasher for the Dept. of Nematology and Dept of Entomology. After graduation, I worked as a PGR, Post Graduate Researcher in the same dept. I worked off and on for two years while I was getting my Teaching Credential.

My interest in teaching came from helping my dad coach high school baseball after I had graduated high school. Basically, I became a teacher so I could coach. I would also argue, that is a bad reason to get into teaching. I coached for 13 years. I am no longer coaching.

I credit my science teaching ability to my experiences in the lab at UCD. I also credit my master teachers at Cordova High School who had an extraordinary insight into science and science education. They're all retired now and I've yet to meet their equal.

I credit my overall teaching ability to my experiences as a baseball coach and a baseball scout (that's a different story).

I consider myself very, very lucky to have had the influences I've had. Sadly, I know of only a handful of science teachers who have similar experiences.

[cbish]

Let me clarify what I meant by the millitary comment.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who enlist in the armed forces, serve a few years, go to college and become teachers. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the 20+ year, retired Lt. Col. type.

We've had a couple of those and they've really struggled. They're just not used to dealing with 'regular folk'. Believe it or not, where they struggle is with discipline. They're really not disciplinarians. They've never had to be. No one has ever questioned, let alone challenged their authority. It's incomprehensible to them.

We had a teacher in our dept. who lasted a year. He would let the lunatics run the asylum then snap and hammer down hard. He was inconsistent.

Worse than that, we had a Principal who was a Lt. Col. right out of the Pentagon. She too, was soft on crime. She destroyed our disciplinary infrastructure. She eliminated all the detentions and suspension services. She just couldn't believe that kids would vandalize, steal, cut class, smoke dope etc.etc.etc. After 15 months on the job, she had a break down, was hospitalized, and resigned. We're still trying to recover.

[CBL4]

Cbish,

It sounds like you took a long road to find the right spot. I am glad you found it and your students are probably as well.

I have thought about teaching too. I am 43 year old software engineer. I loved it for the first 15 years but lately the most enjoyable part has been teaching less experienced people. I no longer get the thrill in engineering. In the next year or two, I may be in a financial position to retire (or at least take a major paycut.) I have thought about teaching at a community college or high school.

We are talking about the same military people - retired officers. For me it was WWII and Korean War vets and two were colonels (not sure about the others' rank.) Perhaps they have a steep learning curve and the ones I had were the ones that overcame the initial problems. They had all been teaching for at least 10 years when I had them as teachers.

My personal experience with the younger math/science teachers was that they were just not that good at the subject. Of course, my experience is 25 years out of date.

CBL

[cbish]

CBL4 wrote: have thought about teaching too. I am 43 year old software engineer. I loved it for the first 15 years but lately the most enjoyable part has been teaching less experienced people. I no longer get the thrill in engineering. In the next year or two, I may be in a financial position to retire (or at least take a major paycut.) I have thought about teaching at a community college or high school. We are of similar age (I'm a little behind you). I share the same sentiments about teaching that you do with your job. It must be an age thing. The grass isn't greener. If you wish to teach, I would recommend community college. Honestly, working with teenagers is alot of work. It might be too much of a shock to the system if you tried to do it now. If you've worked with adults your whole life, stick with adults. 19-20 year old CC students are flakey enough.

My personal experience with the younger math/science teachers was that they were just not that good at the subject. That definitely can happen. If they're beginning teachers, they may not know the subject very well. Consider this. When people get a degree, they've recently been studying their topic in a specialized way. When they begin teaching high school, the curriculum is basic. Realistically, they haven't thought of those topics in years. It may have been freshman or sophomore year in college or maybe even high school since those topics were last considered. For example, being a computer engineer, you'd most likely teach computers or math. When was the last time you used the Quadratic Equation? You may have to teach that but you haven't seen it in 25 years. Good Luck! It takes a few years to nail down your subject matter at that level.

If you have any other questions, fire away.

[CBL4]

Cbish,

Thanks for the encouragement and the advice. It is what I would towards anyway but it is good to get confirmation.

My problem is what I know (embedded and real-time programming) would probably be a graduate level class. What they are teaching at CC is probably stuff I do not know.

CBL

[bigred]

I just thought this (ie the topic) was worth a bump.

Any other things you or a teacher you had did to make school more fun/bearable?