Our last day of school was Tuesday. It didn't have that happy relief feeling to it that the end of school normally does. Apparently coming out on the backside of covid was much more difficult than actually going through it. It wasn't a terrible year, but it was rough and I don't think I am going to look back on too many parts of it fondly.  And that was before finding out about the latest school shooting. I've been trying to avoid it as much as I can because I simply don't have the bandwidth for it right now, but that has proved to be impossible. Stupid me went on facebook (why am I still ..read more

 I spent 19 class days on this unit, far more than I ever have or even ever imagined having to. I know part of it is that I am learning the computational part along with them. I don't feel like I am clear on what the end goal is so that is something I will need to work on. We had the test yesterday. I got through about six of them before I had to stop. It's hard to grade through tears. They were awful. I really need to go back and reteach some of this, but with only twenty days left in the trimester, I have no idea how I am going to get through the next couple of units in time.  I am ..read more

Today was a weird one to observe.  Today we started wrapping up Constant Velocity with the Colliding Buggies Lab. Kids were given the problem and a slightly structured page to record their thinking and progress. We have been working through some problems with where buggies would meet on paper and in Pyret, and we had done the Buggy Lab at the beginning of the unit, so there was a lot of background for them to pull from. First hour was off to a slow start, but that is not unusual. They aren't quite awake yet. It's pretty quiet, and getting them talking can be rather tedious (and at times ..read more

For the last few years, I have had a comprehensive final test in my chemistry class, which was essentially a big retake on all of the targets for everyone. My kids hated it, and quite frankly, I was getting bored. My principal always refers to finals as a time to do some type of "cumulative activity", but I had yet to come up with an activity that covered all of my targets and still allowed for a retake situation. A couple weeks ago, on a rare Sunday afternoon with nothing to do but ponder life, I had the idea that my final could take on the form of an Escape Room*. I said the words out loud ..read more

For the last 10-ish years, I have used Standards Based Grading in my classroom. What this looks like has evolved over time, but overall, the same basic principle was at work. My classes are broken down into overarching ideas that span the entire grading period. Those ideas are each marked separately and repeatedly. Students are able to see the ideas in which they perform strongly and which ideas they need work on. The targets I have written for my classes are ones that we circle back to over and over throughout the trimester. We don't stop talking about conservation of mass because we had a te ..read more

The last year or so have brought about a lot of changes for me. But the biggest one is coming up next year. Next year we are using the retirement of our other science teacher to completely restructure our science department. Our new motto is "all standards for all students". There are arguments for and against that philosophy, but we decided at this point it is the direction we wanted to go. In order to align more easily with NGSS standards, we are moving towards a Physics First sequence. Freshmen coming in will take physics. Sophomores will follow with chemistry and biology will be a junior ..read more

My boy is a fourth grader who hates school. He's good at it, but at this point in time, he wants to "be a youtuber" when he grows up, so he doesn't really see how long division fits into his plans. In yet another conference with his teacher, she was scolding him about how if he doesn't show his work she can't know whether or not he understands the concepts. She ended with a question, "How am I supposed to know if you understand it or not?" He looked at her, blinked, and said, "Well, I haven't gotten it right yet." As a teacher, this hit me hard. I have students in my class right now that ..read more

Many of us at the high school level know that parent teacher conferences are an exercise in futility. We have them. The doors are open. We even have cookies. But the parents are few and far between. And those few parents that do venture in are typically the ones that we really don't need to see. A few years ago, my school made a series of decisions that changed that.***** 1. It all started with our seminar. Ours is 30 minutes every day. It is used for activity meetings, study hall, down time, college visits and getting help with class. We have transformed that time period to include an advis ..read more

As of late, my Chemistry class has been in kind of a whiteboarding rut. We are moving through Stoichiometry, so there is a lot of working of problems which results in a lot of whiteboarding of problems. This combined with the dreary winter weather makes us kind of complacent and we tend to zone out a little bit as our friends are up there going through the motions. Today we went through eight problems. I noticed that not many of the kids had completed the entire worksheet and I wasn't sure if it was out of boredom or lack of understanding. But even as we were going through the whiteboards, no ..read more

In case you didn't know, the Ice Bucket Challenge is all about raising awareness of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). When I asked some of my kids at school if they knew why they were participating, they mumbled something along the lines of "doing it for that cancer thingy." I nearly cried. If you have ever known someone who has been afflicted, you know that this disease is one of the most horrible fates you could ever imagine. Your body shuts down. You are trapped inside knowing that you are unable to do anything about it. Mr. Griffin was one of those teachers who could reach out and pull you in wi ..read more