Do you allow your students to bring ‘cheat sheets’ with them for tests, or do you just write all the formulas on the walls so they don’t have to?
I like it fine. It’s a job, and I get to tell people things that I think they need to hear, and I get to be a bit of a snob about a few things. I can use my spiritual gift of pickiness in getting kids to be specific in their science, and I know that I’m a good bit more fun and informative than some other teachers here, because I’ve seen them teach, and I hear stories from kids. There are probably some who complained about me to other teachers, but I know that few teachers get invited to senior’s “I’m going to college” parties in the summer, like I did.
I haven’t had the problem really with teaching the same thing over and over, partly because it hasn’t been that long, and because I’m definitely in the stage of getting better at it. It’s also a long, long way from working a factory line. I only get back around to the beginning every year, not every hour. I might like to get to the AP chem or physics classes later in the career. AP chem shouldn’t be that hard, although I would probably need to review some stuff and run my thoughts and caluculations by someone just to make sure I’m doing it right. But when I helped in a chem class 7 years ago, we did all the California standards, meaning that we did a sizable bit of the AP class. In fact, when I took the state test to be “fully qualified” or whatever on the subject matter, I said, “The kids who got an A in our class might actually pass this test.”
I don’t. I don’t really know any, and they seemed so corny that I just knew I couldn’t really carry them off. It’s not really in my personality, and as a kid it made me think the teacher was kind of out of touch. Between my looks and personality, I skew more toward making friends except for the kind of rare occassions I have to do something like move kids because they’re inturrupting.
The good thing about chemistry is that it’s the upper half of the school, and even in this hick town, that means that they’re pretty well behaved, mostly. Although last year I had the Visual and Performing Arts Academy class, meaning I had about half a class that didn’t want to be taking a hard science, and were very out of their shells, and knew how to project their voices. I finally just let them do what they wanted as far as work, because yelling at them only builds resentment. I know some of their grades probably suffered, but one of the things I really learned last year is that I’m not their dad, and taking responsibility for their grades only made me frustrated and mad.
My view now is that I provide as good a service as I can manage, and if they choose not to avail themselves of it, that’s their and their parents’ responsibility.
Unfortunately, last year we did few labs. The academic performance here is fairly low. We get about 6-8% of the school going off and getting a four-year degree. There’s a brain drain out of this area. If you have a college education, you have about three options if you return: the hospital, the US Dept of Ag, or the school district. There just aren’t many upper white-collar or entrepreneurial opportunities here. Unless the kid is from a large-land owning family, if he/she goes off to UCLA, etc, he probably doesn’t come back.
The point being that in my first year here last year, I didn’t do many labs because we “didn’t have time”. Now I wish we had, because I think they’re important to keeping the kids’ interest. That’s my plan for this year, and what I did 2 years ago, when I was following another teacher, and had better equipment. As for safety, I think you do have to generally err on the side of safety, because I narrowly escaped last year. A boy swept a beaker of strong sodium hydroxide into the lap of a girl. Fortunately, it seems the base used up most of its power on her clothes, and she wasn’t burned. It was only after that, though, that I realized I hadn’t insisted on goggles. Duh.
We did make nitrogen tri-iodide last year, though, and that explodes, but it’s almost impossible to get hurt, because it only is exploding the filter papers, and you’re not holding them. Of course, though, some kids spilled the solution so that later the counters were popping as we wiped them up and the crystals were exploding. The first day of school I put aluminum foil in a strong base and put a lit candle under the resulting hydrogen balloon. I wore goggles mostly just for the example of it, although the last time I did it, the remaing bit of balloon caught on fire.
I haven’t done the sodium trick, mostly just because I don’t think we have any. That’s something I should get the dept head to order. I’ve shown those Theodore Gray vidoes in class. Those are great. My church buddy told me that USC someone smuggled out a sizable chunk, and they threw it off a cliff into the ocean. He said it exploded back out of the water. Fun. I haven’t heard the Rubber Bible thing.
The brighter kids are sophomores, having skipped physical science and taken bio in 9th grade. A good many are juniors, with a couple seniors thrown in most classes. We’re working on getting more activities and lab work this year, but I don’t really have the equipment I should. The other thing is the money, in that if you have people work in partners only, you need samples for 400/2=200 runs of the lab (that’s 12 sections of chem between three teachers). So I tended to only have 5-6 groups doing it in each period instead of 15. I guess I have heard something about the legal considerations. Someone cautioned against telling them how to make dry ice bombs, and I said, “So when the administration showed The Chronicles of Narnia as an official reward for attendence, were they promoting stabbing people with large swords?” It does bother me, though, the idea that if you teach them to make thermite, they might try it and burn through their foot. I don’t know where I fall on that idea.
The guy I worked with two years ago would make dry ice bombs with small soda bottles and tie one to a brick at the bottom of a water-filled 5-gallon bucket. The water would shoot out about 20 feet, having absorbed all the energy of the exploding bottle. Technically it was illegal to do at all, supposedly, but he was enough of a guy to want to do it just for himself, so he did, on the lawn between class buildings.
Yeah, I want to be more of that guy, mostly because when I stressed about their academic performance last year, I was the only one stressed, and it made me kind of berate them for their performance, which turned them off. Later on, I just let them go. This year I want to make it fun for me if no one else, and I bet it will be more fun for them, too. My theory now (and I’ve run it past a few people who should have informed opinions) is: The bright kids already understand it and are bored, the next kids down might get it if they can interact with it themselves, the middle kids might be inspired to come to class with a good attitude and want to participate, and the lower kids might at least participate some and not feel like they’re reporting to jail every day, if you do labs. So labs and interaction are the real answer. These really are children, which you realize more as you interact with them. I’ve even made a couple genuine friends, as far as that goes, but you’re not dealing with a population that can stare at you and actually learn as they take notes for an hour every day.
Not that much yet, but the nitrogen tri-iodide is pretty good. Oh, and if you put sulfur 6-1 with powdered aluminum, a glowing wire will make it catch fire rather well. I did this in the fume hood, and it broke the beaker I used. Oops. So then I did it outside in an evaporating dish, which is more built for that.
Haven’t had that, but I would be pretty upset, because they also probably wouldn’t do it from a distance, meaning they’re within the blast radius, which is officially bad. That sounds like the office gets involved.
Heck, I discovered it was dumb to leave hot plates out, because kids turned them on and walked away. I’ve never even heard an emergency shower story, although the beaker of base story above was a “Hannah, take her to the bathroom, take off her jeans, and wipe her down with wet paper towels” incident. I put holes in my jeans working with that, too. I haven’t had anyone use the eyewash or shower. Yet. Some kids put their dry beaker on the hot plate, and then poured tepid water into it, and broke out the bottom.
It’s a bit hard to tell about the interest. I think it might be waning, because fewer and fewer kids come from situations where they would have used chemicals on their owns. My farm-kid college buddy knew a lot of practical things that most urban kids didn’t. He’s now brewing his own beer, which is a lot of practical home chemistry. I think that to get people interested, you have to get practical and hand on, or you only get the real nerds, who are into the diagrams and math.
They’d have to probably break in, and then into the chemical closet, and the Wrath of God would come down. They in all reality would probably be shipped out to the continuation school, and that’s if they didn’t go to juvy for the drug manufacture charge. The whole thing is so bad that it hadn’t occured to me. However, this county is famous for its meth manufacture, and they had so many defendents that they stopped shipping them to San Diego for trial and built a satellite court out here. We try not to have more than one electronic gram balance out at a time, because if someone tries to weigh his head or book, it will probably break, and you could fence one for a hundred bucks if you know one of the drug manufacturers. It’s easier to notice the one going missing than one of six.
Atomic size, electronegativity, ionic size really kicked their butts. I should have done more “place the beads on the paper to make a diagram” stuff. If I can get magnets, maybe I can make them work with that. It was also pulling teeth to get the phase transformations calcualted (joules to heat the ice, melt the ice, heat the water…). I found that the word problem stumped some of them, and then some of them couldn’t solve for the m in Q=mc(delta T), because they got a C in math, and that was two years ago, and they probably copied the homework to get the C. Oh, here’s another example: One of the most common answers to 4=10/x is “forty”. That’s two math errors at once.
The reality is that the state won’t let a junior take the CST (state test) unless he had a science class that year, so the school shoves as many kids into chemistry as will fit, so that at least they won’t score Far Below Basic because they didn’t even take the test.
What surprised me was how hard stoichiometry was last year. There really is a difference in the academics here. The year before, in L.A. County, I did demos, and then they tried it, and I would do more examples, and wander around correcting things, and within a couple days, everyone but the stoners in the back were pretty much on board. Here, there were significant numbers lost. The abstraction abilities were just lower. I don’t teach AP. We were skimming last year in just the regular class, though. I doubt the AP class will have to skim as much, because just today I looked at the AP roll, and every kid I had last year is the kind you’d love to have in a chem class. “Yep, he never said a word, but smoked the class. She asked great questions and made points I had forgotten about. He carried like 6 kids on his back by answering their questions.” It’s also only about 20 kids, so it’s much smaller than usual, and they all got As in regular chem, many of them pretty much in a walk. The real question is whether getting a walking A in regular chem here means they can run with the big dogs in AP, because the AP test is not curved at all. Either you pass it or not, and the teacher doesn’t administer it or make allowances for where they’re coming from. I’ll be interested in the AP test pass rate.
There aren’t really that many formulas, and not for one quiz, especially. They’re expected to remember most of them. Some I have put on the board. We have a brand new chem teacher this year, who has never taught, and I’ve had to talk him out of allowing notes during quizzes, because it’s setting up too many kids for future failure. Too many will just rely on the notes and not really study, and when you have to make the final worth 50% or such of the overall grade (because their open note quizzes didn’t reflect their actual learning much), they’ll flunk that because they never properly learned it. One of the things that I’ve learned is a large difference between kids and adults is the concept of the future. Many kids can’t see it coming very well, and if you give them enough rope, they’ll hang themselves. Now, if they won’t study, you can’t whip them to force it, but I think it’s asking too much of many of them to slide along using notes until the end of the quarter and then BAM!, they have to remember the whole quarter on their own. They’ll drown.
Does your school do the US Chemistry Olympiad?
Working as a TA at a US college I had the same problem. Part of my job was to assist students with “any kind of chemistry problem”. The ones who came asking about genetics were the easy ones - most of my students were unable to:
- translate a “word” problem into equations,
- “solve” an equation (just move terms around until it takes a recognizable, easy to solve form, “0 = a - 1” becomes “1 = a” which happens to be the solution; I don’t remember what the proper word is), much less a system of equations
- recognize as an equation anything in which the variable wasn’t called “x”.
Most of my HS math teachers (Spain) were pretty bad, to the point of learning trig in physic and differential calculus in chemistry, instead of in math. Seems to be sadly common.
Cardinal–do you honor & venerate the Patron Saint Of All High School Science Teachers, Victor Von Frankenstein?
What’s the dumbest thing one of your students has done?
I remember one of my classmates looking down into a test tube of conc. HCL and reagent to see if it was boiling yet. He was holding the tube upright and had taken his goggles off. The teacher bawled at him and he looked up and went “huh?” just as the test tube spat acid a foot in the air. Literally a second from losing the sight in one eye.
He got detention and had to sit out a couple of classes for ‘being a moron’, or in other words nearly giving Mr Frost a heart attack.
When I took chemisty back in high school, we did an experment that involved putting some sort of liquid in a burette, then on a bunsen burner. The bottom part unexpectedly fell out of the burette but I was able to put it back together so we could continue our experiment once we refilled it. Later on, while using the bunsen burner, my hand and wrist caught on fire for a few seconds.
Should my teacher have noticed?
My lab partners did, and we were all surprised by the lack of injury to me. I wasn’t quite sure that I hadn’t imagined it until they freaked out…
Well, it sort of makes sense to do it that way. It’s not fair under the current system because the science teachers work extra hard to pick up the slack for the math teachers. But maybe the system should be reworked to make this happen. Just a thought.
If you feel weird about telling jokes, just write them on the board or on the top of a worksheet or something. It’s funnier that way, because the kid just happens to notice the joke, rather than being told “I’m going to tell you a joke now” which raises the expectation. Because really, chem jokes aren’t THAT funny.
Here’s one to start you off, if you choose to take it. There are plenty more on the Dope and the Internet…
One hydrogen atom says “I think I lost an electron”. The other hydrogen atoms asks “Are you sure?” - “Yeah! I’m positive”.
What material would make a sturdy, quick heating, reasonably quick cooling heating element that connected to a few batteries would get hot enough to set off flash paper or flash powder?
Mod note-I’m not breaking any laws and an informed answer can only make my life safer.
You ever do the fun labs, like making candy canes or peanut brittle?
Question! A mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids can be used to nitrate an aromatic compound. What is the major mono-nitrated isomer formed by reacting aniline (ArNH2) with nitric and sulfuric acids?
The only consolation there is that the teacher couldn’t be held responsible. I remember walking into chem class during a lab two years ago:
Me: You’re not wearing goggles during that?
Mr. Sams: [pops head right around] Who’s not wearing goggles?
Me: [points]
Mr. Sams: [glares student into hurredly pulling goggles off of brow] Thank you, Mr. Cardinal.
Ok, you’ve stumped me, and revealed what I’ve always said: I’m really only holding the ladder of science; I don’t really have a rung to stand on.
Heck, I don’t even have a degree in science, I have a degree in Communications. I passed the California state tests to be “highly qualified” wellllllllll after my degree. I went back and took chemistry classes at junior colleges, and then even later, I took biology and geology, which helped me squeak past the general science tests.
The tests were pretty darn easy in general, though. I still remember two of the general science essay questions: 1. Describe the carbon cycle. 2. Explain why the gravitational constant is getting smaller as this landscape attains higher elevation. Maybe it’s just being raised with an MIT engineer father.
Now I have to do that. I’d never thought of it. In organic chemistry, we isolated the caffeine from tea leaves, but I suspect greatly that the equipment is beyond what we have. I remember reflux tubes, etc, at some point. I also remember driving out the rest of my class by not properly containing my glacial acetic acid vapors. I had to go in and connect the tubes while everyone waited outside. You know that stink on vinegar? Multiply by 20, as cooking vinegar is 5% acetic acid, and glacial acetic is 100%.
I have my student aides looking for labs and activities, but 2 of the three I wouldn’t truly trust to figure their way out of an 8th grade algebra class. They needed a class, and at this school with the lack of electives (the acredidation society warned us to fix this), I know they don’t have many options.
I don’t think they’re going to come up with much, even with the state standards and a stack of lab manuals staring them in the face. I hope they find decent jobs typing other people’s transcripts or laying asphalt or something.
Someone may have to help me out here. This is, as my dad the engineer might say, in the category of “try it and find out”. Hmmm, heating up with batteries. Why batteries? Anyway, I would think the wire involved in a dead short of batteries would get pretty warm for a bit. I’d think it would depend a lot on the power of the batteries. AA batteries aren’t going to deliver much amperage unless you connect a raft of them in series. If you need a spark, you need more voltage than you do amperage. Most batteries aren’t made for voltage. I can’t recall ones over 12 volts, although I’m probably missing something. A spark off your finger has very high voltage, but very low amperage. Note, however, that the verified gas station fires have been started not with cell phones, but with sparks as people got off their seat covers and touched their metal car bodies.
This reminds me that I just printed out an article from www.instructables.com about making flash paper, but I haven’t really read it. I think we need to do that. I’ve decided that this year is more about fun than last year, because when I didn’t have fun, no one did. I also printed out one about replating steel items by electrolysis. That would be fairly cool, and the welding shop should probably have something like a battery charger to drive the reaction. With a decent worksheet, that might be a pretty good activity, but as I only today introduced the entire idea of the nucleus and electron, appreciating that reaction is a ways away.
I do other things, like kind of dance around, or say, “Yes, but I want more of a chemistry nerd definition”. So I try to straddle the fence on admitting that there are nerds and geeks, but insisting on exacting statements and definitions. Instead of being seen as an ogre, what I had to call a few houses about was kids treating me like their teenage buddy. “I’m the teacher. We’re friendly, but I’m not such your buddy that you can put paper clips in my hair when I’m sitting down next to you. Get it straight.” I’ve just today moved a few people for the day because they were chatting too loudly during roll. It kind of helps me knowing that I won’t be at this school next year, and I can embrace my “do it my way” side, which I know I won’t really abuse. My problem is saying, “Guys, guys, pleeeaaaassseee…” until it’s too late to lay a good smack down, and it takes me months to accomplish what should have taken 2 weeks at the beginning. Every read Machiavelli?
This all reminds me of my big Chemistry Speech of Purpooooooosssseeeeee!
"I know that you won’t remember this much in ten years. I won’t tell you that this is the most important class you’ll take, or that your future depends on learning this. In ten years, your nephew or cousin will come to you and say, "Can you help me?', and you’ll take the book and say, ‘Uhhhhhhhh’.
What is the point of high school, REALLY?
It’s to learn how to study, how to learn, what kinds of things you like, how to work with people on an adult level, how to do it even when you don’t like it, how to be responsible for yourself without your parents watching your every move, and how to Fix The Problem.
That last one is a major emphasis of mine. Don’t sit there without the paper and then claim you couldn’t do the work because I forgot to give it to you. Fix The Problem. Don’t tell me you couldn’t do the lab because I didn’t hear you calling me. Send someone to get my attention. Fix The Problem. Don’t act like it’s my responsibility to see inside your head and discern what you don’t understand and then explain it. At the very least, ask a specific question, like ‘What’s that?’. Eventually we’ll discover what it is you don’t know, and fix it, if you’ll put in the effort. Make use of your neighbors, as I can’t be everywhere at once. It’s not the talking I object to, it’s the not working. On the other hand, I can’t make you work, so all I can do is remind you that I’m here to help, the quiz is in fact coming, and your grade will depend on your ability to concentrate and learn even if you’re not really into this. Such is life."
You just can’t notice everything, so I imagine that even the most controlling teachers have been fooled at some point.
(HS admission) I didn’t really much like my Economics teacher my senior year, because he moved me because I laughed at something during a “silent pre-quiz study time”. It’s genuinely immature, but I kind of had it in for him after that, even though he did notice how upset I was, and let me stay in my original spot, in the end. As a teacher now, I know he was trying to be understanding and realize that maybe he’d jumped too far with a kid who wasn’t really a problem. Annyywwayy… Someone brought a toy gun to school that shot little discs, and I borrowed it, and one day leaving class, as he bent over to pick up something, I shot a disc at him, but I shot high. Still, it’s the kind of thing that I might take a very dim view of myself.
What kind of instructions do you leave substitute teachers? I know some teachers that wouldn’t expect a substitute to write more than their own name, much less teach a normal day of class. But I really like teachers that give me something to do, because it builds experience. Playing videos, while easy, is also dull. Often I will ask to sit in on other teacher’s classes during my prep periods to guarantee that I as a future teacher am learning something meaningful that day.
Point 1: The ring is deactivated, and it’s going to be harder to get that second NH2 on it.
Answer 1: It should go into the 3 position to give you 3-nitroaniline, if that’s even the proper systematic name.
As for subs, I’ve found that asking them to do almost anything other than hand out paper is just taking a shot in the dark. I left for three days once, and left actual instructions that actually made sense and would actually teach something, and when I got back, I got a note that as far as I could tell, boiled down to “I wasn’t prepared to actually teach when I came here. How dare you.” It also was reflected in what actually got done. This was for 9th grade earth science.
As for chemistry, what are the chances your sub knows something about converting pH to a [H]+ ion concentration?
[QUOTE=TJdude825]
Well, it sort of makes sense to do it that way. It’s not fair under the current system because the science teachers work extra hard to pick up the slack for the math teachers. But maybe the system should be reworked to make this happen. Just a thought.
[qUOTE]
It wasn’t done that way on purpose. We started using trig in C&P 4 months after we’d started it in math, but the math teachers we had between 6th and 12th weren’t good at explanations. All of them were completely unable to respond to questions… any kind of questions; you asked any question and they just went “uh?”, stared at you for a bit and continued exactly where they’d been. The one we got in 12th grade is the only one still there and I hear she’s learned to respond to questions, good for her. The Chem and Phys teachers, well, sometimes they just jumped on the Socratic method because they didn’t know the answer either - but a lot of the time, they did it because “ok, one of you has already started thinking, let’s see if all 40 of you can figure out the answer”.
The purpose of school isn’t to fill your head with data - it’s to teach you how to look up data and how to mix and match data, how to think. My math teachers just happened to be of the “fill their heads with data” variety. Most of my English and History teachers were, too; it wasn’t just the math ones. But in math, we had the bad luck of never get a “make them think” teacher. I met one when I was in college: it was cool, I got to ask him a ton of questions I had left over since forever.
Wrong abreviation: it should be PhNH2. And it’s the para compound, with the NO2 on the opposite carbon to the NH2. You also get some reaction on the NH2 itself (Redox, instead of substitution).
We had lots of fun making mononitroluene and dinitrotoluene in college, 3rd year orgo lab. The threat from the TAs if you steeped up the temperature too high and got the tri compound was “if you survive, we’ll kill you.”
I’m no high school science teacher, but I’d try model rocket starters.
They’re basically two wire leads joined by something that flashes hot enough to ingnite solid fuel model rockets, and they work on D batteries, too.
Hmm maybe that’s something i wouldn’t want concealed up my sleeve after all.
If necessary I can always construct a little smoke and flame magic wand.
[QUOTE=Nava]
YES.
See my speech about the purpose of school, above.
As has been noted before, often the best students make lousy teachers, because they’re not sure how this could not make sense to you. I was a pretty decent student, but my dad passed on a nature that looks into everything and then tries to explain it in terms that can be understood by newbies.
You may remember the coaching successes of Magic Johnson and Ted Williams… I read a story in which Stan Musial was asked about how to spot the spin of a pitch and predict its movement. He explained what he did, and then the other player asked what you did next. “You hit the crap out of it.” Wow, thanks for the deep insight, Stan. I think he didn’t entirely know how he did it either.
I know Albert Pujols just came up over-average in hearing, hand-eye coordination, nerves, reflexes, and muscle twitch speed. I haven’t heard if he’s a good teacher and manager of people.