podpolia » Tales From The Classroom

Peace, Love, and Exorcisms

admin — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:13:12 +0000

Said by a student to other students who were arguing in class:
“Can’t we all just shut up and be one big happy family?”

By the way, my latest excuse for not posting much is that I finally got a permanent job teaching Chemistry. I have a number of students with a taste for the outré, however, so I should have plenty to post about in the future. A sample:

[A girl in class was sneezing repeatedly.]
A: I keep saying bless you, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I guess the demons don’t want to get out.
B: You should try saying “GET OUT OF HER!” instead of “Bless you!”
C: I’m not sure I’d trust you to be doing exorcisms.
B: Oh, I’d be good at it. I’d hit people with a crucifix.
C: That’s not an exorcism, that’s a beat down!
B: A HOLY beat down! And I’d put the crucifix in a sock so it wouldn’t leave marks.

Educational Philosophy

admin — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:39:39 +0000

Via the World’s Only Rational Man, we have this link to an article discussing low grading standards in education departments in colleges and universities. I could have told them about that without all the trouble of doing the research — my experience in education classes in college was prettymuch spot-on with this assessment. I can’t paint with too broad of a brush, as I did have a couple of good professors for education classes, but my educational psychology prof stands out in my mind as a perfect example of this phenomenon. She even admitted to us one day in class that she had taught sixth grade for a while, but stopped because she couldn’t keep control of the classroom. It was not hard to understand why after hearing some of the drivel she spouted in class — all of your students must feel good all the time, you can’t ever embarrass them or criticise them, they should always get good grades, etc. Oddly enough, this philosophy was largely followed by the elementary ed majors, but not those of us in the class who were in the secondary ed program (and incidentally, majoring in our particular field rather than in education). We mostly just sat in the back of the room and laughed at her, imagining her trying to teach high schoolers.

Another way they could have done this study would have been to look at commencement programs. I seem to recall my undergraduate commencement program listing an astoundingly high number of elementary ed majors as graduating with honors. They really made other majors look bad, but those of us who had taken education classes knew what the true score was. Pity that it takes papers like these to bring it to the attention of the broader public.

Money Saving

admin — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:39:43 +0000

I saw a link on Drudge about a school district saving money with sheep. I was quite surprised when opening the article to find out that I have actually worked for the district. (And no, for those who are wondering, it isn’t particularly a rural district – it would probably best be described as suburban.)

What I See Every Day

admin — Sat, 14 May 2011 04:22:27 +0000

Besides my usual sub report the other day, I created a visual record of what I saw throughout the day. Click to enlarge:

Another Side Of The Story

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 01:03:44 +0000

Rewatching the coverage of the September 11 attacks the other day, it made me wonder what the reaction of those students in that classroom in Florida thought about being front and center while history was being made. Apparently the folks at Time were wondering that too.
It’s difficult for me to realize that the little kids you see in that footage are the same age as the students I have every day in class. It’s hard for me to imagine what growing up in the shadow of the smoke rising from the Twin Towers and never knowing things to ever be any other way would be like. I suppose it would be similar to the Cold War in that respect, but even I can only barely remember the end of that – I was about the same age when it ended that these kids were when the war on terrorism began. Definitely food for thought there.

UPDATE 5/5/2011 21.20: CNN has been taking a look at comments made by their users on this subject as well, and their coverage of that is also rather illuminating. There are definitely views from all sides on the issue.

Overheard In Class

admin — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 02:59:19 +0000

“Effin’ Russia! All they have are guns and soup!”

Pi Day

admin — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 02:30:27 +0000

Today (3/14) was Pi day. As it happened, I was teaching math today, and we (naturally) started discussing pi. One of the things we discussed is that as it never ends or repeats, you can find any string of numbers in it – if you used the old A = 1, B=2, C=3 code and attempted to translate the digits of pi into words, eventually you would come across the complete works of Shakespeare, in order. We also somehow decided (with pi, as the site says, “things [get] out of hand“) that it would be a good idea to write as many decimal places of pi as we could manage on the back board. In each of the classes after that point, students took turns doing this:

We made it to 6,000 digits by the end of the day.

You can click them to see higher (although still not great as I took them with my phone) resolution versions.

Who says math can’t be fun?

Definition By Example

admin — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 01:54:36 +0000

“ADHD stands for Attention… um…. oh, look, a squirrel!”

Addictions

admin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 02:36:22 +0000

“He sent her money for divorce, and she spent it on cocaine. Then she got sober and spent it on shoes, which are far less snortable, but just as expensive.”

Missed A Couple

admin — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:40:59 +0000

I just found a few more of the quotes I meant to post earlier.

“I’m leaving the country and going to Alaska!”

“SHAPE is non-profitable…” (from a paper)