Modeling

This is a great video that tells about the strategy I'm trying to use in physics:

Notice how the modeling concept works through these phases:

• Model Development 
• Model Deployment 
• Model Failure 

He talks about how modeling goes from the concrete to abstraction. I once tutored a student in Physics who had been a straight A student until Physics Senior Year. It turned out his teacher showed them how to derive equation after equation to define physics concepts, but the only labs they did were after the test, as a reward. The student and I figured out together how the concepts worked, and he started getting A's again!

For more information, look at the American Modeling Teachers' Association (AMTA), where members can find a full curriculum for Physics, Chemistry, Physical Science, and now also Biology. The speaker also mentions the Modeling website at Arizona State University, where the strategy originated.

It's been nearly a year since I wrote here

I've thought of many posts I wanted to write, but I've been busy learning things, traveling and working. Can't do everything I guess.

Modeling

Last summer I participated in a workshop about Modeling Physics Mechanics. All of the physics teachers in Whittier USD participated, while about half of the students came from other districts. I had heard a lot about how modeling is a tried-and-true way to teach science to pretty much everyone, but I wanted to try it out for myself.

Learning how to use Vernier data

We acted as if we were students, with time out every once in a while to put on our teacher hats. A modeling lesson usually starts with a short demonstration, video, or possibly a min-lecture introduction, but mostly there were demonstrations to wake our curiosity. For example, the first demo was a few washers swinging at the end of a long string hanging from the ceiling. The class discussed what we saw and suggested which variables could be changed to find out more about what we were seeing. Then we split up into groups, which changed for every new topic. Each group picked one of the variables to change, as the independent variable, (number of washers, length of string, distance pulled to the side), and which dependent variable and then did 10 trials. We had to figure out how to do what we planned and measure the dependent variable. In some labs we measured things using Vernier equipment, which was my first introduction to that. In our notebooks, we drew the set-up, wrote about what we were doing, made tables and graphs, and attempted to make some sort of mathematical equation. All of these things are part of the model of the pendulum.

Preparing a white board

Then each group presented a white-board of their experiments in a "Board Meeting". Sometimes we got similar answers, sometimes something went wrong. Often there were various ways to get to the same conclusion. We learned that getting something wrong can be a better way to learn that getting it right. The other students were expected to comment respectfully on the others' white-boards, preferably by asking questions. In that way we all learned from the various approaches.
I am planning on taking either the follow-up course this summer. - on waves - or a first modeling course in chemistry.

Traveling

We had long wanted to take my grandchildren to the wonderful Danish island of Bornholm, where I taught English and German at the island's high school for 7 years in the 1980's. 

My daughter's plans, though, were to visit us in California first, so we met at Yosemite and then had several days at home in Fontana where my youngest grandchild particularly enjoyed our pool. My son even managed to come by with his new fiancee, so we did have a short reunion here.

But we also managed to bring my older grandchildren to Bornholm, which they loved as much as we do. We hiked on the cliffs, rode bicycles and went swimming off the rocky shore. We found some old friends living near our summer cottage, and wandered through the halls of the school where I taught, and even found a group picture of the faculty, including me!

And since the grandchildren live in England, John and I also took a few days both in the countryside and in London before picking them up (since their school ends in late July) and taking them home again.

Studying

I took a very interesting distance course called Matter & Interactions last fall, which used a Momentum first approach, which seemed like an excellent way to structure physics curriculum. We also learned to use the VPython programming language to make small simulations of what we were learning. I wish the modeling curriculum were based on this structure, because it is a very intuitive way to present Newton's 3 Laws. I am continuing with the material of the second semester on my own, since there are videos of all the lectures online.

I'm now taking a MOOC through Stanford on Reading to Learn in Science, since so many of my students seem to have trouble comprehending content in what they read for science classes.

Teaching

Of course all this learning was to give me a good basis for teaching science. I was offered a job as science teacher at a school for Independent Study, which unfortunately, turned out to be mostly desk-work, where students came in to take multiple-choice tests and then moved on to the next. The charter had developed an innovative NGSS-inspired Integrated Science curriculum, which would have involved teaching classes, but there were no available classrooms, and the teachers were very skeptical about it, so very few students were starting it.
Luckily, before Christmas I was offered a classroom job teaching General Physics, which I entered very enthusiastically. Starting to teach in the middle of the school year turned out to be an impossible situation, because the students already have expectations about the course that can be hard to change. The students had been taught science up to that point very traditionally, so it was a struggle to convince them that

1. science can be fun and you can learn something at the same time. 
2. making mistakes is a good way to learn, if you try to learn from the mistakes. 
3. you can help your fellow students by giving them constructive criticism (which is why Modeling teaches to ask respectful questions) 
4. you don't have to learn many different formulas if you understand where the formulas come from. 

I used the Modeling curriculum, starting with Momentum to teach Newton's Laws, and supplementing with the VPython programs I'd done for my online course. We had a nice collection of Vernier equipment to use, so they got to play with some very advanced toys as well. Unfortunately, the District needed a definitive observation about a month after Christmas, when I was still in the process of convincing students all of the above, and the results (in district minds) were not up to par. So I left my students with the curriculum I'd planned for them in the hands of the best subs I could hope for, and now have time for my blog and courses again.
Some day I will find the school that is convinced that the NGSS is the future and that we need to prepare for it, and that hopefully will allow experimentation in methodology to find the best ways to encourage students to love science.

Reawakening curiosity through inquiry

Sorry, I haven't been keeping up here. This year has been enormously challenging as I have tried to find multiple entry points into what motivates my students. I have tried a variety of methods, but keep coming back to learning through inquiry. I am forever grateful to all the fantastic advice I read on NSTA email lists, where answers to others' queries also provides me with inspiration. I keep buying books recommended on the list, and hope to be able to finish them this summer.
One of the most helpful books has been Teaching Physics With Toys: Hands-on Investigations for Grades 3-9 for which I discovered the KNEX educational sets and instructional materials to introduce fun simple machines to my students. I've included a few pictures of what they've experienced.
Pulleys with KNEX flag pole and sailboat - and a classroom clothesline hung with real pulleys to experiment.
Gears with a KNEX windmill with 3 sizes of gears- and a game called Top Gear I found on EBay, as well as an old-fashioned hand egg beater, which several students used to beat whipping cream to butter!

We also experienced levers, real and modeled see-saws, wheelbarrows and shovels and spoons. (KNEX wasn't really needed here.) 

And most of them have at least some understanding now for the physics concept Work,which lies behind all simple machines. The unit ended in the construction of small models of the three simple machines, which now decorate the classroom wall instead of inspirational posters.

 Now we've taken on electricity and magnetism, constructing small motors and inducing both magnetism and electricity. Tomorrow is the fun static electricity day with balloons and a list of materials to figure out which gives and which receives electrons - encroaching a little on chemistry while we're at it. And then they get to dig into what's behind the old game "Operation" to see what a circuit consists of - using a lesson plan from the Toys book.
My supervisor says that, although they're a rowdy bunch, they can talk more about science than any prior Conceptual Physics class at the school. I feel that they are much more open to taking on new science concepts, and work to remember the new words like Fulcrum, Mechanical Advantage, and now coil and induce. I hope they enjoy chemistry next year!

I love teaching!

I finally got THE job! It took two years after my credential to finally land the job I really wanted. The school is friendly and extremely supportive, and I think they genuinely are glad to have me as a colleague!
I am teaching 4 sections of conceptual physics, which I love - planning learning experiences through activities and very little reading or math is lots of fun (and costs me in buying materials - like, most recently golf balls and golf whiffle balls plus plastic rules to use as a source of force, to discover the relationship of mass, force and acceleration. These are kids who've had many setback because they got left behind in math somewhere along the line, as well as more language learners (not just Spanish speakers) than I've experienced before.
My fifth class, General Chemistry, has to be more structured, because there are three of us teaching it, and the district has a (generously general) pacing guide and benchmarks. We have been doing the same labs, so we all get together to set up the first lab, and the rest of us use the same set-up. Two of us use the chem labs of the others while they are away, so it works. In fact we're all quite new - one has been teaching biology for a couple of years at this school, one's first year was last year, and two of us are brand-new chemistry teachers (except for what I taught at the charter school as part of Integrated Science.) The school gave us a whole day with subs yesterday so we could plan a common lesson and common unit test - which will be observed, of course. They are very concerned that we find this a good experience!
My 6th period class has been getting more and more out-of-hand. It has more than usual kids who can't stay in their seat, or who are bored or otherwise not participating the way I would like. So I asked our new Assistant Principal of students what to do. He came and observed a relatively well-functioning 3rd period, and then came in half-way through 6th to see the difference - 2 groups had been playing with the Hotwheels Track and bouncing their golf balls, instead of investigating acceleration with them, so I had taken their toys away and made them sit still. Two other groups were waiting for the materials to suddenly appear at their tables... but the others were happily investigating - and playing, which is fine with me, if it's playing to learn! (First period connected many sections of track and tried to do a loop, which didn't work, but they tried it in a variety of ways. I love that kind of initiative - when they had gotten through what I was looking for.) The AP lectured the poor 6th period kids, who sat there looking rather sheepish.  I'm curious to see how they are tomorrow. Some of them just cannot sit still!
The only drawback is that it's 35 mile away in sometimes heavy traffic, so I have to leave by 6:30 for my 8 o'clock class. (The school even starts later than many others!) But that gives me a lot of time to do last minute preparations, etc. If I leave 10 minutes later, I arrive half an hour later!
When I get home at around 6 pm (after correcting papers, etc. and stopping by Starbucks for sustenance on the way home) John is preparing dinner, and I can go for a 15 minute swim in our new pool! We're talking of getting it heated for the winter, because we both love that daily dip!

So the impossible is possible! I did get a job!

Back again!

It's been ages since I wrote here. No wonder I only have 2 followers. I will try to be more consistent for a while.

I was a bit depressed about all this teaching thing I've gotten myself into. The school where I was teaching last year had to close because there weren't enough students - but those 100 students we had really needed our school, because they just couldn't manage the impersonal environment of 40 kids in a classroom and thousands of kids in the school yard during break. My facilities were terrible, but I loved finding materials to be able to do science in a combined music room/girl's gym (shared with another teacher.) The occasional fingers finding keys on the piano was the worst disturbance. Not being able to lock doors and keep my materials there was an inconvenience. Watching kids enjoying science made it all worth while.

Then another summer went by where I was reading up on all my subjects, and picking up a new one, Earth Science, but no jobs. Finally a charter that had turned me down this summer, because I didn't have Earth Science, called me and needed me, because the young man they'd hired skipped out after 3 weeks. But they expected me to teach all 4 of my sciences with 5 preps for 7 classes, 4 of which were 8th and 9th graders, which I found more than I'd bargained for. I bought 5 cardtables and 20 chairs for the classroom, so they would be able to work in groups on a flat surface. When I arrived the classroom was equipped with desk-chairs all in rows. How can you learn science that way? I managed for 3 weeks - until we were to leave on an already planned trip to India and I knew they had a good sub ready for them - and quit.

I went into teaching because I know a lot and have lots of ideas and love it when students love it, too. I can put up with kids who can't sit still, or are a little disruptive, because I've figured out that putting them in small groups with good learning and discovery activities keeps them busy and learning. At the last school the kids destroyed things. (One threw an egg we were using for osmosis experiment at the periodic table and enjoyed watching it drip down. I was outside dosing out vinegar I didn't want to smell up the classroom, because there was no ventilation.) The school's response was detention or expulsion, so I was always missing 2-3 expelled kids in my classes, who then couldn't make up the activity learning we were doing in class, and got more disruptive. I can't help but believe that kids respond to the confrontational punishment with more disruption. They came to accept it, and didn't realize that I don't want confrontations, I want learning.

I've been taking more courses, and reading more books. I will try to write more about them here in the future. Happy holidays!

Where I need to be

The image on the right was one I found on FaceBook. I think it tells a good bit about my life. Problem is, each time I find "where I needed to be" something happens and I have to move on.

To catch up a little since my last blog post back in October, I was actually glad that I didn't have a job all fall, because there were a lot of family things going on (my husband was very sick, so we moved to a new house without stairs in a neighboring town, and there was a birth and a death that moved us all.)

But in January, I was asked to return to the tiny charter school in Hesperia, where I completed my credential. It was like coming home. I knew all the colleagues except the new Dean of Students, who has been invaluable, and I knew about half my students and they knew me, so we didn't have to start at square one.

I am also teaching the same subjects, Biology and Integrated Science, although different parts of them, since the teacher they had in the fall had taken a different part of the curriculum than last year's teachers. But the most important aspect was that I have learned a lot about Guided Inquiry and Reasoning and Sense Making since then, which turned out to be the right way to address the needs of pretty much all of my students.

Most of our students have come to us because they just couldn't make it in the regular public high school. Some had tried a variety of other charters, home schooling, etc. Many have a great difficulty concentrating, and get easily distracted. If I had been trying to do whole-class teaching, I think I would have lost most of them. But I put them in 6 groups of about 3 students, and provided lots of hand-on labs to introduce topics. I also made many worksheets, often finding illustrations and text on line, and then guiding them with questions to the illustrations and concepts. It took a while for the kids to understand that they were to work TOGETHER in their groups, and that I wasn't going to be standing up front with a PowerPoint, but coming around to each individual group to ask them questions, and guide them on their way (I like the word, facilitate!)

I am more than half-way through the "University Induction Program" at UCLA Ext, to clear my credential, with interesting courses and "Inquiries" into my teaching about what sort of strategies will help my ESL students, and now my students with IEPs. I've also just completed a fun course at CGU in ways to teach Physics hands-on, which gave me a lot of tools and ideas for the Physics part of Integrated Science, and an online course in working with students with ADHD, which is much needed to learn to reach our many "wanderers" and "blurters." And I've also earned a certificate as "Green School Professional." (I've been taking more classes than my students, to learn to teach them better!)

But the tragedy I alluded to in the beginning is that our little school is too little. We need about 20 more students to release some important funds and make us viable. So the charter has been pulled, prospective students are being turned away, and our students are trying to figure out where to look again to continue their education. Some of the students are looking forward to going to a "real" high school, with all the amenities we can't offer, although we do offer gym, a couple of sports, classes in art, music, sign language and astronomy. But many are going to try the individual learning of home schooling or computer-based learning, away from any social aspects of school. Some of my students are sure to get lost, students I was just getting through to. How sad! My younger colleagues (one just got married) need jobs to support their families, older ones aren't ready to retire yet. Our special ed teacher, who isn't much younger than I am) is working on her EdJoin application for the first time ever. She was the life-blood of the school for most of its existence, but is left in the cold like the rest of us.

So far the only jobs I can see for me are even further away than my trip through the Cajon pass to Hesperia. I can manage without a job, but I hate inactivity, and I have discovered that I have much to give my students. So I'll just have to see where life will take me next, and know that that's where I'm supposed to be for a while again.

On Saturday, I will be walking in the graduation ceremony at Claremont Graduate School, with cap and hood and all. I'll post a picture to prove it after it's happened!

Why do we have to learn this stuff?

I once had a student who knew exactly how long 5 cm was. A teacher had had each student find 5 centimeters somewhere on their hands. Connecting up to prior knowledge?
2 cm is a good deal more than half an inch, though, more than 3/4 inch. I think they need more practice working with rulers!
Here's another reason to learn math.
American Chopper vs The Metric System:
(another reason to learn the metric system)

Memory and Sense Making

On Wednesday I am off to Orlando to participate in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Summer Institute for High School Teachers on Reasoning and Sense Making. I am looking forward to being with a group of teachers who really want their students to understand mathematics. Too often during teacher training I ran across teachers who were more of the "drill and kill" school.

With my experience with myself, my own children (now successful adults,) and the children and young people I have taught, kids don't learn because you force them to memorize something or give them drills to do whatever time and again until it sinks in. Kids learn because they are curious about something and want to find out about it. If they have a reason to learn something that means something to them (and I doubt "to get into college" or "because it's in the standards" are reason enough for most students,) they will want to learn it, and will dig into a topic until it is theirs. They might even ask someone for the answer - or help to find the answer.

I read a short article yesterday about some research that implies that people don't remember as well as they used to because now they can just Google stuff to get answers they don't have to remember. Evidently some people were tested on how well they remembered things (probably a list of unrelated facts) and some were given the opportunity to enter them on a computer. That last group, of course, forgot them immediately. But that doesn't prove the thesis that we remember differently now. The author of the article pointed out that Socrates was just as worried that the new-fangled techniques of writing would ruin people's ability to memorize things - which is probably true, of course. I write things down so that I can go on to investigate other things. In a sense, the written word is an extension of our long-term memory.

During my teacher ed classes I came upon several references comparing the brain to a computer. You know, data comes into short-term memory, but it has to be connected to other information to be transferred to long-term memory. If we just give students facts, or formulas, or steps to solve problems, they may remember them long enough for the unit test, but if they don't have a way to connect those data with something else - something that makes sense to them, and they want to know about - that data we tried to stuff into their heads probably won't be around for the final, or state exams - or life.

I remember a newspaper opinion piece written by a teacher years ago in Denmark, who claimed that a teacher's job is not to fill in the holes in students' brains, but to create the holes in the brains, so that students would go around looking for what they could put into them. Learning, he said, is making holes, not filling them in. Those holes are what students create while they are making sense of their world. And the holes will never get filled. They will be dug deeper, with lots of side channels that connect up with other holes.

This was illustrated beautifully in a very moving film we saw on Saturday, Buck, which is about a guy who spends 9 months out of the year telling people how to train their horses (not break them) at clinics all around the country. Buck likes to say he's not helping people with horse-trouble, he's helping horses with people-trouble.

I kept thinking that he was talking about classroom "management," where teachers are figuring out how to train their students and need help with "student-trouble" while in reality, it's the students (who have to be there, just like the horses had no choice in the matter) who have "teacher-trouble." The movie was about the best movie on education I have seen. I kept wishing I had a notebook, so I could write down all his words of wisdom. So I bought the book that became the movie The Faraway Horses, in hopes that some of those bits of wisdom are stored there.

One of the most telling episodes in the movie was a woman who told about how Buck had changed the way she trained her horse for dressage. Evidently in the bad old days, horses were trained to get into various unnatural positions by harnessing them with torture instruments (there were examples shown in the film.) Finally the horse gave in and did as required to avoid the pain and humiliation of the harness. But the woman had participated in a sheep-herding clinic with Buck, and discovered that all those unusual positions came naturally to a horse when he was using them to herd sheep. The horse found a connection where he needed to be in that position. And then during dressage, he easily moved in the position (probably fondly remembering the weekend herding sheep.)

Are our students being difficult because they don't want to be harnessed to a school desk when it doesn't make sense to them to be there? Are we trying to break them rather than helping them make sense of what we think they should know?

At the NCTM institute, we have each selected a different area to concentrate in, which for me will be Geometry, which I think was my favorite math subject in high school. I taught some Geometry this past year, taking over from another teacher. It was very difficult teaching students to do the proofs of geometry, which is what I liked best, and which is what geometry is all about. I hope that the Institute will help me see how to present geometry so it makes sense to them. Of course it's easy enough to make sense when you're talking about things that can be represented physically, like area and volume, circles and cylinders. But the abstract high-order thinking of proofs seems to have been distracted by low-level memorization of theorems.

I expect to be a better teacher after the Institute - but it is only one of many ways I am trying to make sense of my job as a teacher.

Addendum

While reading this afternoon I happened upon a note that is so pertinent to this, that I am quoting it here:

When reviewing radioactivity for this book, I was reminded that too often in science resources, authors explain what happens without really explaining why it happens. If you can only describe occurrences,then you really don't understand what's going on, and you end up only memorizing what happens. If you can figure out a mechanism for the occurrences, though, then you can build a lasting understanding of what's going on. Even though scientists often can only describe what happens when they first encounter a phenomenon, the ultimate goal is a mechanism for the phenomenon and the resultant understanding. You can compare this to mathematics, in which there are rules to follow. Only when you understand the reasoning behind the rules do you understand math.

William C. Robertson, in More Chemistry Basics, p 109 (my italics)

Credentialed Teacher!

Hurrah! I received this email today:

Congratulations, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing issued you the following document on 7/20/2011

Preliminary Single Subject Teaching Credential ...
Issuance Date: 07/18/2011 Expiration Date: 08/01/2016
Authorized Subjects:
Mathematics (Examination), Science: Biological Sciences (Examination), Science: Chemistry (Examination), Science: Physics (Examination)

This has taken me since December 2008, when I took the first test, and has been a struggle to get the required field work, since there were so few open jobs. All of this has been documented here in my blog.

But I still am looking for the job where I will be facilitating students' learning and understanding. Same job market.

Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL)

I spent a fascinating 3 days this week on the University of Redlands campus this week learning about Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), a relatively new way to teach science (and other subjects) where students in 3-4 person cooperative learning groups figure out the concepts they are to learn using directed work sheets, rather than a teacher-based PowerPoint lecture. Those who have used the system report dramatic improvements in student learning, and particular, in student retention.

The system was initially used in chemistry classes at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, where several of the boys from my high school graduating class in York, PA, got their training as engineers. Because of the great results, the idea spread to many other colleges and universities, where it has been used successfully in a variety of college courses. The original copied "activities" have now been published as work books, that the college students buy. High school teachers soon discovered the method and started using the college materials in AP classes. This started the High School POGIL Initiative (HSYPI) . You can find sample lessons in both biology and chemistry through that link. Very inexpensive workbooks for these subjects will be available in January (unfortunately.)

A POGIL lesson is carried out in 3-4 student groups, where each student has a role: Manager, PR (the only group member who may ask the teacher questions,) Recorder, Quality Control (consensus builder,) and possibly Process Analyst (who looks at the group's dynamics.) These groups are often kept together for a longer period of time, as they learn to work together.

A POGIL lesson is based on the Learning Cycle: Exploration, Concept Invention/Term Introduction, and Application, which all refer to a model, which can be a diagram, a demonstration or even a video.

1. Exploration involves very direct questions to the model, to make sure the students understand the details of the model. These might include questions as basic, "What does the dotted line represent," but go on to more detailed understanding of the model.
2. Concept Invention helps students derive the concept to be learned in the lesson based on their exploration.
3. Term Introduction gives students a name for the concept. Up to this point, they are exploring and thinking about connections. They may already have invented a term for the concept, but this step introduces the term in a new question.
4. Application gives the students an opportunity to use the new concepts and terms in a broader, often more open-ended question.
5. The Learning Cycle may start again in the same activity with a new Model, Exploration, Concept Invention and Application. 

The students learning is guided by a worksheet with the model and questions that start as Direct in the Exploration phase, then Convergent (using the material gleaned from the direct questions to the model - which have a correct answer) in both the Concept Invention and Application phases, and then the open-ended Divergent questions for more advanced applications. Divergent questions go further, and do not have a correct answer (although there may be incorrect answers!)

As you can see, this is a sort of guided discovery learning. There are also labs created according to this system. In particular, POGIL labs are used for exploration and content invention. They come before any lecture on a topic, rather than afterwards.

You can find a few worksheets on the website. Unfortunately the many activities that have been developed in Bio and Chem for high school will not be available until January. At least the workbooks then will be very affordable. (The current college workbooks cost about $35.)

A lot of teachers are creating lessons for their own use, and sharing them on the site, and elsewhere. The main way to create your own lessons is to turn the book lesson around. Start with the examples as models. Then turn the introductory material into concept invention and term introduction questions. But easiest for a beginner of course is to find existing materials. I googled POGIL and found several sites where teachers have made their lesson activities available.

As soon as I find out what I will be teaching (which depends, of course, on which school hires me to teach which subject that I soon have a credential for: Math, Bio, Chem or Physics) I will be working on finding or creating appropriate POGIL lessons. From what I can see, the students are active all the time, so there is little time for them to cause classroom management issues. Even the smart kids will be working well in their groups (for which there are always a few extension questions.)

In a couple weeks I'll be off to Orlando to learn more about Reasoning and Sense-making in math, which is a less structured concept with the same aim - to facilitate the students' owning their learning, so they have little need to memorize factoids that don't necessarily make sense.

Discovery Learning

Comics were great on science education today.
Even the New York Times was in on it with a A solution for saving the space program

Doonsbury on teaching biology in Texas

Doonesbury was great today.

Two weeks down and running strong (and tired!)

I feel very comfortable about my new job. My colleagues are very supportive, and happy to have a teacher who can teach biology, chemistry and math. (The French didn't really materialize, thank goodness!)

I love having very small classes so I can work with each student individually when they need it. The 2 remedial math classes have about 6 students each, which is what the students need to be succesful. I am letting 3 students work ahead on their own in Algebra I, so they may be able to catch up with the rest of the class. Others are just filling in the holes in their math knowledge from too many years thinking they couldn't do math. I love the challenge of helping them understand what math is all about. We've been working on the substitution method for solving 2 equations. Today the light went on for one of the students and his face just shone! It has been a very difficult concept for them!

I'm constantly amazed at how much I know about the science subjects. I've not only studied for tests, but lived a whole long life being interested in science and soaking up so much about it that I can use to entice and motivate the students. But they are still new subjects for me, so I have to study the topics thoroughly to present them well. I finally got the electronic gradebook up-to-date with both attendance and quizzes. There's so much to do in the beginning! And I know the names of more than half my students (since there aren't that many) but that is a bit problem for me. Some of the students need so much help and attention, others act bored. Others escape from a difficult home-life. And still others just couldn't make it in big high school classrooms.

All that takes time, of course, on top of nearly 2 hours daily travel time partly through the lovely Cajon Pass. (The time and direction I drive is with very acceptable traffic. I had a couple of foggy days in December, and gusty winds that blew over some tall, lightly loaded trucks. But the wind doesn't bother my little Insight and I keep as far from the trucks as possible.)

This shows the southern end of the Cajon Pass.
and no, I did not take the picture! I'm down on the ground!