Some weeks I can't seem to keep up with myself or my students. This has been one of those weeks. My poor Math 11 students - all 5 of them in two different classes (which run simultaneously!)- deserved a teacher more prepared to differentiate instruction, but all I could do was go back and forth between the two groups (pre-calculus and apprenticeship and workplace) with muddled explanations. Somehow I needed to explain the ambiguous case of the sine law and the usefulness of stacked bar graphs at the same time. Luckily we found one example of a useful stacked bar graph in biology 11. Unfortunately, I finished Friday afternoon knowing that neither of the pre-calculus students understood that there
was an ambiguity much less why I cared. The physics 12 students who I check on couldn't understand the point of the game their teacher was using to help them understand parabolic motion, and I was of very limited help. Biology 11 students struggled with natural selection and variation, the math is going to get harder next week, the service class was disappointed that their plans didn't work out for the Terry Fox run, it seemed that the book of Romans wasn't captivating my religion 10-12 students, and I even struggled with the science 6/7 lab class.
So why do I love teaching?
I think it is the promise that next
week just might be better - maybe I'll see the light come on in a
student's eyes. Maybe one of my students will understand the connection
between the quadratic equations I help them learn and the population
biology or the physics that they are learning.
Maybe something we do in class will be the bridge between where they are now and the place they want to go - or maybe it will just be an interesting detour. Either way, I want to help my students explore the possibilities. So I keep trying, keep learning, keep struggling to become a more effective teacher.
This week I started another online course -
Inquiry Through Science & Engineering Practices - from Montana State University. I'm hopeful that some of what I learn I'll be able to use to shape the way I teach - and by extension - the way my students learn.
(I should probably take Physics 12 next!)
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