As the second quarter begins things are running smoothly for my classes. In Honors Chemistry I am a bit ahead of last year, mostly because the new edition of the text book has moved some first semester topics to the second semester. I need to save at least five days this quarter in order to make time for the old material later. I plan to do this by not showing the movies I usually schedule. The movies are for entertainment only and give me a day to chill in quiet while they watch. I have also decided not to schedule any review days—again, these were just days for me to do work in class while they worked in quiet. My schedule this year is such that I have time during the day to get things done outside of class time.
We had a teacher in the past in Science who also coached. He used to assign his students desk work almost every day while he typed and did “coaching” preparation. The administration never seemed to care; he was a very successful coach and only taught lower level students. Yes, I am being cynical.
I got an email from a parent, concerned that his daughter was only getting a “C” in AP Chemistry. He wasn’t blaming me; he was just concerned because she was an “A” student last year. I explained to him that AP Chemistry required exceptional problem solving skills that could not be predicted by grades in Honors Chemistry. Many students, I told him, required more time to acquire those skills. As a result they lagged behind the others. He wanted to know how she could improve her skills and I responded that only practice over time would help.
This girl is a god student, but does nothing beyond the minimum work assigned. I don’t tell students this but it is true—if you do just the assigned work in a difficult and/or challenging class you should expect to get a “C”, nothing more.
When I took calculus in college the teacher assigned 15-20 problems for homework each week. Besides those problems, I would do every problem at the end of each chapter. I got an “A” in calculus. Most students would laugh at you if you if you suggested that they do every problem at the end of each chapter just for practice; but practice does make perfect. A former student of mine in AP Chemistry is an excellent example. She would do every problem at the end of each chapter for practice—I know this because she would come after school and ask about any she was confused by. This normally took 45 minutes the day before the test. She got an “A+” in AP Chemistry, was the valedictorian of her high school graduating class, and attended Notre Dame. She is now a math teacher, and when she was student teaching, she came to see me on one of her days off. She made the trip of over 100 miles because she noticed that many of her students were having trouble and I might be able to help her figure out what to do with them. To this day she is the most focused and hard working student I have ever taught.
In contrast, I have students currently who got a chemical formula wrong on the last quiz because they were too lazy to use the ion list I provided. They would rather guess than turn the page over and look for what they needed!
I do have one young lady who shows promise though. She came to see me before the AP Chemistry quiz Friday for help. I had assigned two practice problems from a work sheet but she had done all 10 and wanted the answers to the other 8 to make sure she had done them correctly. First quarter she earned an “A+.”
No comments:
Post a Comment