Having Fun Yet?

What is the most important element in teaching? There is no one answer to that question. There are so many attributes to being a great teacher. Furthermore, there are so many different styles excellent teaching that it is impossible to box in the notion of being a great teacher into definable, consistent characteristics. However, there are some correlations. Here's one I want to focus on tonight: cooking dinner.


Yes please. [Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXkyIrrfp6k5LDfGN1Bbc4OQUSqbeLRVZ_KV7M2HJKh6DrsPJkO-70SUPqKRKappSWuuHEuKEJPQdpbM2YxrhDCSW1VqDcCC91G5FisBONYj__86CYuoe8oGvuQiRIQHdrtmeC4O_7EoQ/s400/Giant+Breakfast+Burrito.jpg]

Sorry I haven't eaten dinner or started cooking tonight. No, tonight I wanted to focus on having fun. I can't tell you how important it is to have fun while teaching. On so many occasions I've taken the world's most boring discussion on kinematic equations and made it fun by pretending like it was fun. No joke. Well, it's more than pretending: you have to actually believe its fun.

What do I mean? When you take the classroom, you have to be in love with what you're about to teach. The students will pick it up immediately in your body language. On the days when I convey a modicum of boredom or frustration, my kids don't work for me. But when I attack their attention by jumping up and down when I convey an idea, by showing bright, wide eyes, and by keeping a smile on, they pay attention and they will love it too. I've had students laugh at my dumbest jokes. Today in fact they literally laughed when I explained that it was silly if the gravitational constant G was equal to 1. I explained with a smile that in that universe they would feel a force of a few thousand Newtons and come slamming into each other at all times. Before that, they cachinnated (yeah I know it means laugh loudly but I hate the word guffaw) when I demonstrated what would happen if, as they suggested, the force you exert when swinging a bucket around a circle pointed up. I flung the bucket upwards at the top of its motion and it hit the ceiling and my kids went crazy. Not to brag, but I had a room full of 15-year-olds laughing as they integrated new physical concepts into their schema. OK that might have been bragging. Sorry.

The point is - if you believe your subject is fun and teach it with joy, your students will believe it's fun too. In a subject that inspires fear like Atilla the Hun piloting a Death Star, it's all too important to communicate to students that they can succeed. Not only does fun make the classroom climate palatable, it also makes them more likely to work for you. Furthermore, some students may even look forward to your class.

So take to every class with love and with excitement. You owe it to your students. Otherwise they will be evil, skeptical, and stupid.


Erm... Sorry I had to. [Image: http://i.qkme.me/DkF.jpg]

How Can we Learn From Great Teachers?

My ECU class has asked me to post the following questions and then report back to them with your insight. Please comment with your thoughts! I have included some of my own smarmy comments, filled with dry wit, vanity, and pretentiousness. Would you have demanded any less?


Results of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science test, called the Nation's Report Card, revealed disturbing results. Science scores for North Carolina students in Grade 4 were lower than those of students in schools located in 24 high-performing states. In grade 8, NC students' science scores were surpassed by scores of students in 25 high-performing states.

In other words, our state is terrible. Somewhere Petey Pablo is crying.

What can North Carolina science teachers learn from science teachers in schools located in high-performing states? What do you think?

I think we absolutely can learn by conferencing and collaborating. However, given our busy schedules, it is SO HARD to find the motivation to contact teachers from other areas. The internet has made this astronomically easier, but we still have this tendency of being lazy. Well, some of us do. Others of us have babies to take care of. Miles and miles of babies.

Image: http://babyanimalzoo.com/tag/baby-goats

While some of us have human babies, some are fortunate enough to have goat babies!

Will collaborating with science teachers in schools located in high-performing states help science teachers in North Carolina improve their students' learning and achievement? What do you think?

Nah, probably not. Of course so! It can't get much worse, can it? I think it absolutely can - you just need both parties to be willing participants and willing listeners. Listening means being willing to change; it requires participant teachers to be open to amending their teaching methods. That lab you do every year where you sleep in your chair while your students line up force vectors with rulers, get bored, make shivs out of the aforementioned rulers, and begin forming a Philip Zimbardo-style prison experiment may need a bit of work.

Image: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/136/902/memes-come-at-me-vancouver.jpg?1308517262

This is what happens when your students don't respect you [or if the Canucks lose to the Bruins despite being up 2-0 and 3-2 in games].