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Hooray for teaching
Mar. 16th, 2008 11:23 amA year ago if you had told me that someday I'd be lecturing to a math/physics class about the paintings of Magritte and how they inspired the bizarre pranks I did in college, and that the students would actually be participating in the discussion and enjoying it, I'd have thought you were crazy. But hey, that's the sort of crazy place I'm teaching at now.
Speaking of crazy, as a demonstration of absurdist art, I set up (on the hallway window ledge outside my classroom) a row of about 30 green plastic army men interspersed with red dice. During the art discussion I asked my students what they thought it symbolized. Got some pretty interesting interpretations (mainly along the "war is a gamble" theme), then told the class "I'll tell you what it symbolizes. It symbolizes that Mr. Truman bought some green plastic army men at Safeway, grabbed some dice from the classroom because that's the first thing that came to mind, and set them up randomly in the hallway." They thought it was pretty funny. More intriguing, though, is that several days later none of the army men or dice have been stolen, but all of the dice have been changed to 5's.
I love my job.
Over the last few days we've been introducing the basic concepts of circuit design. The way we're doing it: "Here's a couple of batteries, a few lightbulbs, and a bundle of wires. Mess around with it and draw a diagram of anything that does something interesting." Then on Friday I drew a dozen circuit diagrams on the board and told the student groups to predict what they thought each circuit would do, then build the circuit and see if their prediction was right. The kids loved it; it was one of the few times that nobody noticed class was over because they were so involved with what they were doing.
Speaking of crazy, as a demonstration of absurdist art, I set up (on the hallway window ledge outside my classroom) a row of about 30 green plastic army men interspersed with red dice. During the art discussion I asked my students what they thought it symbolized. Got some pretty interesting interpretations (mainly along the "war is a gamble" theme), then told the class "I'll tell you what it symbolizes. It symbolizes that Mr. Truman bought some green plastic army men at Safeway, grabbed some dice from the classroom because that's the first thing that came to mind, and set them up randomly in the hallway." They thought it was pretty funny. More intriguing, though, is that several days later none of the army men or dice have been stolen, but all of the dice have been changed to 5's.
I love my job.
Over the last few days we've been introducing the basic concepts of circuit design. The way we're doing it: "Here's a couple of batteries, a few lightbulbs, and a bundle of wires. Mess around with it and draw a diagram of anything that does something interesting." Then on Friday I drew a dozen circuit diagrams on the board and told the student groups to predict what they thought each circuit would do, then build the circuit and see if their prediction was right. The kids loved it; it was one of the few times that nobody noticed class was over because they were so involved with what they were doing.
