Essential learning

I've been having a lot of conversations lately about learning standards and targets. These are the things that are essential for a student to learn as determined by various groups with a stake in education. Those groups can be federal, state or local governments, regional offices of education, etc. And they serve as a laundry list of specific things that a student should know when they leave a classroom.

As I look at the list of things that a physics student should know, it occurs to me that although it would be great if students knew how to solve for the velocity of a cart that rolls without friction down an incline of a certain height, that particular skill will likely never be of use to them, even if they go on to moderately technical careers.

So what would be useful?

I'll think about this some more, but when I think of the skills that were most valuable in any of the techs or entry-level engineers with whom I've worked, three things immediately come to mind:

1. Vocabulary. When someone is already familiar with basic science terms and doesn't use words like "whatchamacallit", "thingy" and "whatever", not only do I have confidence in that person's intelligence, it makes communication much more efficient. 
2. Basic familiarity with science. I don't care if someone can recite the relationship between electrical power, current and voltage, nearly as much as I care that she has a sense that there is a relationship and can look up the specifics if necessary. 
3. Logic and critical thinking. It's hard to overstate the importance of the ability to think in terms of "if this, then that." It's the difference between being a valuable employee/teammate/asset and a helpless robot. This could be the biggest indictment of science education in America, but there's an alarming lack of people in industry with the ability to stand back, and ask themselves if what they're seeing makes logical sense. So many people just go through the motions of what they're doing without thinking about it. What's worse, when prompted, they can't think about it.

I'll see if I can refine this list, but I have the feeling that it's my duty to use these as "standards" at least as much as the standards I'm given by the state/ROE/etc.

Practice makes perfect

I read an article from a recent Time magazine about holding kids back in the 3rd grade because of substandard reading skills. The article made the point that it's difficult to discern the risk:reward ratio of holding kids back (the reward of building/reinforcing the necessary skills vs. the emotional/psychological risk to the kid), but it did make the case rather strongly, based on a Brooking's Institution study of public schools in Florida, that extra reading instruction every day helped those kids who lagged behind their peers.

Reminds me of a quote from one of my students over the last few weeks who discovered that she understood friction problems a lot better after going through several examples: "So... if you do more problems, this stuff seems to get a lot easier..."

There just might be something to that idea.

Baby's first parent-teacher conferences!

I just had my first round of parent-teacher conferences, and I saw the above cartoon just prior to it. Coincidence? *gulp*

Oak Park and River Forest High School is a place where there's lots of parental involvement in general, so I expected some pretty intense discussions during the conferences. But the conferences were actually quite nice and constructive. Two of the things that I noticed right away is that the parents seemed very reasonable (quite unlike those in the cartoon panel on the right above) and understood their kids' strengths, weaknesses and tendencies in school. In most cases, the only point on which we ever really differed in our views was on how vocal their kids tend to be: I would say something like, "my only concern is that Xxxxx speak up for herself more in class and not be so shy about contributing," and the parent reaction would be something along the lines of, "wow! I can't get Xxxxx to be quiet for anything at home!"

Also helping to avoid any surprises (which tend to put people on the defensive) is the online system we use to record grades. All parents have viewing access to their students' grades at all times via a web interface. So for the most part, nothing I said was news to them.

Maybe it's because I have mostly Jr's and Sr's: their parents had probably heard the same things many times over the years, and they seemed to know their kids situations well and there weren't many surprises.

One last observation - the conferences aren't compulsory for anyone. So parents can skip them altogether if they like. Looking at the list of parents that signed up, it seemed the kids that I felt most needed a parent-teacher conference were the kids whose parents didn't sign up. There were some of course, but the general trend over two days was that I talked to parents whose kids were doing pretty well already. Conclusions are left to the reader as an exercise. :)

...like a broken record.

I have been so completely consumed by this job - not that I mind. On the contrary - I love it. But my neighbors say things like, "man, we haven't seen you guys in forever!". To the outside observer, I've become pretty hermitic. And that's pretty ironic for someone who spends all day every day in a room teeming with people.

We've now got one full week left until Thanksgiving (with its 3-day week), then we've got three full weeks of school after which is final exams and then a 2 week break for Christmas. And that's it for the semester. My god, where has the time gone? I was speaking to my principal the other day and saying that at this rate, I'm scared that I'll wake up one day and suddenly realize that I'm 80 years old...

On that same topic, I was speaking with a colleague about another person who made the jump from industry to the classroom and that person's comment was: "I never watch the clock any more that's for sure - well, except to wish I had 10 more minutes in class..."

Damn right.