Eric Dahlstrom

life continues on, but it helps my mood immensely that it is no longer February. hopefully we get to see green stuff outside again soon.

our district might be exploring the possibility of a program related to fitness/wellness. I think it would be a great idea to encourage us, as a faculty, to stay fit and active. I noticed that a lot of teachers attending a program on fitness were a little older - I think thats really interesting (although maybe the younger folks felt like they knew what they were doing, or something along those lines)

I’ve not worked on my paper to (a) give it a rest, and (b) life is busy again. so I checked the requirements for class on Tuesday and it said to blog about the New Teacher book, which we never assigned new sections due to the weather. so I guess I’ll just mention that I was a little disappointed in the book. it just seemed like an excuse to complain about the current state of education (given there is plenty to complain about) and didn’t really get specific about the various obstacles were overcome. Maybe my expectations were a bit too high, but I was a little let down about what was actually there - not enough meat.

so writing this paper has actually been pretty easy so far. I have to write what I consider the “official” part of the paper -the theoretical background, the part where I put in some references.

the rest of the paper is actually pretty much written. I will of course review and revise next week, but I’m happy how fast it has going.

the hardest part has actually been writing the conclusion. I wrote the following as my last, sum it up paragraph:
“In summary, the capture sheets had a positive effect on our classroom in that it helped students organize their thoughts better, take more responsibility for their notes, and decrease the skill-and-drill time time required to reinforce topics that were only skimmed over in other sections of class. If I were to continue this study, I would work on increasing the ability of students to engage in higher level learning, differentiating more according to student ability”

I’m not sure what I think of this paragraph. thoughts?

well we start our February break today, and its much needed. I’m not sure I realized as a student how much the teachers need breaks as well, to recharge mentally. I toyed with the idea of going on a vacation but I really don’t feel rich enough, and I don’t trust that free cruise coupon that came in the mail.

I’m working my way through the mess in my apartment, figuring out how I will organize this paper. In class, people seemed to find the data I collected very interesting, especially the cultural change many of the students were having trouble with. Maybe the break will help with some of their attitudes as well. I’m also feeling better about the way I’m implementing the capture sheets, as I think some of the structure is creeping its way back in, but in a good way. I also liked the suggestion of eventually having the class construct the big ideas sheet instead of just me.

Its cold out. and snowy. and its not fun driving just because it takes so long to get anywhere.

anyway, I’m keeping this brief cause I’m tired and need to go to bed soon.

my plan is to get my draft done over February break. By draft, I mean the first and second version, because my writing style is to write and edit as I go. Its tedious and I’ve tried in the past to let it flow and seriously edit later, but I’m too type A to let mistakes and poor wording pass. I feel this is the hardest part of the writing process so I want to do this when I’m not mentally tired from teaching all day.

then, I’m taking a week off, before I return to the paper to reconsider the major ideas and themes of the paper.

more to come later.

as I feel like I’ve been detailing each step of this, my current step is the interview.

first, who? I would like a fairly representative sample, but what does that mean? gender? gradewise? learning style? and if I’m only doing a handful of students, is this a realistic thing to worry about? I picked a few students today that I knew would be diverse, and others who were listening volunteered, so I’m going with it. but I hope its a good sample.

the second part is the questions - is there a way to get good honest feedback about me, if I am right there? am I ready to accept that feedback? I think I’m very comfortable with the students I’ll be interviewing so if its going to work, I’ve got the students who can deliver. I’ve never felt like I’m good at “unpacking” answers so I’m hoping that I’m good about getting indepth answers and getting the kids to actually talk freely - once that happens I’ll get good honest feedback and great insights. As I type this, I guess I’m realizing that this is my goal - get kids to talk a lot.

the one thing that class brought about for me was thinking about how the students perceive my teaching on the constructivism/tradionalistic scale. I’m very curious to see how this turns out.

So, we’re a week into the new style of notes, and as predicted the audience is not receptive. I had a discussion with a student today after school and she was mentioning how she really didn’t like the new style, but when I asked her to elaborate she admitted that the new capture sheets made her think more which is what she didn’t like. I suspect my surveys will come back with completely negative remarks on it after the quiz on Wednesday, although I am going to tell them that I am comparing their quiz scores to last year’s classes.

I did also make a modification in that I gave them a big ideas review sheet, with all of the major concepts, vocab, and skills that they would need to know. So, we’ll see how things shake out.

Its frustrating getting the kids to actually attempt this with open minds. I really think that most of them complain a LOT anyway, and that they haven’t given these a fair chance. I’ve told them that we aren’t going back to the old way however, so they should get used to it.

Well the midterms are in and graded. Its hard to be completely fair while grading these things, but we do our best (and that also refers to the Regents exam). At least we get to pick the questions for our midterm so it seems more fair than the Regents.

Most of my students did a good job, I had a few slide a bit but I also think it is useful for students to understand that sometimes a grade can be higher than it deserves to be, based on working hard. I completely value hard work so that doesn’t bother me, but sometimes it puzzles me that students don’t walk into the test knowing how to do the types of problems I told them would be present.

I start my action research plan on Monday. I am going to focus on my second block class because I am changing the seating in my third block class; my only question really is figuring out who to interview. It might be on a convenience basis (basically, students I can actually meet with to do an interview) but as a scientist, I want to try to get four or five very different students so that my data is more complete. Just a current thought in my head.

Also, I’m sorry to say that my one class did not quite reach the goal of getting to see me wear a tutu and tiara the whole day. I’m sure the online community is the worse off for it.

I chose the word for my post this week because I was thinking of the midterm my students will be taking on Thursday. for the bio kids, they should be ok if they remember to study, because they have had so much of it before they even got to me. I really don’t have that many kids that struggle with the material, they just struggle with study habits. for chemistry, however, the test is definitely fair but also a very strict judge of who has actually learned material. Just about all of the questions, both multiple choice and short answer, have been asked many times before including previous tests, yet each year I get some bombs. I really don’t know how else to get that across to my students that even the super smart kids need to study (we did do 5 days of review in class) but I guess we’ll just have to see. fingers are crossed.

I also just wrote up the survey I will be handing out to the kids after the unit on solutions. I am hoping to get some good responses, but I am wondering if a followup after we spend more time with the capture sheets might be useful. The way the timing of this action research falls, the students only have four days with the capture sheets instead of the old notes, so I am wondering if some of the kids who don’t like change might like the capture sheets after using them for a while. we’ll see…

other than some finishing touches, I think the action research is ready to go, which is good because in a week it is go time.

A week into making my first capture sheets, I’m struck by (a) how much more work it is to not just tell them information, but yet provide good structure and a starting point for discussion, and (b) how much setup some of these lessons will entail, and (c) how much I would really like to have a colleague in my school who did this. I’m sure it wouldn’t be exactly the way I wanted it but still.
We have one more week till midterms. This means we are reviewing all this week, a fact that makes me a little nervous. I’m not sure the chemistry students really understand that this test is a stout reminder of the entire volume of information that we have covered, and I really hope they prepare adequately. Biology, I’m sure some kids will be fine, and others will need to put in some work that they are not accustomed to. I do a lot of review so there really isn’t a whole lot more that I can do, but it is still stressful sometimes. At least this year my second proctoring assignment is before I have to give my exams, so I can spend the rest of the week grading them, and the regents finally put chemistry early in the testing schedule in June, which means I won’t be rushed grading them and I can then focus on biology, instead of giving both in the same day and having to get them graded so fast.
Anyway, I am excited for some quality football. Plus, hopefully this week my forensics textbook that I have been waiting for is coming in the mail. So have a nice week everyone.

I love this time of year. everyone is (usually) in a good mood because of the holidays, and then January brings midterms which is always interesting because you realize how much you really have done so far. I’m sure the students don’t find it as interesting.

anyway, I met with Michael over the break and I finally feel like I know exactly what I am doing. I’m still dragging my feet a little bit about actually typing up the capture sheets (my new version of “notes”) but I feel like this is change I might actually like and continue to use, which I suppose is the whole point of this course.

so to sum up, here’s the old and the new. the old was to do notes towards the beginning of the period, then do activities/labs/worksheets/etc to support the notes. the notes themselves consisted of skeleton notes and accompanied by powerpoints with the missing information. I tried to provide lots of examples or sample problems, but I had just about hit the ceiling as to how far I could make that particular style of notes work.

the new is a change in the procedure as well as notes. Now, I’m going to try to do something first - labs, demos, or stations if possible (I’m not sure what I’m going to do the day I discuss calculations of molarity, molality, ppm and mole fraction). This is nice also because I feel like I will also be using demos more effectively. Then, use capture sheets to ask students to think about what they just saw/did, and derive concepts and definitions from that as a class and as individuals. Instead of me dumping the information, the idea is that we come up with stuff together. This might be possible here too because a lot of the topics we will cover second semester are applications of information we have already discussed.

I’m starting this new system right after midterms. I bumped up the solutions unit, which is really only about four days of information, so that I would have a nice piece of data but not too much. My pieces of data will be a class survey, some spot interviews, and data analysis of the assessments.