Hey Mister!

Hello Physics students. Here are some websites you might find useful.

Volleyball 1

Volleyball 2

Volleyball 3

Baseball 1

Baseball 2

Baseball 3

Basketball 1

Basketball 2

Basketball 3

Karate 1

Karate 2

Swimming 1

Swimming 2

What have I gotten so far?
At first I was afraid that my students and I might not have been able to handle the changes. I was worried that I might be setting expectations for the “new” experiences a little too high. I asked myself, what if kids cant do it? What if I don’t set it up properly? Based on these questions, I decided to do a “test run”. A mini version of my action research where students went back to an introductory activity they had already done, and defined measure variables and made calculations based on all they had in front of them.

After all was said and done, I found that students had little or no trouble figuring it out, and shifting their way of thinking to get it done. Now that I know that we both can do it, I’m ready to measure how they feel tomorrow and based on THAT go full throttle on my research next week!!! Wooohooo!!!!

What do I expect?
I really believe I can improve student’s level of confidence with physics variables and problem solving. I’m not sure about performance anymore, but I’m going to measure it anyway because I feel it is still important to better my practice. All my efforts are mute if I can’t get them to perform well. If they don’t perform well they will not feel confident about physics!!!!

Victory

Originally uploaded by canomarrero

We woooooon!

For the last couple of months I have been helping to coach a “Science Bowl” team. Twice a week we got together to practice a bunch of questions. At first I had my reservations. It was an extra hour and a half that I could have been using to plan or grade, but I said hey, if I’m ever going to get involved in other school activities it’s got to be now. Anyway I got involved and it paid off!! Yesterday we had the local competition at RIT and WE WOOOOOOOOON!!! Woohooo! Granted, there were only two teams in the senior category but still, we came back from behind after loosing the first two rounds and won 3 rounds in a row!!!

I was so excited and so proud. The feeling is like nothing I have felt before! The joy of seeing your hard work bring joy and a sense of accomplishment to a group of eager young minds is amazing. Now we get a choice of going to Philadelphia, Washington DC or both for national competitions. Either way it will be awesome!

Target Practice

Originally uploaded by canomarrero

I must confess that “The New Teacher Book” readings are the first I have done in a while. These were very good for 2 reasons; 1st they are short and 2nd, the fact that they are short makes every word a powerful word. There is a lot to get out of these.

I will start with “Teaching for social justice”. I felt I could relate very strongly to this one. The author talks about standing up for what you believe and putting up a fight against any and all unjust practices. These will have a negative impact on your students and you must find creative ways around them. No compromise. A word of caution though, before you become outspoken you must make sure you hone your skills as a teacher and obtain results. This will provide the back up you will need when defending your practices against those who question and openly criticize them. This resonates strongly with me because for all of my first year I pretty much kept my ideas to myself. Second year, due to some level of success I had last year, I feel more comfortable speaking out in meetings and inviting people into my classroom. My comments have turned heads, and sparked some passionate conversations, to say the least. Now, having said that, there are plenty of situations in which I have been hesitant to speak out, like with issues of management AND social justice. Because I don’t think I’m particularly strong and still haven’t a lot of data to back up my beliefs, I have kept myself on the sidelines of those conversations. As time goes by, I will hopefully be able to be more vocal and active in such issues.

The White privilege article was also very insightful. I always found that arguments on racial inequities could be brought to a breaking point with the argument and complaint that surfaced with affirmative action, where white candidates felt they were being denied work in order to accommodate Black, Hispanic and/or people with other ethnic back grounds. I always found it nearly impossible to argue against such ideas. Yet the author of this article reaches an understanding that it is not an act of discrimination, but an act of consistence with their commitment of maintaining diversity in the workplace.

In fact, Time Magazine recently published an article on a certain school district that decided to maintain a predefined ratio of Black, Hispanic and White students per school. In order to make this happen as soon as a “quota” is met enrollment may be denied due to ethnicity. Some might think this to be “wrong” but preliminary data seems to show that these students learn a great deal about social consciousness and integration. Test scores have increased, along with other positive things that seem to have created a real change in the overall community. The transportation issue is solved by providing bus services for all communities to all schools, even if a school is as far as 45 minutes away. There is an element of student choice in there but I won’t get into that.

So the overall message I take away from these is to stick with my guns. As I do I must make sure I only fire them openly when I am sure I will hit the bulls eye. In the mean time, I must make sure I keep going to target practice until I can consider myself a sharpshooter.

Good Vibrations

Originally uploaded by canomarrero

Good Vibrations

I’m in that kind of mood. I feel like I could sit down and calmly plan 3.0 x 10^8 lessons. Not Just any lesson, good strong lessons that don’t suck!! So I’m going to take that energy and transfer it into blogging…JA! Maybe I’ll plan after.

So anyway, I was thinking about my research….actually that’s a lie, I haven’t been thinking about it because I feel I’m very close to getting started on data collection, but at the same time I’m nervous about what these lessons are going to look like. When I was student teaching, I remember obsessing about the details. That obsession made the experience hard because it made me forget about what makes me a good teacher in the first place, which is the flexible atmosphere that my students feel comfortable in. With obsession comes an up side down reflection of stress and with stress comes overwhelming self criticism. This self criticism is what nearly drove me crazy last time. I’m going to make a conscious effort not to obsess. I’m going to incorporate my research into my style; I think that mindset will help me prevent any destructive interference.

The focus on academic performance also makes me nervous. Most of my students are seniors and we go through a sine curve of senioritis and motivation. If we are on the crest of the curve by the time I begin the research I might get some really good results. If we are at the trough we might not do so well. On the other hand, if I can get them to perform while on the trough the frequency success just might increase!!!!

Can you guess what my research unit will be on?

How might inquiry be related to social justice?

Inquiry provides students an opportunity to experience science in a way that they might not have experienced before. A chance to participate in the work that scientists actually do, rather than just hearing about it. Although some students can express interest in just hearing about science other students need that chance to do it differently. In giving that chance it also increases opportunities for more students to achieve scientific literacy. Students who aren’t engaged in science miss out on participating socially through science. Whether it is through access to and use of scientific information, or voting and expressing their views on decisions that are based on science.

How do people learn science?
By doing it, and participating in it. By collecting data, finding relationships, establish ideas about natural phenomenon and defending these ideas using evidence. I also think they learn science by being exposed to all of the above before behaviors and concepts are even given a name. If a student can explain a relationship, by the time it is given a name, students have an experience in which to conceptualize that word or concept.

This is as far as my brain takes me……..

Ok, this is a VERY rough draft of some of the things that were missing from my research. I’m sure there is a lot of work to be done and I’ll keep working on this. Also this is very informal; it’s more like my stream of thoughts as I think about this without much editing or fine tuning. Hope this makes sense

Other variables to be measured

• homework performance
• performance in tests

Some Research questions – this is the part I might have spent the least amount of time on.

• how does the level of alignment between standards and “experiences” affect students ability to solve physics problems mathematically
• how does providing students with experiences to contextualize learning in affect their ability to identify physical variables and solve problems?

Innovation (not sure how innovative this is)

Usually when I design labs or experiences for physics they are aimed at objectives that achieve only conceptual understanding of patterns in physical phenomenon. When I write objectives for these experiences I don’t really look at the curriculum. I only do that for more traditional days in which we take notes and practice. Even in days where I do both, the objectives of the experience may be very different from the objectives of the notes and practice.

So I think I will rewrite my activities based on the standards present on the curriculum and plan for more obvious transitions between experiences, notes and practice. In order to do best accomplish this I feel I have to be able to constantly reference the experiences and also the students have to be able to do so as well. In addition I feel that at the end of class should be directly connected to the behavior observed in the first experience. So doing calculations that are based on what was observed or data that was collected at the beginning might help.

Membership

Although I will be discussing and presenting my progress through the class blog and during class, for the most part I will be working by myself. I will be responsible for re-designing and re-writing all activities and assessments. I will undertake all aspects of the investigation including collecting data, analyzing it and presenting my results.

Timeline
Not sure…do we start when we want to? If so, I will probably begin data collection when my current (dynamics) unit is done. I might try it with momentum and impulse….I think I’ll be starting that in 2 weeks and it will take about a month to teach. So within those two weeks, I will be working on rewriting my experiences, notes and assessments.

I know this isn’t very specific but I will refine it as time goes by.

Resourses
Not really sure what I’ll need until I plan out my activities.

Data collection Ideas

This one is hard….lets see
• How much homework is turned in
• Correctness of homework
• Number of questions students ask during in class practice
• Types of questions they ask (From: What do I do mister? to Just tell me if I’m right…is this variable mass???)
• Test grades
• Correctness of in class practice. On average, how the class performed.
• I might build a confidence rubric to rate myself after planning.

Eureka!

Originally uploaded by canomarrero

This post was going to be a reply to comments by April and Ashley and it just turned into a storm of ideas so I think it might work best as a post. That way it is exposed to more people.

Ashley’s and April’s comments I guess gets me thinking about several things. First, the fact that my chemistry is General has a lot to do with it but not completely. It’s more about the nature of the process skills in the curriculum. For example, identifying homogeneous and heterogeneous substances based on physical characteristics is an objective that is very easy to come up with experiences for students to contextualize what they will learn and be able to do. On the other hand, identifying variables and solving for Vi in d = Vit + 1/2at^2 is a lot harder. So in that case I feel I’m forced to make semi-prescribed “labs” where students just conceptualize a relationship that I later translate for them into an equation. My kids are very good at recognizing patterns and relationships between variables, so initially students go “ooooooooh, I can see where that came from” but it doesn’t really get at the skill they need to develop. Does it???

This problem arises both in general and in Regents Physics because in the end both finals heavily assess students’ ability to solve physics problems mathematically.

Now, the kicker comes when I have to teach “skills” in chemistry such as stoichiometry. You know what I mean? I don’t really have a good experience to take students through that will lead to a natural connection to stoichiometry.

So I guess my area of focus should move in a different direction. More towards connecting the experiences more directly to process skills. Maybe something like:

….studying the effect of the level of alignment between pre-lesson experiences and curricular process skills on student’s ability to solve physics problems mathematically.

Wow! Just reading it scares me!!! Let’s think about variables

When planning I usually know when I have a well aligned lesson. So maybe I could rate my level of confidence with the lesson before teaching it to see how that confidence affects performance.

Usually when we start something “new” (after we have experienced it) and I go through some sample problems, I post problems that they will solve one at a time, we stop, I ask what they got but I never get a clear picture of how many of them were actually able to do it.

Some variables then could be:

• rated level of confidence with the lesson before it is taught
• by head count: amount of students who can or can’t solve “sample problems”

Other ares like questions and innovation will be coming soon….

Jealous

Originally uploaded by canomarrero

I have been reading other peoples blogs and I feel this inevitable level of jealousy and frustration at the same time. I see people are having such interesting and meaningful discussions, and for the first time ever, I feel I have nothing to say!!!! I read and I find myself just skimming through and something inside me keeps me from fully participating in these conversations. As action research projects grow the conversations become bigger and better articulated. They also become more specific; developing questions, bouncing ideas and quoting readings. I wish to participate in these conversations and have an opinion, but I find myself minimally invested in this. I haven’t even started to read chapter 1!!!!!! There is so much more I could be doing right now, but my mind pulls me in a million different directions. I must sound like the little kid that the other kids don’t want to play with!

But seriously, I think it’s a matter and sitting myself down and really spending a decent amount of time with this. I promised myself that after writing this blog post I would at least do my readings. The deadline for our plan is coming up and I need to get it done. Never fear, I will do my best not to turn this into the poster project all over again.

For those who don’t know, around the time we were working on the posters I was about ready to drop the class. I felt that I was having trouble investing time in class in a way that I felt was meaningful. I also had some serious concerns about the value of making the poster. I thought it was cool idea, but I really didn’t see how it would impact my students or the value of it if they had very little say in it. I also had concerns about the way my group kind of dispersed and we never really worked as a group. After our first session together everyone just went their own way and I was left wondering what happened and no one to discuss my concerns or bounce ideas with. To be clear, I’m not really blaming anyone on this, I’m an adult and I’m responsible for my own work but once again I felt a little jealous that all other groups meshed and worked together and ours didn’t work together at all.

Enough ranting…..I will put a strong effort into this. Like many things in the Warner School, I don’t think I’ll see its immediate value until after I’m done with it!!! Wish me luck!

rec studio

Originally uploaded by canomarrero

I should be blogging about action research but I have other things to say…

Lately I feel this huge desire to do something extra. By extra I don’t mean work, I mean music. Anyone who reads this blog knows how passionate I feel about teaching. But teaching is hard work. In many aspects, it’s a job. There are days I just don’t feel like it. Music is expression. It’s such a powerful way of letting out emotion. As much as blogging and reflection with others provides an outlet for emotions about teaching, I feel I need a little more than that.

Music is like this itch that I haven’t been able to scratch. So I think I’m going to start looking into starting or joining a cover band or something. That means I have to build up my stamina and start practicing.

On that subject, I’ve always had this idea about having a year long project where we could have a generic room where students could use physics and engineering to design and build a recording studio. I see soooooo much potential in a project like that. Eventually students could write and record a song or two. There is so much to learn about waves, electronics, dynamics, etc. Sigh, I wish I was a millionaire. I would also have to make myself a bit more of an expert on the subjects. Or maybe it would be better if we learned together?? uuuuuu, that would be awesome. Imagine a situation where both the teacher and students are almost as equals in terms of learning and expertise!!!