First up is a writer for space.com on the latest in astronomy apps, and astronomer - Mr. Chris Vaughan (@astrogeoguy) He arrived at the school at 8:15pm and 12+ students came trickling in afterwards. It was a tough time for the majority of my class as there were many tests and assignments due that particular week. A definite reason to not run this workshop towards the end of the semester. Next time I'll change the time of year this occurs.
@trudeauhs checking out Jupiter on trudeau hs pic.twitter.com/uo8166oa1m— Andrew Shin (@MrAShinYRDSB) June 10, 2016
Nevertheless, we saw the moon in spectacular detail, then Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, and then a whole host of stars came out. Antares, the "equal to-Mars" star, which twinkled, giving away its star status making it distinguishable from Mars. We saw Vega, the brightest star in the summer sky. Other salient and very interesting things in the sky was the ISS and the iridium flash by a satellite.
@trudeauhs We got a snap of Saturn thru @astrogeoguy 's telescope. Thx for teaching us about telescopes & night sky! pic.twitter.com/JapnU7u5o4— Andrew Shin (@MrAShinYRDSB) June 11, 2016
Second up was Ms. Julie Lum, parent council chair for the past 3 years as well as a geologist + engineer for the Suncor/Shell. We managed to tag-team this presentation, as I helped convert her quiz into a kahoot.it. The change from last year's presentation to this year's was impressive as she incorporated videos and presented Shell's vision of clean energy and latest in fracking in an engaging presentation. It's pretty cool to see a parent council chair who is willing to try teaching. As a parent of 3, parent council chair, and now a 'teacher', she has put on hats as a parent, administrator, and teacher.
he skillfully guided students through their misconceptions of the universe. He would take students' inputs and ideas and weigh them by guiding them through logic - pulling on some of their ideas, like a loose thread, until it came loose. He followed them through on their misconceptions to point out its weakness from their own logic that he helped guide to eventually crumble their misconceptions.
He arrived early, and I gave him the option of speaking to grade 9s. He held a Q&A session. He taught with humility and incredible openness. The questions that those grade 9s asked (most of which came from my ex-grade 9 math students who I have encouraged to ask questions) were great - how is the universe expanding, how big is the universe, why is it so much harder to breathe as you get higher, how do we measure how big things are, etc. Again - he has never taught grade 9s, but his ability to take such difficult concepts and simplify it for them was like watching Michaelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel. He used anecdotes, simple math analogies, and drew upon everyday experiences to satisfy their questions.
He apparently teaches astronomy to humanities students - UT forces humanities students to take a science. I could see that he used the same tone with my high school students - where every word he used was measured and carefully selected so as to keep his audience engaged no matter how difficult the concept. I could tell that he used this tone and linguistic style for both the grade 9s and grade 12s as there was one hint where this 'armor' broke - one of my grade 12 students asked how can the universe be simultaneously infinite in size and infinite in mass. His tone and pacing changed ever so slightly as the question started to enter the realm of math. He excitedly rattled off the density equation and explained how the beginning of the universe can be infinite (because the universe is anything and everything that will be), but also be small in volume, exploding the density to infinity.
A colleague pointed out that I can do this same process as the professor with my math students - where I can help guide a student to use their own logic to to help them see the error of their own math solution. And it's true...I can do that because I know the subject matter. I just don't know my astronomy well enough to get to that level. So it was spectacular to watch and see this occur for an astronomy course.
His visit, among many things, showed me that I have a long way to go as a teacher. It was really fun to watch the art of teaching. Time to get to work!
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