Defeat Breast Cancer!

Teaching is something that I absolutely love; its rewards are sometimes tangible, often instantaneous, and can be endless.

Coaching is also immediately gratifying, and its results are endless AND tangible.  I started tryouts for ultimate frisbee yesterday morning at 7am - 8am, just before class started.  One of my former students came back to help organize tryouts and more are on their way as they finish off their exams. 

Dancing - I enjoy in itself.  I danced yesterday, sacrificing 20 minutes of period 2,3, and 4 to raise awareness and money vs breast cancer.  This is the 6th year in a row I've done it.  Although the stage was closed, it was better we performed on the floor as we were closer to the crowd.  I was able to feed off the crowd a lot more.  Even my mistakes, I was able to laugh them off this year as opposed to years past. 

We have been practicing this dance for 4 weeks now and as always, it was worth it in the dancing itself, but also to help Trudeau's STRUT club promote awareness and raise money against breast cancer.

The best thing about this dance was that it was organized, choreographed by a couple of students.  It's a small portion of what happened this whole week as they've been selling popcorn, cookies, and raising awareness throughout this Pink Week.  Anyways, if you'd like to see the fruits of our students' work, here it is: 

 

Old Style Education vs the New Style Education

We are at a crossroads for learning. Students are very good at informal learning;  their interests lead them to finding resources on the internet to learn more about their interest.   This is in contrast to the formalized learning that happens in school sometimes.  Some students can bridge these two styles of learning; other students aren't successful at formal education or don't see the point in school.

Many teachers prefer the traditional method of education with the teacher at the front leading the classroom.  Students don't know what they don't know and it's important that the teacher impart some of the perspective, experience and knowledge through interesting media.

However, there are more and more voices from the progressive teachers (which are mostly online) with this view that I found on flickr:

Others prefer student lead learning with teachers as facilitators.  The epitome of student led learning and teacher facilitation is depicted in the makerspace below:

Content doesn't matter as much, as we now have access to knowledge all the time with the internet.

Skills matter more.  With the makerspace, students are creating things.  With this higher engagement, the important skills of initiative, collaboration, and perseverence are all practiced at a much higher level.  Developing these soft skills will enable them to succeed at whatever job they are placed in.

It essentially boils down to this: do we try and give students a base knowledge to start with or do we just let them lead their own education?

The answer is always the same to these new initiatives: mix i the old with the new.   I will do both because students will benefit from both.  I just hope I know how to balance it and if the time allocation is done correctly.

Very often, students don't know what they want to learn because they haven't discovered it yet.  For these students, it is my job as a teacher to show them the amazing parts of this world.  Once their interest has been captured, then it's my turn to facilitate and lead from behind and let the students lead the way.

Grade 8 Parents' Night

Hundreds of parents and students descended at our school just to see what Pierre Elliott Trudeau has to offer.  They want to compare our school with the other options out there - the Catholic board or private schools.

I found a few helpful students and we spent most of the time just preparing a room for that would show the parents and students the different math pathways.  Presenting the different math pathways available would benefit the parents and students no matter which school they chose.

We decided to set up the classroom in a way that they could 'walk' the different math pathways available and see where each pathway ends.

As a result, our school has run the transfer course for the first time.  The principal spent some efforts advertising this course at the grade 8 parents night 11 months ago.  She advertised the applied and transfer course pathway as an option for any students that scored a level 2 or below in their grade 8 math scores.  

With the applied + transfer course pathway, the students are exposed to 1.5 credits of math rather than just the 1.0 credits in the academic grade 9 pathway.

There's no way to tell if this applied + transfer course of 1.5 credits is enough to prepare them for grade 10 academic.

This scares me more than their EQAO scores.

Which I guess, in many ways, a good thing.  I'm more concerned about their transition than their EQAO scores.

In my younger years, I'd care too much about their EQAO scores .   I've now realized that if I take care of them as students, the EQAO scores will take care of themselves.  EQAO is subset of what and how they should learn.

I'll be sure to track their success next year.

PS:  The best part of the night was watching a few students explain to the parents what the math clubs and math education is all about.  It's interesting to hear of their experiences.

Creating Crystal Methods in the Lab

In the past two weeks we spent some time developing a good procedure and adjusting the procedure to grow the biggest crystal we could given a set amount of material.  Here are some of the results.

Chemical #1:  Cupric Sulfate

The characteristic blue of this copper really had me excited as it would have been interesting to see a large blue crystal.  The majority of the crystallization occurred at at the bottom of the beaker instead of the hanging crystal seed, so it didn't turn out as large as ED, RQ, and SC had hoped.

Picture 1: Crystallization occurring on hanging seed crystal with simultaneous crystals growing along bottom of beaker. 

Picture 2:  Crystallization happening on bottom - due to impurities at the bottom of beaker

Chemical #2:  Sodium Chlorate

The cubic structure of sodium chlorate was really evident in this jar.  As you can see in the pictures below, the layers of cubic sodium chlorate that accumulated on top of one another was absolutely breathtaking.  

 Picture 3:  Crystallization occurring on seed crystal as well as some impurities at bottom of jar.  If you look really closely, you can see the crystals growing on the nylon string near the top of  the beaker.  

  Picture 4:  ED, RQ, and SC decided to make multiple crystals and were able to grow multiple in different jars.  Of particular interest are the two cubes that have joined together.  

    Picture 5:  ED happy with his baby crystals. One is named Jerry, the other is a John Doe.  

  That's a picture of a proud father, right there.   

Chemical #3: Chromium Alum

Unfortunately, this beautiful black crystal suffered the same fate as the cupric sulfate.  

 Picture 6:  Crystallization at the bottom of beaker.  =( 

  Picture 7:  OH and MA were able to crack some crystals from the bottom.  

 Picture 8:  Some of the larger crystals that were extracted.  

Picture 9:  My favourite crystal. You can see its shape is almost perfectly octahedron.  The math teacher in me is quite pleased at the almost perfect symmetry of this crystal.

Picture 10:  OH and MA with their chromium alum octahedron crystals.  

Picture 11:  The rest of the class' sugar and salt crystals in a contest.  

I look forward to reading their reports that will maybe offer some reasons as to why certain crystals were able to grow well and others not so well.  Their recommendations in improvements to the procedure will be especially interesting, and I'm considering passing on their observations on to the next group next year to enlarge the crystals.