One of the things that can be discovered about me pretty quickly, is that I have a lot of one-liners and quotes in my head. I use these to bring myself back into focus when I get blurred. I know that there are a lot of people out there who are annoyed by these one-liners and even a little annoyed by my use of them, and so I try not to use them often, but I have one that has frequently been running through my head these last few weeks.

“We often grow more by bending with the wind than by standing in rigid defiance.” J. Stephens

I’ve begun this new and exciting school year with a fresh optimism for the impact I might be able to have in the classroom. It promises to be a school year full of changes. Changes in the way I teach, changes in the administration in my school, changes in my own perceptions of the things that happen around me.

Because of the changes in the administration of my school, I’ve observed three categories of teachers at my school. There are those who are in a wait-and-see mode. I believe this is the bulk of the faculty. There are those who are standing by and ready to consider the new changes and what they mean to the kids – willingly implementing anything that works toward the improvement of our school and our students. Then there is a small group of those who are standing in rigid defiance . . .

The truth is, it is like this in any workplace. It is not reserved for schools. Anytime there is a “changing of the guard”, there are bound to be issues. Even within a classroom, we can see this effect.

I began my first year of teaching half-way through the school year. The person I replaced was a well-liked coach who had a much different teaching philosophy than I. My students divided into the same three groups I’ve witnessed recently. Some of them really seemed not to care about the fact that Mr. G was now Mrs. P. I would say this was a majority. Then there were those who were kind and helpful and tried to adapt to my style as quickly as they could, eagerly embracing the new way in which they were being taught. And yes, I had those who stood in rigid defiance. It became a battle of wills. Who was going to give in first? Well, it wasn’t going to be me – I had too much riding on actually keeping my job!

I can remember the day it all came to a climax. I had just handed back an test which none of my students in one of my classes had passed. I told them that obviously, I had neglected them in some way and that we were going to go through the unit again, in condensed fashion, so that we, together, could figure out what went wrong for them. One of the students stood up – apparently having been elected somehow to be the class spokesperson and said, “Mr. G wouldn’t have given us such a hard test – Mr. G wouldn’t have made us learn this!”

This had been a frequently heard mantra  – Mr. G never made us do homework, Mr. G always gave us multiple choice, open book tests with two answer choices, Mr. G didn’t make us do this! I don’t know if any of this was true, but they certainly wanted me to believe it.

Can you guess my answer? “Do I look like Mr. G? Because if you think I do, then I might have to send you down to the nurse to get your eyes checked!” The class erupted in laughter and never did I hear “Mr. G . . .” again. Did they automatically stop rebelling? No, but the fact that I did not let them move me from my plan of action went a long way towards establishing respect from them and it went an even longer way towards establishing my own self-confidence.

What’s my point? The next time you find yourself saying things like “we’ve always done it this way” or “we never did it that way” or “Mrs. X had us do it this way”, remember . . .

Bend.

The first is DNATube. Like YouTube, but the videos uploaded are by scientists. I have to admit, the time I’ve spent here is minimal, and most of the videos I found were a little high brow for a high school student. However, there is current, accurate information there and a lot of the graphics would be good companions to a well delivered lesson.

The second is ScienceHack. ScienceHack is also a host for science videos. The site claims “every science video on ScienceHack is screened by a scientist to verify its accuracy and quality”. Some of the videos are better than others, but the site is worth a look-see.

Try them out and comment here to let me know what you find!

In the afternoon, I attended a session by CPO using their light and optics kit. It was very engaging and seemed like a great way to investigate the properties of light and terms like reflection, refraction, diffraction and focal point. Lastly, I attended a session about integrating technology into the science curriculum and somehow I ended up sharing several of the web 2.0 tools I use. It was a fun session, though.

Of course, somewhere in there, I visited all the exhibitor booths, got lots of free stuff, and numerous ideas that I’ll have to sort through in my free time (cough, cough).

The first session I attended was entitled “Forensic Science: The New Interdisciplinary Science”. I expected it to be an overview of all the different things forensic science could do for all science disciplines. In actuality, it was a hands-on lesson based on one forensic lab that could be done where students determine time of death for a “body” (really a cup of water with sodium polyacrylate) using a TI-84 and a temperature probe. The really cool things I learned from that session were that it takes very little sodium polyacrylate (which can be purchased at garden centers under the name water-tite or water-lok) to gel water, and that the entire book this woman had written, complete with forensic labs, can be downloaded for free online. Woot!

I also attended a session about teaching reading in science classrooms. This session was something I was really interested in, because I believe some of the issues facing my students in taking the TAKS are largely because of an inability to comprehend text. I knew I was in trouble when I walked in and the lady handed me a copy of all her powerpoint slides which had every word she was going to say typed on them. I was too polite to leave, but wow. Why do teachers think that’s the way to teach teachers? (I’m only hoping that isn’t how she teaches her students!)

One cool session I attended was put on by Flinn Scientific. They basically just did cool demo after cool demo and of course, I learned a lot there. The session was very entertaining, but by the time I went there, I was so exhausted from the rest of the day that I kept catching myself dozing off. I’d sat on one of the front rows so that I’d be able to see the demos and I felt bad that I kept nodding off. Still cool, though.

All in all, I’d say today was very beneficial to me. I plan on spending this evening sorting out all the sessions for tomorrow and having a firmer plan on where I want to go, along with alternatives in case something I want to go to gets cancelled (like the grant writing session I wanted to go to this afternoon).

The Governor’s Division of Emergency Management has a website with a lot of information about how to be prepared for and safe during hurricane season.

Naturally, unitedstreaming has several good videos on the topic. My favorite is “Raging Planet: Hurricane”. It has a lot of good video and explains how hurricanes are formed, how they are monitored, and the damage they cause.

Discovery Science Connection has an interactive “Create a Hurricane” that is very informative and lets students try to make their own hurricane. There are also a lot of good video clips about hurricanes.

NOAA has all kinds of information and interesting storm trackers.

Various websites offer lesson plans and activities: Education World; National Geographic Xpeditions; Hurricane Lesson (students are mayor of Pensacola Beach, FL, and have to make decisions about evacuating residents).

Hurricane animations: fly through a 3-D model of a hurricane at Hurricanes: online meteorology guide (this one is kind of high-tech so probably not for the younger kiddoes); BBC NEWS Animated Guide to Hurricanes; Classzone by McDougal Littell; NPR: Demonstration of the Saffir-Simpson scale (this is a really nice visual for the scale).