I.T. to Teacher

Alyssa commented about my MySpace post, and I want to respond, but since it's down the page a bit I figured I'd bring it to the top like this.

I respect the fact that you have an opinion to a certain site. Yes, it is true us teens love to express ourselves and we love to flaunt what we have to the world on the internet. I myself love the internet in general, no matter what site I am on. To me, it's all about the closests friends and family. And no doubt the 'in crowds' and the 'cool group' is what teens are into right now, not all of them are. including me...

~Alyssa; Michigan, USA; 14 yrs. old

Thanks for commenting, Alyssa. I don't often respond to comments, but you brought some things to mind, and I want to address them.

I have no problem with people doing the trendy thing. Heck, look at me, I'm blogging. Now, being trendy for the sake of being trendy, that's another story for another time.

MySpace, like Geocities, has it's place in the internet spectrum. It is a place for people to stretch their wings and start figuring out what they can do with this thing they call the internet. Not everyone is going to be able to write good web pages. I did for a while, but those days are long gone (and good riddance to them). Now, like many people, I use a common tool for my place on the internet because now I'd rather have easier than better. If you browse random blogs here on Blogger you'll see many that look the same (there's only so many templates to choose from), and many that sound the same (blah blah blah). I try to set myself apart from the crowd by having a blog with a purpose and scintillating content, not just a place to post which movie I saw this weekend. Like you, my target audience is my friends and family. Visitors like you are just a bonus.

The thing that surprised me about MySpace is that as much as my students talk about it, and as popular as it is, there seems to be very little effort or thought put into most of the MySpaces out there. I just looked at some random Spaces, and may have only found bad ones (try stumbling around the internet and see what percentage of good sites you hit, it's probably pretty low, too). The tool used for creating a MySpace without needing a huge amount of time and ability may not lend itself to creating distinctive pages. I don't know.

It probably boils down to the fact that I am not quite twice the age of most of my students. I'm an old fogey who just doesn't understand kids these days. Why, back in my day....

I've seen 300, and it was a great movie. As you can imagine, high school guys love it. Actually, the girls liked it too. As one put it, "How could you not like it? Abs everywhere!"

So my school's mascot is the Spartans. You can imagine the guys are enjoying that association. From time to time in the halls you'll hear, "This is Sparta!" I've heard of a couple of teams in the school with plans to use lines from the movies as their "war cry." Some football players in one of my classes decided that "Spartans! Prepare for glory!" would be a wonderful thing to yell before a game.

They didn't think it was such a good idea when I pointed out that when the Spartans referred to glory, they were referring to death in battle.

Seen on a test-

I want my epitaph to read:

He was a great man.
He loved physics,
But magnetic forces weren't his forte.
Remember him, and let this be a lesson to all:
Do not worry about magnetic forces and fields,
For their havoc cannot be stopped.

It's a review day during this AP class two days before their test. As the students are leaving one comes up to me and asks if I'm available to answer questions after school. I say yes, and he says he'll be there after school with questions. This is a good thing, because he needs the help.

After school comes, and so does he. This conversation transpires.

Student: "So I haven't been paying much attention lately."
Me: "I've noticed."
S: "Now I have incentive to do better." (insert some reasons about college, being grounded, etc)
M: "Well, I'm glad to help. What do you have questions about?"
S: "Well, I know we're doing magnetic fields, ... but that's about all."

It turns out he wants me to re-teach everything because he wasn't paying attention and has now decided he should have been. I tell him that's not good enough. I can answer any questions he has, but he has to know enough to ask questions. I'm not going to re-teach it. I have him look at the review sheet I made, and I give him my book and tell him to sit here, read the worksheet, read the book, and let me know if he has any questions. After about 10 minutes of this he decides that the review sheet is pretty thorough (darn right it is) and that he'll look at the book at home and come in the next day with questions.

The next day he comes in... with one question. It's not even about the hard sections. It's a minor thing that the book explains very well. I answer his question and he leaves.

We'll see how the test went.

I was giving a test first thing this morning to my AP Physics B class. One of my better students arrived near the end of class. She had a note from the office saying her absence was excused because she was ill. My student told me that she had gone to a concert last night, and when she woke up this morning she had a headache and her ears were still ringing. I'm guessing that's not the story the office heard, but I can't do anything about it because they said her absence is excused.

When she comes in to make up the test tomorrow I think I'll tell her how pathetic her excuse was, and that she'd better get used to the ringing in her ears because some day it won't go away. Ahh, tinnitus, my ever-present companion.

Here's a little scribbling I did during TAKS testing. The students complain about how dull the testing is. They don't think about how exciting it is watching them take a test.