I love days that go like today went. Sometimes everything falls into place. Teacher preparation, student attention, curriculum content and the stars align to make a great day. Teaching basic biochemistry to sophomores, we started with a short news article about the oceanic wandering of white sharks. I save and print interesting news articles that are used as short reading and writing exercises everyday. The article even ended up tying back into today's lecture.
My presentation of notes was great (even if I do say so myself). My timing was on. The students were attentive and contributed. There were all kinds of cross links with previous knowledge, both pointed out by me and discovered by the students themselves. The use of the Atlas of Macromolecules was a great attention focuser and interest grabber. I only found the resource a few days ago and it is really changing many of my future lesson plans and presentations. We covered (introduced) nucleic acids and proteins. I got to spend time discussing collagen. The kids recognized as the stuff Angelie Jolie injects into her lips. We discussed how prevalent collagen is in all animals, including humans. Then I started down the path of what we do with the collagen of animals we slaughter for food. This led to the fact that Jell-O is rendered and dehydrated animal skins, bones, and gristle. You should have heard the ooooohs and yucks. This gave me an opportunity to emphasize the importance of avoiding cultural bias when discussing other peoples. They can't make fun of or make faces about other people's food if they don't even know what their own food is made of!
The last third of class was the first part of a class demonstration/experiment involving what else? Jell-O. It's the classic pineapple experiment. Students were totally into it. Reasoning out the need for a control and proper clean up procedures. They kind of suspect something weird is going to happen. Why else would a high school teacher care so much about pineapple in Jell0?
I can't wait for the reveal moment next week. It is always one of my favorite days of the year (right up there with Schroedinger's Cat day in Chemistry).
I was so pumped with the day's progress that I stuck around after school and demolished a huge chunk of the grading mountain. The volleyball tournaments had knocked me behind the curve. Now I get to sit back and watch Battlestar Galactica. It's been a good day.
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3 comments:
Well, it sounds as though you are enjoying teaching. It is moments like these you describe that really make me love teaching too. I really don't get this very often in introductery courses though. Makes me a little jealous.
If you think intro classes full of non-majors is bad, try a classroom of 16 year olds who don't even want to be in any school let alone a science class. Oh yeah, they don't have a choice in not coming to class either. You are required to notify their parents of every minor detail. You also get to spend your time monitering behavior rather than teaching.
Teaching is a calling not a job.
PS- Standardized tests are also a lot of fun.
The last comment was me. (I've been lurking and occasionally commenting on a creationist crank's blog recently and have gotten into the habit of commenting anonymously.)
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