Justifying Social Justice in the Classroom
In the Sunday Papers session at TAM 2014, Michelle L. Knaier presented a short talk about teaching social justice through science education. She began by defining social justice as “treating all people with fairness, respect, dignity, and generosity” and later gave some specific examples of racist, sexist, and homophobic stereotypes …
#StopBashingTeachers, a charter school’s equivalent to #PoliceLivesMatter
There’s a video of a New York charter school doing its rounds at the moment in which you can see a teacher verbally and emotionally abuse a first grade student. If you love kids, if you’ve been abused as a child yourself, that video makes you want to cry, puke …
Not Knowing What We’re Doing
The more I teach, the more I realize that students don’t really know what teachers do, and neither do the adults they grow up to be. It wasn’t until I was in my senior year in teacher school that I started to really grasp what exactly this job entails. I …
A Rose by Any Other Name…
Names can say a lot about us. Even though our parents did not choose for us the way J.K. Rowling did for her characters (you could think that the parents of Remus Lupin were asking for their child to be bitten by a werewolf), they still had their reasons for …
Pop Quiz: The Interrupting Student
Lecture begins and notebooks are open with pens standing by for the inevitable. Focus starts to occur for both me and my students as I lull them into learning by listening to the intricate web that is the Black Hole. As I expound about what it means for something to …
Pop Quiz: Woo Hoo!! Spring Break!!
*Disclaimer: Daylight Savings Time has turned me into the walking dead. I have not functioned properly since before the time change. This pop quiz may read like stereo instructions because of this. Sorry. This week is “spring” break for me at most of the colleges I teach at. Of course …
Pop Quiz: The Horror of Textbook Prices
At the beginning of a new semester there is always a little bit of excitement in the air. Everyone looks fresh faced and ready to take on the subject at hand. I notice that as I pass out the syllabus and we go through it the students attentively listen with …
Pop Quiz: Of Ferret Pee and Snake Hisses
No corny Valentines Day Stories for Pop Quiz. I only recognize the true holiday of my birthday today!!! In celebration of this wondrous day I give you a corny teaching story instead. Years and years ago I taught a physics lab class at a farm town University. Normally, I would start my …
Pop Quiz: Gifts
‘Tis the season for socially expected gift-giving, one of the few things I really don’t like about the holiday season (after all, who could object to lights and mulled wine to brighten the dark winter nights?). Call me a Scrooge if you will, but I always try as much as …
Pop Quiz: Engage All the Students!
I came across this great post at Cult of Pedagogy called, “A Mild Case of Fisheye.” Go read it, I’ll wait. Done? Okay good. Well, to sum it up (in case you kept reading here) the post describes a problem in which teachers think they’ve had a really good class …