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Topic: Is this right of a teacher?  (Read 13082 times)

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Offline cth

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Re: Is this right of a teacher?
« Reply #15 on: November 20, 2009, 05:30:32 PM »
If I didn't live in California (49th out of 50 in the nation at last count in high school education!), and if I didn't see and experience how people are being taught here I wouldn't believe it.

This reminds me of the time I had a student come to me for help in Chem 101 when I worked as a tutor, and she angrily claimed that her teacher wasn't teaching them anything. So I did my usual "it is your responsibility to learn the material, show up to class every day, and listen to the lecture, yadda yadda," but then I had to bite my tongue when the student told me that "there was no lecture to listen to." Huh? It turns out what the teacher was doing was handing the students packets of problems and putting them in groups to "teach each other" as part of a new experimental "hands off" approach to teaching students. The student was almost finished with a year course in chem 101, and she didn't even know what an atom was. It was truly a sad thing to see.

 :o I guess that was a pretty extreme case, right? I have been told California is the richest state in the US, so it should do better than that.

Online Borek

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Re: Is this right of a teacher?
« Reply #16 on: November 20, 2009, 05:43:50 PM »
If I didn't live in California (49th out of 50 in the nation at last count in high school education!), and if I didn't see and experience how people are being taught here I wouldn't believe it.

Long and it starts from something completely different, but if you are patient enough to read 30 posts or so you will be no longer surprised by anything:

http://mailer.uwf.edu/listserv/wa.exe?A2=ind0911&L=chemed-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=17630

(click Next in topic to advance). Note that this is an ongoing discussion that started on Wednesday.
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Offline renge ishyo

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Re: Is this right of a teacher?
« Reply #17 on: November 20, 2009, 07:31:18 PM »
Quote
I have been told California is the richest state in the US, so it should do better than that.

That's thinking like "they" do  ;) Money has nothing to do with academic performance because none of it ever gets spent to lure in more highly qualified teachers (to be fair, the problem to begin with is the tenure system over here has made it so you *can't* get rid of the bad teachers even if you wanted to).

Quote
d if I didn't see and experience how people are being taught here I wouldn't believe it.

Long and it starts from something completely different, but if you are patient enough to read 30 posts or so you will be no longer surprised by anything:

http://mailer.uwf.edu/listserv/wa.exe?A2=ind0911&L=chemed-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=17630

(click Next in topic to advance). Note that this is an ongoing discussion that started on Wednesday.

Yeah, Borek that was the sort of thing that I was alluding to earlier. Although to be honest, even a biology teacher teaching chemistry is an improvement over some of the things I have heard. For instance, I have even heard of language arts majors teaching chemistry over here! It is in this way that you end up with teachers who can't even balance a chemical equation.

The TC is just going to have to teach himself which is not really uncommon here. Much of my lower division education in college was "self taught" using over the counter books from Borders and Barnes and Nobles. That's just the way things have to be I guess.

Offline DrCMS

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Re: Is this right of a teacher?
« Reply #18 on: November 21, 2009, 05:11:19 AM »
:o I guess that was a pretty extreme case, right? I have been told California is the richest state in the US, so it should do better than that.

The Californian economy is very large (if it was in independent country I think they say it would by the 8th largest by size of its economy/GDP) however the state is bankrupt due to the way the laws need to be approved by the population.  So they vote to spend lots and be very green but not the raise the taxes to pay for it all. 

Offline JGK

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Re: Is this right of a teacher?
« Reply #19 on: November 23, 2009, 12:17:08 PM »
If I didn't live in California (49th out of 50 in the nation at last count in high school education!), and if I didn't see and experience how people are being taught here I wouldn't believe it.


 :o I guess that was a pretty extreme case, right? I have been told California is the richest state in the US, so it should do better than that.

California has a current budget deficit of 20.7 Billion Dollars, if they're the richest state, I'd hate to see the poorest
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Offline 1234567188

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Re: Is this right of a teacher?
« Reply #20 on: December 02, 2009, 11:34:06 AM »
I'm doing chemistry in 8th grade for the first time ever, and my teacher doesn't know everything.. Hrm hrm..

He says:
Al + HCl ==> AlCl + H
Is it normal that teachers say this to new students in order to not confuse them? It seems a bit weird, as I spent about 2-3 hours online to develop a method of finding that it's actually:
Al2(m) + 6HCl(aq) ==> 2AlCl3(s) + 3H2(g)

Well, I guess I'm smart, but shouldn't students be taught the right thing from the start?

Kind regards,
"DLA"

Yea, It's kind of the normal thing a majority if not all of the chemistry you do in 8th grade will be dealing in concepts not specfics. So the exacts arn't really important, you will get to balancing later on.

Offline JGK

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Re: Is this right of a teacher?
« Reply #21 on: December 02, 2009, 12:23:34 PM »
I'm doing chemistry in 8th grade for the first time ever, and my teacher doesn't know everything.. Hrm hrm..

He says:
Al + HCl ==> AlCl + H
Is it normal that teachers say this to new students in order to not confuse them? It seems a bit weird, as I spent about 2-3 hours online to develop a method of finding that it's actually:
Al2(m) + 6HCl(aq) ==> 2AlCl3(s) + 3H2(g)

Well, I guess I'm smart, but shouldn't students be taught the right thing from the start?

Kind regards,
"DLA"

Yea, It's kind of the normal thing a majority if not all of the chemistry you do in 8th grade will be dealing in concepts not specfics. So the exacts arn't really important, you will get to balancing later on.


There's a problem with that method of teaching in that some kids just can't adjust from that initial concept to the specifics when they're taught them later on. When i was a kid the local schools used ITA to teach kids to learn English initially http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet (luckily my mother wasn't a fan of this "trendy" stuff and taught me to read & write before I entered the school system).  Unfortunately, a number of the kids I studied with just could not cope with the transition from one system to another and it really set them back. Probably why I can see the value in more conservative teaching styles.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Offline Evaldas

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Re: Is this right of a teacher?
« Reply #22 on: December 02, 2009, 01:03:42 PM »
We aren't awarded with the best chemistry teacher as well (although I'm not from US), she can't handle the class (well that's not really her responsibility, but other teachers manage to do it) nor she has the interest in trying. If we have a chemistry test and someone asks a questions about the exercise FROM THE TEST the teacher is more than glad to help during the test (not sure if that's a bad quality for everyone tho :D). Or for example there was an exercise in the papers we've been given for homework which sounded something like this "4 alloyed ampoules in room temperature are filled with a) hydrogen, b) ozone c) water d) ammonia. Which ampoule has the most molecules?" so she said that she wouldn't rate this exercise, since in her opinion somebody made a mistake, because we were speaking about gases and ideal conditions and etc, and she said it's weird for the authors to create such exercise if everywhere in the book it was written that the same amount of gases in the same volume have the same number of molecules, I then explained to her that water is not a gas, and since it's room temperature water is A LIQUID and the ampoule filled with water has the most molecules, and her response was "still, doesn't make any sense. I don't know... I'm still not going to rate this exercise".
I know she's going to leave in a few months, I'm kinda glad about that, but also sad a bit, cos I've come to like her, because she's sweet no matter what.

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