Greetings everyone! I realize that this may not pertain to
everyone, but I really need to vent and get everyones input!!! I
recently returned from parent-teacher conferences and now I think I see
where the students' attitudes come from. Most of the conferences went
very well and I received excellent report from the parents, but there are
a few that really worked their way under my skin.
I was showing one set of parents the material we were going over
and the father blurted out that his son couldn't learn that material.
The father never really looked at the material. The paper was the
different types of reactions and predicting the products.
One mother told me that her son is unable to do most of my work
because he doesn't know the difference between right or wrong and she
also claimed that her son even has a hard time locating his hands if they
are out of view. That kinda suprised me because a while ago, I got on
her son's case for messing around during lab and assigned him an after
school detention of not only cleaning up his own mess, but the rest of
the lab (nothing too extrenious, just wiping lab tables, desks, mopping
the entire floor...) and he never really caused any other problems since
then. Also, if he has such a hard time locating the position of his
hands, then maybe he shouldn't be driving. >:->
There were a few others, but the real kicker was when a parent
and I were discussing the lack of participation of her son. The son is
noticably of above intelligence, but is heavy into self-expression (art)
and sometimes from the appearance of his pupils...I think he's into other
things as well. The mother told me of her son's interests in pop and
abstract art and if I made my class more art related, he may take more
interest. I think I felt my jaw hit the ground. I am structured in my
classroom, but I also know that I'm a bit more liberal on some of our
activities and topics. I feel that I'm not there to just teach chemistry
and physics, but how to think logically and applying those logic skills
to real life. I'm not sure how I responded to her...I don't think I want
to know.
Maybe next week, to make science more art related, we'll start
coloring the periodic table. :-)
Dwight
(a.k.a. as the artist of "Nude scientist descending down the double-helix
staircase."