Day 9: Melbourne High School and Albert Park College

Yesterday I visited Steve Draper at Melbourne High School and Jane Coyle at Albert Park College.

The daily schedule at Melbourne High School is more similar to what my own school runs: seven 43 minute periods every day. The school is an all-boys school and is selective entry, so students take an exam to get in. Most enter in year 9, but the occasional student enters in the latter years. There seems to be a strong emphasis on marks and scores from the get-go, and Steve told me that sometimes it can be frustrating when the students are more focused on the grade they get than learning the material. I actually think that the Victorian scheme of assessing students puts a stronger emphasis on underdstanding that the NYS Regents- the year 11 course is basically a dry run for year 12 and it's relatively low stress. 

I observed a physics 12 class on electric power and transformers. Steve did some awesome demos including melting nails and solder. The students were really engaged by this. Then I observed a year 11 prac (lab), during which the students were looking at the I vs. V curve for a globe (light bulb). They were using a different experimental setup than I employ for this sort of activity: breadboards, variable resistors, and a single 9V battery. I usually do it via the Modeling-esque version of batteries and bulbs, which has the students build a simple circuit and then add additional batteries. I can't get the same fine scale for really small voltages, but in terms of setup and data collection it goes faster. It was really interesting to see the same activity I do executed a different way. Finally, I observed a year 12 maths methods course (by the way, NEVER call it math here). It was about binomial distributions, and their teacher was pushing them well past the content that they're likely to see on the state test and into confidence intervals. Neat stuff.

After my visit Steve and I went for coffee with Dan O'Keefe. We had an interesting discussion about the nature of education and how schools can best prepare students. Steve made an interesting point about how the current educational system is basically a remnant of a different time and we're headed for a vastly different future. He recently attended an edutech conference (http://www.edutech.net.au/) and mentioned that the skills employers most want out of graduates are adaptability and creative problem solving abilities. I agree wholeheartedly and think that it's high time that traditional education be re-imagined.

Speaking of which, this leads me to my visit with Jane Coyle at Albert Park College. Albert Park is a state-run school and is not selective entry. It is a very new school- the current year 11 class is the first cohort to go through. The school has such a strong reputastion that people have begun moving to the area just so that their children can attend it. This is actually a bit of a problem, as the space is not quite big enough for the extra classes that have been added. It puts a strain on the staff and the building.

The facilities are really nice: large open spaces and small tables for group work. All the students bring their own device to class every day, so there is no need to have permanent desktops around the room. The school has an excellent set of Vernier equipment which it puts to good use with lots of student-centered activities. Jane also uses a flipped style, but it's not just straight videos. Her students are also expected to do reading assignments outside of class, but Jane stressed that the reading quizzes she administerers via Google Forms are just for comprehension/completion, not to check to see if they fully understand everything. That role is saved for clas time. Periods are 60 minutes and students generally meet 4 periods a week: two singles and a double.

The Year 11 double period I observed on a Friday afternoon was remarkably focused and the students had a lot of energy. They worked Newton's second law problems in small groups and then worked on an Atwood prac. It was nice that they all had electronic access to the writeup sheet and instructions so they could start their reports right then and there (Google Sites).

There are 7 girls taking year 11 physics out of a total of 31. There were 4 in the class I observed, and I asked them if they were going to continue on next year. Two of them said they will definitely take year 12 physics. The third said maybe- she seems to struggle a bit with the content. The fourth is trying to decide between physics or a pre-university course that she can earn university credit for taking.

Jane and I had a great discussion about why so few females take physics in Australia. This was actually the focus of her Masters work, so she was very well informed! Her research, which involved surveying female students in maths methods courses, found that:

• The female students analyze prerequisites for university and know what they need to take. Then they focus on those courses. Since physics isn't a prerequisite for any university courses of stud, they generally dont take it [though this limits their options if they don't end up pursuing medicine]
• A strong indicator of whether or not female students will study physics is a connection with someone who knows science- usually a family member
• Seeing another female who has studied science or teaches science also increases the liklihood that they will study physics
• Finally, exposure to a career that employs physics- especially an altruistic career or one that involves helping people or society such as Engineers Without Borders- increases the liklihood that girls will study physics

Jane works very hard to be visible and get to know the younger students in an effort to grow the school's physics enrollment. It is already the highest of the co-educational schools I visited, but she sees a lot of room for improvement. Our research interests are very similar and we had a terrific discussion.

The day ended with an interesting lecture at Melbourne University and then a farewell dinner with Dan, Colin, Jane, Barbara, Neil, and Paul Cuthbert. It has been a fantastic trip and my mind is reeling from everything I've seen- can't wait to implement some of these great ideas next fall! I'd like to formally thank all of the teachers who invited me into their schools, answered my endless questions, and made me feel right at home. I'd also like to recognize that none of this would have been possible without the support of the Rural School and Community Trust- thank you for making this journey happen! 

Day 8: Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School and Billanook College

Today I visited two Pauls: Paul Fitz-Gerald at Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School (IGSS) and Paul Fielding at Billanook College. A common thread between the two, aside from a mild geographical proximity, was the Space Camp they run in the summer. Students from both schools spend an entire week during their holiday break learning about aerodynamics and flight first hand. They go for a flight in a glider and also in a plane, launch model rockets, and design their own gliders. The camp looks fascinating- wish I could get all of my students together for a week in the summer to do something like this!

Before I forget, Paul Fielding showed me a really neat camera called a Key Cam that uses a micro SD card and is affordable enough to be attached to a rocket. The footage is remarkably good and the unit is affordable enough that it's not the end of the world if it doesn't survive the landing.

I observed a year 10 class at IGSS that was studying inertia. Well, actually a pair of them running simultaneously with different stations, and the students moved back and forth between the rooms depending on which experiment they were working on. The teachers (Paul and Dina) had planned this out ahead of time and it seemed to go really smoothly. The activities were engaging and were presented in the form of real-world scenarios- pushing a heavy shopping cart, collisions between cars, etc. 

Many teachers here, like as Dina, Giselle, and Paul Fielding, were actually engineers first before becoming teachers. The undergraduate degree doesn't matter too much- the teachers either got a one-year postgraduate diploma in teaching or a masters afterward. The diploma is being phased out and the only option for new teachers will be the masters route.

Billanook College feels like it's far removed from the city, but it just happens to have a large campus (with its own stream) and be situated next to a vineyard. It's an independent school, but it doesn't have an entrance exam, so it gets a wide economic cross-section of students. It has strong support services for students with learning disabilities and also for international students. One faculty member told me that while the campus is nice, their strength is in the programs they offer. The school has a day with five 65-minute periods on a 2 week rotation.

I observed a year 11 class that ran like a well-oiled machine. The students were running motion labs using inclined planes and trolleys (carts). They collected data via the Pasco Spark Systems. The only hiccup, which was really minor, was the transfer of the graphs to the students' Google Docs writeups. They have to take a picture with their device (iPads for years 7-9, BYOD after that (laptop and phone/tablet) and then insert it into google docs via drive. It worked fine and the students had an excellent handle on using the devices after having them for so long. Side note: Paul Fitz-Gerald's school had an interesting way to let the students know the expectations for how iPads were to be used during the lesson:

Too few students at my school use devices in this manner, so it's not really applicable, but I liked the idea.

There was 1 female student out of two classes that total roughly 22 students. Paul Fielding told me that the state average is 20% female for year 11's, and 10% for year 12 courses.

After school Paul took me to the top of Mount Dandenong, which was spectacular. We then had dinner with his wife, a linguist, and the school's career counselor. It was fascinating to hear their perspectives. 

Day 7: John Monash Science School and NVSES at Monash University

Today I visited Barbara McKinnon at the John Monash School for the Sciences (JMSS). It was unlike any other school I've visited- anywhere. It's a select entry school focused on the sciences. Students come from the area around the school, but they also have a program where students from rural schools attend remotely for most of the year and then come in person to spend a 3-week stint at the school. 

Stock photo from: http://www.patrickredmond.com.au/data/photos/93_1untitled_w.jpg

The layout of the school was groundbreaking when it first opened, and it's still fairly unique (more on that in a moment). The layout is very open, to the point where there are classes going on simultaneously on either side of a “bridge” without any dividers. This means that there is always some background noise from other classes, even in the enclosed classrooms and labs. Part of this is due to the glassed-in separators between the rooms, but the other reason for it is due to the class sizes. Every period is essentially a double period and is either 70 or 75 minutes in length. There are 4 periods in a typical day, unless it's Wednesday, when there are only 3. The students spend Wednesday afternoons doing extracurricular activities and the staff have professional development.  A normal class is 50 students and is team taught by two teachers. One usually takes the lead while the other circulates and answers questions that crop up without interrupting the flow of the rest of the class. This seemed to work remarkably well, but there was a lot of background noise. The pros of this model are numerous and have been documented by Greg Lancaster of Monash University. One of the biggest positives that Greg noted during our discussion was the continuity if a teacher happens to be absent: their partner can simply step in and teach the lesson with the support of someone else filling in. This also means that the pair can divide the lessons so that each teaches the material they feel most comfortable with. 

The students at JMSS are very focused, and that's what makes this model works. One student told me that the noise can be distracting at times, but that she really likes the model with two teachers and the open classrooms. This was echoed by many students, who also enjoy taking classes with other dedicated students with s genuine interest in science. The open model has been tried at other schools, with what I understand to be limited success. Students who are apathetic toward their studies or tend to have behavior issues can take advantage of the freedom the model offers to goof off or misbehave. The biggest issue JMSS appears to face in terms of discipline seems to be attendance issues with students who aren't as dedicated as they ought to be, and subsequently getting these students caught up. Missing a 70 minute lesson is challenging to make up, especially when the students have very full schedules. Speaking of which, they take approximately 7 different courses: math, a core science, an elective science, English, humanities, language, and gym. Languages are either French or Japanese (nearly positive that this is the case, but to be honest the schools visits are blending together a bit at this stage, so take that with a grain of salt).. The range of courses that are under the umbrella of humanities is somewhat surprising: they include environmental science and IT courses. 

A standard teaching load is 4 courses plus extra duties. Since the courses are team-taught, this prep load is slightly better than it appears at first blush. Also, it is mandated that all of the sections of a particular course stay in sync and use a similar approach. This keeps the students on the same page, but decreases the flexibility allowed to individual teachers. As one student noted, it gives extra prep time for tests because the test cannot be administered until all of the sections have completed the material, but it also means that feedback is delayed because the test is not returned until all of the students enrolled in the course have taken the assessment. It can be 2+ weeks before students find out their scores on a test. 

On a side note, you being such intrepid readers have probably noticed a distinct dearth of students in my photos. This is not accidental, but rather because there are strict rules here about getting permission before publishing photographs of students. Given the extraordinarily short nature of this trip, it wasn't feasible to get the suitable permission so I am only able to share images of teachers and their classrooms. Barbara told me that the students and teachers would be very comfortable with my coming and going, and this was certainly the case. They were also very comfortable answering questions, both about the content they were learning, the process of learning, and how their experience at JMSS compares to their previous schools. 

This is already a long entry, but there is more to come. This is possibly the most applicable bit too, because it involves rural students. The original goal of my fellowship was to visit schools in rural areas similar to the region I live in back in the United States. Dan O’Keeffe from Vicphysics was instrumental in setting up my itinerary, and he sent an invitation to their mailing list of teachers asking for volunteers to have me come visit their schools. Nobody from rural schools responded, and after arriving I learned that many rural schools simply do not teach physics because they do not have a teacher who knows the content. This explains why I haven't been able to visit rural schools!

The program at JMSS for rural students is pretty unique. Two teachers sit in a recording studio and have class with students who are connected remotely from all over the state. The ideal setup is for the students to attend in real-time, but the videos are published to an unlisted youtube channel for students to review if they happen to miss class. This is a good way for students in remote areas to get access to material that they would not otherwise be able to learn. 

Today while I was chatting with Simon Tyler, one of the teachers at JMSS, he said that my name sounded familiar. Turns out that he recognized it from the Global Physics Department! Small world...

I had lunch today with Greg and a visiting researcher. We had a great discussion about how to make good videos for education and what it takes to do that from a pedagogical perspective. Among other things, Greg works on a project called the National Virtual School of Emerging Sciences.  Fascinating stuff- perhaps the model of remote delivery could work for small rural schools in America? In NY we'd have to sort out how to handle the hands-on lab component, but it certainly has potential. It would take some work to do it right though.

I liked the look of this building on Monash's campus:

Day 6: Buckley Park College, VSSEC, and Vicphysics

Today I spent the morning with Neil Champion at Buckley Park College. Buckley Park is a state run school in a suburb north of Melbourne. It has an accelerated group of 25 students who compete to be admitted, but I didn't have the opportunity to observe these students. Instead, I observed several different classes: the tail-end of a year 10 class, a year 12 class, and a year 7 class.

The students were quite welcoming and Neil gave me ample opportunity to talk with them. Curiously, the thing they were most interested in discussing was accents, which I found quite interesting. Several students were astonished to learn that, to my ear, they have accents. When I spoke with the younger students I got the chance to ask them about their future plans in science. Several students I spoke with didn't plan to continue studying science after year 10 because they didn't think that their careers would need it. I asked for an example and it was business or law. Another student who wants to be a midwife was unsure if she would need science (I suggested biology would be a good starting point). Other students thought they'd take chemistry, but just because it was the next thing to do, not because it was of particular interest. 

The year 10 class was a mixture of boys and girls, the year 12 course has dwindled to 6 boys and 1 girl, and the year 7 was 14 boys and 10 girls. The seating in the year 7 class was curious- many of the boys chose to sit close to the back while the girls sat toward the front. One of the girls said that the exact opposite thing occurs in some of the other courses- the boys sit toward the front. She wasn't sure why this phenomena happens. 

Neil said that for the year 12 students the females seem to enroll in the course only if they're confident that they can handle the material, while more of the boys take it without really thinking it through and consequently end up dropping the course. 

Neil has had an extensive career in education in a variety of different roles. He has worked as a teacher, administration, textbook writer, and also in curriculum design. He was one of the authors of the textbooks his students use, which were really interesting in that they are hybrid. This means that the students have paper copies but also electronic access, not only to the textbook but also to the website with associated worksheets and simulations.

This afternoon I went to visit the Victorian Space Science Education Centre, which is typically abbreviated as VSSEC. This is a facility similar to GTAC, in that its mission is to use space as a vehicle to get kids interested in science. They have programs for students in years 3-12, and will soon add programs for the three younger years as well. They have programs for students to come to the center and experience working in mission control or as astronauts. They also have water rocket programs for younger students. Another notable thing is that the fees for the students depend on the type of school they're coming from: students from economically disadvantaged or rural schools come for free. There are also outreach programs where VSSEC staff take lessons to classes, frequently giving them equipment and lessons. VSSEC serves approximately 13,000 students each year.

To be honest, by this point in the day I was, to put it in the local vernacular, "knackered." I took a lot of pictures of the facility and was overwhelmed and impressed by everything they do. The Mars room was incredible and I wish I had a facility similar to this to take my students to experience. 

I'll leave you with the pictures and field any questions you have- leave them in the comments below and I ought to get a notification.

Finally, this evening I attended the monthly Vicphysics meeting. It was great to see a group of professional teachers working together to improve their craft and help other teachers. This reminds me of the Western New York Physics Teachers' Alliance, which I wish were closer to me!

Day 5: Camberwell Girls' Grammar School

Today I visited Giselle Lobo at Camberwell Girls' Grammar School. CGSS is located in Camberwell, which is an eastern suburb of Melbourne. It's an all-girls school, and remarkably this was the first time I have had the chance to observe female students since I arrived in Australia. In one school I visited previously the female students happened to be in a different period than the one I observed, but in the other schools the female students simply do not choose to study physics. I have been quite surprised by this, but CGGS certainly doesn't have a problem getting its students to study physics. There are two year 11 sections and two year 12 sections. Giselle has the dubious honor of teaching both year 12 maths (methods) and years 10-12 physics. Teaching a year 12 course here in Australia is both an honor an a large responsibility- they generally require a lot of work due to the VCE exams at the end of the year.

CGGS is in the midst of a large renovation. It appears that it will be a great addition to the school, but at the same time it was distracting to the students to have the construction noise right outside their classroom. So much so that Giselle moved her afternoon class to a different location. She didn't have access to all of her equipment in the new location, but the students didn't complain about the noise like they did in the earlier section. The first classrom was a large physics classroom with lab equipment and an lcd projector. The second classroom had a whiteboard and two large televisions that Giselle connected her iPad to using Airplay.

The first class I observed was year 12 students who were learning how to apply the right hand rule. They were thrown by some of the symbols the textbook used- labeling a dot as point "X" is confusing if you're trying to figure out whether the electric field is coming out of the page or going in! (For non-physicists: a vector coming out of the page is represented as a point (tip of the arrow) and going in is an x (end view of the arrow with fletchings, usually with a circle around it)). The students were engaged and remained remarkably focused given the din outside the door.

After lunch I observed one of Giselle's colleague's math 12 courses in methods. In general methods is sort of the middle route - specialist is more difficult calculus and there is a third option, but to be honest I can't remember what it even is. This class was reviewing the content of their recent SAC Exam (school assessed component). Each student's final grade in the course is a weighted average of their score on the state-authored VEC exam and a series of exams that are administered and scored by the school, which are affectionately called SAC's. The students didn't have their own exams in front of them because the exams haven't been completely scored yet, but they seemed to remember the majority of the material. It was calculus- anything from integration and sums to related rates. To be honest I was surprised by how deep this course went into the content- makes me think that the specialist course probably hits well above the AP bar I'm accustomed to.

The final class I observed was Giselle's year 11 students, who were working on motion problems. They learned this material last year during year 10, but they only have one quarter of physics (10 weeks), so they didn't get terribly far into it. Today's lesson was probing for what they remembered and required them to utilize multiple representations of motion- moving from a written description to graphs of position, velocity, and acceleration vs. time. They had the general gist of it but had some difficulty deciding whether line segments on velocity graphs should be straight or curved. This led to an interesting discussion of how realistic they needed to be when modeling motion. The class was using the Conceptual Understanding Procedures (CUPs) materials from Monash University. These seemed similar in intent to the Modeling Curriculum I use and I liked them a lot. 

The whiteboard at the end of class. There was another version of the top-left velocity graph with negative signs in place of the red positive marks representing increasing slope, but it got erased before I could snap a picture.

Weekend Expeditions

Amos invited me to spend with weekend with him and his family in Torquay, where they live outside of Geelong. It was great to revert back into a "normal" lifestyle instead of the wandering vagabond theme I've been enjoying lately. On Saturday we took his son on a walk/bike ride to the park and then spent the afternoon at a footy match (the Geelong cats even won!).

Yesterday we went surfing and I managed to catch a few waves. 

Then it was off on a drive down the Great Ocean Road to look for Koalas, which we eventually found.

Also saw kangaroos at dusk, but by then my phone battery had died so there isn't any photographic evidence. It was a busy weekend but also an excellent interlude before I dive into the coming week, which is jam-packed with school visits and events.

Day 4: King David School

On Friday I went to visit Milorad Cerovac at the King David School. King David is a private Jewish school in one of Melbourne's eastern suburbs. Becuase of time restraints, I only got to visit one class, but beforehand Milorad and I went out for coffee with Phil, one of his maths colleagues. That informal discussion was great- it was nice to talk to extensively with a maths teacher who focuses on specialist maths, which is equivalent to American calculus.

The physics class I observed was using what they'd learned about aerodynamics and applying it to a challenge: building the best paper airplane. There were three distinct performance categories: flight duration, greatest distance, and acrobatics. The students had been tasked to research paper airplane designs for homework, but the wrinkle that Milorad threw at them was that they had to use a different paper than they had expected. In this case, the official KDS paper was quite large, and the students were not allowed to cut it. The designs were quite creative and the competition was a huge success.

Milorad explained that in addition to giving the students a chance to apply what they'd learned about the topic, it was also a good way to end the week and turn a class that could have been a bit of a struggle because of the timing into something engaging. He also told me that he liked to give opportunities for students who might not be at the top of the pile academically to excel and experience success. I'd say that this endeavor fit the bill quite nicely- it reminded me of the physics olympics events I do with my own students.

I was so wrapped up helping out wit the competition that I didn't take a single picture! C'est la vie.  

Day 3: Bialik College

Yesterday I visited Colin Hopkins at Bialik College, a private Jewish K-12 school close to where I'm staying in the Eastern suburbs. It was really nice to be able to walk there instead of drive or use public transit. Not that those options are particularly bad, but walking is way better!

Bialik has a spectacular campus and is very well funded. They have outstanding facilities including a student garden, indoor pool, etc. The science rooms aren't on quite the same level as some of the newly remodeled primary school areas, but each classroom has an interactive whiteboard and is quite functional. 

I observed two different classes: years 11 and 12. I found the students to be very sharp- when Colin introduced me as a teacher from northern NY one immediately asked me if I lived close to where the prisoners escaped. Another student, upon hearing I went to Cornell, asked if that was the college that is both private and public. Quite impressive- I know very little about the colleges in Australia and never would have made those sort of connections when I was in high school. Perhaps part of it is how western-centric the culture here tends to be (music, tv, etc.), but I think that it goes deeper than that.

So back to the teaching... Colin said that a big part of his job is giving the students exposure to different ideas. They grasp the concepts very quickly so he doesn't feel the need to do extensive rote practice, so he has ample opportunity to discuss current events. This is partially enabled by the longer periods that Bialik utilizes: 60 minutes vs. most other schools' ~50 minute periods. No dedicated prac (lab) periods, but they have class most every day. 

One of the things that struck me most about the school was its culture. Colin said that they never have discipline issues, and that the culture of learning is deeply ingrained throughout the school. For example, he commented that he rarely has problems with students completing their work. If anything, students come asking for more! I can't quite say the same thing about my own students... This culture starts at the top- teachers are expected to model ongoing learning for the students and frequently talk about what they've recently learned or seen with their classes. An interesting sidenote was that while Colin did an excellent job sharing cutting edge research with his students, he was equally comfortable admitting that he didn't quite know how pentaquarks worked. The interactions between teacher and student struck me as much more of a conversation than a purely didactic lecture. It was mostly teacher-centered, which Colin freely admitted as much. However, he said that he feels this is the best way to give them the material they need in an efficient manner so that they can spend extra time covering topics from current events or those outside the curriculum. 

Bialik is known for having some of the highest test scores in Victoria. I asked what this was from- the qaulity of the teaching or something else. Colin quite humbly stated that it was partially due to his teaching, but also attributed it to the emphasis that the school puts on the value of genuine learning from an early age and also the quality of the students who take his courses. 

One interesting note was that his classes do not currently have any female students. Physics is not compulsory in Australia, nor is it a prerequisite for any college courses of study. Chemistry on the other hand, is a prerequisite for the study of medicine, so many more students take that course. 

Two final comments

After school I tagged along with another teacher, Alon, who runs the robotics club for middle school students. They were doing some excellent work with a soccer competition and I was really impressed with the level of thinking these young students were putting forth. They also gave me a fascinating lesson on the different pronunciations utilized by Aussies and Kiwis.

Bialik recently had some students travel to the United States to attend Space Camp in Huntsville and Orlando. I had some very interesting conversations with teachers and students about the differences between our societies: they covered the spectrum from food to racism. 

At the end of the day I spent way more time at Bialik than I had planned, but it was more than worth it.

Downtown: Melbourne University and University High School

Today marked a whole different type of journey from the driving I did yesterday: I ventured into the center of Melbourne for the first time. It was actually fairly painless- public transportation here is quite god, especially after you figure out which side of the street you need to stand on to get the tram you want! I only made that mistake once, but I ended up at a grocery store, so it was still productive.

This morning I went to the Graduate School of Education at Melbourne University to join Russell Tytler and his team of PhD students from Deakin on a project that they're working on related to the social aspects of learning science. They brought in a class of year 7 students who were being taught a lesson about how to classify objects and ran them through an activity dissecting flowers andcreating dichotomous  keys. That in of itself was interesting, but what was even more remarkable was what was taking place behind the scenes.

I watched the lesson with the researchers, PhD students, and AV technicians in the control room behind a 2 way mirror. The classroom was miked and there were 10 different cameras filming the action. The video will be analyzed to see how students worked together to construct a model of what they were learning. I felt very fortunate to have the chance to be included in this, and they were incredibly patient with all of my questions.  On a side note, I wanted to take pictures but couldn't have the students in any of the images (and I also didn't want to be a distraction). I meant to take some after the students were done, but never got the chance.

After the lesson the students got to check out the control room and then were sent off on a scavenger hunt of the campus. I went along with one of the groups and got the chance to see what Melbourne University is like. It was a really neat campus and remarkably secluded for being in the middle of a large city.

My next stop was University High School, which is right next to the University of Melbourne campus. Uni High, as it's called, has ~1,175 students. It's a state government school, and it's exceptional. I was treated to an exhaustive tour of the campus by Paul Cuthbert, who is one of the school's physics teachers and an active member of Vicphysics.

I saw so many things that I'm never going to be able to describe them all, so here are the highlights:

• An incredibly faculty lounge
• Separate faculty lounges and office space for each department
• Massive storage areas
• Cutting edge equipment in the Elizabeth Blackburn School of Sciences

• The unique Galileo Project where Year 9 students take a term off from classes to work as a cohort on projects that make a difference in the city
• The Gene Technology Access Centre

Most of what I saw was incredible, but I also noted a few minor downsides. Paul teaches in both the regular University High School and in the Elizabeth Blackburn School of Sciences (EBSS). His class at EBSS is 70 students in a large lecture hall. The seats are permanently fixed, so I imagine it would be hard to do a lot of small-group discussion. Also, as Paul noted, it is heavily reliant on technology. If the technology goes down, there isn't a viable alternative to continue to teach. When these 70 students have lab, it's in an amazing facility with top-notch equipment. The flip side of the coin is that only half of the students can work in the lab at a time, so they have to break into two groups, which can get tricky.

One day down: Deakin and Christian College

Yesterday was my first day on the ground, so to speak. I first met with Russell Tytler at Deakin University and then visited Amos Freeman's Year 12 physics class at Christian College in Geelong.

GPS malfunction aside, the drive was ok. I got a little bit turned around at one point and the roundabouts are tricky when one is used to driving on the opposite side of the road. I'm getting used to driving on the left faster than I am the location of the windshield wipers/turn signals, which are opposite what I'm accustomed to. Luckily it was raining so it wasn't such a bad thing to turn on the wipers every time I wanted to signal a turn!

Deakin was really interesting, and it was great to hear about the research that Dr. Tytler is working on. We also compared notes about our respective education systems and he filled me in on how the PhD degree works in Australia. It's completely different than in the States. No courses, just different research and assigned readings, etc.

I spent the afternoon with Amos and his year 12 students. Got a solid idea of how the physics curriculum works (years 11 and 12 with the VCE exam after year 12). It goes much deeper into some topics than the NYS Regents curriculum I'm used to- especially circuits. However, it doesn't really touch on waves or Modern physics at all. And it's done over the course of two years... Classes are either a single or double 50-minute period, and the year 12's get 2 double periods every week while the year 11's get 1. The class I observed was fairly small: about 12 students. It was the first day back from a 2 week holiday so it took a little while to get them thinking again (made me feel a little bit better that my students aren't the only ones who behave like this), but by the end of the period they were firing on all cylinders.

I really liked something that Amos had them do regarding the right-hand rules. He introduced the rules, explained how they work, and then did a demonstration to check that experimental results matched theory (having a support technician would be amazing by the way). Afterward, he asked the students to write down their own definition/interpretation of the rule in their notes. I thought this was a better way to do it than have the teacher write the rule on the board, but I also thought an interesting addendum would have been to share what each student wrote if there had been more time.

All in all, it was a good day. I neglected to take pictures while I was at the school, but I snapped this bleary picture on the way back in an attempt to show what the countryside looks like. I promise to do better next time around!

On the ground

I finally arrived in Australia. A delayed flight caused me to miss my connection, but I wasn't alone. There were half a dozen other passengers in the same boat, and we bonded while waiting for hours in the customer service line to get hotel rooms for the night. The following day was better than expected, got to see some family and rest before heading back to the airport. All 6 of us who were stranded ended up being seated in two rows on the same side of the plane, so we got to compare notes about our experiences and how the day had been. These people were random strangers, but we had some really good conversations and realized we had a lot in common.

I've been talking to a lot of people lately. Normally I interact a lot with a few people, but this was a lot of shorter exchanges. Part of me thinks that when people are traveling they're more likely to initiate / accept conversation with someone they don't know. But there is something else going on here. When I was in Argentina, people were nice to me after they got to know me. But it was rare for random people to offer to help before they knew who I was. It only happened once or twice as far as i know.

Australians are some of the nicest people I have ever met. I know it's a broad generalization, but I had people I barely knew volunteering to give me Australian dollars in case there was a fee for a shuttle and I hadn't had a chance to exchange money yet. Someone else explained tipping to me on the spur of the moment. I learned about how speech pathology services are provided by the state government and how the PD for teachers is different from that for speech pathologists. Upon hearing about my fellowship, a couple on a shuttle bus explained the idea of the OP exams (which have apparently been phased out). I've been blown away by how kind people are and I have only met one person who agreed to help me beforehand- all of these other interactions were random. I could get used to this!

Big doings - Global Teacher Fellow

This must be some sort of a record two posts in one week? What sort of crazy things will happen next?

The answer is: A whole lot! I'm leaving for Australia where I'll be traveling as a Rural Trust Global Teacher Fellow (Rural School and Community Trust). I applied for this back in January after hearing about it and realizing that I wanted to do something beyond my normal work. I realized that I needed to go somewhere in the southern hemisphere to be able to observe classes during my summer vacation. The requirement to travel over the summer was an integral part of the program. I choose Australia based on the suggestion of Dr. Dan MacIsaac, my advisor from graduate school, who had heard of the work being done at Deakin University and suggested I check it out.

Out of the blue I emailed Dr. Russell Taylor at Deakin University. Dr. Tyler send me some articles to read, told me about the research that was going on, and gave me more information about the school system in the province of Victoria. He invited me to come on down if my application was successful, and lo and behold it was!

It's been a whirlwind of the school year and I'm finally at the point where I can breathe a little bit well in between taking care of my kids and trying to get ready for this trip. I'm getting more excited and more nervous every minute there's a lot to do before I go but I'm also excited about the possibility of learning from other teachers professors change that to end. Hopefully this will help re-energize my own physics teaching will also give me a window into different educational system that approaches students learning in a different way than my own. I feel that this will be invaluable and I'm thrilled to see how they do things, especially reflective writing. I'm also excited to interview the teachers- nothing terribly formal- just a conversation about how their location reinforces their teaching, how they help students relate to the material, and how they grow professionally as educators – basically the same things that I struggle with as a teacher. I'm hoping to be able to visit teachers and schools that are located in areas similar to my own. I'm not positive that this will happen because those teachers are fairly isolated and Australia is a huge place. I'm limited to the province of Victoria but hopefully I'll be able to find some schools where I can observe things that are relevant to my own teaching. Dan O'Keeffe, a retired physics teacher who runs the Vicphysics Teachers' Network, has been a godsend, helping me figure out logistics and putting together an itinerary for me to visit different schools.

A lot of my preparation before I leave has also been technological: trying to get a good app to do interviews, trying to organize my notes and my thoughts for everything that I want to get out of this experience. I've decided to use this blog is a place to chronicle all of my different visits. Probably won't be anything too detailed but after each school I go to I'm hoping to put some quick notes up here so that people can see my impressions and track my trip.

So thanks for taking the time to read this- and come back soon to see more new stuff!

What Matters

This was my first year teaching AP Calculus. It's been an incredibly busy year and I've been fighting to get out from beneath a crushing workload all year long. Hence the long gap since my last post... and the long period of silence before that! I have high hopes of being able to use this space to reflect on some of the things that went well this year and other things I want to work on.

Let's start off on a high note- the projects my AP Calculus students did at the end of the year. After the AP exam we still have 5 weeks of classes. We covered some material I'd skipped and another topic or two I felt that they should be exposed two before taking their next calculus course, if they're going to take more math that is. After that I cut them loose to work on independent projects individually or in pairs, but with the admonition that if they worked with someone else I'd expect twice the awesomeness that either would have achieved alone.

I was inspired to do this by some other calculus teachers, most notably Sam Shah. I gave my students a rough list of ideas and told them that I'd actually prefer it if they came up with their own topic. I was thrilled with their work and the presentations they gave to the class. Even the groups I worried were going to fall flat rose to the occasion. Here is a brief description of my students and their projects.

• Two students worked individually to artistically render different related rates problems. One chose water being poured from a watering can into a plant with the excess coming out of the bottom. Another depicted an athlete sweating at the same time he drank from a water bottle. This was a great avenue for these students to apply their artistic talents to calculus.

• A student looked at a hypothetical plot of land and investigated the respiration rates of different species of plants that could possibly be planted there to evaluate each plant's contribution toward producing oxygen, food food, and also the impact it would have on the soil and the water it required. This was a lot to bite off and it didn't get reach fruition, but the intent was spot on.

• A student looked at how the mass of a container changed over time based on what was being poured into it. I was hoping to see something more complicated than a cylinder, but the rig itself turned out to be challenging to construct so I was fine with the final product.

• For one of the weekly reflections earlier in the year I gave the students a choice of two prompts. One was to evaluate a claim about the length of a meandering river. Only one student tried it, and didn't get very far. One of his peers picked it up and analyzed 4 different rivers using LoggerPro and Excel. He got 1.93, which is remarkably similar to this article, which he found after his analysis was complete.

• A pair of students tackled the dating pool problem from Think Thank Thunk. They came up with their own creepiness rule, which included a clause that one could not date a person who was equal in age to (or younger than) their own child. This made life difficult, but they complicated matters a bit by looking at issues of sexuality and how the LGBT population factors in. They had difficulty tracking down precise data, but came up with results similar to those that Sean's students got (one's dating pool is largest at age 39).

• Two students wrote a related rates problem, solved it, and then turned it into a song. My video is of appallingly poor quality, but the audio is where it's at.

• Finally, earlier in the year one of my students was visibly appalled at my attempt to model 3-D solids using cross-sections on top of curves. I'll be frank- I tried really hard, but failed miserably. He wanted to do better and produce something that future students could relate to better than my ill-fated attempts. He generated a complicated curve using Desmos and then exported it to Excel as a string of points. We sent it to AutoCAD as a polyline (love their policy of letting educators use the full program for free- I know how I'm doing my 3-D solids next year!). We layered a rectangular array of polylines over it- all parallel to the y-axis. Then we trimmed them to the original curve and extruded each as its own polysolid. This was tedious because the height for each had to be set to be the same length as the polyline it was going on top of (he was stacking squares). He wanted to have 346 different squares, but I talked him down to 22 or so. It still turned out really well. 
  

        The icing on the cake was that we sent it to the #-D printer in the technology department! So he            had a model to show the class and took it home with him after his presentation.

         By the way, I used to teach AutoCAD, so this wasn't completely off the cuff. 

Can't wait to do projects again next year! AP scores came out today. I am psyched with how my students did, but I'm more excited about sharing these projects.

More news to come, hopefully in the near future. Headed off on a big trip and I am going to be blogging about it here, so stay tuned!