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!