O.k. another post from Seattle, this time with Mark in tow. He's made it to Seattle and despite all of the poor communication on my part we seem to have made it work out pretty well. It's great to see Mark again, and bodes well for the rest of the trip. If only we can find a place for him to stay tonight. . .
We've done stuff here, Mark and I, but I'll let him tell that since I always have to don that hat. Instead I'll talk a bit more about the clinic I am in. It will be a short post, I swear.
So there's a lot of people at this clinic for somewhere around 30 different AP courses. The class that I am in (Physics) is around 35 people. Other classes are much smaller (Art History has 4). We are in a room at the edge of the school, with the rest of the science dorks. I would say that they keep us there so we don't spread nerdiness to the rest of the clinic, but every AP teacher is a nerd on some level so we are all lost.
Our instructor is named Martin (whoa!) Kirby. I think I have mentioned him before. He's from the UK but teaches in LA now. He is self described as a lazy teacher who find the easiest way to be good so that he can have a life (he is newly married all of 3 weeks ago). That being said he is a teacher I greatly enjoy. He isn't mired in tiny details very often, tells good stories and has a sense of humor in himself. He does try to put on a show often, treating us like an audience, throwing one-liners our way. I'm not too keen on that, and certainly never want to be like that. I feel like it is slightly condescending or in genuine, I'm not sure which. He's very easy to side track, and we have spend the past three days talking about the test, how it is graded (and grading some ourselves) and hanging out talking about how we teach shit. It is really laid back and informal. In order to have some structure we do a few things. Sometimes they are him reading, and then getting side tracked. Other times, like today, we do activities. Today we were given a "bucket of crap" lab, which basically means we were given a pulley, string, two masses of identical mass, a stopwatch and a meter stick and were asked to find the mass of one of our keys to within 15%. The procedure was totally up to us. This type of open lab was something I wanted to incorporate in my class already, but after doing it I am totally sold. I want a little more structure than he has (more questions, make them write it up afterwards), but it's in the new syllabus for next semester.
The other thing I really like about my class is how everyone else seems to be doing work, and we, like real physics teachers, are just chilling talking. Brian, in History, is basically being told all of history from 8000 BC to now and then talking about it. The chemistry and biology people are doing nothing but prescribed labs and learning how to teach them. It sounds totally boring and I'm glad I don't teach any of those subjects.
We have only one day left and then I get an actual certificate (really, the paper, no shit). At that point Mark and I have to figure out what to do. We're toying with the idea now. I'm pretty sure I want to spend the day touring more of Seattle, and getting to the island that I hear is so cool. Aside from that I don't know what I'm going to do. Again it is going to be really cool to have Mark to talk to for the rest of the ride home. There's lots of shit to catch up on. Since we have more time I'm not sure if we are going to blitz through the country, but the trip should be interested all the same. Right now are big concern is finding a place for Mark while still being able to get to the fucking movie at 10:20. Oh, we're going to see Spider Man 2 with Ben and Sarah.
Well, I think that is it for me right now. There really isn't much to talk about. I might blog more, I might not depending on how things are going. Regardless I'll blog from ATL, assuming Jeremy has detoxed my computer from whatever shit has been happening to it.
M
We've done stuff here, Mark and I, but I'll let him tell that since I always have to don that hat. Instead I'll talk a bit more about the clinic I am in. It will be a short post, I swear.
So there's a lot of people at this clinic for somewhere around 30 different AP courses. The class that I am in (Physics) is around 35 people. Other classes are much smaller (Art History has 4). We are in a room at the edge of the school, with the rest of the science dorks. I would say that they keep us there so we don't spread nerdiness to the rest of the clinic, but every AP teacher is a nerd on some level so we are all lost.
Our instructor is named Martin (whoa!) Kirby. I think I have mentioned him before. He's from the UK but teaches in LA now. He is self described as a lazy teacher who find the easiest way to be good so that he can have a life (he is newly married all of 3 weeks ago). That being said he is a teacher I greatly enjoy. He isn't mired in tiny details very often, tells good stories and has a sense of humor in himself. He does try to put on a show often, treating us like an audience, throwing one-liners our way. I'm not too keen on that, and certainly never want to be like that. I feel like it is slightly condescending or in genuine, I'm not sure which. He's very easy to side track, and we have spend the past three days talking about the test, how it is graded (and grading some ourselves) and hanging out talking about how we teach shit. It is really laid back and informal. In order to have some structure we do a few things. Sometimes they are him reading, and then getting side tracked. Other times, like today, we do activities. Today we were given a "bucket of crap" lab, which basically means we were given a pulley, string, two masses of identical mass, a stopwatch and a meter stick and were asked to find the mass of one of our keys to within 15%. The procedure was totally up to us. This type of open lab was something I wanted to incorporate in my class already, but after doing it I am totally sold. I want a little more structure than he has (more questions, make them write it up afterwards), but it's in the new syllabus for next semester.
The other thing I really like about my class is how everyone else seems to be doing work, and we, like real physics teachers, are just chilling talking. Brian, in History, is basically being told all of history from 8000 BC to now and then talking about it. The chemistry and biology people are doing nothing but prescribed labs and learning how to teach them. It sounds totally boring and I'm glad I don't teach any of those subjects.
We have only one day left and then I get an actual certificate (really, the paper, no shit). At that point Mark and I have to figure out what to do. We're toying with the idea now. I'm pretty sure I want to spend the day touring more of Seattle, and getting to the island that I hear is so cool. Aside from that I don't know what I'm going to do. Again it is going to be really cool to have Mark to talk to for the rest of the ride home. There's lots of shit to catch up on. Since we have more time I'm not sure if we are going to blitz through the country, but the trip should be interested all the same. Right now are big concern is finding a place for Mark while still being able to get to the fucking movie at 10:20. Oh, we're going to see Spider Man 2 with Ben and Sarah.
Well, I think that is it for me right now. There really isn't much to talk about. I might blog more, I might not depending on how things are going. Regardless I'll blog from ATL, assuming Jeremy has detoxed my computer from whatever shit has been happening to it.
M
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