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Advice and opinions

These are the the advice and opinions of the webmaster and do not reflect the opinions of the sponsor or visitors to this website. If you want to provide your own opinions, which are welcome, please email me so I can add your ideas. Likewise, you can click on the "request space" button above and we can set you up with your own mini-website here.

General ideas

to jump to Chemistry specific ideas click here

1. Teaching in a school labeled as "urban", "underperforming", or with any other government label just so you can wipe out your student loans is the WRONG reason to work at that school.
2. Always keep chocolate around. You will want to make friends with other teachers who are chocoholics and need a fix.
3. Anyone who goes into teaching for the money is an idiot.
4. Respect your students.
5. Your students are not there to be your friends. Don't force a friendship to happen with them. If a friendship is going to happen, it will happen.
6. There is nothing wrong with working outside of contract hours if it means that someone else's life is going to be better off for the work you are doing.
7. With knowledge comes responsibility.
8. Nobody cares how much you know (said to the teacher). All that matters is that you are able to get the information inside the kids' brains.
9. Always keep water around and drink water often. The #1 reason for exhaustion is because you are dehydrated. You become dehydrated by talking. If you like to lecture, keep a LOT of water around. You'll need it.
10. If you lose your voice, it is ok to take the day off.
11. If you are sick, it is ok to take the day off. But don't be absent too often because the kids won't tolerate it.
12. Decide how much your time is worth. If you can spend $20 on something that will save you 2 hours of prep-time, is it worth spending the $20?
13. Decide how much your sanity is worth. If you can spend $40 so your students can be doing activities instead of bored by the book and therefore driving you nuts, is it worth the $40 to save your sanity.

link to page on cya

A few things to know about Melissa's chemistry teaching philosophies:

1. Having students take notes off the screen is a waste of time. So whenever possible I typed up my notes, made photocopies of them, and handed them out. I did go over the notes orally and drew diagrams they could copy when appropriate. Yes, I paid for the photocopies out of pocket. But the money was well worth the time we saved in class by not having to wait for them to copy down words that had no meaning to them. Taking the time to explain the words was, to me, a much more valuable use of time.

2. I went fanatical about teaching to the standards. Standards were listed in documents when possible. They were listed on tests. Questions on tests were mapped to a standard. If a question did not match a standard, it was not on the test. If CA did not have a standard that I thought was important, like significant figures or dimensional analysis, I added it to my standards. When I have the time I will post copies of my tests and review sheets.

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3. Homework is for practice, not for demonstrating mastery. I believed in giving lots of homework as long as it provided students an opportunity to learn something. In other cases, homework was assigned so that we could do a lab without having to take class time to prepare for it (pre-labs.)

4. I taught on a 4x4 with 90 minute blocks. This means I saw every student every day, but for only 90 days. After the first semester, I got 90 new students and got to start everything over again. Given this time restriction, I cut out lots of things that most other people get to teach. So don't judge me because I did not get to redox. I made thoughtful decisions about what opportunities my students were given and which ones they'd be seeing for the first time in college.

5. Some of the documents here are listed for "chem sci" which was a non-college prep chemistry class I had the delightful opportunity to teach. I loved these kids because they, for the most part, would do everything I asked them to do. They did most of the labs the college-prep chem kids did because they were competent enough to do them. I suppose failing physical science as freshmen allowed them to realize how fortunate they were to have a teacher who did not treat them like they were idiots.

Link to Melissa's chemistry stuff