Teaching

So, I have discovered that rather than teach a physics course over the summer with this summer program I want to be an assistant. There are some cool classes that are happening and sadly, I am not part of either. Today I skipped out on the drama class in the morning to go with one of the other classes on a walk to collect plants to make plant shirts.

The drama class is to the stage where all the students are needed and the only thing the other assistant and I do is get after kids who are talking or goofing off. Not really exciting and not necessary to have two of us. So the one teacher was going to take her kids and gather plants to paint and then make prints of on t-shirts. That sounded so much more exciting... so did their trip to a watercress farm, the hike to the waterfall, the hike to the top of the ridge, and the trip to the board of water supply. Mind you the one also made terrariums, and they are watching termites, and they caught crayfish. I'm jealous. Today I joined them and I have to say... my shirt is coming along very nicely! I am going to add more stuff to it.

So I sit in my class, the one that I can control and realize how boring it really is. And I feel horrible! These kids were signed up for this class, all of them have done the programs before and know how fun they can be, but mine is just boring kind of learning. So, I decided to look at what could be fun using what we already know, and possibly bring in things that we didn't cover yet. At the end of all the curriculum I am supposed to cover, there is a project to create a Rube Goldberg Machine. Why not do this now instead of maybe later? I say maybe later because there's more stuff to go through than we can fit in the 5 weeks. So, today we wrapped up our final investigation, we set 3 tables end to end, I rolled out a long sheet of paper, and they began designing. :) For an hour these 3 kids worked hard without breaks designing their project. No whining, no complaining, nothing. I think I did the right choice.

They must design a machine to pop a balloon and they cannot use fire or heat. Apparently I should have added explosions, but coke and mentos can't be too bad right? They plan on containing it in a tube to set off another reaction with alcaceltzer to fill a balloon over capacity. The problem I see? They think the coke will stop at the tablets to cause gasses to fill the balloon... it won't be a gas that fills the balloon, it will be the coke that fills it with the gas and causes an explosion. But, they will get to learn this on their own!