New Toy

So, my students are taking their TNReady tests and I've had a little spare time this past week. What does one do with spare time? Create electronics, of course.... This week, I put together a noise level indicator for the classroom using some LED's, a breadboard, a microphone, and an Arduino Uno. I've actually improved on the design in the video and I may upload a new video with the new and improved version. Let me know what you think!

First Robotics Competition 2017

The Spartans had a great time this weekend in Huntsville, Al at the First Robotics Competition! The event was awesome and the accomplishments of these students is awe-inspiring. What these groups were able to design, build, and operate is nothing less than spectacular and I'm very happy to have been a part of it. Team Sparta Bots put everything that they had into this and I'm extremely proud of what they were able to do. They learned many lessons, overcame obstacles, and are hungry for more next year!

Huntsville here we come!

    I'm super excited to be heading to Huntsville, AL today for the First Robotics Competition with SpartaBots, Stratford STEM's robotics team. You can check out the competition here. It's been great helping these amazing students design and build their robot for this year's competition. I will have pictures of the even available soon! Wish us luck!

Use something they love to help them learn!

     Hello everyone! I know it's been a while since I've posted anything but times have been busy. I'm still in the process of getting photo release forms together so that I can add pictures of the students to the blog, but hopefully they will be here soon. Today, I wanted to talk about something that has been said plenty often enough but I haven't seen done as often as I'd like. This is taking something that students already know or love and including it in your instructional strategy. This is a major part in the theory courses taught to secondary educators and I can certainly see why it is stressed so much.

     Working with my current demographic, I find motivation and interest to be vital to getting students to buy-in to the lesson or take an active part in it. This means finding ways to make the students interested in something as thrilling as data collection. Luckily, I like to think outside the box and color outside the lines and I came up with idea that I believe the students really enjoyed and one that earned me a "that a boy" from my fellow faculty members. This was simply flipping bottles!

     If you haven't noted this craze, chances are you aren't around students who have access to a bottle that they can flip because they will... constantly! Here is a video that currently has over 53 million views on Youtube of guys flipping bottles:

     This craze has swept the globe for reasons that I can't fully understand but I know a winning horse when I see one. So, I decided to have the students do something they loved doing anyway, flip bottles! Luckily, I could sneak in a little education under the radar. The trick was to have students generate a legitimate experiment all while having fun. We proposed the test or initial observation, generated a hypothesis, collected data, analyzed the data, looked for sources or error and improvement, and finally graphed and shared our results. It was a great way to introduce the scientific method and basic data collection.

     This link will take you to a copy of the activity if you'd like to see it or use it in your own classroom. This link will take you to the graph that I used in place of the one you just visited. I had hopes of taking this into an Excel lesson and having the students compile all of their data into a single graph, but time didn't allow. All in all, the students enjoyed the lesson and showed definite improvement on their assessments of this content. I will definitely be bring this or an activity very similar back into my classroom.

2017 FIRST Robotics Competition

So, I'm super excited to be a part of the Sparta Bots team in this year's competition! I'm new to robotics but I have some experience with electrical/electronic systems and fabrication so I've managed to make myself useful so far lol. These kids are intelligent, creative, and motivated so I can't wait to see what we come up with in the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted ;)



Here's the competition intro video:

First lab day with the Spartans!

So, everyone keeps telling me not to keep staying so late, but how else am I supposed to get this stuff together? In all reality, I thoroughly enjoy setting things like this up for the kids. I know I might burn out if I'm not careful, but I'm determined to do the best I can to get these students involved and interested in science. My real concern is this: How many of these tools will operate correctly after 142 9th graders get their hands on them!? Lab day here we go!

Good news!

Scientists Can Turn CO2 Into Ethanol—And They Figured It Out By Accident | @curiositydotcom https://curiosity.com/topics/scientists-can-turn-co2-into-ethanoland-they-figured-it-out-by-accident-curiosity?utm_source=androidapp

Grouping Chart

I realized as I started teaching that coming up with grouping numbers quickly can be difficult, especially when you have 20+ students staring at you, waiting to call you out on your math skills! So, this morning I decided to create a grouping chart to quickly do the math for me. Feel free to use or augment this in anyway you see fit!

Link to Grouping Chart

So much for sleeping in!

This is the first weekend that I've had off from work in several years where I didn't have to request it. The plan: treasure each moment of sleep and take full advantage. The reality: I was up at 7 am. I wanted to sleep in and have a nice chill morning, but I couldn't. I woke up this morning with a zeal, an anticipation of getting back to my class and getting the job done. So, what lit the fire?

Last night, Kat and I decided to go and see this movie. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest that you do! A story of applied science and struggle for equanimity? I'm in. The movie was very inspirational and definitely worth the ridiculous price of admission to theaters these days. Forgive me, I still remember paying less than $4 to see movies. In fact, there was a $1 theater in my town as a child!

So, back to tending that fire. Week one has wrapped up and rather abruptly due to snow!

It was great to meet all of the kids and start building the curriculum. I'm not going to lie and say it was perfect, that the kids were very well behaved and eager to learn. Don't get me wrong, I could see that hunger in a few faces, the hope that I was one that was going to help them learn and really improve their lives. It was great to see that look, that hope. It was also a little disheartening to see the ones eaten up by total apathy and belligerence. This presents me with my goal for next week, the one that doesn't seem to want me to sleep in on a snow covered and chilly Saturday morning: break the belligerence, inspire, and improve.

I think I spent a 3rd of this very inspirational movie thinking of ways that I can use it to motivate students, to help them see the struggles faced by people just to get accepted, educated, and given the opportunity to contribute. The three women in this film were most certainly educated and definitely contributed to what I consider a monumental feet, a very important one. They are an inspiration, one that I hope will help me cut through a jaded haze pervasive in so many high school classrooms, specifically mine. So, here's to progress, to fixing problems and moving forward, to giving these kids the tools they need to meet the challenge head on and overcome any obstacle.

Here's to week 2.

Student Teaching at Sharon School, TN

Going away card from the students

     You know, I have to say that I had a wonderful student teaching experience. I learned a lot about what teaching is like outside of a theory environment and I was lucky enough to work with wonderful teachers and amazing students. I'm really going to miss working with Missy Estes and the awesome kids at Sharon School in Sharon, TN.

     Mrs. Estes was super supportive and helpful, giving me tonnes of advice and plenty of room to practice my craft. I couldn't have asked for a better cooperating teacher. She's an amazing educator and helped me feel welcome and that I've made the right decision in my choice of careers. While working with her, I was lucky enough to attend 2 field trips with the students, one to a play in Huntingdon and the Beta convention in Nashville. Here is a picture of Mrs. Estes and me having a blast during the Beta convention:

    The Beta convention was amazing! There were around 7 thousand students at the Opryland Convention Center and the atmosphere was electric. The students were all extremely well behaved and seemed to really enjoy the trip. I mean, who wouldn't enjoy a weekend at the Opryland Convention Center!? I will post an album with pictures of the trip soon.

    Now that my student teaching experience is over, I look back and realize how much I'm going to miss these kids. They were great to work with, attentive, and eager to learn. Everyone has told me about how difficult junior high students are but I couldn't disagree more. I'm truly going to miss these kids and it's shocking how quickly and easily you become attached to them. I decided to crash the schools Christmas party a couple of weeks ago and you'd think they hadn't seen me in years! I was swarmed by a crowd of jubilant students the second I peeked my head in the door and promptly group-hugged with a vengeance! Those kids are awesome and I can only hope that I get another group like them this year.

   On my last day there, the students got together and made me a going away card...a HUGE going away card lol. It was very sweet and I can't remember ever feeling so blessed and appreciated. On top of that, Mrs. Estes made me a loaf of zucchini bread and a basket of goodies (all the great teacher swag: post-its, pens and pencils, stapler, paperclips, and other assorted supplies). I will forever look back fondly on my days at Sharon School and hope the best for Mrs. Estes, the faculty, and the amazing students!

The Struggle

As I've begun to plan out activities and lessons for the class, I've come to a realization. I'm broke! It seems like everyone has one these days, but I decided to jump on the wagon and create a GoFundMe page for the classroom. If anyone wants to donate to the classroom, we would be eternally grateful for your help!