Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs. In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year. Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home. I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
This blog owes a lot of inspiration from this post by George Couros . Sometimes as a teacher I have to deliver content to a large group. Today, in AP Physics 2 was a good example. We are covering magnetic force. I can predict the force and motions experienced by an object when acted on by a magnetic field. This is a very complicated topic that students can't experiment with at the atomic level. I can set up a demonstration that shows what happens at a macroscopic level but it doesn't help students understand what is happening at the subatomic level. The biggest difficulty is not mathematics. It is spacial reasoning and conceptualizing what is happening. It is a process which involves "right-hand rules" which provide simple models for how charges behave in a magnetic field. Here is a sample question students learned today from scratch. Ok, enough with the physics talk. What is my point? I feel that as educators, the current wisdom ...