I guess I decided that I was ready to say some things. We've had a lot of commotion about school reform for the last couple of years in Idaho and I wanted an avenue to express some thoughts. I also wanted to start a reasonable conversation among educators and parents about the topic.
I feel like I have changed how I teach over the last 13 years of my career and learned some valuable principles of learning along the way. I want a format to share those ideas more easily with others in a profession that tends to isolate teachers and tends to force them to learn their own lessons.
I am thankful to this underground community of bloggers and commentors that I have benefited from in recent years. I have never been a big commentor on other's blogs and I suppose this is my way of contributing to the ongoing conversations.
And, I'm going to try to carve out an hour a week to post. I think I can do that--we had a snow day today...so I found a little extra time:)
I thought it might be nice to finish off my first post with somethings more entertaining. Each new calendar year I haves students write down two statements about what they have learned in the previous year. The statements can be funny, weird, or even profound. Here are the highlights from this year. Not all of them are original, but there are some pretty good ones.
In the year 2012, I have learned...
- If you try to impress a girl with your kill-death ratio, pray that she is a gamer or just walk away.
- When life gives you lemons you should make grape juice and then sit back and relax while the world tries to figure out how you did it
- No matter how big you are, freshmen will always be picked on
- Chocolate milk makes everything better
- My physics grade is about as impressive as the Detroit lions
- School is much more enjoyable when everybody is staying home for the end of the world
- I'm in physics for a reason. Girls might let you down, but physics will always be there. Its the law.
- Out of 7 billion people on this planet, out of 8 planets in this one star system, out of 100 billion star systems in this galaxy, out of an infinite amount of galaxies...that I am significant.
- I have learned that Mr. Stoker is not a teacher but an evil maniacal person that "loves to see the final chicken scratches of desperation at the end of each test"
- What goes up must come down...my physics grade is not exempt.
- Humans are very resilient. We have survived the end of the world at least three times.
- The secret to dancing is to pretend you have a wedgie and try to get it unstuck without your hands
- When you get a lung transplant, the first loogie you cough up will not be your own
- teaching your parents how to use Google chrome, while a worthy cause, will make you die slowly inside
- if you can't explain it simply, in simple terms, you don't know what you are talking about
- In 2013, the movie 2012 will probably be moved to the comedy section
- Procrastination: I'll think of why I do it later
- Even though your mom comments on all your Facebook status updates, you probably shouldn't block her
- Riding an invisible Korean pony while singing "hey sexy lady" will get you one billion views on you tube, but zero sexy ladies.
- Every successful movie that there has ever been will have 2-3 premiers: the original, digitally remastered, and 3D
- Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
- You are always going to fail sometime, all we can hope for is to fail better each time...or at least to fail bad enough to make it into a YouTube fail compilation.
- When one starts reading memes everyday, one simply does not think normally anymore
- No matter how hard you try to pop a soda top quietly the teacher and everyone in the area turns around to see what the noise was
- If I hug a wall, the wall hugs me. Now I have a friend.
