iPhone + Facebook + Twitter = total time suck

It just hit me that I have not posted to my blog in months!

I think a big reason happened last October when I got my iPhone which became a quick addiction. My iPhone is with me everywhere and I am so glued to being connected with information. Sure I always had the internet but now I have the internet in my hand to surf while I am, say, standing in a long bank line. It just blows me away all the new applications that keep coming up that are just wicked cool. I love my little baby!!


Then around this time, I also got hooked on Facebook. I started off slow but then kept finding more and more friends I lost touch with and it was just so cool to "see" them again and chat just about silly, little things. As a part of this addiction, I also slipped into the Mafia Wars time-suck...who knew stealing and fighting and whacking people could be so much fun?

And now I have found the third leg to the technology stool....Twitter. At first I could not figure out what the big appeal was because I was already chatting with all of my Facebook friends. But then I found out how much fun it is to be a groupy and follow the simply ramblings of stars like Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Smith, Jon Favreau and (it is scary I am admitting this) Miley Cyrus.

Well since I am such a newbie on Twitter, I need to build up my "following" so anybody interested in keeping up with MY ramblings (not that I am as interesting as Ashton), please feel free to follow me at my handle which is: SciTeach3

I cannot wait to see what is coming next!!

sexting...unintended consequences.

Sexting. Probably a term that most people have not heard of before but unfortunately it is something that is going on in alarming rates. Sexting is where teens (primarily) are taking naked/semi-naked pictures of themselves with their phones and sending them to others. This is another example of how incredible technology can be misused and how it can have massive unintentional consequences.

There really is no argument that we live in a very sexually charged society and this is a very big driving influence to our children. Because of this many adolescents feel it is necessary to engage in shocking behavior just to be noticed, to fit in, or even to win the affections of somebody who has caught their eye. As a form of "flirting" they are taking scandalous photos of themselves and sending them various people. Naively they think those pictures will just stay with the person they sent them to but realistically "hormonally challenged" teenagers tend to spread things like that around to everybody they know.

What these teens are finding is that this simple slip in judgment ends up resulting in massive amounts of embarrassments, broken friendships and even physical fights and school suspensions. But what most do not realize is that there are potentially much more serious implications for sending naked pictures over the phone: child pornography charges.

A group of students in Pennsylvania have been slapped with child pornography charges by simply sending naked pictures to each other over their phones. Here is the story from CBS News:


Watch CBS Videos Online

As I have posted several times on this blog, actions have consequences. I am sure these kids, like the thousands (which is a vast understatement) of others doing the same thing never considered that they could be arrested for just trying to titillate a friend. But the fact is if charges like this stick, these children can be branded with a life-long label of “sex offender”.

According to an article from ABC News, Bill Albert, the spokesman for The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, reports:

"It's more common than parents think and certainly more common than they'd probably hope," said Albert. "Our research suggests that one in five teens freely admit that they have either sent or posted electronically nude or semi-nude images of themselves."

I teach at a very upper-middle class K-8 school and so far this year we have had two different incidences of these types of pictures being spread around. As Mr. Albert said, without a doubt, this is happening more than people realize....and unfortunately, most parents are clueless.


I ask that if you know any teenagers or even parents of teenagers, please pass along this frightening information. What I find is that most kids do not intend for bad things to happen but sadly they really cannot see beyond the moment...it is up to us to help teach them how.

[Above picture taken from San Diego 6 News story on Sexting]

what truly made Lincoln a great man...

With today being Abraham Lincoln’s birthday there are lots of people who are expounding on his great accomplishments. But the thing that stands out the most to me are not all of the wonderful things he did do, but rather I want to celebrate all of his failures. Here is a list of “highlights” that lead up to his presidency:


Age 7 – his family was forced out of their home and he had to go to work to support them

Age 9 – his mother died

Age 22 – he failed in business

Age 23 – he ran for the Illinois House of Representatives and lost

Age 23 – he lost his job. Later that same year he decided he wanted to go to law school, but his application was rejected

Age 24 – Lincoln borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business, but by the end of the year he was bankrupt.

Age 25 – h ran for state legislature again and lost

Age 26 – he was engaged to be married, but his fiancé died and it broke his heart. He spent 6 months of that year confined to bed from a total nervous breakdown.

Age 29 – he sought to become Speaker of the state legislature and was defeated

Age 31 – he sought to become elector and was defeated

Age 33 – he ran for Congress and lost

Age 36 – he ran for Congress again; this time he won.

Age 38 – Lincoln ran for reelection to Congress and lost.

Age 39 – he sought the job of land officer but was rejected

Age 44 – he ran for Senate of the United States and lost

Age 46 – he sought the vice presidential nomination at his party’s national convention. He got fewer than one hundred votes and lost

Age 48 – he ran for the United States Senate again, and lost again


And then in 1856 at the age of 50 Abraham Lincoln ran for President of the United States and became our 16th president.

Reaching for success is never an easy thing and every person has faced failure at one time or another in their life. But think of all the setbacks that President Lincoln faced and yet never gave up on himself. How many of us would have simply stopped trying after only a few of the things that happen to him? To me, this is why Abraham Lincoln was such an incredible figure.


Happy Birthday Mr. President.


[Information taken from the book “The Rhythm of Life; Living Every Day with Passion and Purpose” by Matthew Kelly - I cannot recommend this book highly enough!]

the power of peer teaching...

Sometimes we teachers just get in the way of learning. Unfortunately it is very easy to fall into the trap that we have to grade everything that we give our students to do and this really is not the best way for our kids to learn. If you allow the kids to try and work through the problems on their own and then let them peer tutor themselves, there is a better chance that they will actually learn the concept.

Case in point…

Earlier this week I gave my students a worksheet that consisted of sample word-math problems relating to various Physics formulas. This is information that we have been going over for the last couple of weeks and it was simply putting math to the concepts. My instructions were for them to do as many of the problems that they could on their own and if they get stuck, try their hardest to work through it. After 20-minutes I then told them that IF they absolutely could not do anything more on their own, they then could pull out their notes and the book to see if that helped. I gave them another 10-minutes to have them try and figured out the problem with additional resources and then I told them that IF they were still blocked on some problems then they could get help from ONE other person. I then had the answers taped to the back counter so they could check to make sure they got it right.

The key to this was that I emphasized over and over again:

“This is not for a grade! Simply copying an answer from somebody will not help you at all so LEARN from your friends, do not COPY from them.”

Two days later I gave an actual assessment on the material and the results were incredible! The comprehension was much higher than in the past where I was just doing “drill and kill” graded assignments. Once I took the pressure off the kids about not worrying about getting the right answer compared to learning the process, they learned the information much quicker.

Sometimes teachers just get in the way of learning…

time sure does get away from me...

It just occurred to me that I really have not blogged in awhile. I will admit that it would be easy for me to say it was because I have been so busy with school and committees and my Masters classes but that really is not the complete story. To be honest, I have been so addicted to playing on my iPhone and with FaceBook that all my extra time has somehow just disappeared.

You know how boys do love their toys...

why this election needs to be over...

After 18-months of this presidential race, I am ready for it to be over on Tuesday (and sadly that is not always a given). The thing that just kills me is I am so tired of the soundbites....these guys keep saying the same things over and over again and here is a great example of it:

definitely NOT an 8-5 job...

What an incredible week this was.

The 10th of October was the last day of our first quarter and so on the 9th I gave my big end of the unit test as well as collected a huge lab report we had been working on for the past month. Well since grades were due first thing Tuesday morning, the 14th, I had basically only four days to grade:

• 1,560 short answer test questions which included a lot of detailed math problems
• 585 pages of lab reports (130 reports which had on the average 4.5 pages)

Oh but the fun did not stop there. For reasons unknown to the common teacher, our district insists on having parent/teacher conferences the first week of the second quarter. So from Tuesday through Friday morning, my team held 35 conferences before and after school. On Thursday the kids get out early and so we had conferences from 1:00 until 8:00 that night with only two 20-minute breaks.

I must say I am a little brain dead right now....

non-verbal survival tactics of teenagers....

Now I know for a fact that there is a lot that goes on in my class that I have no clue about but at the same time I know so much more than my students think I know.

I love giving my classes book work to do and then pretend that I am engrossed in doing something else and then watch them from the corner of my eye. Then, without warning, I will look over to two students who are talking but only one of them can directly see me and they say to the other one:

"DANGER, DANGER, DANGER!!!! He is looking at us right now so you better try and cover your tracks the best way you can...sorry but you are on your own as I am going to pretend like I was working all along and just hope he is as dumb as we think he is and will not notice that I was indeed talking. And again, I am sorry but if he mentions anything about us not working I am going to quickly throw you under the bus and say that you were the one talking to me but I definitely was not talking to you - GOOD LUCK!"

All of this is said non-verbally by a simple glance, the darting of the eyes, a slight flinch, a twitch of an eye brow or any other very, very subtle form of communication. And the really cool thing is that the other student clearly understands what is said and they then scramble to look like they were not turned away talking but rather picking up a piece of paper or some other innocent activitity.

Teenagers are a riot!! If you cannot laugh doing this job, you just have no business being a teacher because this is funny stuff!!!

My fellow teachers, what are some of the non-verbals that you see in your classes?

master multitasker....

Definitely being a middle school science teacher is not for the faint of heart. I just finished up a density lab that would make mere mortal men (i.e. non-teachers) run away screaming and wish they had their mommy close by. In each class I had around 30 kids broken out into 8 groups going in all different directions, mixing liquids, measuring things, whipping around glass beakers like pros all while I am wondering around making sure nobody is stupid enough to actually take somebody's bet to try an drink the corn syrup.

I remember being in the corporate world and having so many people brag about their "multitasking skills" - and frankly I was one of those arrogant bastards. But you do not know multitasking until you are in charge of a room full of teenagers who are just waiting for you to be looking away so they can get away with doing something they know they should not be doing.

It is almost like an Olympic event with my opponent trying to get away with something and me trying to catch them....pitting skill against skill....will against will. And the fact that the odds are 30 against 1 tells you just who the professional is in this game even though our side does not always win.

People are always getting hurt at work like getting carpal-tunnel syndrome for typing too much or getting a thrown out back from lifting heavy objects. I am just surprised that teachers do not get "eye sprains" from having to look at sooooo many different things in the room all at once. Come to think of it, this is probably why I sleep so well at night because my eyes are just so happy not having to look at anything for 8 hours.

that just cannot be....

Ok, it is Sunday so where else would I be but the coffee shop grading papers. I am planning my lessons for next week and so I broke out the calendar and it totally freaked me out. There are only 3 weeks left in our 1st quarter!!

I guess the fact that this school year is flying by is a good thing because that means that I am having fun and things have been goinig well. The only down side - as happens every quarter - I am running so far behind in where I want/need to be. The thing that threw me for a loop was that my principal sent me to 3 days of workshops a couple of weeks ago right at the time I should have started my first quarter lab and so now I am playing catch up.

But let me not focus on the negative....the fact still remains that this has been a really good year and I am having fun [outside of what caused the previous post of course - hehehe].

Now if I can just learn all of my student's names!!!! [it is kind of getting embarrassing saying "Hey....you!" all the time]