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In the last two weeks, I have received 2 very important emails from previous students. Today I received this email from a previous student, now in her 3rd year at a prestigious university BSc Chemistry Degree.

• “Anyways, I spent my entiiiire day Sunday working on an assignment at the library. I expected it to take an hour or two tops, but got stuck on some questions with a bunch of calculus work I had apparently blocked out after first year..
   
   I was really really tempted to give up and ask one of my friends in the class for an explanation and some answers, but kept hearing your lectures about “growing our brains” in my head, so I couldn’t…
   
   I stayed there all afternoon, got really frustrated, whined about how nice it was outside, and eventually I worked out all the problems. I’m SO happy I took the time to do it on my own. I really understand the material now, and I know I wouldn’t have learned anything by taking the easy way out and asking for the answers. It was much more rewarding to staple the pages together at the end too.
   
   So, I just thought I’d let you know I was thinking about you and your lessons, and say thank you. Even if your words kind of ruined my Sunday afternoon this week, you really made me a better student, and I still appreciate it.”

Our school has not ranked near the top where we believe it to be based on reports from our university friends and scholarship money. One of the reasons is that we offer few AP courses and no IB courses. We believe that growing brains requires flexibility, has little to do with the amount of content and programs are too confining.

The second email comes from another previous student now in her first year at a nationally renowned university in the center of the continent full of AP and IB graduates.

• “But now to the real reason I was going to email you! I just wanted to first of all thank you, so so so much, for making us do all those full formal labs. no one here knows how to write one, let alone how long it takes to write one well, so they are all scrambling trying to buy old labs from upper year students while i can sit back and relax. It sucked at the time, but its so worth it now. Also, even though it wasnt my favourite subject, i opted to take the harder of the 2 physics courses here. I’ve had 2 lectures now, and its easier than anything we did with you or mr ryan. We aren’t even expected to derive the formulas that we had to know for gr 12 physics, it seems incredibly easy. all in all, i just feel very prepared for my classes here even around all these people who did IB and all AP classes. So even though most of your students are going to dislike physics (at least I know most of us did last year!) keep teaching it the way you do because its effective! I also had a prof today that reminded me a lot of your teaching style, because we are using iClickers for quizzes and on the very first day he went on a little schpiel about how he would like to change the education system and how unfair it was that they had to give us marks based on lectures…just reminded me a bit of our first day in chem 11. anyways, Ill keep you posted throughout the year on some general stuff that i’m doing, hope the year goes well for you too! “

So its the end of the year and keeping kids on task is tough. So I finish every last 3 weeks with projects. The student choose. Some are doing water quality, others are making VandeGraaff machines, some are creating a solar panel charger for Iphones using many calculators.

But these two sweetheart girls do not have an idea of what to do. Earlier I had presented the idea of putting an electric guitar together thinking that someone (I had a group of boys intersted in music in mind) would bite. No one did. So I resuggested that these two girls do it because one of them plays fiddle and it was atleast musical. They reluctantly agreed. Then the fun starts.

At 8 am on Monday, my son’s electric guitar worked perfectly, just slightly out of tune. By 8:30 am, it was in many minute pieces. My pair looked at it bewildered.

All of a sudden, the pair came in upset. They heard from random students who watched us disassemble the guitar, that it worked perfectly before hand. This added pressure the the pair. They were under the impression that we started with junk and if they were not successful, then it was still junk. But knowing that something was destroyed specifically for this purpose, but some pressure on. Then the fun really began…

I told them an almost true story. My twin boys have been preparing a duet (piano/guitar) of Bruno Mars “Just the way you are”, to play at the final middle school variety show to profess their “interest” in a couple fo girls. Then I told my physics girls that the guitar that they were working on was my son’s guitar. Then I played the song on repeat for the entire class to hear while they worked. 

I also told them that I was not particularly impressed with the choice of girls that my boys had chosen (untrue), and that I would not be upset if the guitar never got fixed. This really jumped the inspiration. It was now their mission to ensure that middle school puppy love flourishes.

Thanks to Krista Ritchie for inviting me to speak with your BEd. class. It was fun to look at how I use emotion to increase engagement in the class. I had never really thought about it before. Using the bell for suspense, creating arguments related to the content, telling stories.

I have a new one to add. Two of my students are putting together an electric guitar as part of the circuits portion of the physics 12 class. The students thought I had a guitar in pieces and needed them together. The reality is that at 8 am, the guitar was in perfect working condition and by 8:20 it was completely in pieces with individual wires removed etc… This showed my confidence in them. I was willing to destroy something knowing that it would get fixed.

Then I told them that it was my son’s guitar (true). I told the girls who were putting it together that my twin sons were preparing for the end of school year variety show and that they were getting ready to sing publicly to a couple of girls. Just to add to the ambiance, I played the song on repeat. The perception is that the future of middle school romance depends on the re-assembly of the guitar. They are working hard. This tactic would probably not work with a group of guys.

Thanks for making me think Krista and class!!