Teacher in wonderland

Barring last-minute changes (why not add death and taxes to the list?), I get my own room this year. I wandered around the room earlier today, checking out different vantage points.Yes, I have an Ingmar Bergman complex...

It's a lab room with lots of windows and lots of space--multiple white boards, an interactive Smartboard, 2 bulletin boards, 6 lab tables, a fume hood & shower, and multiple eye wash stations. (I'd call it a biology teacher's wet dream, but I'm having enough issues with my PSA as it is.)

So here's my fantasy list of things I want to do with the room--I'm trusting more experience teachers reading this to steer me clear of potential disasters:

Playstation

The head starts falling ever so slowly--a jerk, a nod, another jerk. His head ends up on the desk, a string of drool from his lip to the growing pond on his notebook.

In high school you rarely have time to ask what the problem is--maybe your class sucks, maybe his grandmother is ill, maybe the child was up playing WoW--but if it's only one or two kids in a week, it might not be you.

We have a lot of "discussions," usually a bit one-sided, and we have a lot of labs. The kids are trained to look for what is supposed to happen--they've been trained to do this since they first trucked off to school lugging their SpongeBob lunch boxes.

What we don't have is a whole lot of science going on day to day.

I plan to have a rotating display at one of the lab tables, something to stimulate thinking. It might be a Jacob's ladder one week, a prism the next, maybe then a Newton's cradle. I could share my Drinky Bird and the "boiling" pen. I could put out a stereoscope and a beetle, or maybe a hand-cranked generator, or just a bowl of water. A stethoscope, a fossilized orthoceras, a karimba, marbles, a jar of slugs, a bag of shells.There are literally hundreds of simple demos used since Socrates showed Plato how to start a fire with a magnifying glass, things a lot of my kids have never seen.

I'd have to make it informal enough to be attractive, yet formal enough to keep it focused--maybe I'll just leave a notebook there for students to write down observations and thoughts.

Here's the kicker: they can go up one at a time, whenever, and play for as long as 10 minutes. (I may need a small hourglass, which itself can be interesting.)



Sun dial

I have windows. I have a sundial. In September I'll have tenure. What's the risk in drilling a small platform on the 3rd floor ledge?

Maybe I'll keep a composition book by the window and appoint a Minister of Time.



An analog clock

Yep, I got a big, old-fashioned school clock that was almost tossed last year. I kept it in my big box of junk, wrestled out the old battery, scraped off years of battery crud, and now hope to use it in class.

It has a second hand--you can watch your seconds spin away.The minute hand perceptibly moves. "Quarter of" makes sense looking at a handsome clock like this one.

I may hang an abacus next to it.



The Declaration of Independence


I'm betting at least one kid complains--"Hey, that doesn't belong in here, this is science class."

Look at the opening line:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Declaration of Independece, the italics, obviously mine

See, children? You can't be diving into the Declaration without knowing a little something about the laws of nature.



A garden

I've done this every year in just about every class, and owe a huge thanks for all the teachers who put up with it in their classrooms. If you teach in an urban district you owe it to your children to have them plant something, anything.

For me, the raw Goya beans work best--the kids are convinced they won't grow because they come from the grocery store. They grow like weeds. Peas work well, too, and have lovely flowers.

One of my best moments ever in a class was eating a bean from a bean plant grown in class. I explained that the stuff that made up the plant came from the carbon dioxide from our breath. (A collective yech!)

Wheat grows well, too, and can be used to make some flour come harvest time.


The (un)usual menagerie

This is, after all, biology class.

I have been charged with setting up a saltwater tank--if successful, I hope to capture a critter or two from our Jersey shores--the Newark Bay is only a few miles away.

The Drinking Bird photo is from "Best cubicle toys for programmers"here.
The Goya beans from their website.
I figure the Declaration and Alice are public domain.