I needed to be reminded of something like this, especially after my crummy summer class.
A student in my class - the one where I have them do an independent research project - asked to be let into the lab today so she could put some of the plant matter she's collecting in the drying oven, so she can then get the biomass and (later) the calorie content of the forage (by burning it in a calorimeter).
As I was showing her were all the stuff she needed was, she said, "I'm so excited to be doing this! This is so neat. I've never had the opportunity to do anything like this before; I've always had to do labs where we kind of knew what the result was going to be even before we started and where we knew that hundreds of people had done the exact same thing in prior years."
Yup, that's it. That's why I require the independent research project. To give people like her the opportunity to do this thing - and hopefully enjoy it and learn from it.
I'm not doing it for the people who might cheat on their results.
I'm not doing it for the people who phone it in and then are jerks to me when they didn't get the grade they thought they should get.
I'm doing it for the people who give a damn.
Now, if I can just remember that all the time...
Monday, October 27, 2008
THIS is why I do it.
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3 comments:
This is what I wanted to remind you of when you were so down about your youth group kids, too. Sure, the yahoos ye have with you always, maybe even a majority. But there's always that one or two that make it worth it in the long run.
I used to date a special ed teacher, and her first job was teaching the behavior-disordered junior-high boys. A truly unenviable job, that was. Her classroom had its own security guard, and her "parent" teacher conferences were with probation officers. She used to call me literally every day in tears. I tried to tell her that there was probably one boy in there who would come back in twenty years and thank her. (The others, alas would probably be either dead or incarcerated.) I still wonder if any of them made it. If so, it would have to be worth it.
This is so cool. I think one of the greatest things about home schooling is being able to feed these kind of feelings in our kids. At least sometimes.
Bless you and those students who appreciate and profit from your hard work!
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