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Summer Teaching Begins
Jun. 26th, 2007 05:08 pmI just finished my second day of the teaching for a math/science program for high school students this summer, Needless to say, these are pretty highly motivated kids to be willing to spend a big chunk of their summer taking various college-prep sort of classes. (What's odd is that for being math and science based, I seem to be the only one teaching any science classes, and there's only one guy teaching math, so I don't know what that's about.)
So anyway, mindful that these kids are both more engaged, and giving up summer vacation to be here, I try to make it more interesting, more interactive, and more free-wheeling than anything they'd get to do in high school. My geology class, for instance, this morning went outside and worked themselves into the geological time scale, with each of them as representative eras in Earth's history. (It's one thing to read descriptions or comparisons of this, and to see it demonstrated -- I think we all were a bit impressed. I had no idea how long a go of it dinosaurs managed to make.)
And in the second part of my global climate change class this afternoon, we had some rollicking (sp?) fun with a somewhat modified version of the Settlers of Catan board game. We all tried to survive the effects of of a very gradually changing climate... which showed vividly how those in the more marginal zones suffer first, how small breaks in a trading network can cause society-wide collapse, and even so how one village still managed to succeed just fine even after it lost all outside trade -- they achieved a sort of sustainability, I suppose. Not bad work, I think, to demonstrate all that to 8 teenagers in a couple hours with a board game. Many thanks, emusnare, for a truly brilliant suggestion. It was quite a success.
So anyway, mindful that these kids are both more engaged, and giving up summer vacation to be here, I try to make it more interesting, more interactive, and more free-wheeling than anything they'd get to do in high school. My geology class, for instance, this morning went outside and worked themselves into the geological time scale, with each of them as representative eras in Earth's history. (It's one thing to read descriptions or comparisons of this, and to see it demonstrated -- I think we all were a bit impressed. I had no idea how long a go of it dinosaurs managed to make.)
And in the second part of my global climate change class this afternoon, we had some rollicking (sp?) fun with a somewhat modified version of the Settlers of Catan board game. We all tried to survive the effects of of a very gradually changing climate... which showed vividly how those in the more marginal zones suffer first, how small breaks in a trading network can cause society-wide collapse, and even so how one village still managed to succeed just fine even after it lost all outside trade -- they achieved a sort of sustainability, I suppose. Not bad work, I think, to demonstrate all that to 8 teenagers in a couple hours with a board game. Many thanks, emusnare, for a truly brilliant suggestion. It was quite a success.
