Reflection at boundaries

Right right right...

So I was teachin this lesson on Friday on the reflection of waves at boundaries right...

It starts off with a walk to burn down the school

"Who's with me!"

Everyone.

"Right, take your school jumpers off, wrap them around a long stick, dip them in petrol and set them alight. We're off to burn down the school!"

So I have on the board 4 parallel lines.

At the first parallel line I says

"Right the school is protected by a swamp. The swamp contains piranha that will nibble your toes. Then, when they taste blood they will devour you to the bone. To add to this you will have to swim with your torch above your head to keep it alight."

"So who's turning round?"

1 person.

fair enough.

So at the next boundary we get more hardcore and I say

"Right, in the Amazon river there is this type of fish, called the Candiru fish. Gents you may want to cross your legs"

"Basically, when you take a pee, the Candiru swims up your stream and embeds itself in your *whistles*"

"It pushes spikes out to either side and stays there eating your *whistles*

"So who's turning round?"

Most male hands go up.

Two more boundaries and I'm running out of ideas. So the crocs come in.

By now there are like 10 people left and I'm thinkin

hmmmm how am I gonna get rid of these ones...

So I say

"Right at this boundary there's a bunch of heavily mutated octopii. They have 25 legs each."

"And what they'll do is that if they get hold of you they won't kill you. Well not straight away. What they'll do is they'll stick their tentacles in your mouth, in your ears and up your nose. Then they'll look for any other holes they can find and slot their remaining tentacles up there"

"so...."

"Who's with me!?"

Anyway, the moral of that story is that at boundaries, waves will reflect if their situation changes too much, which is to say that if the density of the medium changes substantially they will mostly reflect.

For example, waves travelling from solids to gases will mostly reflect, which is why they put that jelly stuff on to your belly when they do ultrasound scans.

Man. I love my job.

mischievious teaching practices

After getting a fair few (alright two - it's more than usual) comments on my nucleus post and getting a link up from Foss on his site I thought I'd just whack up a few pics of a class at work.



It's always been in my head that the classroom is somewhere that is totally underutilised for learning. We sit down in a classroom and often it's treated as a box in which you learn, but the room itself is not used for learning. Taking this approach to it's logical conclusion I decided in my last school in the UK to make use of every square inch of the room, the tables, the floor, the ceilings and the windows and to bring it alive.



We don't do that a lot in secondary for some reason, I guess it's seen as a primary thing, dressing the class up, but when pupils daydream and look around the class doesn't it just make sense for them to actually take things in that may have some educational content?



Obviously, all of this stuff had to be taken down at the end of the week. Fire safety hazard apparently.

Oh well. At least I TRIED to be creative.

Bloody hell! I get paid to do this!

Ever wanted to give an annoying kid an essay...?

Well now you CAN with the new "mischief Essay giver"!

Am on a bit of a blitz at the moment. Any feckin about in class results in an essay to be in at 9am the next morning. This morning I got a FANTASTIC pair of essays back about "The history of safety goggles" - to be scanned and posted right here later - in which I learn from my year 8s that

"The Inuit carved goggles from caribou antler to help prevent snowblindness. The goggles were curved to fit the user's face and had a large groove cut in the back to allow for nose. A long thing slit was cut through the goggles to allow in a small amount of light. The goggles were held to the head by a cord made of caribou sinew"

Flippin eck!

This was so much fun to read as was the next one that I didn´t even rip it in half and throw it in the bin in front of their faces like normal. Instead I had an idea.

The punishment for misbehaviour is simple. One side A4 on a topic which is already written on the top of an A4 sheet of paper. 10 words per line or you have to repeat and any argument gets you an extra side, all in for tomorrow morning at 9am.

So far I have the following titles...

The history of the atom
The story of penicillin
Architecture in Madrid
The historical significance of salt
Analysing Don Quijote
The history of rock music
and
Perspective in modern art

Any more suggestions....

I'm gonna collect them and make them into a book later. It's gonna be a treasure trove of completely pointless information...

(let's not have "the sex life/inside of a ping pong ball" please it was funny the first time I heard it 17 years ago but has lost it's edge a bit now...)

The travelling sketchpad: part 3 - I don't do this job for the money...

Danny doesn't do a lot of work in class but he does doodle a lot.

So I asked him if he could do a sketch for me of anything he wanted.

And here it is.



And they wonder why people become teachers! This has given me a great idea though for The Adventures of mini-Andy. I hope he agrees to it. Watch that space...

ADHD - a teacher rant

Sorry guys I'm going to get serious for a second. I just have to get something off my chest.

Will people PLEASE stop saying

"this kid or that kid has ADHD and is therefore a pain in the arse"

I'm sorry that is just not true. Kids with or without ADHD can be a pain in the arse. They are people and all people can be a pain in the arse.

Now the thing is that I suspect I have ADHD. I can't concentrate for any length of time on anything at all, and I like to get up and wander around. I also write a hell of a lot and take an unnatural number of photographs. I'm endlessly curious about everything and, having a very short attention span, I'm able to apply myself almost immediately to anything at all and solve problems really quickly before they bore the shit out of me.

My school report in primary school read "A complete pain except if you give him a maths book. He will run around all day long but if you give him a maths book he will sit and quietly solve problems completely absorbed on his own and nothing can distract him"

Thing is that the difference between me and a kid that is a pain in the arse is that I'm NOT AN ARSEHOLE. If something interests me I will make damn sure I solve it and quickly. As a hyperactive kid and adult, I love nothing more than finding things out, but I find that life happens far too slowly around me.

Other people think and do things too slowly for my liking, the world seems to happen at a snails pace. I can't REALLY get my head around how slowly things happen around me and YES I do find it bloody frustrating.

But I'm NOT AN ARSEHOLE.

The thing is that if I were to take out my frustration on others and make myself a pain in the arse a few things would cross my mind.

1. It would be rude and disrespectful
2. It would be a poor reflection on me. Just because the world doesn't go as fast as me it's not their fault and I should slow down and wait up for them

The fact is that sometimes teachers plan without understanding the nature of this condition and react to it badly. Society at large, moving tortoise-like through time does not really grasp the speeed of thought that the ADHD kid moves at and so generally things move much slower than we want them to.

But that is no excuse. If a kid has ADHD and behaves badly they deserved to be punished and shown the meaning of manners like everyone else. The fact is that we all inhabit this world together and if you move at a different pace then school is a place to learn that in some instances we need to accomodate others and it is the teacher's job to teach this understanding.

It is not for us to stand by and blame a condition that we don't understand, this Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, for the fact that a kid is out of line.

The fact that a kid is out of line is the issue, disorder or no and we need to have the courage to stand up and address this issue regardless. Too many teachers let kids get away with all sorts of crap in the name of ADHD these days and it's bollocks.

For me ADHD has been a godsend. The difference between me and a kid who is a pain in the arse is a firm hand and good teachers.

Let's not shy away from the issues. A pain in the arse is a pain in the arse and should be dealt with appropriately. Don't bury your heads in the sand.

Watch this video on VideoSurf or see more Opera House Videos or Videos

I've just posted this up on the TES Staffroom board under my Watchmen pseudonym.