What’s the Rush?

I have never seen students in such a rush to do math.  Before they have even finished writing the number used for a calculation they are punching the calculator to get to the answer as quick as they can.  But they get lost in what the number represents and don’t know where to go next.  Slow Down and be Neat!  Its a concept that never really occurred to me until I’d spent a decent amount of time tutoring chemistry, in particular empirical formula calculations, basic stoichiomestry, limiting reactant, etc. and have been forcing my students to not only obey the golden rule chemistry math (i.e. “every number needs a unit guys!!), but also to neatly right on their equations and conversions.  Boy what a difference it makes.  You can literally see what to do next fall into place when they take the painstaking time to neatly write things out.  In fact, what has been really sinking in has been that if they carefully right out units “all the way” (i.e. not just “mg”, but “mg Na”) the math just kind of falls into place.  There is a natural tendency to rush to do the math.  It is a trend we have been bucking and working to do the math last.  For folks who like to rush (something in the past I have been guilty of myself), it is a hard habit to create but in the end it turns dividends!

Mastering Vocab and the 3F Rule

A large contingent of the students I tutor are those competing for entry into the nursing program, which means they are all taking A&P and stressed to the max.  Now it’s true that a lot of anatomy can be rote memorization.  But there are 2 major concepts I have been trying to hammer home:

1) Learn Your Roots

The amount of vocab in A&P (and science in general) can be very intimidating.  But if you can learn root words, you can quickly master more than you think you can.  Learn that lysis means “to break” and you can quickly master glycolysis, hydrolysis, lysosome, etc.  Just to name a few.  Learn “gly” or “glyco” hints at sugar and you are well on your way to glycolysis, glycogen, etc.  Learn that most enzymes end with the suffix “ase” and you can quickly identify them on site.  It is a simple concept, but it is shocking the eureka moments I see whenever I explain it to students.  It can really help give them a running start at what they think a new word means…

2) The 3F Rule…”Form follows function”

Again in a effort to simplify things, I have been working a lot on getting students to understand the “flow” of A&P and how amazingly efficient physiological designs are (for the most part; human knees notwithstanding).  A few examples of note from recent sessions:

• The Sarcoplasmic Reticulum is perfectly designed to swath the muscular fiber bundles in a muscle to get uniform contraction across a broad area.
• The spindle fiber machinery of mitosis is really the only logical way you would separate DNA material in a cell.  In a terrific moment, I asked a student “How would you design the process?” as a poor man’s initiation and by golly his design was pretty close!
• The neuron, both its gross morphology as a receiver/transmitter of information, and it’s function as a simple transistor, combined in a web of neurons, is almost exactly how a computer works!
• How could you design a muscle fiber contraction apparatus better than the ratchet-effect of the sliding filament?
• Why is the left ventricle of the human heart so muscular?  Because it has to force blood through the whole body, while he right simply has to get it to the heart of course!
• Plumbers every day install check valves almost identical in design to the tri-cuspid and mitral valves!
• Does not the design of a capillary bed make perfect sense when you realize you want to increase surface area to promote gas exchange?

The Point of It All!

One thing that is great about tutoring is that students have the opportunity the drop survey with comments on how a tutor did in ACE’s “suggestion box”.  I was lucky enough to have one handed to me from my supervisor just the other day from a group of students studying for a mitosis/meiosis quiz.  They wrote how they could not have passed the quiz without me and how they really wished that I taught the class.  It was an amazing feeling and I am comfortable enough with my own masculinity to admit it brought a tear to my eye.

It was nice to it came on the heels of a student the day before that was very frustrated with me that I wouldn’t just give her the answers to her homework and annoyed that I (politely I think) suggested she come back when she had her book, notebook and showed some attempt at trying it on her own.  It can be hard at times to try to show someone how to use a rod and reel when they really just want to be given a fish.

A New First Day

Today was my first day tutoring at the local community college. Given that it was the second day of classes and we had a hurricane yesterday it wasn’t terribly crowded, which was actually kind of nice to be able to sit for awhile with the few students who came in and try and connect with them early on.

The first student I had was working on simple conversions (e.g. how many mm in 3 cm, how may mL in 2 quarts, etc.). He was struggling a bit, partly because he was rushing and partly too because he was getting lost “in the weeds” as they say. He was going into each one somewhat anxiously and getting bogged down in the numbers without first stepping back and figuring out what he was trying to accomplish in a broader sense.

We did a decent number of conversions and I kept trying to get him to write the steps out explicitly, cross out units as he goes, make sure he labels the units with each number, etc. It was funny because skipping steps, not writing out steps, etc. are all the same bad habits I used to do when I was that age. It is just laziness and it is only with the benefit of hindsight now it is clear how much easier chemistry can be when you write out all the details.

It was a good first day. It is so incredibly rewarding, even on a small scale to be able to help someone do something they couldn’t do a few moments before and see that “Eureka!” moment when it clicks in their brain and they own it for the first time.

1st “Website Wednesday”! – Khan Academy

So one of the things I am hoping to do with this blog is get into a rhythm.  Since I am a creature of habit, I thought what I might do is thematize (new word?) posts on various days to help start a rhythm.  For the first, I thought of…wait for it….Website Wednesdays! (inventive I know).  Website Wednesdays would be about websites that I find on the web that I at least think are cool and interesting, be it about biology, pedagogy (fancy word for teaching), or whatever.

So for the first, I wanted to share this website Khan Academy.  It is a way cool website started by this very interesting guy Sal (a former hedge fund analyst).

His mission is to basically provide free instruction on “everything” to whoever wants it.  It started out with him tutoring his nephew remotely, then the lessons went to YouTube and exploded from there.  He quit his job and now is funded partially by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  I had come across his lessons (all short 10 min. segments) while reviewing for taking the Praxis tests.  He has got a really great delivery and has a real knack for explaining complex ideas in simple terms.  He is a natural teacher.  Here is a talk he did at TED a few years ago…

He is expanding the idea into a whole learning algorithm of levels, and tests, etc.  He has developed a whole back-end relational database too for tracking progress and the like.  There are even a few schools it seems using the system as a beta-test I guess.

While I am not sold on the tracking, he did mention one idea in his TED talk video that I found interesting.  The idea of flipping the classroom – homework relationship where “homework” was to watch a short content lecture, take notes, pause-rewind, etc. and the next day’s classroom work was implementing that lecture through activities, group work, problems, etc. with the teacher facilitating and helping out 1:1.  I was intrigued that it took the teacher out of a lecturer role and into an almost full-time facilitator role.  At any rate, it was intriguing…

So check out a few of his lessons – they are great and range anywhere from math, chemistry and bio to history and economics.  Cool stuff!  Keep it up Sal!

This Is Your Brain on Summer

Good article on the potential effects of summer vacation on academic achievement.  The best part of the article is the idea that done correctly, school during the summer can be a fun and engaging experience!

This Is Your Brain on Summer – NYTimes.com.