Combating Summertime Boredom

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Sarah

As a college professor I have the option to take off about 8 weeks during the summer. I look forward every year to spending this time with my kiddos. During the school year we are constantly running from one activity to the next. It is so nice to be able to relax and have some space in our schedule. That said, I get bored easily. By this point in the summer my kiddos are really starting to pick at each other. This is often a recipe for disaster. In this post I want to share some of my strategies to combat summer boredom and to keep those young minds nimble.

If it were up to my kids, they would watch TV/play video games all day long. Honestly, that would make my life so easy! I could get so much done while they were complete zombies. However, I don’t want to melt their little brains so we try to limit the screen time in our house to two hours per day. The american average is greater than 7 hours.

Activity Books

When I get up in the morning I need time to drink my coffee and get myself psyched up for the day. The kids often get up and immediately want to turn on the devices. One way that I manage to limit screen time is that I require my kids to eat breakfast, get dressed and spend sometime completing activities in summer bridge workbooks before they turn anything on. These can be found at your local bookstore or on Amazon. There are lots of options. I have one from Kumon, another from Sylvan Learning Centers and one from Brain Quest. I picked ones that corresponded to grade level and offered a variety of activities.

Visit the Local Library
I must admit, I do not use the library much at all during the school year. It is just too much for me to keep track of all the books checked out and stay on top of due dates. In the summer, on the other hand, I make a point to visit the library at least once a week. Most public libraries offer free summer activities for kids and my kids love to bring home new books to read. The variety helps us to keep reading all through the summer! One way to stay on top of the chaos is to have a designated place in the house for the library books. We have a crate where we keep all of our books so it is easy to grab on the way out of the house on library day.

Play to Your Strengths!
I am a microbiologist and I teach general biology classes. I purchased a small digital microscope that we have been playing with this summer, exploring stuff that we can find in/around our homes. I have also adapted some of the labs that I use with my college kids for home use. I’ll save the details of those experiments for a later blog post, but here are some of the things we found in the backyard yesterday.

The underside of a mushroom.
Aphids from our milkweed plants.
Soil from the backyard.
Mosquito larva (don’t forget to empty all standing water!)

Check out the Local Attractions
We are very fortunate to live in Central Florida. We have lots of things that we can do outside the house. Some are free and others are incredibly expensive (I’m looking at you Mickey). We have memberships to the local zoo and to the science center. We also try to visit some of the lesser known attractions. Last summer we went to Gatorland. That place is so awesome! It is a look into what we would call “Old Florida” complete with gator wrestling!

Documentaries/Online Learning Programs
21st century kids are constantly exposed to electronic media. I try to be intentional about the type of media that my kids consume. Sometimes I let them choose a cartoon or show from the offerings on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, but there is so much crap out there! I prefer that they choose shows/activities that are learning centered. For my pre-Kindergartner I like StoryBots (Netflix). She has learned so much from it! The older kids will even watch it wither her.

My fifth grader loves Jonathan Bird. He makes documentaries about sea life that are freely available through his website or through YouTube. Here is our favorite episode:

We also subscribe to the Smithsonian Channel and there are tons of great documentaries available for streaming through Netflix, Amazon and YouTube.

For learning games my kids enjoy the Prodigy math game and learning to program using Scratch ( https://scratch.mit.edu/ )

What sort of activities do you do in the summertime? I would love to know!

-Sarah

Inspiring Curiosity

Posted on June 15, 2019 by Sarah

We initially started this blog in 2012. I was a brand new college professor and this platform became an opportunity for my husband and I to share our thoughts and ideas on education and technology. We took the conversations that we had at the dinner table and put them into this public forum. It was a project that we could share. The last time I posted was in 2014, I had just finished my first year in a tenure track position and was getting ready for the arrival of our third baby. It’s true what they say, three is the hardest number of kids. The long and the short of it is that life has been incredibly busy over the last five years. While Michael has continued to maintain the blog, I have struggled with juggling parenting and full time teaching. Throw in an interstate move, a new job, and some extra teaching jobs on the side, and I just did not have the bandwidth to write.

Things are beginning to settle down a bit (I hope) and I feel the need to start contributing again. Two years ago I started my current position at an awesome institution dedicated to high quality education. They invest heavily in faculty development and provide plenty of opportunities for me to hone my craft as a teacher. I have learned so much and I want to share those ideas with others, so here I am, back in the blogosphere.

Michael got super excited the other day when I told him that I wanted to start writing again. For him, this blog has been a labor of love. We sat down over breakfast, before the kids got up, and talked about the directions we wanted to take things. I am a biology professor and he is a computer programmer. We both naturally lean towards topics in STEM, but we don’t want to limit ourselves to that. We tossed around some ideas, and came up with our new catch phrase:

Inspiring Curiosity through Creative Projects and Exploration

As both a teacher and a parent, it is my hope that I can inspire people to get excited about learning. One of my biggest frustrations is when I encounter a student that sees my class as an obligation for getting a degree and not an opportunity to learn new things. I want to tap in to people’s natural curiosity. With curiosity comes joy in learning and discovery. I want to help people to find awe and wonder in the world around them. I want to use this blog and social media channels to this end. In this world of fear, suspicion and tribalism, I want to encourage others to think outside of themselves and open themselves up to new ideas and perspectives.

I am not sure where this all will lead, but I will leave you with this video that encompasses what I am hoping to achieve. It is of a student seeing Euglena (a microscopic, single celled creature) under the microscope for the first time. The first voice you will hear will be mine, followed by my student’s. I love that I captured this moment, because you can just hear her joy in her laughter. It is more moments like these that I seek.

Stepping Outside the Mainstream

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Sarah

Today is the first day of school for our boys (I know, early right?!). It has been quite the journey leading to this day and I spent some time reflecting on it last night as I laid out clothes and carefully packed lunchboxes. As both a student and a teacher, the first day of school is one of my favorites. It signifies new beginnings and the opportunity to learn new and exciting things. I’ve always loved school in general and I hope my children will have a similar love of learning. That said, when our older son started kindergarten last year I did not expect it to be such an emotional roller coaster.

Instead of enjoying his first year of formal education, I felt like we barely survived it. He is a bright, energetic little boy who happens to have a July birthday. I had no idea what a disadvantage this would be for him. He did fine on the kindergarten admissions test, but he was the smallest kid in his class and he just did not have the emotional maturity that his teachers expected him to have. Over the course of the year we were bombarded with notes home about how he couldn’t sit still and focus on his tasks. Honestly, we felt that we received more negative comments than positive. We felt like complete failures as parents. We felt helpless.

Our public school district is one of the best in the region. This was one of the best primary schools in the county and his teacher was an award winning teacher, yet, it seemed like something was going terribly wrong. More and more, it felt like we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Despite all of this, our son never seemed to lose his enthusiasm for learning. One of our biggest fears was that he would learn to hate school. We knew that we would have to make a change.

Our family made the decision to pull out of the public school and switch to a Montessori school. Since students in the primary classroom starts at 3 years old, both of our boys will be going there. It was a long discernment process. I don’t think it is the right decision for every family(or even one that many have the luxury to make), but we feel like it is right for us. Montessori educational principles encourage creativity and independence. This is in contrast to what we experienced at the public school which felt very much like the “factory mindset” that Seth Goden speaks about (see his talk on education here). At the new school there is an emphasis on personal development and self-reliance, rather than on standards and tests. I feel like each student is treated as an individual rather than a member of a cohort.

It makes me a little sad that we are giving up on public education, but at the same time I think that it is important for us to step outside the mainstream. This is going to be an interesting year for us and I look forward to sharing some our experiences with our readers. Just another perspective among many 🙂

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Summer Reading

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Sarah

After suffering through the semester from, well you know (see my last post here), I have not been inclined to do much reading or thinking about teaching. That said, I have read some interesting books during my summer break and I’d like to share them with you. When I get snippets of free time like I’ve had for the last 6 weeks or so, I tend to binge read. Some of these titles hold academic interest, while others were purely for entertainment. I realize that a couple are classified as “Young Adult Fiction”. Judge if you must.

Honestly, I feel a little vulnerable sharing the list with you 🙂 You can learn a lot about a person by looking at their bookshelf. I firmly believe that books have the capability to expand our worldview and open our minds to new ideas in a way that TV and the internet cannot. Books allow you to completely immerse yourself in a subject. When I’m reading the rest of the world just kind of falls away. That said, books can influence your thoughts and actions well after you are finished reading them. I’m still digesting the material but I do have a few initial thoughts that I’d like to share.

– The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

– The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman

These two books were both set during World War Two. The first was a work of fiction, while the second was non-fiction. Both illustrated the power of fear and discrimination that dominated Europe during that time. They also provided examples of people that did not give in to the mass hysteria of Naziism and instead made choices that they believed were right, but put themselves and their families in harm’s way. Interestingly, both also emphasized the importance of education. In The Book Thief, the main character learns to read, while in The Zookeeper’s Wife, an underground school is maintained despite being outlawed by the occupying German forces.

– The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

– The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy by Seth Mnookin

These two books are centered on infectious diseases. The Ghost Map chronicles the emergence of the field epidemiology during a cholera outbreak in Victorian England. The Panic Virus, on the other hand, is set in the modern day and examines the many different factors that underlie the phenomenon of the antivaccine culture. As a microbiologist, it is hard for me to imagine a world in which people believed that miasma and vapors caused disease rather than microbes. I also struggle with understanding why parents make the choice to forgo vaccination in the face of scientific evidence that contradicts their point of view. Both of these books emphasize for me the importance of education, not just in terms of facts, but also teaching students how to think scientifically.

– Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A Novel by Maria Semple

– The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Ok, so honestly, I don’t really have anything profound to say about these two books. They were both read for their entertainment value (Who reads sob inducing, romantic, teen fiction for entertainment? Me, that’s who).

What books are you reading this summer? I tend to choose books based on other people’s suggestions so I’d love to know what you are enjoying!!!

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Survival Mode

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Sarah

Hey there. Remember me? I’m that crazy biology professor that used to blog on this site. I just survived the semester from H-E-double hockey sticks. Survived is a good word for it. I can’t say that I was the most inspired educator this Spring. Creativity and ingenuity kindof went out the classroom window. Instead, I relied heavily on old standbys and previous semesters’ work.

Let me give you some context. I was teaching two courses this semester. One that I have taught every semester since I began teaching, and a brand new prep (the subject of my last blog post in January). Teaching the new course was akin to being thrown into the deep end of a pool without floaties having just a rudimentary ability to swim. The person who taught the course before me didn’t give me much to build off of. She didn’t use a textbook and had not established a lab curriculum that I could easily follow. Basically, I had to start from scratch. This alone is intimidating, but I was up for the challenge.

But wait, there’s more! Let’s add in the weather. We live in Georgia. You may remember the the great Atlanta snowpocalypse of 2014. Fortunately, we live far enough from the city that we didn’t suffer through the horrible traffic; however, we had no less than four “snow” days at the beginning of the semester, two of which were days that we were scheduled for labs, which are hard to make up. I found myself making adjustments to the syllabus on the fly.

On top of all of it, I was incredibly sick for the first half of the semester. There was the stomach flu, an awful head cold, a sinus infection, the stomach flu again, pinkeye, a crazy rash all over my body, and oh did I mention that I’m pregnant with baby #3? Morning sickness is enough to suck any sort of motivation from your soul, but add all the illness on top of it and I was a bit of a zombie in the classroom. I found myself just praying that I could get through the semester without doing irreparable damage. Blogging just didn’t happen.

The one thing that I can be thankful for is that my microbiology course is so well organized at this point that I could let it mostly drive itself. I had all of the lectures already recorded and posted on YouTube. The lab curriculum was well established. I could copy homework assignments from the previous semester and I simply followed the schedule that I had been working to perfect the last several years. Am I completely satisfied with the way it turned out? Nope. There are lots of little changes that I want to make here and there, but this was not the semester to do it.

Now that it is all over I am taking some time to reflect and reevaluate. Summer is great for that. I’m also planning for the future. The next six months or so promise to be interesting. Coming soon, I will be teaching microbiology again during a short, 4-week summer term. Right now I am trying to figure out how to fit 16 weeks of material into that small space. This Fall will be another unique situation. Baby #3 is due at the beginning of September, which means I will be taking most of the semester off. I will be leaving my courses in the hands of one of the best micro instructors in our department, but the logistics of course sharing should be interesting at best.

All of that was to get you up to speed on what’s been going on with me and to explain my absence. I’m hoping that I can return to blogging with renewed enthusiasm now that I have a little bit of breathing room. Well, at least until September, but I’m trying not to think about that right now.

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The trap of perfectionism

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Sarah

Early this morning, I woke from a nightmare. In the dream, I had landed a job at the university where I had done my PhD research. In this job, I was supposed to be teaching a large (300 students) lecture course in microbiology. This was the course that I had been a teaching assistant in during grad school. It was the first day of class and I had just handed out the syllabus. Just as I was about to speak, one of the co-teachers (I didn’t know there were co-teachers until that point) expressed dismay at the number of exams I had scheduled. Apparently they usually only gave two exams a semester. I had totally messed up the normal routine. Then I realized that I had scheduled the entire course using the wrong textbook. Clearly, I was wholly unprepared for the class. It was at this point where I was backpedaling and trying to make sense of the situation that I woke up.

I frequently have dreams like this at the beginning of each semester. I spend a lot of time fretting over the courses that lie ahead and all of the work necessary to plan them out. I’ve dreamed about not having the syllabus ready in time or even showing up to class inappropriately dressed. All of this is an expression of my anxiety over wanting to deliver the best course possible, but not feeling ready. I have learned that I am a bit of a perfectionist. I didn’t realize this until a friend of mine was telling me about the perfectionist cycle, also known as the three P’s: perfectionism, procrastination, and paralysis. It describes my personality too well. I can get so wrapped up in wanting a lesson plan or lab activity to be perfect that I put off planning because I’m not sure how to make it just right. This eventually leads to decision paralysis and then at the last minute I throw it all together.

I’m currently in that position. This semester I am teaching a course in cell and molecular biology for majors. It is one of the core courses for the degree in biology at our institution. This is the first time that I have been asked to teach a course like this and I want to do it right. I’ve got a pretty good plan in place for the lecture portion of the class, but I am struggling with the lab. I have looked at what other professors have done and I’ve explored the curriculum resources offered from various sources, but I just can’t seem to make a decision. It’s crunch time. I’ve got to make decisions this weekend so that supplies can be ordered in time. Hence the anxiety ridden dreams.

What can we do about the perfectionist trap? There are some great articles addressing this very topic. Here is one from Inside Higher Ed that specifically addresses the problem within the context of academia. For me, I have to remind myself that sometimes its best just to write the first sentence or move forward on a project accepting that I will need to make adjustments and changes along the way. For me it can be a matter of just getting that forward inertia to get things rolling. Will my classes be perfect? Nope. But it is ok, and accepting that is an important aspect of avoiding the trap of perfectionism.

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Closing out the term- Reflecting on what worked and what failed miserably

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Sarah

Tomorrow is my last exam of the semester. Woohoo! Freedom! I’m not sure who’s more excited, me the professor, or my students. As always, it is a good idea to take some time to reflect and think about what has gone well this term and those things that probably should not be done again.

The Good.

I really enjoyed my microbiology class. I had several students this semester that had taken introductory biology with me in the past. I felt like the rapport in the classroom was great and I enjoyed getting to know a few of the students better. Some of them had really interesting stories to tell. Overall, the class went pretty smoothly. I use a flipped classroom model, where the students watch videos outside of class that are more of the traditional lecture format, and I use the classroom time for activities and group assignments. I also use clickers (we use Turning Point at our institution) which the students like and I can quickly find out where their weak points are. I still struggle with getting the students to prepare outside of the classroom, but I think the model is working. I am happy with the grade distributions and I feel like the level of difficulty is where it needs to be.

The Bad.

In an attempt to limit the amount of paper that sits on my desk each term, I started having students turn in lab assignments to me online. In principle this seems like a good idea, but as it turns out, it makes it much harder and takes longer for me to grade them. The students also seemed to struggle with the process of converting files to PDF and submitting them to the online drop box. I’m not sure if I’m going to throw this idea out completely next term or if I’m going to tweak it to make it easier for all of the parties involved.

The Ugly.

I really seemed to struggle this term with my Introductory Biology course. In general that class is a tough nut to crack. Most of the students are not at all interested in science and are just taking the course because they need a lab science and they were terrified of chemistry. Over the summer term I had come up with an idea to build fill-able outlines for my student to use during my lectures instead of just giving them my PowerPoint slides. My students really struggle with reading the textbook and capturing the main ideas so I wanted to give them a tool that they could use to guide their studies. It seemed to work well with my summer class. I really thought that it would be awesome for helping my students to get the main ideas. I was SO wrong. They focused so much on the outlines when I lectured that I don’t think they ever really heard me. It was terrible. I’d get stopped multiple times during lectures to go back in and fill in the blanks for them. Then, at the end of class, several students would come to the front of the room wanting me to give them my outline so they could get the exact wording that they missed. Talk about encouraging rote memorization. Maybe this would work better for my flipped classroom where they can stop the lecture and go back and fill in the blanks, but it did not work at all for my traditional lecture class. Fortunately I am not teaching this course in the Spring so I have some time to figure out a new strategy.

I am looking forward to the next few weeks of planning out the Spring term. I love to tweak my courses to make them better and I think I have a lot of material to work with after this semester.

Highlights from NABT

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Sarah

Last week I had the great opportunity to attend the annual conference of the National Association of Biology Teachers in Atlanta. I learned a lot and was pretty overwhelmed by the end of each day. For my next few posts I want to spend a little time sharing some of my highlights from the experience. Today I will start with two talks that I attended on the first day of the conference.

“Climate Change, Oceans, and Waterborne Infectious Diseases: Prediction and Prevention”. Rita R. Colwell, Ph.D. This was the first session that I attended. Dr. Colwell is an amazing scientist and a former director of the National Science Foundation. Her topic, waterborne infectious diseases, is something that is near and dear to my heart. If there is one thing that we could do to improve overall global health, it would be to provide universal access to clean drinking water.

Dr. Colwell’s talk focused on cholera and how climate influences the incidence of the disease. She challenged the idea that it is a disease caused solely by inadequate sewage treatment, but pointed out that the causative agent, Vibrio cholerae, is commonly found in aquatic environments associated with copepods. During periods of increased temperate and rainfall, resulting increases in phytoplankton lead to increased numbers of copepods, and in turn, more Vibrio cholerae. They can actually predict outbreaks of cholera by monitoring environmental conditions like sea surface, temperature, salinity, rainfall, and chlorophyll.

As a teacher, what I took away from this talk was the importance of presenting concepts within a global context. It can be very easy to zero in on a particular topic and focus on the fine details, but if you don’t take a step back and put the concepts into context, you can get a skewed understanding. I was very familiar with how Vibrio cholerae causes disease, but I had never really contemplated the environmental context outside of the importance of clean drinking water and proper sewage disposal. I love learning about familiar topics with a fresh perspective!

“Lessons of a Half Life”. Paul Andersen a.k.a. Bozeman Biology. Paul Andersen is kindof a rock star in biology education. It was funny, people were lining up for pictures with him. If you are not familiar with his work, check out bozemanscience.com. He does these amazing YouTube videos on a wide variety of topics related to biology. They are great for reinforcing material in my introductory biology course.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from his talk. To be honest, I felt a little intimidated at this conference. I was not trained as an educator. My education and training have focused solely on biology and biomedical science, not teaching. I do my best as a teacher, and slowly, but surely I feel like I am getting my footing, but I was definitely over my head during several of the sessions that I attended. Mr. Andersen’s talk, however, was very approachable. He talked about his journey as a teacher, starting out at a school with around 50 students, to moving on to a school with several thousand (side note, my nephew will be attending that school next year, yikes!). One big take away from his talk was the importance of seeking out positive influences in your teaching journey. He is very interested in integrating technology in the classroom and formed an informal learning community with fellow teachers to bounce around and share ideas. This is something that I am excited about because we will be starting our own teaching circles next semester here on campus. I am hoping that they will be as fruitful for me as his was for him!

Those were just a few of the talks that I attended. Next time I will write about the sessions I attended on implementing the ideas outlined in the document “2011 Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action”

Ownership in education

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Sarah

How do we encourage our students to take ownership of their education? Over and over again I encounter students that want to sit passively in the classroom and receive knowledge. They expect me to tell them what they need to know and then the memorize the bare minimum necessary to pass the course. As soon as the semester is over, any knowledge they might have gained is quickly lost. This model of “education” is inherently flawed. It does not encourage life long learning, subject literacy, or critical thinking. Instead, it generates mindless drones.

My job is not to make students learn. I cannot do that against their will. Instead I see myself as a sort of personal trainer. I can point students in the direction of knowledge, but I cannot make them think. They must take an active role in the process. If someone buys a membership to a gym but never uses it, they will never get into shape. The same concept applies to the classroom. A student can pay thousands of dollars in tuition but never learn a thing.

As teachers there are many tools we can use in the classroom to encourage active learning. I am by no means an expert but here are a few of the things that I am trying to use to help my students take ownership of their education:

1) Make it relevant and relate able. One section of my introductory biology course where students really seem to get interested in the material is genetics. The subject is not easy but they can easily see how it can apply to their own lives. We spend a lot of time talking about inherited diseases like sickle cell anemia. I tell them stories about friends of mine that have a little boy with cystic fibrosis. I make it personal. There is a great Nova documentary called “Cracking Your Genetic Code” that discusses some of the real life implications of genetic testing. Together, these things provide my students with the context they need to see why learning this material is important.

2) Don’t talk at them, talk with them. I am totally guilty of this, especially this semester, but it is important to allow your students to engage in a conversation relevant to the course material. One thing that can help is to use case studies. I do this more in my microbiology course, but there are a lot of resources available for general biology courses as well (One great resource a comes from the College of Charleston and can be found here). Again, these provide relevance, while encouraging discussion.

3) Be smart about homework. In my introductory biology course I am using an online homework system that allows me to build pre lecture assignments that are designed to engage the students in the material before they come to class. They are relatively short And it is my hope that they might actually crack open the textbook before they enter the classroom each week. I also provide post lecture assignments that examine how well they understood the lecture content. I have mixed results with this approach. Some students seem to be much more engaged in the classroom after completing the assignments, but mostly I get a lot of complaints about how much work they have to do each week. I hope to continue to tweak this process in the future. I want to bring more of the homework problems into the classroom and use them as a platform for discussion.

Key Question: What have you found that can help engage students more deeply into the course material? One thing that I am hoping to explore more in the future is to use inquiry based labs. I’ll save that for another post later.

Frustration

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Sarah

This morning we had a DNA extraction exercise in my Introductory Biology course. I asked my students where DNA is located in our cells (answer: the nucleus). They stared at me blankly. We are more than halfway through the semester and my students cannot answer that very basic question. Clearly there is something wrong with my teaching strategy. Or, there is something wrong with them. Or, maybe it was because it was 9am and nobody wanted to be the one to speak up, but this is a prime example of the frustration that I have encountered this semester.

For all of the effort that I put into this class, I feel like I should have better results. Over and over again I have tried to encourage them to study. I had mid-term meetings with each student to talk about study strategies. I give them homework assignments to re-enforce lecture material. I give them study guides and keep my office door open so they can get help when they need it. They don’t come. I’m not sure what else I can do to help them to be successful. Some days I feel like I am teaching in an empty lecture hall.

So what am I to do when faced with this sort of frustration? Here are some things that I do when grades are down and I feel like the worst teacher in the world:

1) Reevaluate. Take time after an exam or a major assessment and reflect on what went well and what did not. Sometimes just breaking it down can help you to figure out where you might need to use a new strategy. This can be hard in the middle of the semester where you’ve already established your syllabus and grading policies, but it is important to maintain some flexibility and be willing to make minor changes. There is no sense in doing the same thing over and over when it just isn’t working.

2) Change things up. Variety is the spice of life right? Sometimes we can get stuck in a rut. If we teach the same thing over and over it can get very monotonous. What can you do to change your routine? For me, this means that I am not teaching introductory biology next semester. Instead I will be teaching an upper level course in cells and molecular biology. I am looking forward to the change in pace. I love teaching the non-majors, but I think I’m getting a little burnt out. I hope to return to the course in the Fall with fresh ideas and renewed enthusiasm.

3) Trust in the process. Sometimes you can do everything possible and your students just won’t learn. If you are confident in your teaching strategy, then you have to accept that some students just aren’t going to be successful. There are more reasons for this than I can count. You are not the center of their universe. Students have lives outside the classroom and sometimes those lives get in the way. Unfortunately, many students are at your school to get a degree, but not to learn. Just as you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. You can lead a student to knowledge, but you can’t make them think.

What sort of encouragement can you give me? I am open to suggestions!

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