(Did You) Study for Final Exams?

Why didn’t you?!  Of course that sounds a little cynical from my end, but the fact remains that few students will study for Final Exams and fewer will visit my web sites for help. Makes a teacher wonder why THEY (the teacher) puts so much time and effort into their lessons and in creating fair and valid tests. I could be surfing the net, playing my guitars, teaching my parrot new tricks, binding up wounds from parrot bites received during training, or any number of other activities. Final Exams are a fact of life. They happen at the end of a semester or year in most American High Schools. They happen in jobs when you are expected to be able to perform on your own after receiving some expensive training. They happen when your kid is leaving home after 18+ years and you wonder if you taught them well.Preparing BEFORE the test is smart, responsible, and necessary – that is, if one hopes to achieve a measure of success. Don’t cripple yourself on purpose.Get to it! If you need some help or even pointers, see me before or after school or come to see me during SRT on Monday or Tuesday.

Be…

I haven’t added to this site for a while. Things have been very busy. I am taking an online class through Purdue and have been trying to get students to write for our wiki. The coming week (Feb 6-8) I will be at the Hoosier Association of Science Teachers, Inc. annual conference in Indy. I will be acting as  HASTI Board representative a member of the IABT and also picking up some useful tips and tricks for improving my classes and my teaching.While I am away, oh thou hearty students, there are some things I expect you to be:Be PreparedBe Patient and TolerantBe EngagedBe Excellent!I’ll be checking up on you and then I’ll be seeing you next week! 

Why Do I Have To Learn This?

I hear whining like this all the time.  Considering that Biology is the study of  how YOUR body works, about how YOU get and use energy, about how YOUR genes get transfered from this generation to the next, about how YOU grew in your mother’s womb and continue to develop, and about how YOU fit into the scheme of life on earth, you would  think most students would pick up on the relevancy without having to be directly told…but…I supposed I expect too much.]]] sigh! [[[Here's how Steven Dutchs professor up in Greenbay said it: 

This Course Wasn't Relevant         

"If something as vast as mathematics or science or history can pass through your brain without even scraping the sides on the way through, that's a pretty big hole. Are you sure it's the course that doesn't relate to anything? Our other customers in the community want people who have a good general stock of knowledge they can call on for unexpected needs. Being able to cope with unexpected needs means learning things that may not be immediately needed. You need to stop worrying about whether you need it now and begin worrying about whether your boss might need it later. A ten year old girl in Thailand saved hundreds of lives on December 26, 2004. She had just learned about tsunamis in school, recognized the warning signs, and convinced her parents to warn the resort management. As a result there were almost no casualties at her resort. In all likelihood none of her classmates will ever have need to know about tsunamis. A number of indigenous groups in the region escaped the tsunami with almost no casualties. They recognized the warning signs, which had been passed along through generations with no tsunamis, until finally that "irrelevant" knowledge became relevant." 

from: http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/nosymp.htm     [_Not an official UW-Green Bay site_]