I asked my students to write to the idea of life lessons they garnered from reading The Maze Runner. Never give up was the theme of their answers. I haven’t given up on doing lab work with my students and today they did behave better than they did the previous lab, yet I wonder what benefits they get from doing the work themselves compared to just demonstrations. I end up buying all the consumables in order to do labs, although the liver was so expensive at 44 cents—not! The lab turned out very good except in first period when we ran out of time to finish up tubes 4 and 5. I may have to demo those two tubes tomorrow for first just to make sure they can see the difference in the reactions due to concentration.
The students are really not going to like me when I tell them that they need to do more extensive writing on the report on this lab. This lab was from HHMI and it was great because it show easily without much effort the reaction of catalase in liver with H2O2 and then in the various tubes we use heat and pH and concentration of substrate to enzyme to see how this makes a difference for observed outcomes.
I was exhausted at the end of the day with prepping for each of the lab periods taking up most of my planning (and this was with help from TA’s I got from another teacher) and part of lunch. Plus my TA in 6th helped me get everything ready for 7th hour today.
I worked on our department action plan today. We are planning forward for the next three years with our hopes and wish lists. It will sure be nice if I can get into that research in optics fellowship this summer to help with lab equipment. I finished my application yesterday. It took me a while to write the essays for the application.
Seems like things are going well for starting the pond on campus. I am glad I have a partner in this operation. When more than one person on campus is involved it seems that people step up and take notice and pitch in.
I finished listening to The Lovely Bones yesterday. I just read a quick synopsis of the movie and it mentions that the character Suzie weights her need for vengeance and the hope her family will heal from her murder as she watches them from heaven. Frankly, in the book I don’t see her desiring vengeance at all and she just watches over her family because that is what she wants to do in heaven. She doesn’t seem to have an agenda for her family at all nor does she really give too much thought to getting back at her murderer.
Well I am done with my musing over today. Interestingly, I had started today’s thought thinking I would write more of my own Life Lessons to add to that other blog I started of that title.
Here is the only one I can come up with for now.
Never give up, try to do each thing you do better than the last time you did it.
Whoa, I think I need to reword this one but I will let it stand for now as the main idea is there. It just doesn’t have the right syntax, nor the right feel to it. I won’t give up on rewriting it. (smiley face)