It's Not Magic, It's Science!

This was a good week, but it didn't start out that way. Monday afternoon I was teaching a class when I got a call from the principal.  She had gotten a phone call from a parent about the grades her son was getting in my class.  It seems as though this parent had poured over the online grade book with a calculator and had a few things to say about my grade book.  This wasn't the first time I had heard from this parent.  And I was really bummed that she had not talked to me about it but had gone right over my head to the principal.  This incident sparked in me one of those teaching crises of faith that I go through every now and again.  I love what I do but is it worth it? Why didn't I do something with my life that depended on my output alone rather than what I can get 150 13-year-olds to do in 40 minutes a day? I'll never get promoted. I 'll never get a bonus.  And on and on and on in my head..... On Tuesday I came into school and I was still feeli...

"Ms. Cimini! The M fell off!" When I heard that I thought the kids were joking.  My response was something like "So, there's an M just floating in the water?" I went over to investigate and sure enough, there was an M floating in the water.  Somehow, the M had come off the M&M intact and was just floating there. Everyone stared at it for a moment, took a few pictures then went back to dissolving M & Ms for science. Chemistry was happening. It was fun, fascinating and the students were learning. The M fell off (look between the O and L) Last year, I taught middle school chemistry for the first time.  I had taught regents chemistry years before and in teaching middle school chem for the first time I fell to a lot of the bad habits I had developed when teaching high school.  There were a lot of Power Points and worksheets. But this is my year of trying new things. This year I wanted to teach chemistry in a way that was going to make the kids excited t...

Welcome to my blog! Each post will have some thoughts on teaching, science and stuff (but mostly teaching and science). So, away we go! The Teaching Section This has been my year of new things.  After spending a lifetime as a diehard New Yorker, my husband got a new job and we moved to New Jersey.  Of all places, Jersey.  As a New Yorker, moving to New Jersey was like moving to another country.  Up until last July I had lived my entire life in the best of NYC's boroughs, Queens.  Sure, I went away to school and spent a year living in a cabin in the Massachusetts woods (my Thoreau year?) but my drivers license always said NYC.  But now, I sit in my suburban New Jersey neighborhood, and an NJ license sits in my wallet.  I miss Queens terribly but I have a beautiful house with a backyard and square footage I could have only dreamed of in NYC. My suburban jungle. For 8 years I worked at a school in my Queens neighborhood, only a mile from home. ...