On “Evaluations” for 2020-21 Chemistry

In my last post, I mentioned that I did unit exams differently, and that students largely liked them. Not just that they liked taking tests this way, but in the end-of-year evaluation, many in both my Honors and AP Chemistry classes specifically remarked that the Evaluations were fun (!?!)

So, how did I trick my students into liking tests create Evaluations that felt good for students and actually measured some knowledge?

Evaluations were kinda like week-long projects. Because my district was remote for much of the year, I gave students some flexibility with dates, but not with content and standards. I’d give a rough topic or a set of starting conditions, then gave them an outline of ideas to cover, including a rubric for how I’d be looking at things. Also, some of the Evaluations were a little weird or out of the norm, so they didn’t feel like tests.

For example, the first APChem Evaluation covered the first unit, which was largely review from Honors Chem. All of this stuff was easily Google-able, so I needed them to explain how everything worked conceptually. So I asked them to choose two concepts and make analogies to two different texts they’ve recently read. AND, they had to be drawn in cartoon-format (stick figures encouraged!) Since many of the chemical concepts dealt with structure and interactions of atoms/particles, analogies were pretty easy to find with nearly any text. Points were awarded on clarity of connections between chemistry and texts, as well how the analogies didn’t work, and a nice citation at the end.

For a mathy unit like stoichiometry, I took an idea I’d read somewhere (sorry, but I don’t remember where!) and used student ID numbers to generate quasi-random assignment to a list of reactants and amounts of starting materials. Students then produced a video explaining how they calculated the amounts of products, the limiting/excess reactants, what happens when the limiting reactant is doubled, and a particle diagram of their particular reaction.

Basically, I emphasized students’ explanations over calculations. They had to be able to explain, either in writing or verbally, how something worked. This also allowed me to help students with tricky parts, so that we could discuss similar problems and they could still complete the work on their own, and they knew whether they knew it or not.

Did Evaluations take forever to grade? Yes. But they were far more entertaining (and dare I say, fun??) to work through. Could students still cheat? Yes. But especially when I asked for explanations to extend analogies/knowledge, it was pretty obvious who hadn’t really done the work. Could students get a re-do? Yes. They had to fix the broken/missing parts, explain how they got their original answers, and explain how the new-and-improved versions were better.

I kinda want to keep Evaluations next year, but I also know that I’ll have to change them up a bit. However, I think it will be worth it for them and me.

Social justice in chemistry, year 2

It’s Year 2 of this project. Last year, I used Moses Rifkin’s curriculum around race (specifically, Black and White American chemists). While the conversations were great, it was uncomfortable because of my school’s demographics. We have very few Black students, and I didn’t  moderate properly around some issues (this was pointed out to me later by a student). I had talked with the Black students in my class before the unit happened, but I was still pretty uncomfortable with basically having them anecdotally represent a whole race. While I believe I could moderate and check those conversations more effectively this year, I instead chose to use Moses’ outline with some of John Burk’s resources around gender this year. I have more than 50% women in my AP Chemistry class (interestingly, this demographic is different from the AP Physics and AP CS classes, taught by men, at my school). I wanted to have more students actually in the “minority” class we were discussing, as well as having my (fortunately limited sexism) experience as a woman in sciences.

Day 1: Intro, Ground Rules, and Numbers

I tried to get my chairs in a rough circle to facilitate conversations (I didn’t do it last year, and it was hard to get some people to talk with each other). I have a very large and engaged group this year, and it’s exciting to hear their ideas.

I asked for names of chemists, and got the usual: Marie Curie, Rutherford, other scientists in names of Laws. But no living scientists (one student suggested me, which is flattering, but no one knew a famous living chemist). We discussed what it means that the first name is a woman, and the rest are men. Also, we couldn’t think of a single living chemist, other than a couple of relatives. They remembered that I’d brought up Madame Lavoisier and others in class.

Trying to find a picture of a real chemist, not a stock photo is interesting, too. Online searches for “chemistry” or “chemist” get lots of pictures of white women and men, intently examining food coloring in test tubes. The pictures looked too staged and clean to be real chemists (I think I’m doing something right, having this be a justification).

Day 2: Stereotypes and Perceptions

What does it mean that approximately 53% of college graduates with chemistry degrees are women? Our class demographics (about 42% men, 58% women) match this idea. A few students said that obviously, the newer generations of college graduates will start bringing up the employment numbers (approximately 28% women chemists). But when we looked at how long the 50/50 split had been going, questions remained about why women are underrepresented in chemistry-related jobs.

What is “stereotype threat” and are women seen as “threatening”? Someone (these are juniors and seniors) brought up affirmative action.

Day 3: Cyclic systems

Pay gaps (visualized here in Scientific American). Are they justifiable by “maternity taxes” and women choosing to care for family? Do they then keep women out of furthering their pay? other education? their kids’ educations?

Are perceptions of women’s equality (e.g., while speaking) accurate? I thought about using the AreMenTalkingTooMuch app during class, but didn’t want to alienate or degrade conversations.

Day 4: Privilege

Discussed the articles they’d read for today. A lot of students thought that the Bic pens for her were fictitious things.

I set up Jess Lifshitz’s library book activity. Like last year, I let the whole class go at matching 26 books with my 26 vague descriptions. A few titles were put into multiple slots, but after about 10 minutes, they matched about two-thirds of the books to the descriptions. What did it mean that titles were “correct” or “incorrectly” matched? Does that mean something about how we make judgements on actual people?

I wonder if I could do this book activity with only-animal or non-human illustrations, looking for gender roles and expectations.

Day 5: IAT debrief

Students turned in their results from the Gender-Career and Gender-Sci/LangArts tests. As a group, we skewed toward associating men with careers and women with family, and men with science and women with language arts. Several students commented that the results were what they expected to see. Based on yesterday’s conversations around current statistics appearing about even, I asked about how our group results match up with our demographics and individuals’ expectations of particular college majors. What do our “expectations” have to do with how we collectively think of ourselves as a society? We discussed articles they’d read, relating to IAT and its assessment as a tool and as a resource. Also, about how biases begin, and their (probable) historical use.

Day 6: closure(?)

We took a gander at everyone’s posters. Lots of women. A couple people noted that it’s hard to find a random chemist online with enough biographical and research-related info to make a poster, noting that everyone they found was a university researcher. We discussed proprietary information and ties to industry, and wondered if university women were more or less tied than similar men.

I had them fill out a post-course-survey.

 

Round up:

My students are what my grandma would have called “intelligent, but not smart”, meaning they’re well-read and well-educated, but have no idea how to deal with people in the real world. (Grandma applied this to me and my cousin; I was the intelligent one, he was the smart one.) Academically, my students know what sexism (or racism or other -isms) is, how to dissect it in novels and essays, and whether they’ll face it or not (and many already have). Academically, they know how to deal with bullies and bigots, and how to help others, but they were all pretty scared to realize that now they need to start acting on these ideas. I’m also in their boat. Choosing to do this unit took me a few years to get the guts to prepare it, and I still only do it with my AP students (11th and 12th graders I’ve had for two years of classes) after the exam. I want to expand it to my Honors students (every 10th grader in the building): I think this is my way of starting conversations in my “intelligent” and introverted way.

This year felt very different. Instead of being more comfortable with using the curriculum a second time, it was essentially brand-new. Also, this year I was in the minority group and it made me think really hard about how to present ideas, whether I was over-sharing, whether I was getting too soap-box-y. There was a part of the class that was very certain of the everything-is-fine-sexism-is-dying-out persuasion. To his credit, one student was brave enough to say so during class, and students responding to him shared examples and reasons that made him apologize and start to re-think some things. One day when students were sleepy and responding less, I overstepped and turned preachy. I apologized the next day for adding too much of myself.

I’ve got so much privilege that I haven’t been in this position before. I’ve never had to tell someone what my experiences have been and why they matter. I’ve never had to hold myself back when “my generation” (meaning: I’m old!) was blamed over societal sexism and norms. Getting knocked down was hard manage, especially while trying to not push my own views too hard. I’m obviously not the first person to notice this balance, but it was my first time that I really cared about.

When I teach this unit again, I want to be more conscious of how it feels to be in the spoken-about-group rather than just the moderator. The anonymous class feedback I received was largely positive, and a majority of students said that we need to talk more about things they’ll see outside of our school-bubble, especially in non-humanities classes. I’m excited to continue this work, creating a modular version for other teachers to use. We need to have some conversations around how the identity of the presenter (and identity of the students) will drastically the contents and conversations of the unit.

 

 

Social justice in chemistry

I’m relatively new to social justice, but when I realized what it involves, I knew that I needed to bring it to my classes. A few years ago through Twitter, I stated following a number of teachers and leaders who do and embody this work. I’m nowhere close to their levels of expertise, elegance, or confidence (yet), but I decided that this was the year for me to start bringing it to my classes.

Moses Rifkin is awesome.

Besides being a super nice guy, he has been doing social justice in his physics classes for a number of years. I finally met him at NSTA last fall and had a lovely afternoon discussing things and attending social justice sessions. He generously provided his curriculum in this series of guest posts on John Burk’s pages, I took (very) large chunks of his curriculum, subbed “chemistry” for “physics”, and was off to the races. I tried this unit in my AP Chemistry classes (not my 1st year chem courses) after The Exam was finished. 

Added bonus: I decided that I would try out OneNote for this unit (part of my professional goals), but did a bad job introducing this tool. My students (rightly) objected. 

Side-note: my school district is very strict about showing student work (even without names), so I can’t post any pictures of student work. 

I wanted to set my desks in a circle for discussion, but since only half of my classes did this unit (and they alternated in my schedule with the other classes), it was too much of a pain. I wish I had just done it. I’m lucky in that our English/SS teachers have trained our students well in how to have respectful conversations with each other, even with difficult topics. I did, however, use a “speaking ball” for the whole week: 

My generation’s fidget spinner.

Tuesday

It’s the day after Memorial Day and a week of non-school, so most of the kids hadn’t done the mini-research project of finding an African-American chemist. I asked for the name of a chemist, and most thought first of Marie Curie, but then listed all of the white men found in the names of various laws (Boyle, Avogadro, Hess, etc.). No living person came to mind, and only one woman. (Hey, chemists: do we have a spokesperson?? Nobody like Neil deGrasse Tyson or David Attenbourough or Jane Goodall or…).

I gave them a few minutes to start some searching for images, which pops up a white woman in a lab coat (advertisements/stock photos), a lot of people staring intently at test tubes of colored liquids, a few pharmacists (thanks, English!), and a few shocked people with crazy hair. In short, few actual chemists, nobody doing any real science, nearly all white. 

Then we took a few minutes to compare basic US racial demographics to science industry demographics and college degree stuff. We talked about why. Since 2/3rds of my classes were jet-lagged and they hadn’t completed the first assignment, this was challenging to jump into. I tried to get them to produce reasons for this gap in intended college degrees and attained degrees. This definitely perked up some ears, mostly because they hadn’t thought about it before. 

Homework: pick a hypothesis about differences and research it thouroughly. 

Wednesday

Discussed the stats they found regarding particular hypotheses about why African-Americans aren’t found in proportional numbers in chemistry. Different classes took different interests (one more of a social bent and one more of a financial bent), and threw around a lot of numbers. Students were okay with sharing numbers, but it took a bit to get them to propose possible implications. I’m glad numbers is starting this unit, so that students have something to hold on to that’s not just anecdote. We discussed whether all these numbers were comparing apples to oranges or not, and what it would take to make it more apples-to-apples.

Then I tried to get them to define racism and who perpetrated what. A few students knew a sort of academic definition (relating to cultural dominance/white power), but it wasn’t communicated clearly to others and didn’t stick. 

Homework: read some articles from a list. 
Thursday

Stereotypes and what we can say about them.discussed the articles they read. It’s interesting to me that the students already know that “low-income” and “people of color” often overlap, but some students needed reminders that those terms aren’t synonymous. I brought up two things: how racism was viewed if it was intentional (racial slurs or worse) versus unintentional (implicit bias or microaggression), and trying to identify who can be a perpetrator of racism. 

Privilege was a pretty involved topic. Our school body has a lot of privileges as a whole. There were some good commentions between personal privileges and possible affordances, along with thinking of others’ lack of privileges and possible lack of opportunities. 

Conversations are super involved, very respectful, but I feel like they’re rushed (argh… my carefully planned six day schedule isn’t extend-able at this point!)

Homework: read some articles. 

Friday

Students discussed their thoughts on articles, many of them read one on the history of race and the Oregon Territory. After a bit, I asked them to put their conversations on hold, and try a new thing (which is based on Jess’s mind-blowing classroom… I’d move to get my kid in her classroom!):

I wasn’t sure about a whole day (there’s only so many days left with my Seniors) with this activity, and I knew my high schoolers would, especially after three days of race-thinking, catch on to the predict-the-story-between-two-books thing. Instead, I gave the whole class all 22 books at once, and asked them to match them to the list of descriptions. They did pretty well (each class got more than half correct), but then there’s the larger discussion around why getting them “correct” isn’t the important part, that about half of the stories still weren’t known/were incorrectly judged, that 16 of the books depict people of color, that the more emotion-related stories (divorce, bullies, etc.) largely involved white characters, and of quite literally judging books by their covers. Also, I taped over the library designation on the spines. Our amazing public library system recently re-organized the children’s books into interest sections, such as “Animals”, “Sparkly”, and “Things That Go”. The books I checked out came from either “Our World”, “Life Issues”, or “Biographies”. Our class discussions were far more surface-level than Jess’s class, but I did enjoy it as a first attempt, and am very interested to give it its own day next year.

Students then got into Peggy McIntosh’s “Knapsack”. And the idea of privilege was pretty well-accepted in our class, but how to deal with it created a lot of conversations regarding what’s seen as unearned privilege, and whether affirmative action is a form of unearned something or not. Also some connections to feminism, and a few family stories of immigration. This was a day that I wanted to keep going for a while.

Homework: do two IAT tests. 

Monday

The IAT test results were interesting, and a lot of students were interested in what it all means. We talked about possible problems with the tests, as well as implications. A couple students took the same test multiple times to see if their results remained the same. 

Homework: look up a non-white and/or non-male chemist and make a poster about them!

Tuesday

The posters they generated are fantastic! I gave them the option of posting them in my room, in the halls, or keeping them private. There’s a great bulletin board outside my classroom, filled with pictures and details of non-male and/or non-white chemists, which makes me so proud of the work they’ve done this week. 

Homework: fill in an anonymous survey about the last week. 

 Wrap Up / Takeaway 

In my post-course survey, nearly all of the feedback was neutral-to-positive. A number of students stated that they wanted this discussion in other classes, and wanted to do more. Some said that this provided them with a safe place to have conversations (or at least a place to say things openly with peers). I need to have more conversation-drivers for those quiet times (although I think that the circle of desks will help, as well as having quiet times isn’t all bad). I also need to be more clear about my expectations for the week, including that it’s okay to be uncomfortable in these discussions. 

These are my AP Chemistry students. My students are generally pretty good about completing homework and doing things I ask of them. This unit had the highest homework completion rate of the entire year: they want to have these discussions. And to the best of my abilities, I’ll continue to provide my students a place to have them. 

#MTBoSBlogsplosion: My Favorite

I’ve been pretty quiet recently, partially due to being ridiculously busy learning how to teach AP Chemistry this year. But also because my district has very strict policies around social media.

Anyway, I saw the MTBoS post about returning to blogging, and figured it was a good time to procrastinate to start again.  And no, I don’t teach math; Honors Chemistry and AP Chem for me!

My favorite thing in class right now is whiteboards. I know… it seems to be everyone’s favorite thing, and for good reason! My students actually cheered today when I told them to fetch the dry erase markers. I am fortunate enough to have two sets of whiteboards! A large set (about 2.5×3′ or so) for groups, and small ones for individuals (one side is blank and one side has periodic tables.)

What do we do with them?

I’ve posted previously about Chemical War, The Mistake Game, particle drawings, and Battleship.

The little boards are great for “secret ballots”. Pose a question, everyone furtively writes down an answer, and either blindly (for my eyes only) or publicly shows it on the count of three. Funny for multiple choice / review days, when I need suggestions for stuff, etc.

Then just plain practice. Yesterday, my honors students took notes about stoichiometry and using BCA tables. Working in groups today made it so much clearer to them! Plus, the groups can do different things: one group made one set of charts/calculations; several groups worked individually and compared work; one group was pretty comfy already, so split into two teams that raced for the right answer.

AP Chem does similar work together. Especially with drawing, the group work is invaluable (these kids are generally fine with the math part). Somehow, whiteboarding lets these (very advanced) kids play with pictures that they would never do on paper, and thereby increases their understanding. I found that if I don’t have a whiteboard day, not only do they complain, but their conceptual understanding has been lower.

Soooo many marker fumes! So little time! (Maybe that’s why everyone loves whiteboards…)

Pictionary Definitions

After grading the third unit test, I noticed that my chem classes were using some words that might be considered interchangeable in an English-context, but definitely are not in a science-context. I had them get into groups and come up with visual depictions of the following words: 

• molecule, atom, ion 
• energy, bond, charge 
• chemical, dangerous

The first set of words was pretty useful for them to distinguish between species. The second set was tricky because we haven’t formally defined “energy” yet (but they should remember something from physics last year). And admittedly, the last set really gets my goat, but there were some interesting conversations as I walked around. And a lot of biohazard symbols and crossbones. But not many chemicals-that-look-hazardous, so I’ll count that as a win. 

Cooperative, Competitive

I started a bunch of posts, but haven’t finished them. Here they are, all combined: I like playing games with my students, and my students are competitive enough (in a friendly way) that they work well in my classroom.

Based on things I’ve seen in the #MTBoS (oh hey, it’s MTBoS season!), I’ve had my students play a bunch of games to practice new and in-progress skills. Also, I’ve never had whiteboards in class before, and I have a set of small, individual boards with periodic tables on one side, and a large set for group work. I’m all over these boards.

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Battleship, which I haven’t found time for previously, was a nice way to practice groups and periods on the periodic table. And we needed a low-key class period.

Electron Memory to review electron configurations, symbols, and a sketch of electrons in their shells/clouds. Yes, it’s a match-three kind of situation! Much harder than normal. Not sure it was super effective in review, however.

Chemical War reviewed compound formation. Each kid had a slip of paper with an ion and a small whiteboard. When they met someone with an oppositely-charged ion, they raced to come up with the correct compound first. Some good questions came out of it, and these particular kids are pretty conscious about asking for clarifications.

The Mistake Game is my new faaaaavorite thing! So far, we’ve used them for practicing balancing equations, and now some stoichiometry. Stoich is funny: it’s almost too complicated to make a mistake, and they don’t want to mess up the beauty in the perfected equations. But I love that they’re seeing where mistakes can be made, and how to fix them. (And BCA tables are amazing!)

Particle drawings is kinda borrowed from the Modeling series of stuff. I haven’t gone to the seminars, but I did attend a few sessions while at ChemEd last summer, and I’ve made my own version of them, which goes along with our new textbooks’ examples. While the kids groan about doing it, they definitely have a better grasp about what’s really happening during reactions.

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And now that all of this is on the table, I’m left with the educator-part of my brain saying, what questions am I asking? And therefore, what am I valuing?

I mean, I’m supposed to be posting to Sam Shah’s collaborative Better Qs blog, and I haven’t posted anything anywhere recently. Not for lack of interest, but for lack of questions. I’ve asked students to do things this year that I haven’t before (no required homework, SBG, draw reactions rather than entirely equations, etc.), but what’s my implicit question? I guess I’m looking for more explanations rather than merely regurgitating processes, but I need to shift my (non-required) homework to meet that.

Day 114: Getting Comfy

Day 114/180(?): starting over with SBG

No, I can’t fit all 180 days in before school starts again!

During an interview, I asked a principal what he/she thought about SBG. His/her response was unfavorable, including that kids would have to figure out the system for each class and teacher. I thought it strange, since kids already do that.

I was chugging along with SBG, following what a middle-school colleague had done, when I realized that I didn’t like that version. I needed something else.

So, thanks to some Tweeps I’ve been stalking for a while really neat and well-connected people (I’m looking at you, @jmbalaya!), I contacted Ramsey Musallam, and we chatted on the phone for a good half hour (in between his summer school robot building fun). I’m gonna give his SBG system a shot, and see what happens. It makes far more sense to me than the other version (at least, for my grade-level and subject). And I’d hate for the kids to be a part (again) of a class where the teacher isn’t comfy with the grading system.

Day 113 (and beyond): Doing It Again for the First Time

Day 113+more / 180: signing a new contract and thinking of next year(s)

I signed the contract for my new school and got a non-sub-ID!

I’ve been working on and off on my new SBG curriculum. While I’m set on trying SBG, I’m now realizing how much I have to do and change from the stuff I already have. And what do I do with lab notebooks on the scale?

And this (start of an) exchange with @rawrdimus:

@rawrdimus Wonder if I can translate this into lab notebooks. Hate them never looking back at stuff.

— What Would NdT Do? (@wwndtd) June 30, 2015

So how do I get students to use the notebooks after they’ve finished particular labs?

So what it comes down to is… I’m feeling like a first-year teacher. Super insecure. I’ve got the job, and now I have to deliver all that I promised. I haven’t been in a normal classroom — my classroom — for eight years. I have scrounged a basic schedule from the school I worked at last fall, and I have all of my old worksheets (which need to be updated for my new SBG thing). I have tons of resources from other people, but need to make everything my own.

Day 107: More SBG Work

Day 107: More SBG work: making it digital

I work better on paper than on computer, possibly because I don’t get into as many online games. At any rate, I’ve translated my digital notes into Evernote, so I can work on it while I’m away from my home computer.

I’m having my annual self-argument about the order of subjects (start with measurement or atomic theory and nuclear stuff). The first way tends to weed-out kids who aren’t that serious about taking chemistry (strangely, because they don’t want so much math). This makes it better as a teacher, as most of the kids who hack it will probably manage to hack the rest of the course. There is a weird transition somewhere along the line, where numbers and sig figs aren’t used for a few weeks while atomic theory is introduced, and a lot of kids forget all rules for precision and numbers. The second way tends to keep a lot of kids in the beginning, but the course may be more than what they bargained for later. After getting the non-number-based stuff out of the way, the rest of the course needs digits and precision, so the math piece is introduced later and used consistently to the end. To me, it’s a much smoother way to do the whole course. And I hate weed-out things.

And at the same time, I don’t want kids who shouldn’t be in the course… be in the course. It’s hard on them and hard on me. And maybe they’d be ready for chemistry at a different time, so maybe a weed-out is kinda diagnostic. And either way, I feel like a big meany, either for having put kids through an ordeal, or not having given them a chance to show me wrong.

Because of my previous schools, I’ve done all kinds of ways to order chemistry, even starting in the middle. I’ve even done a bunch of versions concurrently. Ultimately, it needs to be what’s best for the kids, not me.

I’ll probably change my mind tomorrow.

Day 106: More SBG Work

Day 106/180: More SBG work, starting standards/goals for various topics

Pouring rain and some hail make for a good day indoors.

With last time’s list of topics, I started filling in the sub-topics. Perhaps I should re-do this: create a comprehensive list of skills/ideas/standards I want students to have, then divide them into topics/units. I think it might reduce the number of units for the year (rather than basically following chapter headings), and allow me to mix and match things more fluidly.

I wonder how this would change if I had a textbook to work with. I don’t really use a textbook in class anyway, but it’s confusing to students if I say, “You’ve been sick! We’re working on parts of Chapter 5, only a few pages of Chapter 12, and the first half of Chapter 13 right now. Yes, they’re totally related.”

I think I’m getting the hang of making the standards. It’s pretty indicative of the kind of teaching I’ve been doing (i.e., computing lots of numbers). I need to add more things to clarify understanding of concepts, which should help for students continuing in AP.

I need to add laboratory components. What are the lab skills I want students to have? I think many of these will come in a “measurement” unit at the beginning of the year, but what other skills do I want later-part-of-the-year students to learn in lab (or is it mostly about what kids can get from lab results at that point)?

Oooh… this is thereputic. I wish I’d given this a serious start earlier.