Again, post is late. My bus from NYC came in late last night at midnight and when I got home, I was zonked so I simply passed out. Lugging my stuff from bus to subway to hostel to subway to train to Harrison and back was not a joy. I thought as a traveler I would have gotten used to this by now, but I was wiped by the end of this experience.
I was told that my lesson would be working on reinforcing intro to redox reactions. I brought the battery blue demo, which only 2/3rds worked because I think I might have over-diluted the NaOH for the last step. I also hit the dollar store next to my hostel and spent hours making hands-on volunteer demos. By this I mean, I bought some rope and tennis balls and made an “Electronegativity Tug-of-War” and had kids come up. Fluorine has electronegativity of about 4 and lithium has electronegativity of about 1, so I had 4 kids on the Fluorine side and 1 on the Lithium side play tug of war for the electron. They really got it!
I also bought 4 hard plastic baseball caps and used the wires from whisks and duct-tape to give each one 8 “valences”. I then took a soldering iron and burned tiny holes in the tennis balls to make “electrons” and colored them red and blue. The students could put on the hats and add electrons as needed to mimic the equations we were working on. For instance, when we did the synthesis of table salt from chlorine and sodium, we had two students wearing hats with only one tennis ball, and two students wearing hats with seven tennis balls. They then mimic’d the formation of an ionic bond. I thought they would think the hats were stupid; THEY FREAKING LOVED IT. It was so nice to get that kind of participation.
Michael – I can’t thank you enough for the idea to use nametags; within 15 minutes, I was asking Juuli for her phone and Jerry to come on down!
Bad things – I came into the lesson thinking the students knew oxidative numbers from their reference tables… Which they didn’t. The lesson was going really well up until the last 5 minutes when we started doing some stuff with oxidative numbers upon which the students started blanking and getting lost. It was a poor note to end on.
Also, my clever working of the Jackson 5’s “It’s Easy as 1-2-3…” into my Powerpoint was lost on them because the speakers were not hooked up to the SmartBoard. However, when I mentioned to the class, “Aww! The song isn’t working…”, they started singing it!
In debriefing, they asked what I would have changed, for which I had a myriad of answers. They told me they understood that without knowing my audience and not having been able to do a proper APK, it was understandable. They also apologized for giving me such a rough group. ROUGH GROUP?! This was waaaay better than what I have encountered before in any of my classes in Rochester. The kids might have been chatty, but most of the lesson they were quite engaged.
They told me they were impressed with my immediate rapport with the students and my motions around the room, and I chalk this up to nametags and repeating the mantra in my head, “Smile! Smile! You’re a one-man band!” They acknowledged that it was last period on a Friday afternoon and kids were still getting involved and into it.
We only did about half as much as I had hoped because I had planned for a block… The lesson plan was really impressive to them (thanks Warner!) and they liked my incorporation of a Statue of Liberty ticket out the door, acknowledging it as relevant and local, which I am glad for. I had wanted to work in a local element and even though we didn’t get to it, they liked the concept.
BOTTOM LINE – DID YOU GET THE JOB?!?
They told me they will tell me in a week. I am not totally confident with how it went and I think they want stellar teachers, the best; I don’t think I got it.
I also want to post special thanks to Michael O, Lisa B, and Lynn G, for loading me up with all the chemicals and gadgets I could possibly need, last minute pep talks, and a lovely well-cut suit. You guys give me confidence!

