Honors Chemistry Question Site

Hello Honors Chemistry Students:

Being that not all students use the Science Scholars Facebook site , texting, nor have they joined the Science Scholars website, I have chosen to use this venue as a threaded forum for this class.

Please post questions and concerns regarding Honors Chemistry on this site, rather than texing or emailing me.  I am striving for efficient and effective communication with all of you.

I apologize if I don't respond to every email and text of support.  I enjoy hearing from you and look forward to my return in a few weeks.

Ms. Berman

Everyone has an Opinion

Written by Ms. Berman

Dedicated to all of my SDHS students

"Have you tried acupuncture?"

"You shouldn't be eating XYZ..."

"Your brother can get you an appointment with the top neurologist in LA."

"You should take off the rest of the school year."

Though well-intended, these words come at me like porcupine quills as I am trying to decipher the recommendations the professionals are providing me.  As I step outside myself, for a snippet in time, I realize that my life is momentarily not so different from that of some of my students.  Suddenly almost everyone has an opinion  about what I should and shouldn't be doing.  I know that these suggestions stem from their love and concern for my well-being, and yet it is not my responsibility to please others.  Sometimes in our attempts to calm and satisfy those around us, we drain ourselves of the energy required for our wellness.

The human body is a real life application (RLA) of Le Chatelier's Principle.  When equilibrium has been displaced, it must work diligently to restore balance.  At times, medical intervention is needed to assist in this restoration.  The teenage brain, however, is also an RLA of this principle.  It is taxed on a daily basis as equilibrium is shifted for a myriad of reasons and a young adult must utilize energy until the body has equilibrated.  Being surrounded with positive people who provide a calming influence will enhance this process.  Associating with critical, impatient, and demanding people can impede it.

If it is a challenge for me, a strong-willed, established adult, to remind my loved ones that I must pave my own way, I can only imagine the obstacles that some teens face.  This post does not devalue the immense support that I receive from many wonderful people on a daily basis.  Support being the key word here.  It is merely a reminder to all of us, young or old, that even during difficult times we should be collecting data and having faith in our own hypothesis.  This is not only what we have been trained to do, but it was what we were born to do... as the scientific method is within all of us.  Sometimes we might just need a little space in order to recognize it.

'Tis the Season

Written by Ms. Berman
Inspired by my co-teacher, Ms. Kelli Connaughton

Dedicated to my IB Biology Students

You only have to do two of the three free response questions, I told my IB Biology students as they were starting their test last Friday.  We had just finished a fast paced tutorial and I was excited because I knew that they were ready for the exam.  “Can we do the third one for extra credit?” a high achieving student asked.  Shocker!  I should have seen that one coming, I thought.  An incredibly polite and hard working group of students, I wanted to say yes, but wasn’t sure if I was letting down my guard too early in the semester.  I turned to my co-teacher, who was on her prep period working at the computer, with a questioning look, and she gave me the perfect answer, “’tis the season.” 

Okay, so here’s the thing.  Can a teacher simultaneously cut her students some slack and yet push them to do a substantial amount of work for her class?  Students in this generation are under such incredible pressure, do they really need one more teacher threatening them with grades in order for them to succeed?  If I merely set the bar and define clear expectations, will my juniors keep up with the rigor, or will they push me for more opportunities for extra credit, cutting corners on assignments, asking to turn things in late?  These are questions that can’t be answered at this point in the school year as this is the first time that I have taught this course as an IB non-testing class, and have had the luxury to set my own pace.  This is the first time that I have had 41 students in a classroom with no discipline problems.  This is the first time that all of my students are motivated and I don’t have a single student failing at the 12-week grading period.   

So, juniors, formerly the sophomores who felt negatively perceived by the IS staff, you are the members of my experimental protocol.  My hypothesis is that given the proper data pool (i.e. a certain level of maturity on the part of the students), an IB science course can be taught in a less stern and rigid manner.  Students will maintain a sense of decorum, do the required assignments because it is the right thing to do, and successfully learn the curriculum.  In my analysis, I will address the fact that when a student asks if the non-required free response question could be used for extra credit, a progressive instructor should be thinking, “Isn’t it grand that my students know enough Biology to tackle that optional question?”

Attitude is like a Virus

Written by Ms. Berman

Attitude is like a virus.  Just as a virus cannot exist without hijacking a host cell and taking over its machinery, attitude cannot exist without entering a person’s mind and becoming a part of his or her thought processes.  Some viruses are innocuous and don’t have a significant impact on our immune system, just as some thoughts have little effect on our way of thinking.  In other cases, the effect can be more unhealthful and destructive. 

All of us hear negative messages spoken on a daily basis.  The decision we have to make is how to respond to such messages.  Useful questions to ask are “What are the odds that there is validity to this information?” and “How does this information benefit me and/or the people I care about?”  It is critical to take the emotion out of the intellectual processing of such situations in order to properly assess the value of the many incoming messages that are flung upon us each day.  We, as humans with the ability to reason, get to choose which statements we are willing to process and integrate as a part of our stream of consciousness (or subconscious mind).  In addition, we choose which messages we will reinforce by either repeating such messages to our peers or ignoring them.   The relatively recent emergence of the internet and smartphones has made it easier for “attitude networking” to occur.  Thus, a simple statement, initially based upon opinion, can quickly start to appear as a fact as it is transmitted through a network of people in a short period of time.  As humans, it is easy to forgo control over our cognitive processing center, and react on an emotional level to such statements as they typically elicit such a response. 

The old clichés “thick-skinned” and “let that roll off your back” are applicable to the concept of attitudinal responses.  Those who tend to be less reactive to the attitude networking that typically occurs in any group environment, will usually end up with fewer negative messages cluttering their brain.  This requires filtering fact from fiction, but enhances autonomy and self-empowerment when it comes to decision-making down the road.  There are enough things in life that are beyond our control.  Attitude, however, is within our control and drives everything that we do in life.  In fact, self-esteem and attitude have been proven to be more essential than raw intelligence when evaluating whether an individual will achieve success, happiness, and contentment in life.  At the very least, if we listen with discretion and take control over what we are willing to internalize, then we can aim to develop more positive thought processes.  Over time, the mind will be freed up of the influx of negative messages, just as the aim for a healthy body is to be virus-free.

Labels

Written by Rebecca Chhay

In Theory of Knowledge last year, we took a field trip to see the latest movie about education, Waiting for Superman. In the film, there was an animated clip of a factory that illustrated the track system in education. In the track system, students are sorted off into tracks based on their abilities.

I’ve been in a track system before. I didn’t realize it was called that, but at Roosevelt that was what we had. Two completely different sets of teachers separated the tracks, and it didn’t matter if you were stellar in one subject but you couldn’t deal with another; you were generally put (or later transferred) into the easiest track possible.

We were taught to take pride in our tracks, in the labels the administration stuck on us. In seventh grade, I was part of “Adventure 7”, which sounds nice at first but that effect diminishes after you realize it’s a form of segregation. It didn’t stop there. In our tracks, we had our sub-tracks. For Adventure 7, that meant we GATE students were separated from the seminar students.

Occasionally, when a seminar student was absent, and he or she took a make-up a test in my class, I would hear the inevitable remark about how much “crazier” and remarkably “different” my class was (as I sat next to the empty table in one of my classes, and thus was the recipient of all comments). 

The comments puzzled me for a great deal of time.  I didn't understand as to why there would be such a difference.  We had the same teachers, and the seminar students were just as ethnically diverse, etc. And in fact, I would probably still be puzzled if my 8th grade history teacher didn't insist on switching me to the seminar class even though I didn't have the proper Raven test score for it. The only noticeable difference I could discern after the switch was the fact that these seminar kids knew that the expectation, given their shiny “seminar” label, was that they were going to do all the work and be geniuses. Maybe not everyone in there was a genius, but each student definitely did all the work. 

Is the power of labels really so great?

In high school, we don’t have “Adventure 7”, “GATE”, or “seminar”. Instead, at San Diego High, I am reduced to the label of an “I.S. student”. I don’t deny its accuracy, but I protest at the one-label-fits-over 500 idea.

I have a background, a future, and aspirations. I am so much more than an I.S. student; so much more than a label.

Walls

Written by Ms. Berman

I am sitting on the floor of a dirty hallway, alongside my students who are lined up against the walls of the building, engaged in their studies.  I allowed for differentiated learning today, and this group is reviewing while the other half of the class is taking a test.  I notice Z. successfully tutoring her friends and make a mental note to later ask her to become a Science Scholar.  I slide over to another group of students who don’t openly admit that they are lost, but I can tell that they need assistance.  I think about the fact that I am sitting on the floor, which is odd for a woman my age, but if I try to kneel or stand, I will lose this teachable moment.  And I am not willing to do that. 

I reflect upon the events of the previous day.  In preparation for the upcoming Chemistry exam, I had decided to schedule an after school tutorial.  Immediately after school, when only a few students showed up for the study session, I wasn’t sure if it had been worth it.  Thirty minutes into the review, a room filled with students, when N. said, “My brain just got rocked,” I knew that it was.  As educators, we call these “aha” moments.  A switch is flipped, and all of a sudden a concept makes sense.  This is especially pertinent in a Chemistry course in which there is a processing period for most people to fully comprehend the material.  Every time I conduct a successful tutorial, it is a poignant reminder of how important these small group connections are for true teaching to occur. 

After an hour and a half of tutoring, I had to ask the students to leave my classroom so I could rush off to the Board of Education to take care of some HR paperwork.  Upon my leaving the district building, I noticed several news cameras.  “A lot of media at Board of Ed,” I texted Dr. Ankeney.

“Barnett’s budget plan discussed at tonight’s mtg,” he responded. 

Oh, yes, of course.  “Doom and gloom… think I will pass,” I sent back to him as I started my car.  I couldn’t help but think about the contrast between the ominous news being discussed inside the walls of the Board of Education and the positive energy that I had just experienced within the walls of my own classroom. 

So I guess that gives this blog post a theme… walls.  As teachers in today’s society, we have to deal with walls every day.  Breaking down walls in order to reach our students at large while building up walls to shield ourselves from the negative media.  We must work at holding onto the positive energy produced within the walls of our own classroom and, at times, help our students create artificial walls that they can use to protect themselves during turbulent times.  And sometimes we might find ourselves randomly sitting against walls, in an effort to connect with that one student who hasn’t spoken to us all school year.

Breaking Away Together

Written by Ms. Berman

Dedicated to the students and families of the Senior class of 2012

“My mother says I am the devil child,” an IS Senior recently said to me.  “Ask her to call me and I will tell her stories about some truly bad kids,” I responded in a semi-sarcastic tone.  This flippant comment from my discouraged student, however, continued to resonate with me long after he had left the room.  I find myself wondering why we, as a society, are so set upon recognizing birthdays,  graduations, communions, weddings and so forth, and yet we do little to recognize and prepare both young adults and their families for the one of the biggest life transitions of all: breaking away.  This processes spans over an entire year, as the student begins applying to, planning for, and ultimately going off to college.

Perhaps we underestimate the emotional drain that the application process places on the student, and all of the close family members involved.  When my own children were going through this process, my husband philosophized that it’s an evolutionary necessity for children to get combative enough that we actually want them to move out.  Otherwise, he contended, how would we ever let our little darlings go?  Thus, as a child’s yearning for greater independence and control escalate, so do the family arguments based around the child’s ever changing wants and needs.  This signals that the process of breaking away has begun.

I hear the complaints from both the student and parental points of view.  Parents will contact me behind their child’s back (which I always tell them may backfire and encourage honesty when seeking my input), saying that their child has suddenly turned secretive and defiant.  The student doesn’t want to listen to the parent’s advice regarding college choices, nor topics for his/her personal statement.  A student’s typical rebuttal: “That’s what AVID is for.“   As the parent pushes harder to stay involved in the decision-making process, the student often resists even more. 

The student from the same family may come to me, complaining that all of a sudden new restrictions are being placed upon him/her, such as an earlier curfew or fewer opportunities to use the family car.  “It’s often about control,” I try to explain.  “As you withdraw from your parents, you create suspicion, and it is a normal response for them to try to keep better tabs on you.  Share your life with them,” I suggest.  “Be the one to initiate doing the things that you used to love doing together.  When is the last time that you actually went out and had fun without talking about IB exams, college applications, or career choices?”  Most students can’t remember.

No one is at fault for this dilemma.  Trying to evaluate the situation from the other person’s point of view and realizing that this is difficult for all the parties involved can sometimes lead to a little more patience.  Knowing that most families go through some type of adjustment during this period of time, and merely acknowledging that this is one of life’s most stressful transitions, can help the family members be less reactive to each comment and gesture as they arise.  It does not have to be a tumultuous time for both the student and the parents.  Focusing upon strategies that will create more successful ways to “break-away together” can make all the difference.