Making Ice and taking it easy

Today, I woke up early at 5:30 (8:30 MN time) to call the schools where I sent applications for jobs before I left. Hopefully there are several schools considering me for high school physics teaching positions in the Hutchinson area. We will see if anything comes of these!

At school, I taught Ron’s class. I brought in pictures of my family and of waterskiing, had them make name tags, and tried to start building relationships with students. I made sure to write important things on the board, and even left the information on the board, but only noticed one student referring back to it during the test. Unfortunately, I noticed that at least one student wrote nothing besides his name on the test. What do you do about this issue?

During Deb’s classes, she again reviewed material for the SBA testing in science for tomorrow. Unfortunately, since teachers don’t expect it to take as long, and because science is not a requirement for making AYP for NCLB, they aren't serving breakfast or reserving as much time. Students will have about an hour to take it (as they’re predicting) and then regular classes will resume for the rest of the day. This pressure to go back to class may make an impact on whether students take their time or if they rush through the tests. Hopefully they do well tomorrow!

I spent my prep time pulling out lab materials we will need over the next few weeks. Most of this was mixing solutions of Copper Sulfate (blue) in water, sugar in water and salt in water. I then poured these mixtures into labeled, covered petri dishes in the freezer. There are approximately 80 dishes in there now!!! At the end of this week, when we learn about light and color, students will take these thin pieces of ice or frozen solutions and look at crystal structures. Deb has done this before with students, putting glass on either side of the ice and two polarized pieces of plastic and then students record observations. Steve Culbertson, our “Barrow Dad” is also asking his whaling friends to bring back sea ice of different ages. Apparently the newer ice is white and salty, but as it ages and is no longer in direct contact with the ocean, the salt leaches out and the ice turns more blue in color.

This evening we are excited to relax a bit, with not much planned. We have been going all weekend to events for Piuraagiaqta. Some people are going to bed early, some are doing lesson planning, others like me will be reading our new books from the book fair on Saturday.

-Rachel