Just give a damn and focus on passionate students who are actually interested in something rather than the superficial students doing it to look good for a college application.
Sorry if I use this bit to rant but I'm still mad at a teacher from high school decades later. As a child I was mad at the injustice done to me. Thinking back as an adult I'm mad at all the potential she probably squandered in others.
She taught the electronics classes and was put in charge of the cube satellite project. It was an extracurricular activity where students work with volunteers to design and build a small cube satellite that would launch into space.
It wasn't announced to the school and I only caught word of it from a friend. I rushed to get an application filled out and turned in but the teacher said that I missed the cut off by one day (a date arbitrarily set by her). I was devastated. A few weeks later I was told by a volunteer I could still join in and help, so I did. I put in some serious work and at some point I find out I missed a big meeting. I asked the teacher about it and she refused to believe I was a participant and would not add me to the mailing list.
All my passion and love for wanted to building something and send it into space was converted into vengeful teenage angst and by that young logic I wanted to see her name plastered all over the failure. The best way to accomplish that was to stop showing up and helping. Times goes by and right after all the college applications are submitted I find out that most of the students immediately stopped working on it. Went from something like 100 students down to 3. The satellite was never finished and didn't get launched into space.
I'm probably the exception with the after story: taught myself some rudimentary things from a RadioShack book, got into college and graduated with a BS in EE. Now a days I see all these cool youtube videos and how easily it is for kids to discover things but have may not necessarily have the resources or guidance to get going.
> Just give a damn and focus on passionate students who are actually interested in something rather than the superficial students doing it to look good for a college application.
It's not that easy. Teachers are evaluated on the competency of the entire class, not just the ones who want to be there to learn.
in algebra, sure. like it or not, everyone is expected to attain some basic level of competency by the end of the course. GP is describing something that sounds like an extracurricular/club activity. grades are not involved, and it's pretty common for students to abuse these sorts of activities to pad out their college applications. as a kid, it was dead obvious who was genuinely interested and who was just doing it for college applications.
Sorry if I use this bit to rant but I'm still mad at a teacher from high school decades later. As a child I was mad at the injustice done to me. Thinking back as an adult I'm mad at all the potential she probably squandered in others.
She taught the electronics classes and was put in charge of the cube satellite project. It was an extracurricular activity where students work with volunteers to design and build a small cube satellite that would launch into space.
It wasn't announced to the school and I only caught word of it from a friend. I rushed to get an application filled out and turned in but the teacher said that I missed the cut off by one day (a date arbitrarily set by her). I was devastated. A few weeks later I was told by a volunteer I could still join in and help, so I did. I put in some serious work and at some point I find out I missed a big meeting. I asked the teacher about it and she refused to believe I was a participant and would not add me to the mailing list.
All my passion and love for wanted to building something and send it into space was converted into vengeful teenage angst and by that young logic I wanted to see her name plastered all over the failure. The best way to accomplish that was to stop showing up and helping. Times goes by and right after all the college applications are submitted I find out that most of the students immediately stopped working on it. Went from something like 100 students down to 3. The satellite was never finished and didn't get launched into space.
I'm probably the exception with the after story: taught myself some rudimentary things from a RadioShack book, got into college and graduated with a BS in EE. Now a days I see all these cool youtube videos and how easily it is for kids to discover things but have may not necessarily have the resources or guidance to get going.