Reaching Out through tours

Home › Blogs › kilburn's blog › Reaching Out through tours
May 29, 2008 - 4:33pm — kilburn

This week I gave two presentations to middle school kids about the lab. They didn't have permission slips for the tour as well, but they were still inquisitive about what we did and asked a lot of good questions. It's nice to see kids excited about science, even if they thought the highlight of the presentation was when I broke a penny.
Then I gave a full tour to a group of high school chemistry students.  It's been a while since I've done a tour for kids who have a) had chemistry and b) really want to be on the tour so that was really cool.  They  had to write a paper on their experience so they asked a lot of questions and took notes.
It reminded me how much I want to teach physics, and I was happy that a few of them stayed an extra half an hour to ask questions about science in general.  

Bookmark/Search this post with:
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Magnoliacom
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Yahoo
  • Technorati
Tags:

Comments

May 30, 2008 - 8:45am — walsh

What makes people want to teach?

What makes people want to teach? I haven't really thought about why I like explaining things to people (almost regardless of how successful the attempt to do so may be).

Is it the same principle as snaring someone into watching your favorite show--spreading the wow-that's-cool feeling?

Alternatively, is it more like handing out religious tracts on the sidewalk, including the you-need-to-know-this overtones?

I'm curious as to whether most people interested in education enjoy teaching for the same reasons. I don't think I've talked to other people very much about teaching, apart from long diatribes about how various subjects should be taught.

May 31, 2008 - 2:14pm — kilburn

motivation to teach

I think different people teach for different reasons. For me, part is spreading the "wow that's cool" feeling. It's also the "ah ha" look that kids get when they 'get it'. Part of why I want to teach is because of what you mentioned at the end, I want to change how physics is taught. Many people get turned off from science after taking a physics course, and this seems wrong to me.