It was bound to happen – the time has come when I couldn't keep up with my blog. Nothing is more annoying than being, in essence, promised that you'll find something new and thought-provoking on a site, only to find, day after day, that the author hasn't gotten around to posting anything new. To keep it fresh was the implicit promise that I made to a few dozen friends and colleagues, when tooting my horn with an e-mailed URL – and now I have found myself breaking that promise not two months into this egotistical venture.
But that's a schoolteacher's life for you – one that gets taken over now and again, sandwiched between the intense desire to create something new in the classroom and the unending duty to process paperwork (without which students cannot track their progress or school offices their truants).
My physics students ended their third quarter in Room A302 with a frenzy of whiteboard work and circuit-building. They discovered some of the bizarre things that you can do with nothing more than a couple of AA batteries and a handful of flashlight bulbs. They built several circuits, some of their own design. They slogged through the math that purportedly explained the things that they saw (how can Bulb A be brighter than Bulb B in one circuit but dimmer than B in another?). And they did it, for the most part, by working together.
By and large my students tell me that this was the hardest test I've given yet – but they enjoyed working with their hands and with their classmates. For my part, I've never been a more exhausted teacher, working the room, asking leading questions, and occasionally guiding the sometimes invisible interpersonal interactions among members of groups whom I had compelled to collaborate.
We debriefed today with a final mathematical look at the sometimes surprising behavior of our simple circuits. Math is a language that humans have crafted to model and mimic the physical world; that it does this so well is (to me, at least) a miracle and an enduring mystery. But math is not a language that comes naturally to all of my students, or indeed to me; and years of training and experience, as well as a certain outlook, may be needed to hear its subtle rhythms.
However, I strongly believe that everyone should have the opportunity to see firsthand how equations can echo the behavior of tangible things, be they rolling marbles, glowing lamps, or gyrating moons. Never mind that my students are likeliest to declare themselves business majors when, two years hence, they find themselves slogging through freshman year in college. To see the language of mathematics in action; to glimpse how purposefully playing with magnets and wires could change the course of history – this, as much as music, poetry, or art, is part and parcel of a complete education. And it is a privilege to play a part, however small, in bringing these very human experiences alive under the same roof as my equally passionate colleagues in the arts and humanities.
Copyright 2009 Joshua Roth.