Why I rarely post to Facebook

I made a Facebook specifically to keep in touch with students. Same with MySpace before then. My view was and is that students feel comfortable communicating in different ways than I do, so whatever facilitates their comfort is okay by me. I accept friend requests, but I don't generally make them.  Teachers are often told to avoid Facebook, and I've even been specifically told to delete it by a colleague. The thing is, since I've always viewed it as primarily a place to keep in touch with students and former students, I don't post embarrassing stuff. I hardly post at all, actually, even though more of my "friends" are non-student friends now. Keeping in touch with friends is a nice extra, in my opinion. 

Since I've moved to the UK, I no longer accept friend requests from current students. It's against the rules of my school, so I respect that. Still, my view on posting has not changed. I don't think most of my thoughts need to be shared with the world. I'm talkative with close friends, too much so, I'm sure, but I rarely think to myself "this is an interesting/necessary piece of information that I must share with everyone I know." When I browse my news feed, I would love to say it is full of important or very interesting information, but it is not. More often, I think "Why do I need to know this?", "ugh, gag me with a spoon," or "oh, stop whining." I dread causing those thoughts in other people. 

When I've responded to other folks' posts, it rarely goes well. It seems people often want to complain loudly without talking about it. I've had too many experiences of responding to "omg, I feel so *insert feeling*" with "what's going on?" only to get "I don't want to talk about it" in response. When I think something might invite discussion, I usually find that the discussion doesn't last long before someone compares something they don't like to the nazis, if it didn't start there already. When people just brag about their exercise habits or significant others, I just leave that alone entirely. 

I also don't post thoughts and prayers when tragedies happen. Prayers and thoughts mean nothing in a status update. If I'm thinking of someone that much, I'll call them and see how they're holding up. If someone loses a loved one, I find it hard to believe they're checking their news feed to see how many thoughts and prayers they're receiving, nor noting who is withholding thoughts and prayers and thinking "that stingy bastard." In my view, "sending my thoughts and prayers" translates as "I know bad stuff happened, but don't forget how thoughtful I am!" 

I don't mind checking in when I'm traveling or sharing a mildly interesting anecdote, but facebook is not a place for my innermost thoughts. My blog is different. It's longer. If you made it this far, you obviously care about what I'm thinking, and it doesn't appear in your news feed unless you really care what I generally think. If that is the case, my thoughts and prayers are with you always. 

Women in physics

Everything I was taught, and many people still believe, about women in physics is wrong. Okay, there's my strong sweeping statement for the blog using the "everything you thought you knew" meme. 

That being said, I get into this discussion often enough for a blog post. Women are underrepresented in physics classes and related careers, and they have been for a long time. It seems to be a common belief that it's due to a difference in abilities. I just don't see that. I never have. I have encountered plenty of women that believe it, too, and that's an easily self-fulfilling prophecy. 

What I have seen is a difference in interest, not ability. At both Leonardtown and Northern, honors classes were 50-50, because anyone college bound generally took it. For all my classes, I posted the top 5 academic scorers. This practice caused a few opinions that didn't seem to come up when track teams posted the fastest times in each event, but that's a discussion for another blog post. From my lists, updated every half quarter, I saw a 50-50 split again. Sometimes classes were full of successful male students, sometimes all the top scorers were female, but the average came out eventually. That didn't translate to equal AP enrollment. When I took over Northern's program, there was 1 female in a class of 15. It took me years to achieve equal enrollment, and I only did it once (male enrollment increased steadily, too). Mostly, I was able to get it to around 30-40%. The difference between my male students and female students was simply that I didn't have to recruit the boys. My strongest guys always signed up anyway. My strongest girls needed convincing. It was the girls that told me physics is a boys' thing. It was the girls that often assigned that to different abilities. When I pointed out all the girls in my current top 5, other girls tended to dismiss each one as an anomaly. Some of my best female students dismissed or ignored their own abilities. Lauren told me in the first month that she's just not good at physics. She was wrong. She's an engineer now. I'm always going to brag about that. Kara hadn't missed a single point all year (well, after she realized the top 5 were posted and she had no intention of being 2nd), and she tried to convince me she wasn't that good. I still lost her to AP Bio, but at least it wasn't because she didn't know physics was a serious option. I wanted the best students for my program, just like every teacher does. My female students needed more convincing than my male students, but the quality of work was just as high. 

Another claim I've encountered many times is that women learn differently than men. I encountered it a lot at IUP, where there were 2 female faculty and 1 grad student in all my 4 years in the physics department. I encountered it slightly less among my US colleagues, and I encounter it noticeably more in the UK. I just don't buy it. "Women are like this, and men are like that" makes for great stand up comedy, but poor educational policy. First of all, half the world population sharing a learning style just sounds far fetched. Secondly, learning is not that easy to describe and predict. My anecdote on this is the fact that I was told repeatedly in college that teaching physics to women necessitates dumbing down the math (though I'm pretty sure the female faculty were not the ones telling me this). Sure enough, I avoided mathematical explanations to my girls for a while. I remember it was Jenny that made me notice the error of this. I failed repeatedly to explain instantaneous velocity until I mentioned the slope of the tangent. "Oh, it's just the derivative" was her response. From that moment on, I found exactly what I should have thought. Mathematical explanations work for some people more than others. No gender trends in my experience there. 

My main job is usually finding the right example or comparison to make a concept click in my students' heads. I have explained gas pressure using mosh pits, radiation using wasps and horses, light using paleontology, and weightlessness using the Demon Drop. I use whatever works. In that way, there may be examples that work more often for women than men. I do find long haired people having more life experience with static electricity, for one. I do remember Celena and Natalie telling me to "use more girly examples." Not all girls think alike, but I took their meaning and varied it up more. They noticed and appreciated it. If someone's into video games, I use that. If they're into horses, I use that. If they're into theater, I use that. In my experience, people learn best by connecting new material to stuff they already know. My job is finding that connection, and it's different for everyone. 

I'm working in a girls school for the first time in my life, so I can't say what all the advantages and disadvantages are, but I am noticing something positive for physics. I don't see girls dismissing their physics abilities or describing the subject as stuff for boys. Every subject is 100% female, so they seem to take whatever they like most and are best at. That is how it should be. 

Try not to assume how successful or not you will be before you try, and try not to assume how successful or not someone else will be before he/she tries. And if you find success, try not to explain it away as a fluke. 

British note taking

Students in the UK and students in the USA, in my experience, are not greatly different.  Kids are kids, after all. There are little things, though, that may be due to my new country or perhaps being in private school. But my kids now are top notch note takers. They take pride in it. They brag about it. I actually saw a girl envying another's clear plastic notebook dividers. The owner of the dividers beamed with pride. When I give notes, I need to be very specific about what they are to write down, because they will write down everything. They ask me what the title of today's notes is. I've never heard that question before moving here, and I didn't initially take it seriously. "Call it whatever you like. What does it matter?" was my thinking. Now, I give them an official title. It makes them feel better.  They want it organized. When I draw diagrams, they take out rulers. No excuse for lacking straight lines. They have massive pencil cases full of every color pen in the rainbow. They rarely use pencils, except on scratch paper they won't keep. Scratch work is fine, but the notebook deserves fully polished and beautiful entries. I give them whiteboards for practice work and brainstorming. They are far braver when they know they can erase. 

One possible reason is that they take far more classes than US students do at one time. Americans take 6 or 7 classes in a year, then they're done with it and move onto another, ideally. My UK kids take twice as many classes over the span of a couple years and take high pressure national exams at the end. Reviewing (or revising, as they say here) for those tests is a big deal. They'll spend weeks going over several years worth of notes from all these classes. It's easy to see why pretty and organized notes are so important. 

So, if you want to praise a UK student, compliment his/her notes. 

Apparently, I'm happy

My voice has always been a point of pride.  It's versatile.  It's loud.  In the UK, it's distinctive.  Also, it conveys my mood pretty effectively.  Even if I'm not aware of my mood, my voice conveys it.  Since I've moved to London, people have told me a few times that I sound different.  I sound happier. When I stop to think about it, yeah, I guess I am.

Most of that must be my school.  If I'm happy at work, everything else is a little easier.  And frankly, I've been loving my school.  The students are great girls.  They respond well to me, and they work incredibly hard.  They embrace every task I set, so my time is largely spent finding interesting tasks rather than chasing up students who haven't done their work.  That makes class so much more enjoyable.  I have been in a class laughing along with everyone more times than I'd expected in the first month.  I can hear myself getting excited about physics more often than I had been last year.  I can be a talker and story teller often times, so the energy of my voice is quite important to me.  When a supervisor observed a class, she said that the students were quite focused on what I was saying.  When a colleague observed informally, she said I looked like I was having so much fun that she might have to change subjects.  

My school has been kind enough to keep my responsibilities light to begin with.  I am an associate tutor instead of a form tutor (similar to a homeroom teacher back in the USA, but with more responsibilities of looking after the students overall), and I am not required to coach anything.  So, I've been able to ease myself into the extra things I loved back at Northern.  I was approached by the drama directors, and I agreed to help out a little bit with the tech.  I haven't done much, but I have helped them brainstorm about using LCD projectors and sound cue software.  I have worked a little with the tech kids and given them what I hope is useful advice and perspective.  It's nothing huge, but it's a start.  I was also approached by students hoping to start an engineering club.  That's right, theater and an engineering club, just like old times.  I shared with these students every engineering challenge I used to do back at NHS, and they had that look of "wow, we definitely asked the right person to sponsor."  Also, I've been asked several times to participate in Friday charity events put on during lunch.  One was a karaoke.  Now, I can't sing, and I've never done karaoke.  My voice is good for many things, but carrying a tune has never been one of them.  But, it was for charity, and I figured the new guy should take one for the team and go embarrass himself.  So, I sang "New York, New York."  I did my best Frankie and made up for my lack of pitch with an abundance of volume.  The kids loved it.  

I am definitely enjoying NHEHS, and after this past week, I'm realizing my colleagues and bosses are happy I'm there, too.  The head of my department and the head of the school both told me that they are very happy with the job I'm doing and are hearing wonderful things from the students.  I was walking around with quite a smile after that. 

So, with a solid base of work, I've been comfortable getting out of the house relatively often. I've done some shows and events, but my most consistent activity has been volleyball.  I found a cool group of people that likes to play at a relatively high level, teaches me skills I obviously need, and goes to the pub after matches.  I was asked the first day if I'd keep score during a game, and they decided that they loved my announcer voice.  They said it makes the games feel more dramatic.  And our pub has one good beer and 5 quid pizzas.  That's a winning formula.

A bunch of other things are contributing to a happy Josh.  I'm going to the gym consistently for the first time in maybe ever.  My roommate is awesome and friendly and respectful.  She showed me where to find good pierogi, which I haven't had outside of Pittsburgh.  I'm riding my bike everywhere and gaining thighs of steel.  I'm learning to be patient enough to air dry clothes when it's not raining.  And my lovely parents sent me smiley cookies and parmesan cheese (which is far more difficult to find in this country than I would have imagined).

Life is good.  And you can hear it in my voice.