I have recently received my Bachelors of Science and now started to teach Science and Chemistry on my own for the first time. Before, I was in Science classes as an in-class support teacher for students with low English level. I decided it would be a good move to get my own degree and teach Science as this would give me better job opportunities.
Since it is a new area for me, I am not always very confident, so it takes me quite a bit of prep to get ready for classes and I always want to make sure that I have most of the possible answers at hand. Let me tell you, my year 10 class are an inquisitive bunch! This is for the wrong reasons though! They keep asking me why, why, why all the time. Do you know why? Because they don’t have the fucking facts in their heads!!! They mix up basic elements and their symbols, they don’t know the reactivity series, they don’t know their acids and bases, the list just goes on and on!
I am trying to make this easy for them and to explain things from the very start in very simple terms. I use the internet for this. We are covering chemical reactions now, so I want them to know why they happen in the first place. I want to get a few ideas and them combine it into one logically woven description of the scientific facts. A few ideas seem like good leads and I explore what people have to say; some of it very good, some of it just so-so and here comes my fucking favourite:
Remember the question: Why do chemical reactions happen?
So, I quote after quora.com:
Picture. Name.name: I have a Bachelors in Education, Science Comprehensive (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science)
Based on my understanding of chemistry derived from college classes and nursing school education, I believe it comes down to the physical and electromagnetic characteristics of atoms and molecules. Simply put, it’s like there are a bunch of locks and keys floating around. When the right key finds the right lock, a reaction occurs. Temperature, concentration, catalysts, amount of reactant, characteristics of that atom, etc. can speed up or slow down reactions. Some reactions are slow. Some are fast. Some sustain life. Some end it. Some particles are small. Some are massive. All of these mitigate any reaction.
End of fucking quotation.
Seriously? Based on your fucking understanding of chemistry? Did we fucking ask you for a parable? What is this about? Locks and keys floating around? I wish I had a key, I would lock you up till you stopped babbling about your fucking limited understanding of chemistry! This sort of description would have landed me an F with my Chemistry teacher in my High school! Fucking keys and locks. They magically fucking join and fucking magic happens and people get their BSc’s just because they can fucking spell their name correctly! Oh yeah, please tell us more about your fucking background (NOT!).
So this is what this inquiry based learning yields. Mediocrity. Descriptions by association. Rubbish!
But I would be unfair saying that there are no good resources out there on the Internet. They are usually free and often much better than the resources you have to pay for. So now I have to unlock my own curiosity to explain things to my students so they don’t have to read about some locks and keys floating in the universe of the academically challenged with limited knowledge but expanded egos.