Lesson 3: Statics. Negative Feedback.

Today was the day of negative feedback. Negative feedback can be one of two types: constructive and destructive.

The first one is the criticism by clever people. This kind of negative feedback makes you better. Thanks to such feedback I finally realized that I move too fast, that children don't even try to solve anything themselves. And I took note of this. For the next lesson I chose less problems, and I didn't solve any of them on the blackboard myself.

But the other kind of unpleasant feedback is disrespect and impoliteness of a student who doesn't like your subject or/and who is impudent and bad-mannered. It's a stress, it sucks out all your power, it makes you feel empty. Also it makes you dream about a match of L4D2: dismembering zombies is a good way to let off some steam... Wait, is it ok?

So now, right after the lesson, I'm sitting at a cafe, writing this, and have no energy to get up and go to work. Seems like that girl is striving for my death :(

— written on August 9, 2011

Lesson 2: Dynamics (another group). Bold Experiment.

The idea of the experiment arised after I got an advice from our Chief Physicist of Summer School. An advice was to let fast students solve their own list of problems ahead of other children - an obvious advice, but not for me. And then I thought: ok, I need two threads of execution, but why execute them on the same CPU? It's 21st century now, the era of multi-core processors! And here we come to the idea of the experiment: two threads, two teachers!

Lesson 2: Dynamics. Perfect Timing

Before the second lesson I tried to take into account the mistakes of the first one. I not only selected and solved the problems for this lesson, but also estimated the time required for each problem, and made sure that they make 90 minutes in total. Moreover, I marked some problems as optional, in order to skip them in case of the shortage of time. Finally, I used the principle of "two heads is better than one" and consulted my friend about the choise of the problems.

And such good preparation gave its result. This time mission was accomplished, the plan was fulfilled exactly. To be honest, I skipped all optional tasks, but all others was solved. To boost the process, I solved some of the problems myself on the blackboard, asking the children to "help" me before every important move. So, the perfect timing was achieved.

But perfect timing is not enough for a perfect lesson. Later I understood that this time I still tried to squeeze to much into a lesson. I managed to explain all the problems, children understood everything but didn't manage to remember everything. I was too fast. So, the moral is: it is not important, how much you said. Important is how much of what you said settled into the heads of your pupils.

— written on August 21, 2011