TSA

The TSA's were a joke.

A visit with Bill Valora

Mr. Valora made fun of the kids, criticized their work, made public their faults, and each one of them loved it. He gave out attendance tootsie rolls and prefered that his students address him as Bill.

Bill taught an Intro to Motors class. Most of his students were freshman, although there were a few upperclass students as well. The kids were divided into pairs and assigned a motor to dissassemble piece by piece. They stood at a workbench with a board full of tools and buckets to place parts. I really liked that Bill stopped the class periodically to give instruction and remind the kids of certain procedures. He would then wander around checking work over shoulders. This usually led to another lecture moment where he explains to the class how to do, or not do, what a certain student had just done.

Bill's second period was a basic metals class. The kids had previously finished a project and were now starting on a new one. Bill started with a mini lecture in class, taking care of a few house keeping items and basic instrucitons. He drew an orthographic view of the dust pan that the kids would be making and explained a few basic procedures. Class moved out into the shop where the kids gathered around Bill's workbench. The rest of the class period Bill explained and showed how to correctly make a tin dustpan. The kids seemed to follow along fairly well for most of the lecture, but honestly I was quite bored. All the information was knew to me because I'd never worked with sheet metal before, but I still had to stand there for an hour and watch some dude make a box. Not very exciting.

I need to figure out a way for effective 'active learning.' Where we do a small demostration and then let the kids try it. Then we regroup and move on to part B. Dr C is famous for having hour, two hour long lectures in his woods class. The information is good, but I have to stand around a table saw for so long that everything that he's said has now run together and I can't really remember anything. I really think that he could break his lectures up a bit to be more effective.