Teaching – Page 2 – Science teacher

December 29, 2022

Apple vs. wheat: an economic parable

(Photo of wheat grown by a student in my classroom.)

The market rate for wheat today is $9.08 per bushel. A bushel of wheat weighs 60 pounds. That’s just over 15 cents a pound.

Where did the “stuff” of the wheat come from? Water, mostly rainfall, and carbon dioxide, which well, we have more than plenty to spare. Water molecules are split, the oxygen drifts off, and the remaining pieces are knit with carbon dioxide to form the stuff that keeps all of us alive.

Truly miraculous.

A pair of AirPod Pros weighs 0.19 ounces, and checks in at $249, a bit over $20,000 per pound, and it won’t do any good to water it.

For the price of a pair of earbuds, you can get 3/4 tons of wheat.

The “miracle of the five loaves and two fish” is, of course, a parable, the only miracle story found in all four Gospels, and most folks in these parts know more about the story of Apple than the story of wheat. Farmers do the work of Jesus every fookin’ day.

I get about 50 loaves of bread for every bushel of wheat I buy. One AirPod Pro gets you enough wheat for 80,000 loaves of bread.

There’s a parable there somewhere.

December 27, 2022

Gearing down

I took a walk along an abandoned Norfolk Southern rail that runs through our town. A few decades ago I would pull my little ones in a red wagon to greet our neighbors as they came off the train.

These gears moved the gates that blocked the road, a job once done by humans when the railroad first ripped its way through our neighborhoods.

If you run a small current through the rails, a train’s axles will short the current, and the system will “know” something is up.

The newer signals no doubt rely on computers. Our kids pay a price for this. Knowing how to manipulate an Arduino UNO is fun, but not a whole lot of thought goes into figuring out how the “machinery” works because there is none.

Coding is literally symbolic. It’s clean, it’s cool, it’s profitable.

No gears, no grease. (Yes, I know plastic gear kits are available for Arduino kits. Why not just use a servo?)

Still not all kids are living virtually. Just a few yards from the dead gears and torn wires is an art show seen by few humans, and maybe only one from the 1950s.

The mechanics of an aerosol can are be more easily understood. The kids are alright.

February 6, 2022February 6, 2022

Black music, white teacher: an apology owed

Mance Lipscomb, via Morehead State Public Radio

We favor blues musicians without testosterone, without teeth, without sight, without color.

Black women, androgynous white men, and old Black men are safer. Old, scratchy vinyl recordings are safer. But we shy away from the Black man in his prime.

The blues are easy to play poorly yet sound good to white ears. The Stones made a living on this.

I was playing Robert Johnson as the seniors strolled into class on Friday. I’ve gotten in the habit of playing music as the day starts, and Robert Johnson was the morning headliner.

The third marking period started a few days ago. The class just had their first quiz. Most failed, not unexpected given it was the first quiz for seniors that did not count. Senioritis has kicked in.

So I sang an off-the-cuff blues piece about senioritis backed by a harmonica riff lifted off YouTube.

And now I realize this was a mistake.

So tomorrow I will start class with an apology. Not for playing Robert Johnson, a fierce blues man who died far too young. Not for singing, though that may warrant a separate kind of apology.

I will apologize for my lack of respect. Using that art form at that moment to entertain students was wrong. It felt off at the moment, but I wasn’t sure why. I thank Justin of objective opinions for his kind reminder.

(Yes, I will still sing and play the blues by myself for myself–but I cannot share what I do not own.)