Starting PhD student pro tips:

- Keep a backlog of “small ideas” that you don’t find the time to work on. Soon enough you will be asked to supervise undergrad students in some capacity, and these ideas will be exactly what they need to get started.

If I finish all of the physics a lesson or two before the end of term, I like to use those spare lessons to do something fun. For the last 12 years I have done a boys vs girls engineering challenge and the girls nearly always win. Here is why...

So, my experience of this is normally allowing 5 or so classes do this activity in any given year, always with the same set up and always with me observing just how it goes. In total I must now have observed the experiment about 60 times.

To be clear I am all for students choosing their own teams and such and I am aware of the false dichotomy of the situation. But generally due to sports, boarding houses etc my crew are quite used to boys as one gang and girls as another.

The activity is bridge building. Two tables are set apart and each team must bridge the gap using only paper, string and 4 clamp stands. The bridge must have a roadway and each will be tested to destruction at the end with weights.

So, I split the class - girls vs boys. The rules are clear. They can't interfere with each other's bridges and they can't test their own bridge. They have about 45 minutes to build something. Let me tell you what then normally happens...

On teaching without grades.
A long-ish (20-tweet) 🧵. Here goes.

So, you know how you write lots of comments on an essay/exam, and the student looks at the grade and never reads the comments? That's because when grades enter the picture, the learning stops. /1

Instead of focusing on learning, there is a lot of negotiation: can we find one or two points on the midterm as the student is just on the verge of A-?

Everyone is just on the verge of the next grade.

And all the evals are not about the class but about the grading. Really? /2

Is the grade at all informative? If you are just below the A- or just above that, is that giving the student any information about how to improve their knowledge or skills? No. t is just a useless, demoralizing & stressful smoke screen /3

Students' abilities, challenges, and learning are multidimensional. Providing feedback on these many dimensions is much more useful for promoting growth and learning than are quantized unidimensional grades. /3.5

There is an alternative: do away with grades. Keep the feedback -- lots of it (this is not less work for us teachers) but never summarize it in a unidimensional uninformative number (unless you absolutely have to). /4

Dear Colleagues,
With just one week remaining before the winter break, we are all looking forward more than ever to a couple of weeks of respite from the intense duties of teaching, which are even more overwhelming in pandemic times. 1/
#bced

Like teachers everywhere, we have had to face so many additional challenges this year. Constant handwashing &mask-wearing, pivoting to online learning, upholding health and safety protocols, struggling with tech issues, adapting to different school schedules &the list goes on. 2/

Underlying it all is the constant worry about our students, our children, our partners, our elders, and ourselves. Yet, despite all this, I constantly see #bced teachers’ energy and creativity shining through. 3/

I want to express deep gratitude for all you are doing every day. All of it is evidence of the consummate professionalism and deep commitment of #bced teachers. Thank you! 4/

Of course, we all welcomed Wednesday’s wonderful news about the approval of the Pfizer vaccine, which will begin rolling out to high risk populations in long-term care and health care next week. 5/
#bced