Whew! What a couple days of craziness! I just got finished with dinner and teaching my first geology and minerology course. I can’t begin to tell you the amount of anxiety coursing through my veins before my lesson started. I had many reasons to feel uncomfortable teaching a class about rocks and minerals and these are just a few of those reasons:
1. I think geology is extremely boring
2. I don’t understand fundamental aspects of geology – although my knowledge multiplied infinitesimally over the past week.
3. At the end of my lesson I finally figured out what a mineral is
The lesson plan is vague and is chock full of information that is helpful in teaching college-aged students, but not so much for teaching 11 year-olds. One of my coworkers said she did these activities in college. Another bothersome concept was that I already knew a little bit about rocks, but the entire lesson plan was about minerals, with the mention of rocks as an afterthought (crap)!
The idea was that I had to lay down the law about what a mineral was (even though I didn’t – but do now- fully comprehend the idea of a mineral.) A mineral is a solid, crystalline geologic structure that is made up of the same molecules. Rocks are then made up of multiple minerals. Seems simple enough, right? I then went on to describe a number of tests you could do determine characteristics of an unknown mineral to try to make it a known mineral. For example, if you pour HCl on a piece of Calcite, it effervesces, or if you can scratch the mineral with your fingernail, you know that it is one of the softer minerals and you can locate it on the Moh’s hardness scale. They had to positively identify 12 minerals in 45 minutes, by finding their: hardness, color streak (when you rub the mineral on a plate), color, luster (metallic or non-metallic – I didn’t bother to explain this one and realized in hind-sight I should have), cleavage (I was shocked and baffled to discover that no one laughed at that one. I remember laughing at that one when we learned rocks and minerals in 8th grade), test magnetism, taste the mineral (if it’s salty, then it’s halite aka table salt), and pour HCl on it. I did my utmost to make sure I didn’t let anyone lick the pieces of clear, quartzy-looking minerals (calcite, halite and quartz) that I had put hydrochloric acid on – I think I succeeded. I made sure they asked me before they tasted them for this reason and this one kid asked me if he could taste every single mineral! Even black and gray minerals that were clearly not salt! COME ON!
These kids are remarkably sharp in general, however – from a French-American school in Portland – so I’m looking forward to teaching less stupid children (like last week’s). It just means I have to know what I’m talking about!! Eek! The final verdict of my lesson was that roughly half the kids finished and I have to grade the papers and turn them back in to their teacher for an actual grade – which is exciting, but will be sad for the little girl who finished 3 of 12 and the other half of the students who aren’t overachieving little shits (like I was at that age…) who did not finish either. I guess that’s the heart-breaking part of being a teacher in a real institution (not outdoor school). Tomorrow, I’m teaching my newly discovered specialty – Geology and Paleontology hike and Team Challenge – both of which I know, so I’m going to go hot-tubbing with my new instructor friend! Exciting! For those of you who reading who know camp pretty well, he looks like a piece of broccoli. Tata for now. I will try to get my next entry in later tonight to sum up the mayhem that was this weekend.
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