At the right side of this page I've posted some documents that might be useful to all students in all of my classes. Below the cartoon I've posted some thoughts that might be useful to all students in all of my classes.
An open letter to all my students.
I put together the cartoon above in order to illustrate some things that over my years as a teacher I’ve found make a huge difference in how successful my students are.
Two very important keys to success in my class are…
(1) …to recognize that it’s up to YOU to learn the material,
and
(2) …to do all the assignments I give you even though they might look harder than you think you’re capable of doing.
Regarding Key #1: Even at AMES... an “early college high school”... I still see lots of students who just sit there passively waiting for the teacher to “do his job”. They expect the teacher to somehow shovel the knowledge into their heads while they, the students, just watch. That strategy doesn't work. The students who succeed in school are the ones who take responsibility on themselves to learn the material. This is true in any subject but it’s especially true with physics and math. You don’t learn physics or math by sitting back and watching someone else work through the problems. You have to work the problems yourself and you have to do LOTS of problems. It’s like learning to play the guitar. You can’t just watch someone else play it and then think that now you can do it too. You have to practice, practice, practice… and then practice some more.
Please note that when I say it’s up to you to learn the material, that doesn’t mean you have to learn the material on your own. I’m here to help you… during class, before school, after school, and even during lunch. But you’ve got to come in and get that help and then afterwards you have to go home and work through the problems on your own. Your success is in YOUR hands, not someone else's.
Regarding Key #2: I will admit that some of the problems I ask you to do look hard. A few might even look impossible. I promise you they are NOT that hard. Invariably, when a student comes to me for one-on-one help, we work together for a few minutes and then they say, "Wow... This isn't NEARLY as hard as I thought it would be!" I only ask students to do problems that I have good reason believe they really can solve if they'll just TRY.
Remember that I don't ask all students to do all problems. Many of my physics assignments and tests have problems that are marked, “Only Calculus students need to do this one”, or “If you’ve never taken Pre-Calculus then you don’t need to do this one”. In my math classes I give some problems where I say, “This one is optional”… but then I look some of you in the eye and say, “...but it’s not optional for YOU.” If I require you to do assignments that you think are impossibly hard, it’s because I believe that you have the ability to do them even if you don’t think you do. I do it because in previous years I’ve seen students who have abilities that are similar to yours successfully do these assignments, even though at first they thought they couldn’t do them.
If you’ve read this far then that shows you’re already well on your way to success in my class. Would you like to also know some keys to success in your career after you leave AMES? The sooner you start using these other keys, the better off you'll be.
As some of you know but others don’t, teaching isn't my first career. Teaching is how I’ve chosen to spend my retirement years. My first career was in the high-tech industry of Silicon Valley in California. I started as an engineer and ended in upper management. I had many teams of engineers and other people reporting to me and it was up to me to decide who in my teams got promoted and who didn’t. You might find it helpful in your future careers to know how I decided that.
When considering which people on my team to promote and which people to pass over, I would rate them to see which of three categories they fit best in.
Category C people were those who would say, “Tell me what to do and show me how to do it and I’ll work real hard at it”.
Category B people were those who would say, “Just tell me what you want done. I’ll figure out for myself how to do it”.
Category A people were those who would say, “I’ll figure out for myself what to do, if you don’t mind… and of course I’ll figure out for myself how to do it”.
Actually, the Category A people were usually a bit more tactful than that. What they would really say would be more like, “I know you’ve asked me to do this one thing over here Mr. Hendricks, but I’ve got an idea for something different that I think would benefit the company even more… and here’s the data to back up why I think this other idea is better.”
Which category of people do you think were at the top of my list when it came time for promotions? And which people do you think eventually became upper-level managers or individual contributors who were responsible for projects that were critically important to the company?
Which category of people do you think ended up working in middle-management positions or as individual contributors who were responsible for projects of medium importance to the company?
Which category of people do you think spent their whole careers in lower paying positions within the company?
When you lay the questions out like this, the answers are obvious. However, a whole lot of people out there in industry never think about these questions. They never realize why it is that people around them are getting promoted while they themselves are not.
Don’t worry… I don’t expect you to be “Category A people” right now as high school students. That wouldn’t make sense. But you can certainly get started moving in that direction now, while you're still in high school. The most important step that many of you still need to take in that direction is to stop thinking the way that Barney does in the cartoon up above and start thinking more like Dr. Hibbert. To those of you who have already taken this step, I say, "Congratulations... You're on your way to success!"
I wish you all the best.
Mr. H
