One of my most common refrains in my organic chemistry classes is that students should strive to understand and apply the foundational principles, as opposed to trying to memorize each example reaction that they’ve encountered. I strongly believe that a mechanistic organization discourages the memorization behaviors that students are almost forced to adopt in a … Continue reading How to Help Students See Patterns of Reactivity: My Experience with Karty’s Text
Has It Really Been Six Years?: Part II
Context Is Everything! So, coming back to the gray-hair issue that I mentioned in last week’s post, I have been teaching for long enough that sometimes I need to take a step back and remind myself that most of my students don’t know very much chemistry, especially not the chemistry of their day-to-day lives. This … Continue reading Has It Really Been Six Years?: Part II
Has It Really Been Six Years?: Part I
I have a photo of me and my oldest son taped to a shelf in my office. In the picture, I’m holding him up and we’re wearing matching red bandanas. He was about 3-years-old at the time (he's 13 now), and I had a full head of bright red hair. But today, it’s almost all … Continue reading Has It Really Been Six Years?: Part I