As the semester draws to an end, one would think that I would spend a great deal of my time preparing final exams and their accompanying study guides, but the school administration has geared up a final kick of its own. We’re now spending too much time in too many meetings “analyzing student data.” Once we finish analyzing that data, we have to drill and kill those objectives, assess the students again, then analyze that data. The cycle never ends until the students take their standardized tests in late spring.
In the meantime, I’ve been wrapping up the last physics objectives, which deal with the scientific meanings of “work” and “power,” along with their equations. The basic work equation is work equals force times distance (W = Fd). Sometimes, depending on the given information, we have to calculate force, using mass and acceleration; so work equals mass times acceleration times distance (W = mad).
And there it is: Work = mad. Very rarely does what I teach mirror how I feel about the bureacratic aspect of my career. I proudly told my students that the “mad” equation was my favorite work equation. I didn’t explain why.
I wrote all the work and power equations on the whiteboard. To help my students set up the practice problems, I read each scenario and asked them to identify the given variables. Then, I asked them which equation was needed in order to answer the question. Everytime the scenario gave the mass, acceleration and distance, some students chorused that we had to use the “mad equation.” Hearing them correctly identify the needed equation scenario after scenario made me less mad about the behind the scenes BS involved.
I wonder how many of them will remember the mad equation long after graduation. I hope I can always find a silver lining in the classroom to counteract the horrors of standardized testing.
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