The Frustrated Chair

This year was my most unusual teacher experience in my 27-year career. Our State Superintendent of Schools announced on March 12th that the next day, a Friday, would be our last in school for 2 weeks due to the COVID-19 outbreak. That 2-week isolation event turned into 10 more weeks with an announcement on April 1st. Remote learning began on April 6th and lasted until the last day of school on June 19th. School events like proms, fundraising, the drama production, concerts, sporting events were all put on hold. One of the worst was the cancellation of graduation with the event moving to a pre-recorded virtual event.

Remote learning was, and is, a challenge. Our district complicated matters by adding an online component that no one had much experience in using, we could not grade assignments – only scoring with feedback, and the entire 3rd and 4th marking periods would be only pass/fail.

Meetings between teachers used a different platform than used with students. Again, not many teachers had experience with that platform. Meetings became more frequent, starting as check-ins, and then more into the business of school. My calendar quickly filled up with content meetings, department meetings, faculty meetings, technology meetings…the list seemed endless. Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meets became the buzz words of the day.

Our kitchen table quickly transformed into the “home office”. Opening by 7 AM each morning, and sometimes not shutting down for the day until late in the afternoon. I have never been so tired. Sleeping was difficult as my mind raced with thoughts about supporting my teachers and students. I was not the only one. Other teachers in my building reported similar difficulties. Thankfully no one on our faculty was stricken with a case of coronavirus. And just as importantly, not one of my students reported that they had been ill.

Student participation started off fine. Most students were checking in, were doing the tasks that were assigned to them. I think that part of this was the novelty of the situation, some of it was that they were bored with nothing to do. As the spring stretched into the early summer, their participation waned. As the weather turned nicer, and the district shared their grading and reporting policy for the remote learning with students and their families, the students quickly began to withdraw from our online schoolwork. It did not require much for them to achieve a pass for the MP3/4 marking period, and they could opt out of a letter grade for the year if they chose.

AP exams were tough. Reviewing with the students remotely (online) was a challenge. We did our best, but I am not sure that they were as prepared as they would have been if we had been together in the classroom. I usually spend weeks in review, with timed practice tests, and constant review of the free response questions. I think that College Board had the best of intentions when planning the modified exams, but there were many technical difficulties reported and the opportunities for students to violate the rules regarding the integrity of the test were numerous. I had three students that had difficulties with the first round and had to take the makeup test. I later learned that for one student, she continued to have problems with the online format and had to email her responses to College Board. She told me that it was very stressful.

I was able to participate in a couple of online events, that did keep the students attention. One was a Girls in STEM night hosted by one of our clubs. The math department chair had organized some guest speakers, and they shared their experiences with being in a STEM program at college or in industry with about fifty of our students.

Now we are officially on Summer Break. Every teacher I know is anxious about what the new school year will be like. Will it be all online? All in person, like before the pandemic, or some hybrid with some students coming some days, and parts of instruction online? No one has that answer yet. I am usually so excited to see July on the calendar because it means that school is close. My wife says that I actually go into “school-mode” at the end of July as I start planning and thinking about teaching. I am not sure that I have the same excitement this year. More like anxious dread.

This week began what has become an annual tradition for my AP Chemistry students. Summer Lab! This activity counts as their summer assignment for class. Modeled after the activity that College Board uses to train new AP Chemistry teachers at summer institutes here in Baltimore (thank you Jon Hnatow!) the students do the infamous green crystal lab.

I first ran this activity after attending the APSI at Goucher College in 2011. I had never done the green crystal lab and found it to be a great example of simple lab skills, and a good review of some aspects of chemistry that incoming AP Chemistry students should already have under their belts (stoichiometry, molar dilutions, empirical formulas, formula writing, and redox reactions). This lab experience also checks off several of the old “required” labs that were a part of the AP Chemistry curriculum.

The experience starts before the end of the school year with the Summer Assignments meeting. Students are given the lab handout, a carbon-less copy lab notebook, and the dates for the summer lab. They choose to attend the lab experience or an alternate assignment. Summer lab runs from Monday through Friday, begins around 8:30 AM, and usually ends by 1:15 PM. Students form lab groups (usually pairs) and work together to analyze an iron oxalate compound. The schedule for the week looks like this:

• Monday – Synthesis of the Compound, Introduction to the lab
• Tuesday – Harvesting & cleaning of the crystal, Standardizing NaOH
• Wednesday – Dehydration analysis to determine the % of water, Standardizing KMnO4, Determining the % of oxalate
• Thursday – Determining the % of K+ and Fe3+ through titration
• Friday – Analysis of data

Tuesday afternoon the students also have the opportunity to tie-dye t-shirts. This is a tradition inspired by one of my favorite chemistry professors, who always wore a tie-dyed shirt to class. It makes for a fun team-building activity.

On Wednesday the testing of the crystal really begins. The students determine the percent of water using small samples in crucibles and a drying oven. The nice thing about these crystals is that they change color, from dark emerald green to a light green, when they dry out. Makes it easy to see that the dehydration is working.

Wednesday also increases the skill set with regards to titration. Students titrate a redox reaction between oxalate and permanganate. This one is more challenging than the Tuesday titration for standardizing the NaOH. The redox titration is heated, and acidified. I start the morning, after the first crystals hit the drying oven, with a review of balancing a redox reaction in acid. Then we can connect how water is involved, and how we make this reaction acidic by adding a small amount of 6M sulfuric acid, and 85% phosphoric acid. The students take great care with this titration, as it requires true teamwork to maintain a constant 85-90°C temperature, and hit the color change.

Thursday ratchets up the titration skill. This titration focuses solely on pH and the graph generated by the titration. We use an ion exchange column to substitute H+ ions for the K+ ions in the crystal. Then the students begin a detailed titration using Vernier data acquisition technology, pH probes and LabQuest 2 units. While the ion exchange columns are being re-charged with some 1M HCl, the students gather to learn how to graphically determine the equivalence points on a titration graph with two inflection points. This technique will be used on their own experimentally generated graphs to determine the % potassium and % iron in the crystals. At the end of the day’s work the students are presented with a titration master certificate that they can use in their college portfolios.

Friday is the last day of the summer and the students use their experimental data to determine the empirical formula of the iron oxalate crystal. This part becomes a typical empirical formula problem, where each component is given in percentages, and they calculate the mole ratios for each component. The students turn in their work for each day, showing the calculations for each molarity or percentage that is determined experimentally, and the final empirical formula calculations with a percent yield on the crystal.