Weekly Writing Challenge 1

Part 1

Out of all the age groups, babies are the ones with the largest availability of neuronal networks ready to grab all the new sensory information being thrown their way. Dendrites make this possible. Dendrites are tendril-like extensions of the neuron that receive information in the form of neurotransmitters. When a baby explores a colourful stimulating and warm nurturing environment, these dendrites become abundant and dense, like branches of a tree. They sprout with new information: shapes, pointy objects, car horns, soft hair, and even languages. With more abundance, these branches have a greater ability to group together and form connective areas between each other called synapses. Imagine a synapse as the crossover at Lionel Groulx between the orange and green line during rush hour when both metro cars have opened their doors at the same time—the dendrites are the tracks and the neurotransmitters are the hundreds of scurrying people rushing to make it to the other side to get to work. These connections between the branches strengthens the acquired information into knowledge, a kind of social networking you create when you first get to elementary: grab all the friends you can! The more friends, the better! Babies soon familiarize themselves with what interests them: certain things are fun and gets them laughing with that shimmer of glee in their eyes, other things will provoke wide-eyed terror and a stream of tears.

The thought hadn’t ever occurred to me before that babies can’t control their emotions at all. Could you even imagine a baby trying to stifle a laugh at the expense of being polite during something like a funeral? No. That’s crazy! When a baby is feeling happy, they express it almost immediately in the form of bubbly drooling giggles. When a baby is upset, I guarantee that they will start crying and screaming loud enough to wake Mount Royal. 

A baby never wants to feel upset, the same way adults don’t want to feel upset. A negative environment will always negatively impact a student as they climb each grade. It’s difficult to push away the feelings of doubt that may creep up in the classroom if the wrong environment is laid. Teachers can turn this around or instill fear as a motivator instead. Students acquire a fear of failure rather than acquiring the benefits of making mistakes and independent learning strategies. Fear of failure can lead to test anxieties. (Summary of ideas)

Part 2: First Hand Scene

I had a physics teacher in secondary 5 that I will remember very well for as long as I study science. I will name him Mr. P. The older students who shared their experiences with me about having Mr. P said that that his classes were a blast. He explained everything in detail, loved to help his students, cracked a ton of jokes, and he must have been smart since he’s been teaching physics for at least 10 years. What more could a student want from a teacher? 

Having heard all of this about Mr. P, I was fairly excited to have him as my teacher. The students did, however, warn me that he was tricky to understand because of the nature of physics and that I should prepared to write a lot of notes. Those two facts could not have been farther from understatements like the sun is warm. 

Mr. P was difficult. Difficult in the way that he explained every concept as loosely as Mutsumi Takahashi can explain string theory. Difficult in the way I had to squint to read his green, blue, red, and black scrawling on the white board with symbols I felt like I would never understand. And so utterly difficult to feel any motivation when he often expressed us as being failures very pointedly with “The initial velocity of the rock falling vertically in free fall is…? Come on, you should know by now that it’s the same number you’ll see on your final grade: zero!”

How is any student supposed to feel supported in that sort of environment, when the understanding of the material is being intertwined with subliminal messages of imminent failure. Sitting through the class was terrible and overwhelmingly unenjoyable. I came out of it having learned close to nothing and wondering how I had passed at the end of the year with over a seventy percent.

 Being in a state of crisis one day, battling my lowish grades and nervously awaiting an admission letter from Dawson Science, I asked Mr. P what he dreamed of being when he was a teenager, trying desperately to get the hopeful answer that he faced a fork in the journey of his career that lead him to teaching. 

Nope.

 He always knew he wanted to be a physics teacher at a high school. Well congratulations, Mr. P. You have succeeded in sucking the happiness and confidence out of students in a course that I now love at Dawson College, taught by a teacher that I will forever value.