The Learning Curve

What is the most important thing you learn in school? How to learn.

In middle school, where Lisa is now, learning goes something like this:

In class: Go over how to do something, like multiply fractions. Do lots of examples.

At home: Do practice problems on what we did in class.

The next day: Go over the homework. Do more examples. Explain, explain, explain. Spend a week on said concept.

At New Trier, we were told that we weren't going to be spoon fed anymore. Especially in AP classes. Especially Harper. (HARPER!!!) High school went something like this.

In class: Go over concept. Do some practice.

At home: Practice. Maybe apply it to real life. Read chapter in book on concept. Call friends to ask for help.

In class: Present solutions, right or wrong. Go over new concept.

In harder classes, maybe you're expected to read the textbook on your own. Or do extra practice until you understand the concept. Or email the teacher with your questions. Take your own initiative, or at least something like.

But my chemistry class makes Harper's AP Bio seem like babying us.

Exhibit A: Given half of a reaction mechanism, we're told that "the rest works just like [insert previously learned reaction here], you should be able to figure it out."

Exhibit B: "Now that you've seen some of [insert form of data analysis that we were already graded on], I'll explain how this works." (Thanks a lot...)

Exhibit C: On the midterm, the last question takes the format of "Making analogies to the reactions we learned, predict the products, and draw the detailed mechanism for [insert reaction we've never seen before]."

I miss elementary school :(

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