Week 2

It's week two of Honors Chemistry.

So far it's been good. I'm becoming a bit more comfortable with the environment, as well as the method. I have found that the a lot of the methods are similar to what I experienced in Honors Physics with Mr. Pata. There's the same standard-based grading, the same assess and re-asses system, and there is no traditional homework.

I got to say, it's a nice change. I never felt the same pressure from when I was taking Honors Biology, compared to Honors Physics. Biology was the opposite as you can imagine. With what I have experienced, it's a fair system that aims more at student success in the end than on the first try...and that's what we really need as a society; getting to actually understand whats happening than being obsessed to find out what to answer on a test...because is that really going to help me when I'm at work? Answer B or Answer C? Certainly not.
While this is all a 'fair' and revolutionary to some, I have to ask how far it will go. To what limit does this work to? Could we use this in mathematics, writing, or other sciences? I have observed this system in just Chemistry and Physics so far, and my hypothesis is that it cannot work in other subjects. Why? I thought back to Biology, and what I learned. How much did I learn? All I can say is that we did a lot. We went through many many concepts and subjects in a short period of time. But even more importantly, we learned about even more in facts and information. So we learned many facts and concepts in Biology. To my experience, it was always in a note-and-lecture style because there was never time to do it in a slow, observation-based curriculum used in our new standards system. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this new system will only work with subjects like Phys and Chem because they are primarily concept-based classes that don't really require the student to restate facts and information. Just a thought.

But so far what I've learned has been interesting. the most memorable was the Volume vs. Water lab. The results were interesting, and it felt almost obvious once I learned that a cm^3 was equal to a mL of water. In another memorable test, we observed the conservation of mass. This was obvious to me. Why? It just seemed logical. How could you add mass withing a system without the induction of more mass? Just seemed silly to me, but that's just an opinion, because maybe someone else actually learned something from this test. So that's great for them.

So far the concepts we've learned seem to be rather rudimentary to me, but that's probably because they are simple introduction labs, so as of now I have no concerns or improvements to be expressed about the content.