Weeks 5, 6, 7, and 8

UTA Experiences Reflection
Weeks 5, 6, 7, 8

Daniel Sokolowski

        Hey, everybody. Sorry for yet another mass summary-- things were pretty hectic for me these last few weeks, due to midterm exams and projects for Engineering 0716. But, no more excuses, here's my report:


        Nobody showed up to my UTA hours during week 5. I just used my office hours to do some other work, such as completing a chemistry lab or studying for a calculus II quiz.

        On Tuesday of week 6, Vivian Feng showed up. She asked for assistance interpreting data and answering questions for her momentum, "runaway cart" extra credit lab. I did the best I could with what she gave me, talked over with her how to best view her collected graph data, and how to navigate confusing and seemingly repetitive questions (e.g.: "Why does it ask to calculate Cart A's momentum twice?"). She seemed pretty satisfied with my help.

        On Wednesday of week 6, Vivian showed up. She came asking about questions from the previous exam. About halfway through our session, Yijia Cui showed up for the same reason, wanting to know why she got wrong what she did on the previous exam. I did my best to accommodate the two of them, illustrating concepts like friction, pulley systems (a tricky and under-explained concept), work, power, etc. Fortunately, I had enough teaching savvy to take advantage of the situation and have them teach each other some of the concepts, asking Vivan to explain the equation for friction force to Yijia, asking Yijia to teach Vivian about free-body diagrams. It was a very effective strategy-- it took less pressure off of me (only having to intervene when neither of them knows an important concept), and it solidified their learning, by having them teach and re-learn concepts explained by a peer. Both were pretty satisfied and seemed to learn quite a bit.

        On Thursday, Vivian showed up again. She came to ask some questions about momentum, forces, and systems. I prodded her thinking, illuminated some misconceptions that she had, and eventually answered her questions. She then asked me to look over her work on some homework problems. Aside from some confusion over work from friction (Work = frictionforce*distance = mukinetic*normalforce*distance), there was not much to teach, as most of her errors were just calculator errors.

        On Tuesday of week 7, Vivian showed up. She came to do some practice problems out of the book while I supervised, intervening only whenever she needed guidance or her thinking needed corrected. I taught her quite a bit, I advised that she do further problems for practice, and she left about half an hour later.

        On Wednesday of week 7, Vivian showed up. We worked on questions about power, centripetal acceleration, and momentum. About ten minutes before the end of my hour, Khandaker showed up, asking about questions that were on the previous exam. I tried to answer his inquiries as best I could (and even got Vivian to help teach Khandaker), but time was quickly running out. So, I took a picture on my phone of the specific test question he was struggling with, promised him that I would look over them that night, and invited him to come back tomorrow.

        On Thursday, Khandaker returned. (Vivian did not return.) I showed him my work from that night. telling him about different ways that he might tackle the test question that was bothering him (i.e.: using the range equation, or two of the "Big Five" motion equations). He then asked me questions about work from springs and friction. It was at this point that Allan Yue arrived and asked me questions about the same topic. I did my best to equally divide my attention between the two of them, but Allan is very talkative, and unfortunately just would not stop talking to me when I was trying to teach Khandaker about work from friction and springs. (I couldn't just abruptly tell Allan to be quiet while I attended to Khandaker-- that would have been rude.) The worst part was that what Allan talked about was irrelevant to what I was trying to teach-- questions about the class grading system, the UTA system, which teachers are better than others, etc. After I finally managed to teach Khandaker what he needed to know, he thanked me and left. (I could tell that he appreciated my teaching, and he was sympathetic to my struggle, trying to teach him and break away from Allan, but all the same, I think it annoyed him that I would not give him more attention.) Allan continued talking to me (he did not need any more physics assistance) until my time was up. If a similar situation happens again, I am definitely going to have to put my foot down next time whenever someone tries to distract me from teaching.

        Nobody showed up to my UTA hours during week 8. (Allan came back on Thursday of that week, but it was to resolve confusion over attendance, signatures, and bonus point requirements, not because he needed physics help.)