For those of you stalking following me, I’m moving this site over to a new domain name. Hopefully it will be better.

www.ScienceClass411.com

My old email will still work. (I haven’t decided on a username for that site yet - maybe “myteacher”?)

Hey kids & parents,

If you haven’t heard yet, after eleven years I’m leaving Sprayberry HS.

It’s hard to say goodbye. I’ve taught a lot of your older brothers & sisters. I’ve taught physical science, chemistry, physics and electric vehicle. I’ve been a part of science team and science olympiad. One of my favorite things has been a student that comes into my class not really caring much about science, who then gets excited about some part of science. It happens with the rocket and egg lander projects and sometimes it just happens during a lab. At the end of each semester someone tells me that “science isn’t my thing, but I’ve really enjoyed your class.” That’s almost as much fun as screaming and running away from a renegade rocket with my students. (The students are the ones screaming, not me.)

I’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to prepare my students for what comes next. Sometimes it’s someone just trying to finish “this stupid chemistry class so I can graduate” and sometimes it’s helping a former student through email in choosing a college major.

I’ve had a lot of fun teaching you and will miss you a lot! I still get plenty of emails from former students and hope to continue to hear from you!

So what’s next for me? I’m being a traitor family man and transferring to a school close to home. I’ll be at Milton High School in Fulton County. It’s a big change. I’ve lived, worked or gone to school (usually all three at once) in Cobb County continuously for the last 24 years. No - I’m still not telling you how old I am.

Thank you very much for all the fun times and good memories. Remember that learning can be a lot of fun - do it now before you have to grow up. (Why do you think I like being a science teacher?)

Milton High School, Alpharetta, GA

Parents and Students: Remember, iParent will be down so that teachers can have access to finishing grades for the semester. If you would like to see your grades (for my class only) after finals, you may email me and I will send you a progress report. my email address

an email from Tech Support to all teachers:

Purpose:
Information regarding I-parent access.

Background:
In order to provide the District with the highest quality of service and availability for SchoolMAX during Finals Week and the End of Year (EOY) processes, the following key dates are being provided to allow advance notice for planning purposes:

iParent - Disabled 7:00 am, Monday May 21 until 7:00 am Monday June 4, 2007

Disabling iParent during Finals Week has proven to alleviate performance issues associated with the EOY activities.

Action:
Do not attempt to access I-Parent during this time period–it will be unavailable. iParent will be enabled again at 7:00am, Monday, June 4, 2007.

Closing:
If you have any questions, please contact the Customer Care Center at 770-426-3330

Thank you for your patience and support.

This Wednesday, May16th, at 7:30 a.m. is the VERY VERY VERY LAST MAKE-UP SESSION!

My web site has been restored. Yeah! Apparently there was a hardware failure on the server and the techies at my webhost had to go restore all accounts manually, one-by-one. I thought it’d be easier to ask tech support to restore it to whatever state it was in on Friday, April 20th, but it looks like the best they could do was the 18th or 19th.

Any changes between about April 18th or 19th and April 26th are gone forever. This includes posts to my blog and any emails sent to me @PlanetLanham.com. Emails sent to my @CobbK12.org address are unaffected.

I believe there were only two posts lost on my blog from before the server crash. One bonus question each for physics & chemistry. I gave out the physics bonus on paper and it’s already been turned in. Yes, those questions will appear on today’s test, but since you had them printed and I reposted the question the other day (which meant it was on my blog for a few days) I will not post it again. The chemistry bonus was lost, but I’ll post another one later. The only other posts lost were about the server crashing. Now that everything is (fairly) back to normal there is no need to repost those. I’ve asked tech support to recover posts from the 18th-20th, but I’m not sure if it will happen.

The password function isn’t working on the Documents and Downloads Folder so I turned it off. As soon as it’s working again I’ll turn it back on and you’ll have to login to that folder again.

Thanks for your patience.

I’ve begun updating my flash cards again.

Physics: The updated flash cards start with the next unit.
Chemistry: I put all of the root words into a single flash card file.

Click the “Flash Cards” link on the sidebar of this page.

Since our chemistry test today was so much fun, I thought we’ d do some more on Monday!

Seriously, you will have 30 minutes Monday morning to complete today’s test.

Don’t forget to bring your moles!