Find out what basic safety equipment is in the lab. This affects what kind of activities you can plan. Ask ahead of time if notebooks and other consumable materials have been ordered. Once the school year starts, it’s often hard to get things that are not in inventory. Ask what technology will available to you in the classroom, such as an interactive white board, “clickers,” probeware, cameras, or projection attachments for microscopes. If the school does not provide a laptop you can take home, invest in some USB flash drives you can use to take files to work on at home.

Question from a new teacher


Very relevant and timely info for those of our species lucky enough to be entering the teaching profession but that have no clue what they’re in for…

I love what I do… I get to have deep and meaningful convos about time travel, paradoxes and black holes with interested 13 and 14 year olds. Dream Job.

Ourlast big economic driver was engineering and the first stage of the digital age. At Institute for the Future, in our annual ten-year forecast program, we see an underlying shift to biology as a driver, and what I’m starting to think of as the “global well-being economy.” If biology and the global well-being economy will drive the future, what does that suggest for leaders? How can leaders grow their own empathy with nature and the global well-being economy?

Self-interest and competition will not be enough. Business leaders will still need to drive revenue, increase efficiency, and resolve conflicts, but financial mandates (I win/you lose) won’t be enough. Leaders must expand their view of self and embrace the shared assets and opportunities around them — not just the individual takeaways that will reward them alone. Leaders must learn to give ideas away, trusting that they will get even more back in return.

Leadership, Thinking Ten Years Ahead – Imagining the Future of Leadership – Harvard Business Review


Things to remind myself as I work with my 13 and 14 year old students everyday…

Camping out in my tent at Darlington Raceway and enjoying the ireworks over my head (from felllow campers).

Paving on I 26 at the NC/SC border is making my long commute miserable.