Week Two: Student Personal Inventory

كيف الحال؟ (How's it going?)
On the first day of school I assigned my students a two page "Personal Inventory" assignment that I found in the garbage can of the copy room.  It contained a number of thought provoking questions like "Where do you picture yourself ten years from now?" and "How tall are you?".

The second page used a likert scale to assess the student's comfort level with topics like evolution, human birth and medical surgery.  I selected a few of the questions and compiled the student's answers in an excel spreadsheet (posted below).  Straight stats homey.

 Click on the image to enlarge.

As you can see, my classes contain a diverse group of students, the majority of which have parents working for Saudi Aramco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco), the large oil company nearby.

On average the students seem comfortable discussing human reproduction and contraception, but are on the fence about medical surgery.

I was surprised by the distances some of the students travel each day to and from school.  Students living in Jubail spend three hours a day round trip on the bus.  My first thought was of the big, yellow school buses we're used to, but they all ride in shiny, new coaches.

Click on the map to enlarge

For a few of the questions on the survey: "What's your nick-name?", "What are your special talents?" and "Where do you see yourself in ten years?" I didn't get quite the degree of ridiculous answers I would expect in the States, but I did get a couple of good ones:

Nick-names:
Heraclitos Letcuchilus Phugelquist goes by Max.  Conversely, David's nick-name is David.  Good to know.  Another young man didn't have a nick-name but he wanted me to know his "pen name" is Johnathan Parker.

Which raises the question: What are the qualifications for getting your own pen name?  How do I get a pen name?  Can it be Kevin Sebastian? (Fact: Having two first names triples how intimidating you are.)

Special Talents: I was taken aback by the wide array of talents the students have.  But by far my favorite was, "I never get bored in science."

Where do you see yourself in ten years: I received a lot of ambitious, but fairly general responses like "a doctor working in the Congo" however the most specific was "1200 Park Avenue, Emeryville, California." (Which I later interwebbed to find out it is Pixar Studios.)