I seem to have a lot of friends with two kids and at some point, every single one has said something about how different their kids are from each other - one is shy and the other is an attention-monger, or one will eat anything and the other is incredibly picky, or one seems to have been born reading and the other can't be bothered, etc. It doesn't seem to be a boy/girl thing or older/younger thing; the kids are just different for no reason that the parents can remotely explain. I'm mentioning this because there have been several times this semester when I have thought that the same goes for classes. All of my classes have a distinct 'personality' that I can't seem to explain. Last semester, it was a lot harder to get anyone in my 11am class to speak up, compared to my 2pm class (and the difference in engagement was reflected in the average grades). The two classes always covered the same material, the teams worked on the exact same application problems, so I ...
Observations and ramblings of an economist with a passion for teaching...