Vanier College Reviews
821 Avenue Sainte-Croix, Montreal, Quebec H4L 3X9, Canada
make sure to do the quizzes and activity lessons read the chapters from the book weekly
I took his "The Nightmare Vision" class, which is about the environment mostly, not about nightmares. He is a hard grader on the essays, but asking him questions will help you get a better grade. The quizzes are easy as long as you read the pages he assigns.
Had him for first semester Mechanics, second semester Waves, Optics, and Modern Physics. Personality-wise, he's very kind and approachable, and is always willing to help and answer questions. He's very calm and soft-spoken, so it's better to sit in the front if you have hearing problems or if you tend to get easily distracted. Generally, two tests are given throughout the semester; there will be a quiz every couple of weeks or so which may or may not count towards your grade (in mechanics, some counted, but in waves, all were self-check quizzes, which means they were done on your own time & were meant for you to be able to evaluate how well you understood the concept). If the quizzes do count, they don't count for very much (5% cumulatively) and he discards the lowest one. His approach to explaining concepts is as follows: he explains the concept arbitrarily, gives an abstract example to help you visualize what he's talking about, and then will almost always derive the equation which you will most often use in problem-solving related to the concept. Then he goes more in-depth and gives more details, and he will give two to three problems that he will solve in class related to the concepts. The problems increase in difficulty and there are generally many parts to each problem: he will present the question, and then there will be several "sub-questions" related to the main question. To practice these concepts, there are practice problems (made by other teachers) which present solutions written in a different format than what you are taught in class, which can be extremely confusing to interpret. Don't worry - if you ask, he will direct you to the questions most pertinent to the material you are studying. There are also a set of WebWorks problems for each topic that you can practice on your own time (NOT GRADED, and open all throughout the semester). Before each test, a test from previous years with similar material will be posted as a sample exam. Overall, he's an engineer-turned-teacher who loves his job, and is very open-minded and fun.
Katherine is super sweet. I thought, because she went to Yale, that she would expect a super high level of writing and analysis, but turns out she is easy-ish to please. She gives 90s if you do a good job. To get good grades, spend a lot of time on your essays and be meticulous with your words. The workload is straight forward and she is very considerate with extensions if needed. Read the novels in advance as she expects you to come to class ready to discuss the novel and apply close reading to participation. She is a good teacher, you learn a lot.