(First, sorry this is a day or two late. Unavoidable.) Well, nothing deep and philosophical happened this past week. I had a reprieve from one of my classes for a couple of days while the students were away for their outdoor education program, and it's amazing how much less work it is to have 2 preps in 4 periods of teaching than 3 preps in 5 periods. (For non-teachers, "3 preps (preparations)" means that I teach 3 different courses, so I have to prepare three different classes, and I teach two of them more than once.)
I taught this in several classes, and it went well, as it usually does. One of the students who didn't do so well on his first test showed me that he might end up doing okay, but that he needs a lot of extra help. I'm not sure if he's mature enough to get it when he needs it, but I'm more optimistic than I was before.
The B+ girl from week 2 will take her next test on Wednesday next week, so look for an update there.
But one of the things I try to get across on this blog is an aspect of teaching that non-teachers don't always understand. And that aspect shows itself in these mundane weeks. Sometimes I'm dealing with crying children who believe that their future is at stake because of the 2 points I took off of their test, and sometimes I show up, teach some math, give some words of encouragement, help a few kids understand, and then I go home. Some teachers have the emotional strength to give 100% of their heart and soul every day to their teaching, but most of us would burn out on that after a while. Teaching isn't usually highly intellectually challenging (though it can be sometimes), but it's emotionally challenging. Spending September 11th, 2001 in a classroom was surreal. So is planning out how I will tell my students (in a month or so) that I'll be missing school in (probably) February to go to China to pick up the child my wife and I will (FI-NAL-LY) be adopting almost a year after we thought she'd be home. How personal do you get with the kids? Is it your professional duty to be emotionally involved? Can you be both professional and emotionally involved?
Sometimes it's good to have a non-descript week.
I like your reflexive, symmetric, transitive lesson.
No good for geometry, but for algebra, is our commutative, associative, closure lesson. Plus and Times are not very useful. But a max b (returns the bigger), a average b (returns the average), a right b (returns b), these sorts of operations catch their attention. Not as colorful as "is the sibling of" or "kisses on the mouth," but when I was a kid I remember thinking that this sort of stuff was a waste of time. I like that we force our kids to think. Your stuff certainly does the trick!
Posted by: Jonathan | October 05, 2006 at 08:33 PM