Day 1: Victory

Well, That was a pretty great day. Seriously, it was pretty great. There was only one error: I was anticipating only teaching Geometry today. When I got to my classroom this morning I learned that I had a 1st period class that was not geometry. Oooh, exciting, you say. I say, um, wait, what? I have nothing prepared for not Geometry. 

Off to the office. 

Yup, I do actually have a class that is not geometry to teach in 30 minutes. I tell them that that wasn't supposed to happen. They tell me that it did happen, so teach them something. 

I talk to a colleague (I have colleagues; this is weird to me) who is teaching the class that I now apparently have in 25 minutes. He gives me the prepackaged lesson for the day via e-mail. 

I go back to my room and check it out. It's an easy first day of the semester lesson. 

Class starts and the students come in. I give them my spiel and start the lesson. Our math coach comes in and lets us all know that there's been an error and nobody should be in the class, that I should be teaching geometry. So hopefully that will be all fixed by tomorrow morning. 

That class ended and I'm back in the day that I thought I was supposed to have. 

And then the day was simply excellent. I felt in control of the lesson I gave. I felt that I was fair and honest with my students. I felt that I had their respect. I felt like a successful teacher. Today was a great day. 



P.S. Totally unrelated, I came home and chopped some broccoli for dinner. Thank you Dana Carvey for making broccoli like the greatest vegetable to chop. 

My 1st 2nd Semester

Tomorrow marks the first day of semester 2. My schedule is a lot better now (I'm only teaching two courses instead of three). 

I'm going to try to do a better job of journaling my day on this blog from here on out. The posts will hopefully be short, reflective, & meaningful. We'll see. I'll try to post relevant documents as well. I don't know how that'll go, though, so maybe they'll just be embedded and if you want a document from me you can post a comment and I'll e-mail it to you. We'll see. 

Cheerio!

Desks versus Tables

When I first came into my class room it was full of desks. Desks for my students. This seemed reasonable to me. One of my supervisors suggested that I try tables. Truth be told, I was kind of excited by the idea. It seemed it would be nice to have all my lovely students sitting around tables, collaboratively working diligently on whatever tasks were necessary in order to engage their education. 

It's been about 10 weeks now that I've been with the tables. Make no mistake, I have not been the best at managing the misbehavior of my students (the topic of a different post, yet written). That said, it occurs to me that having my students sit at tables makes it very easy for my students to be social when they ought to be listening. If I was better at keeping their attention, the tables would be great. As is, the tables make my classroom environment rather not conducive to ordered, focused learning. 

And that's what I have to say about that, at least for the time being. 

I teach math; that's my job; I have no other responsibilities.... (New Blogger Initiation Post 4)

So this week, for the new blogger initiative, I'm just going to post whatever I want! Boosh. 

I'm a math teacher, this is true. I'm also a new math teacher. I'm finding that my job is about 80% teaching math and 20% things that I have no real business doing. 

Like announcing the freshmen and JV football games. Don't get me wrong. I volunteered for that opportunity. I think it'll be a great way to become part of the community at my school. I've done two games thus far and I'm pretty much loving it. Yes, it requires one of my nights every week. And I need those nights these first few weeks to get my feet under me. But it's fun to get up in that booth and watch my students pushing hard to get some work done. It's even exciting every once in a while. 

All that said, I've never announced any sporting event. I'm not very good at it. I'm slowly learning how to keep track of all the players on the field, forcing myself to associate names with numbers. I make jokes with the other faculty in the booth. We shoot each other puzzled looks when the officials huddle after every play. It's a good time. 

In short, it is turning out to be exactly what I was hoping for: a good way to inch my way into my school's community. 

Favorite Math Quote (New Blogger Initiation Post 3)

Today on New Blogger Initiation:

Is there a quotation about mathematics that you like? If so, what it is and why do you like it?

My favorite math quote comes from Galileo, 

"Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe" 

I love this quote because it totally fits the way I think. Everything I see/hear/experience, I do so in the language of mathematics. The fact that math is a language (i.e. a way to communicate any idea) is something that I try to emphasize to my students. It's important that they come to understand math as a way of talking about things that would otherwise be very cumbersome and/or imprecise to talk about. 

That's all for today! 

Generalizing (New Blogger Initiation Post 2)

As part of the New Blogger Initiation, here's my second post. This time the prompt I got was to respond to an xkcd comic. If you aren't familiar with xkcd, check it out: it's one of my favorites. The particular comic I was prompted to respond to was this one (titled, "How it Works"):

I like this comic because I see it happen a lot. I think it's pretty obvious these days when this sort of thing leads to sex stereotyping (as in the comic). As a teacher, particularly of math (the language of precision), I think it is very important for me to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen in my classroom. Or in any other classroom for that matter. One person having or not having a particular ability has very little to do with anyone else's ability, even if the two share a commonality (e.g. sex, age, gender, hair color). It's important that I impress upon my students a way of thinking that encourages them to see where connections exist between two things and where they don't exist. 

Organizing the Physical Classroom (Student Teaching Summary Post 6)

Oh finally the student teaching posts are over! Here's what I think is important where the physical classroom is concerned:

- Energy source Something for students to munch on if they're really needing it. 

- Water

- Writing surfaces Students need some hard surface to write on. 

- Community display This might be a wall or a smart/white/chalk board. It's a place where all kinds of information can be easily displayed for all to see. 

- Teacher office space

- Movement space I think it's important to make sure there's plenty of room for people to move around the room. 

- Coat rack You know, in case there're rainy coats to be hung. 

- Absorbant rugs at entrances Again, rain kind of happens every once in a while here in Oregon. If there are no rugs at the entrances and exits, the floors will be very hazardous. 

- Anonymous feedback system I want my students to have a way to let me know what's working for them and what's not working for them. I'd prefer it to be anonymous (not publicly displayed) so that I'm the only one who sees the comments. This is the kind of thing that I'll introduce on day 1 and then only every refer to again to let students know that I'm getting their feedback and making adjustments as necessary. 

- Organizational system Things need a place to go. And they ought to be made to exist there. In my life, there is no room for exception to this. And I intend to ensure my classroom is a clean organized space at all times. 

- Implication that the classroom extends beyond its physical bounds/connection between the classroom & the not classroom Something like a plant would be nice. Just something to remind students what they're fighting for. 

I'm most excited about this list. I've never had my own classroom before and I'm pretty sure about 50% of this list is probably a really bad idea. I just don't know what 50% yet. Only time will tell....