Daily Archives: September 9, 2008

It’s funny that both Dan and Mr. K posted about giving that quizzical look to students — the “are you absolutely sure you’re right?… absolutely absolutely sure you’re right?” face. Or, to put it in the game show analogy, “is that your FINAL answer?”

Like Dan and Mr. K, I do this a lot. Both when kids are wrong and when they are right. And just today, after I had students give me answers to a worksheet, I stood at the board. Rubbed my fingers on my chin, stroking my imaginary beard. Gave that quizzical look. And then snapped back and said: “there’s something wrong here.”

They searched and searched, and someone said they thought they found something wrong — but it wasn’t actually wrong. And in the end, after a good 45 to 90 seconds (who knows? time gets so nonlinear in the classroom), I turned them them and said: “Okay, so you got me. You got everything right.” 

I did it on purpose. 

This all reminds me of my calculus teacher in high school He was a great teacher, and he prefaced the course by saying he would make mistakes on purpose to see if we’re paying attention. And each time he made a “mistake,” hands shot in the air. He would pass it off like something he did on purpose. Looking back, I think a good number of times, he just had made some silly error and was covering. (Sneaky genuis!) But I can say that every so often, once in a blue moon, he would make mistakes that no math teacher would make. (Like saying .) These mistakes became warnings of what not to do.

Ah, I miss that class.

Ah, Mondays. I hate them. Alas, it is no surprise that when you spend a long time preparing something for your students, it will go awry. Indeed, it seems inevitable. 

Over the weekend, I prepared SmartBoards for all three of my classes. Of course, I go into my classroom and see the dreaded red and orange lights of the projector blinking. No, not just blinking, more like maliciously mocking me. Blink. Blink. Blink blink blinkblinkblinkblink blink blink. The projector wouldn’t turn on.

At least I learned my lesson from last year, when the exact same thing happened a few times, and I knew how to cope. The secret: wing it. Seriously. Trying to “recreate” the presentation will be a flop. 

And so I did. And things went okay. Not amazing — but okay. 

With four school days down (and about 160 left), I can say that so far I think I’m in a really good groove with two of my classes. The other two are trickier, and I can’t quite get a pulse reading from them. It isn’t that they are dead, exactly. It’s just that I don’t see the students’ personalities yet — they aren’t coming out naturally.

That’s my fault. I haven’t quite given us any time to bond as a class; I dove right into material for a variety of reasons. And now we aren’t having the relaxed and anxiety-free atmosphere I always thought I was so good at fostering. It isn’t that we are all tense or anything. It’s just that everything feels… well… slightly boring. And if math is anything, it is the opposite of boring.

So now I’m wondering if I can think of something to do during class on Friday to help us get to know each other, to help the two classes each become a cohesive set of adventurers working together — in an exciting atmosphere — to solve something mathy…

I’ve been thinking about having a candy bar competition: the class (or maybe break the class into two groups?) works as a unit to try to solve N problems in 40 minutes. If they can do it, they each get a candy bar at the end of class. (Hey, it worked for us in MathTeam, all those years ago when I was in high school. A blatant bribe, yes, but such a community builder!)

And since this is still the beginning of the year, I can find problems which should be “review” for them, but which they need to know well to succeed in the course (e.g. for Algebra II, they need to know their exponent rules from Algebra I; for Calculus, they need to know basic trigonometry).

Argh, this is more work for me, and it might just blow up in my face, but maybe it’ll be worth it? If I do it, I’ll post the results of this sociological experiment.