Month: November 2007

First Year Faculty Class Observation

Sitting in my mailbox this afternoon was a big white envelope. Inside was my “First Year Faculty Class Observation.” The head of the upper school observed me in late October and this was the fruits of that labor.

Part I of the document was a brief description of the lesson or class.

Part II of the document were commendations and areas of strength.

Part III of the document were recommendations and areas of growth.

I won’t bore you with Part I. And honestly, Part III is interesting only to a certain degree. It does have some very helpful suggestions (e.g. have a good method to close up class to tie everything together) but most were things like “you had students use the calculator in class… how were you making sure they could use it at home without you there” (the implication is that I didn’t have a way to do this, but in fact, I post very explicit instructions for them online so they can refer to them).

So I’m posting Part II below. It doesn’t really scream “you’re wonderful,” but hey, I’ll take the good in whatever form I can get it.

Part II: Commendations/Areas of Strength

Throughout the class you maintained a positive tone that encouraged students to participate in the work you had laid out.

Your carefully planned PowerPoint reinforced different learning styles and helped the students remain focused as new material and tools were being introduced.

You comfortably moved around the room to monitor student progress as they began to work with the graphing calculator and you offered helpful feedback along the way.

You used simple hand gestures to tell a student to hold her question as you finished giving instructions to the whole class and then you returned to listen to the question once the class had begun to work independently.

You demonstrated your understanding of the material and supported your students in their own burgeoning understanding by reinforcing prior learning and connecting it to the new topic. For example, asking students to describe what they had already learned about [the] zero and then making the connection to [the] zero as a function, or drawing a graph and asking “what would be the zero of this function?” When [student name redacted] was unable to answer the question, you reminded her about what she already knew, so she could regain her confidence and telling her “don’t apologize” [for not remembering].

You have already taken time to meet with [the US Learning Specialist] in the learning skills deparment to review the educational testing and instructional needs of various students. Your interest in reviewing this important information is an excellent habit to develop in what I hope will be a long and successful teaching career.

A life of whining

I know, I know, teachers are always complaining.

But what’s even more terrible is that we teachers don’t tend to share our success with each other. We do have successes, I swear– even though they tend to come in small numbers and sporadically. Still, we keep them to ourselves.

So in this post, I’m going to brag.

In my calculus class yesterday, my students struggled hardcore with the chain rule. They didn’t quite get substitution for the more involved problems, and I’ve been trying to hone their intuition explicitly — saying I don’t want them to do problems formally. I want them to practice “seeing” the solutions.

Let’s level here: getting an assortment of calculus students to “see” anything is hard. They like rules, procedures, things they know will always work. Telling them to “hone their intuition” frightens them. There’s less certainty. But the reward of finally getting it is so much greater — because you can suddenly attack incredibly complicated problems.

So I waltzed into my classroom filled with students fretting about not “seeing” the solutions, and said: “Screw the homework for now. We’re going to get this!” And I gave them this sheet with 9 problems on it — I worked hard to come up with the idea the night before — specifically designed to “hone their intuition.” And all I can say is that: it worked fabulously. They were doing really complicated chain rule problems in their heads!

The rest of the class was spent capitalizing on this new understanding. At the end of class, one of my students said that calculus class is the first time she’s enjoyed math since 7th grade when she first learned to solve for x. Which means I must be doing something right.

I left glowing.

Tabula Rasa, or how I wanted to start the second quarter.

With the start of the second quarter, I vow…

to be more creative, to start a project, to put more effort into making each lesson plan clear. Basically, to bring the enthusiasm back to the classroom that I had on the first day. I made a really great first day presentation where I made a pact with the kids: they put forth their full effort and they get me at my full effort.

I told my students its the start of a new quarter. We have a blank slate to work from. Thanksgiving break just happened. I think I will repeat the sentiment on Monday: a blank slate and a new vista of territory to cover. And I hopefully will repeat that sentiment to myself too!

With the start of the second quarter, I’m (by definition) over 1/4 done with the year. Champagne all around! Seriously, though, that opened my eyes. Everyone says first year teaching is really hard, a lot of work. It was, in the beginning, but I’ve learned where I can streamline. (I can’t imagine this is true in the sciences, history, or English… but math is incredibly easy to prepare for. Smartboard makes it time consuming, but it is still easy.) The hardest part so far is becoming emotionally uninvested. And even doing that, I think, helps me out. It isn’t that I don’t care about my students, but I need to have a hard edge to show my students I mean business. So it’s going well.

Also at the end of the quarter, I had to write comments on each of my students. This too went well. What struck me about the comment writing process is how easy it is to write comments for the students who aren’t doing so hot.