First Day Rundown

Well, after yesterday’s histrionics, I can say that the first day passed by without a single “oh my gosh” incident.

Homeroom went well, as did my two calculus classes. (Although one is disproportionately larger than the other. Don’t yell at me, public school teachers, when I reveal the numbers and your brain’s penchant for witty sarcasm goes into overdrive for my kvetching: 15 students in one and 4 in the other. And no, that isn’t a typo and there is no missing digit.) Wednesday is very light on actual class time.

I also did both of my “duties” for the week (proctoring study hall, which no one attended because it was the first day, and sitting at the front desk in case students want to sign out for lunch). I led my homeroom in a discussion of the summer reading, whose theme was “banned books.” (The question I posed: come up with a book you think should be banned at our school.) I made my photocopies and got the printer to work half the time. (More than yesterday’s 20% success rate.) And I even had time to submit my summer curriculum grant form, so I get a little extra scrilla for all the work I did over the summer.

Tomorrow will be the real test, because I teach all four of my classes. And have a bunch of meetings.

The plan

Calculus: Continue reviewing functions, go into detail about domain and range, talk about course expectations in detail.
Multivariable Calculus: Go over course expectations in detail, start teaching about graphing simple equations in three dimensions.
Algebra II: Introductions, start on the basics of sets (element, subset, union, intersection)

With that, I’m out.

If you teach geometry…

dy/dan has done something spectacular:

posted every single one of his geometry keynote presentations for the year.

I don’t teach geometry (and I’m glad because I never really liked it), but now I kind of wish I did have a section.

I’m inspired enough to say that one of my goals for the year is to do the same for my SmartBoard lessons with either Algebra II or Calculus. There aren’t a lot of Smartboards out there. Nor good sites for resources. But looking at this project from a microlevel, instead of the macrolevel, it isn’t so daunting. Maybe I’ll try to post my SmartBoard lessons each week somewhere.

The sky is falling

Preface: Classes start tomorrow.

Things that went wrong today, while attempting to get organized and do some prep work.

(1) The printer in the math office at school decides it doesn’t want to work, so I can’t print stuff out at school. This is the number one worst thing ever for the day before classes start. Period.

(2) My printer at home is broken. Tonight I tried to fix it. I was unsuccessful. As a permanent reminder of this mechanical failure, I have ink all over my bedsheet.

(3) I was suffering from heat exhaustion at the end of the day. There isn’t any AC in our office, and with all the teachers there, working with a flurry of activity, I started to have hot flashes. Whoever said you have to be a woman to be afflicted is a crackpot.

(4) [In my school (as is usual in independent schools) students purchase their own textbooks. None of my multivariable calculus students seem to have a textbook. In theory, they should be able to use their calculus books from last year, since the multivariable sections are the last 5 chapters. However, apparently, the calculus teacher last year (he retired at the end of last year), told his students they didn’t need to buy a book. How he taught the class, I don’t know, but the consequence is: I’m screwed.

(5) As a consequence of this book disaster, an hour ago I decide to check to see if the book order for my regular calculus class went in the system — so students know which is the right book to order. Apparently the course is listed as “Calculus AB BC.” This is NOT an AP course. Luckily they have the right course number listed, along with my name. So there’s a chance students got the book.

What’s unfortunate was that I wasn’t nervous or anxious or anything about going back to school last month, last week, even yesterday. But now that all this has happened, I am having a mini-freak out. Sigh.

Many Eyes, Data Visualization

This site — Many Eyes — was touted in the New York Times today. It’s a data visualization site.

At an experimental Web site, Many Eyes, (www.many-eyes.com), users can upload the data they want to visualize, then try sophisticated tools to generate interactive displays. These might range from maps of relationships in the New Testament to a display of the comparative frequency of words used in speeches by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

[…]

Users can embed images and links to their visualizations in their Web sites or blogs, just as they can embed YouTube videos. “It’s great that people can paste in a YouTube video of cats” on their blogs, Dr. Viégas said. “So why not a visual that gives you some insight into the sea of data that surrounds us? I might find one thing; someone else, something completely different, and that’s where the conversation starts.”

Unfortunately when I tried to play around with it today, it was being a bit wonky. I attribute that to the traffic from the New York Times article. But if anyone does get it to work, holla if you think it’s as cool as it could in theory be.

A letter sent back in time

As last year was winding down, I realized that the kids I ended up with at the end of the year were very different than the kids I began with. I thought about where they were on the first day, and how much they had learned in the intervening months. Not only did I have to get used to them and their quirks, learning differences, personalities, but they had to acclimate themselves to my course, my personality, my quirks, my method of presentation.

And so, in the last week of classes, I asked each student to type a 1 page (double spaced) letter to themselves 9 months ago. I asked them to give themselves advice on how to succeed in this course. Things they know now which they wish they had known then.

And they gave me some pretty awesome reflective letters, full of advice useful to my classes this year. Instead of me telling them that doing their homework nightly is important, or that cramming at the last minute doesn’t work, they now have it from the horses mouths. From those who were forged in the crucible of my math class.

advice-for-algebra-ii-students

advice-for-calculus-students

What’s great about these documents, read in their entirety instead of just the snippets I provide here, is that I get glimpses of my class — and the way I am as a teacher — through the lens of a student.

After talking with my colleagues, I decided not to foist this upon my students in the first few days. There is too much information flying around and it’s too potentially useful to be flung into the “first day crud” pile. Better to wait two or three weeks, when they’ve had a chance to get to know me and my class, and I get a chance to know them and their class. Then I’ll have two or three histrionic kids read a few pieces of advice.

For students, by students.

Mountains, Molehills, and Growing Pains

The beginning of the last school year — my first school year as a full time teacher — was marked by fits and starts. Our meetings started today, and I got to talk more with a number of the new teachers. Some new to teaching, some new to my school.

Can I say, phew!

It’s such a relief not to be in that position again. Getting used to the school argot, learning and promptly forgetting the quirks about the school’s operation, struggling to fill out medical and retirement forms, and firing a mountain of questions to everyone around you while hoping that you aren’t annoying anyone. A totally overwhelming experience. Phew.

It’s kind of fascinating to think back to that time, though. In the first weeks of school, there were huge and small obstacles that I had to overcome. I often didn’t know the difference.

For example, in my school, each teacher signs up for a couple “duty periods” a week — where you proctor a study hall or sign kids out when they leave campus for lunch. I signed up for my duty periods, and then — way late in the game — realized that one of the duty periods I signed up for conflicted with my 10th grade adviser meeting. I freaked out. Full stop.I felt so anxious about it that I sent an email to this faculty list-serve we have asking if anyone could switch. (No one responded.) And I remember being just terrified and anxious to talk to the principal and tell her I had screwed up.

And looking back — even as soon as the day after it was quickly resolved — I realized that I made a mountain out of a molehill. It was a five second fix, and 72 hour freak out.

A second example: in my first two weeks of teaching, I was doing work in my apartment late one night, and realized I didn’t have the teacher’s edition of my Algebra II book with me. I swore I brought it home, so I tore apart the whole apartment. (You know, one of those frantic and desperate searches where you even peek in the freezer, because there’s that minuscule chance that you (a) opened the freezer door looking for a popsicle, (b) put the textbook down in the freezer while you reached for the popsicle, (c) closed the door with the book in the freezer, and then was (d) struck with temporary amnesia where you forgot that you went to get a popsicle and left the book in the freezer.)

I was so freaked out about this missing book that I hopped on the subway and went back to campus to check. At this point it was like 10pm at night and I was dead tired from all the work I had been doing. Plus the subway comes much less frequently at that time.

The book wasn’t anywhere. I returned home, dejected, and I tried to fall asleep. Thoughts kept running through my mind: had someone stolen it? Could I have put it anywhere else? Will everyone think I’m irreponsible?

The next day, after considerable querying and looking like a fool, it turned out one of the other math teachers had simply borrowed it and returned it in a different place.

I now know that losing a book — teacher’s edition or not — is not a huge deal.

More than not being a huge deal, these things weren’t even blips on anyone’s radar. I had made yet another mountain out of a molehill.

The problem was that at the time, I didn’t know what the school culture considered a mountain and what the school culture considered a molehill.

I’m glad I am familiar enough with the school culture so that I know when I can just say “whoops, oh well, time to move on,” and stop worrying. And honestly, almost everything I obsessed about last year were the small things.

This year I know I won’t be sweating the small stuff. (As much.)

Nothing more satisfying…

There is nothing more satisfying than going to your local school supply store and searching high and low for your perfect yearly planner/calendar. Nothing.

And that moment, after you’ve narrowed it down to three, after you’ve studied those finalists in great detail (“that one has room for me to put my after school activities, but this one doesn’t have the spiral which always gets messed up by the end of the year”), and you bring the winning planner to the cashier, well, let’s just say that I don’t even care that I’m spending my own money. [1]

Today I entered all the dates, and wrote in all the days off, shortened days, and important-to-know dates (e.g. Parents’ Night). And for the first quarter, I filled in my classes and all the meetings that I know about already.

And it felt soooooooo good. There is something robotic, yes, but comforting about filling in some of the planner. I was trying to pin my finger on exactly why — and I think I got it. There is so much to do in the beginning of the year that it can feel overwhelming. Filling in this planner not only is satisfying because its one more thing I can knock off my to-do list, but also because it forces me to think about the school year in manageable one day chunks, and not in these ambiguous terms like “unit.”

I now know what I need to do before school starts (namely: plan my first few lessons), and what I want to do before school starts (the list is too long to even contemplate retyping, but it includes things like “learn how to program in SAGE and create instructional packets for students” and “create a homework assignment sheet for each of my classes”– wishful thinking).

What I need to do is a lot, but you know what? I can do it!

So hooray for planners, my comfort in this time of turmoil as school quickly ramps up.

[1] The school actually provides us with planners, but I just don’t like them. I’m particular about certain things, and since my planner is my life at school, I spend my own money to get something I’m really happy with.