I was watching the TV show MONK this weekend, and the latest episode featured a double rainbow.

I got excited, because last year one of my calculus students did a mini-project on rainbows and I learned what caused double rainbows. One thing I learned while helping this student is that when you have a double rainbow, the colors of the “top” rainbow are reversed.

When I noticed that the colors on this rainbow weren’t reversed, I was like… “hmmm… this is a crucial clue to the mystery.” Turns out, however, that it was just a rainbow badly superimposed by someone who doesn’t know about rainbows.

A double rainbow actually looks like this (notice the reversed colors):

If you care to learn about the mathematics behind rainbows, I suggest reading this very accessible paper.

One thing I didn’t know about rainbows is that they are actually circular; from the ground, we are just privy to part of them. But from air, we could see the whole thing!

Pretty cool, huh.

A little surprise for you above — so take a click.

Today was good; not productive in terms of lesson planning, but great in terms of getting all settled in. I got to finally meet my other two classes (Algebra II and Multivariable Calculus) and I thoroughly enjoyed both. Overall, I think all my classes are going to be really solid this year. I’ve been trying to do this really mixed attitude: friendly but firm. (An example of firm: “Can I get a drink of water?” “No.” [I continue teaching].)

Also, I now have a calculus motto, used by a student in an aside conversation: “ANYTHING FOR CALCULUS.” Maybe I’ll make buttons.

My one concern is the split between the two calculus classes: in one I have 15, in the other I have 4. I’ll be honest: I’m already noticing a huge difference in the amount of material we can cover each day. I anticipate getting to cover 5-7 minutes worth of more material in the small class than in the large class. Even today, I got much further, and felt more confident about where we left things. And this is day two. I don’t know how the class sizes got so wackadoodle, but I have to figure out — and early on too — how to keep them at least approximately in sync, without doing either class a disservice.

But I am really looking forward for tomorrow — because after Friday comes THE WEEKEND. (And I’ve been working for the weekend.)

UPDATE: A seal made for my calculus class.

It goes without saying that this post is totally useless.

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.

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.

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.

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.