I’m there.
Apparently, so was this one:
(I suddenly have a hankering to watch “Fight Club”…)
You’ve heard the phrase, “the mind is willing but the flesh is weak?”
Well, this is one of those points in the campaign where:
“The mind is weak and the flesh is weak.”
As in:
Your brain knows that Spring Break is nigh, and thus your body is pretty much shutting down in anticipation.
We will surely revisit this theme in a couple of months =)
Today during 8th period’s group quiz, a brief conversation went as follows:
STUDENT: Mr. Youn, do you think we’re going to have a late start tomorrow?
ME: (looks at weather app on iPhone and sees 20’s along with rain icon) Yup. Guaranteed.
STUDENT: Why do you say that?
ME: Because tomorrow is an A-day.
-_-
Growing up as a kid in Southern California, I was accustomed to two things with regards to the school year:
Per item #1 above, I still like to think of how the topics that we cover in class can be broken up logically into quarters. 5
As for item #2, here are a few parallels I see between the school year and the NBA season:
Of course, if an NBA team is so far out of the playoff race,13 then this is NOT “winning time”. Those teams have no real reason to try and basically tank the rest of the season, hoping for a high lottery pick and a great start to the next stage of life. I suppose the closest school analogy for this would be: SENIORITIS.14
With one week to go until Spring Break,15 this would mark the close of the 3rd quarter. As far as weeks go, this would be an anti-climatic one, at best:
Geometry: Review/Benchmarks, Unit Test.16
AP Stat: Group Quiz/Review, Unit Test.17
Truth be told, though, things are actually beginning to click on all cylinders. It always seems a bit unjust that things usually start to get really good when we are so close to the end. But that’s really the cycle of life, isn’t it?
As I type this on Sunday afternoon, the weather here in Central Texas has taken a sudden turn for the cold, with overnight temps projected to be in the 20’s. And if school gets canned tomorrow, that would be poetic justice indeed, as tomorrow is actually a B-day.
Translation: B-day AP Stat classes would have their major exam bumped from Wednesday to Friday — a.k.a., SENIOR SKIP DAY.
Earlier this week, we started inference with means, which is the last unit before Spring Break. (Translation: this is when it starts to feel like you are pulling teeth from a chicken.)1
Here’s one of the first “problems” that we explore:
Of course, to investigate this claim,2 we need actual “data”:
Yes. I brought cookies.3
Each student gets one cookie45 and counts the number of chips6 in their piece of “data”,7 then writes that number on the board, like so:
Sounds like fun, no? 8
That is, of course, until the following class, when I pose the following question, merely as a matter of academics…
…only to have a student ask aloud with enthusiastic anticipation:
Did you bring us donuts today?!!
. . .
. . .
(Sigh.)
Back in August sometime, I made a promise to myself that for the 2013-14 school year, I would spend as little time as possible outside of 8-5 working on school-related stuff. 1 Why? Because after pushing full throttle for the first seven-and-a-half, I knew the frantic pace of ’07 – ’13 was perhaps unsustainable.
Well, you know what they say about plans.
After being able to go on relative cruise control from August to January, things have ramped up significantly — in terms of required prep, revising curriculum, grading exams, tweaking assessments,2 staying extra-late for tutorials… the list goes on.3
But past experience tells me that this is appropriate for the season.
Past experience also tells me that it doesn’t ramp down much until May 9.4
On the bright side, we did manage to save the globes.
Twice in the next week or so, the guy at HEB is going to help me check out with a dozen or so packs of chocolate chip cookies.5 And he’s just going to chuckle, because he’ll just know:
It’s that time of the year.6
The single worst day of my teaching career?
It was four years ago this Friday.1
Valentine’s day weekend.
The last day of the 4th six weeks.
The day of the rational functions test in Pre-AP Algebra II.
Here’s a near-absolute truth about any math class on Earth:
The 4th six weeks is the hardest.
I estimate that some of it has to do with the fact that it immediately follows Winter Break2 and that it takes kids — like adults — some time for their brain functions to defrost.
But of all the math classes that I have taught3 the January-through-mid-February stretch of Algebra II was the toughest.4
2009-20105 was my third year of teaching Pre-AP Algebra II6 and great efforts were made each successive year to refine the course to perfection. But the end of the 4th six weeks that year was one of those “we’re trying to squeeze more juice out of the orange and there’s no more juice to be squeezed out” moments.
Here’s the short version: I can’t deal with crying students. 7
That afternoon, a parade of my Pre-AP Algebra II students came by after school to see their tests,8 and no fewer than 3 of them break down in tears on the spot.9
For any prospective teachers out there: That is NOT the way you want to go home on a Friday afternoon.
I still to this day remember distinctly when one of the kids saw the 50-something on her paper,10 looked up at me in tears11 and managed to stammer,
That’s IT. I give up. I can’t do this anymore.
And then she walked out. 12
Then I looked to my left and right, and there were yet two other kids that were crying. One of them had to leave for the ladies’ room to compose herself, then came back to look over her exam. 13
I realized then that sometimes, more than anything, our students really just want to hear us tell them that they’re doing things right.
As adults, when the cracks start to show, teachers sometimes have responsibilities that go outside of simply being instructors of the academics.
Sometimes I’m surprised by the degree to which some of these kids are afraid to disappoint us.14 For any figure of authority, the art of being able to strike the right balance between pushing too hard and not pushing hard enough is an impossibly difficult tightrope act. I don’t know how parents manage it. 15
After a tumultuous three-week stretch peppered with ice days (sans any real ice), AP Stat finally makes the transition from proportions to means this next week. There are only two more major exams this year. That kinda blows my mind to think that things have flown by so quickly.
On the horizon: Chocolate chips per cookie and flying frogs.