Feb. 7th

Today was the first day back after a luxurious 6 day ice storm break. Even though it is nearly a week since the storm hit on Monday night, my road is still very dangerous, and was proven to me by how I nearly was unable to accelerate through a 4-way intersection. Anyways, all the students were in a chatter since many of them had not seen one another for much of the "break." As a teacher, I have learned that these 3 days off of school have really put more pressure on me and the other teachers in the math department. We were supposed to have "wasted" an entire day talking about the ISTEP prep tests and what they needed to improve on. Due to the canceled days of school, we were unable to do so. When it came to my student teaching experience, it postponed my duty of taking complete control of both the Pre-Algebra, and Algebra classes. I decided to stick with just teaching the Algebra classes for this week. As you would have thought, review was needed in order to move on and move swiftly. Oh, I forgot to mention, today was also a 2-hr delay, leaving me only 29 minutes for my second Algebra class. My first was still normal since it occurs during the lunch hour. In each class I reviewed special case binomial multiplication as well as using the distributive property. Their task was to complete a worksheet on multiplying polynomials of different sizes, mainly binomials and trinomials. It seemed that the students understood what was going on at first, but when they came upon the harder ones, time was becoming too big of a factor. In each of my classes, I cut the homework nearly in half. I believe that as long as they understand the distributive property itself, I should not need to assign them a ton of problems. I also decided to cut the homework because the more difficult ones had so much work involved, it was taking some kids nearly 20 minutes to finish one problem. I had not done the worksheet ahead of time, and I have now learned that I should probably at least start to work through the problems so I have some sort of sense as to how much time THEY will end up spending on it.
On a different note, I had noticed today that one of the more quiet girls in one of the pre-algebra classes had changed something about her appearance. I wasn't too sure what she did but I told her that she looked different and that I liked it. Immediately, the girl sitting next to her was basically begging me to compliment her. Being put on the spot like that, I wasn't too sure what to say, so then she began to explain to me what was different than before. I had not noticed, even after she explained it all to me. The only reason I noticed the other girl is because she looked relatively the same every day, and today was different. I figure if I lighten up to her and show my compassion, she might open up and get some work done.
Just when I thought the whole crush thing was over, an entire group of girls in my last hour class were just giggling and staring at me while I was trying to teach the review and the somewhat new stuff. So if you are reading this supervisors, this would be the most interesting class to come visit me in.
On a funny note, a cubs fan in one of my classes asked me this "So besides being a White Sox fan, what do you have against the Cubs?" I just laughed and said "Do I need any other reason?" He thought it was funny and we had a good laugh. It's nice to know that the students are truly interested in what you have to say.