Mar. 15th

Pre- Algebra Classes
Today, in my pre-algebra classes I came up with an activity at about 7:50 in the morning, and decided to use it in class. I thought it would be a good thing to use for students to move around and get things going. I made this activity and expected it to take the class time, and allow them time to finish at home. In my 1st hour class, I briefly went over surface area formulas and volume formulas, and then gave them time in class to work. My teacher completely left the class. I really felt like it was completely my own class. He didn't come back until the class period ended. It was a pretty good feeling, and I thought that I was ready for something like this. I think one thing I need to work on with this class is either have them write notes or give them notes to take. The project, though, was a project that just had them measure and find the surface area of 5 objects in the classroom, or at home if they didn't finish in class.
5th Period was a hassle by myself. They were so concerned with where my cooperating teacher was that it took them forever to get under control. It took me longer to explain what was going on with the project than it did for my 1st period class. I put a little thing in spanish for the one mexican-american I have in my class. He thought it was funny and we had to explain what the phrase meant in english. I could tell they didn't like the project, but at least it was an attempt for a change of pace idea.

Algebra Classes
In my algebra classes, I decided that I cleared up any questions yesterday about what we had been doing, so I decided to move onto solving quadratic equations by factoring. With the notes, I went step-by-step, and the further I got into the notes, it seemed a lot of students forgot how to factor, and this is going to be a major problem if I can't correct this. I showed them the zero product property and how they can solve each polynomial by setting them to zero and finding the value of their variable that solved the equation. I gave them an 8 problem half-worksheet where a few of them had already been factored. All of these happened to be problems that had a lead coefficient of 1. The 7th period class erupted in excitement when I told them I was attending the after school dance as a chaperon. Little did I know it was going to be an interesting event for me.


After School Dance
Before the dance even started, I was asked by 4 girls to be their date to the dance. Of course, I turned them down, but in the nicest way I could think possible. Oh yeah, I was asked by two guys from my classes to be their dates. I also turned them down, but at least I know they were joking with me. The principal dedicated a Justin Beiber song to me. He came over to me after he did that and was crackin' up. Apparently he only picked me because my head was the only thing he saw, and yes, I know my head is extremely large and is above the crowd as it is. The choir teacher was the DJ and had pretty low quality equipment. They had some terrible sub-woofers and the overall sound quality was muffled. I could have borrowed my dad's equipment and gotten clearer results. It might have also been the fact that the volume was turned up extremely loud to cover the sound of the gym. This whole tid-bit feeds into my awesome dancing. I was talking with the band director when the choir teacher (DJ) calls out that he has to dance to this song. A huge circle of students surrounded us, and before I knew it, we were both dancing like idiots. It was fun, and then we realized we were being videotaped. (hooray!! Video is on facebook and youtube, haven't seen it, and I don't want to) So I wasn't the only teacher I knew being humiliated I made one of the teachers I had become friends with, so I made him jump in too. It was a lot of fun, I even pulled out the shopping cart dance, and the old pull-start lawn-mower.
Towards the second half of the dance, a few of the girls that I have in class were following me, but every time I turned around to see what they were doing they turned around as if they weren't doing anything. It was quite adorable, and the next thing I knew there was a group of about 15 girls following me. That was kind of odd, but I didn't make a big deal out of it. From the words of another teacher "Oh! Bless their little Hearts!!" That's about all anyone can say about that. Overall, I had a great time, and I got a free slice of pizza out of the whole thing, so I was happy about that.