Mar. 8th

It's a Tuesday, the morning is brisk and it is really no different than any other middle day. Often forgotten like the middle child of a family...ehem. My plan before school was to write out a lesson plan on the quadratics and administer a worksheet I had made for Pre-Algebra.

Pre-Algebra Classes-

These classes are so hard to prepare for, mainly because these students move at a much different pace than what I am used to. Also these kids seem to be the ones that listen the least and are most likely to give up as soon as they don't know the exact process they are going through. On the worksheet I gave them in class, they were to find the circumference and area of a circle as well as area of various shapes. I thought this would be a review. The idea to give this was given to me by my cooperating teacher. I'm alright with him helping me any time he feels that he needs to. I like the fact I can look up to someone and count on when I feel like I'm not doing it correctly. He has worked with children like this for 37 years. I have only worked with children like this for a few months, so anything he suggests I will at least take a look at.
These students had a surprisingly difficult time with the worksheet. It was like they had never seen any of the shapes, even though they had to use them to find the area of their Polygons from their project. I even spent time in class the day before to convey the point that the volume of a Geometric Prism is simply the area of a base (triangle in a triangular prism) times the height. They seemed to really get it, yet today they looked at a rectangle and had forgotten how to solve the area. The most frustrating thing about some of these kids is that the ones that don't pay attention want me to help them the most. I am starting to understand this, and it's not that I'm giving up on them, I just want to give the students that do give a darn a chance to get help first. It seems a little shallow of me to do this, but I think it is actually more fair. Overall I thought the worksheet went terribly and that students are far more lost on area and volume than I had thought.

Algebra Classes

In these classes I was continuing to teach on the use of quadratic functions. The lesson today was simply an extension of the previous day. I was trying to get them to understand how to find the axis of symmetry when it is not on the y-axis. I figured I would bring in the use of graphing calculators, but these gave me so many problems it was ridiculous. I'm not sure why but when a vertex should have been (0,0) it ended up being 1.8 X 10^-7 and stuff like that. I was really confused, and this help the students get off track and almost lost in a way. I know now that I need to make sure everyone has their decimal set to 2 or 3 places instead of Float. You think it wouldn't make a difference, but it made a huge difference. Either way, I need to make sure exactly what I'm dealing with before I use these calculators again. The weird thing that happened in class was a student figured out how to find the vertex once you know the axis of symmetry (look these up if you don't remember). Then when she went to do it on the homework assignment, she seemed lost. I didn't understand how they didn't know how to do substitute an x value into an equation and solve for y. To me, this was something they had been doing for a long time. It's fun to get off task with this class sometimes, and today was no exception. We ended up on the topic of talking about some movie, I forget what it was, but it had absolutely nothing to do with math or anything that could remind you of what we were doing. I see myself as a good relegating these off task things, because I respond to it and quickly jump back into what we are doing. These classes tend to be getting a little more out of control as the year progresses. I feel like I need to clamp down. My teacher is helping me sometimes when it comes to the discipline, because he might see something that I don't and vice versa. I just think that I need to learn a school discipline plan to the finest before I really implement my own thoughts and restrictions.


Overall

I had a fun day today. I got to hang out with some of the other teachers that are closer to my age. It seems that the other teachers can sense my enthusiasm and it seems that my kindness and caring attitude is a draw for teachers to want to come speak to me. It seems like the hard times have gotten to some of the teachers. You can tell they care about their students, but the outer-shell is so rough and torn up, you would think they hate their job and their life. I hope my job as a teacher never turns into a chore. I assume it will always leave me with surprises and keep me on my toes. Today a student forgot his AR (accelerated reader) book, and instead of sitting there and doing nothing, he decided to look over the shoulder of the student in front of him and read the book they were reading. I was trying to hold it in, but I kept laughing, probably distracting the students from their reading time, but it was too funny not to laugh at. I had to explain to the other students why I was laughing afterward.
During lunch, I had been invited by the gym teacher I usually eat lunch with to come up into the wrestling room and play this Wii game where they dance the whole time. She had gotten me and a few female teachers to join in on the festivities. Little did I know the class was all girls. As the song they were dancing to ended, some girls I had earlier in the day, saw me and went "ahh Mr. Kerwin is here!?!?" and proceeded to "faint" to the ground. I just smiled and laughed quietly, as I heard them saying "I hope he didn't see all of our dancing." The two female teachers and I went up to the front and dance battled a song where we did a lot of Russian dance moves. It was a lot of fun, but it was a shame I got a close second place. I scored a solid gold score, and yet I lost by 2200 points. Either way I had a lot of fun doing it, and you could tell the girls were glad I was there because they wanted me to jump in right away, and were begging me to do one more song near the end of the class period.
Faculty meeting at the end of the school day today. We talked about the new discipline plan and what we need to do. It was pretty enlightening because I had no idea what the new plan had implemented into the school. We also sort of made complaints about things that weren't working and what we should do under this new plan. We also asked about when to write referrals. It was nice to hear that other teachers are having the same problems as me, though I don't some of the attitudes they have. Makes me go back to how it seems that teachers lose their shine after a while and get chopped down by the hardships of teaching and lose the teacher they really are, and get bitter. Luckily my cooperating teacher hasn't lost his luster, and I'm thankful that I can be placed with such a wonderful guy.