So after yesterday's admission about how I show up to class typically full of fear over possibly being rejected in my attempts to appear cool, I showed up today in an amazingly good mood. At first I attributed this entirely to yesterday's realization, but then I realized that I was drinking caffeinated coffee for the first time all week. Whatever--the cause was unimportant. I was feeling good!
The trick, then, I guess, is how to replicate this good feeling again and again over the next several days. Right now I am kind of fretful and unfocused, which is kind of a pattern for me on Tuesdays--I have a lot of time Tuesday afternoons to prepare for the rest of the week, but it's so much time I tend to go off to dreamland.
But one of the nice things was: I didn't have a rock-solid plan for today when I started, and it still went well. Now, I wasn't TOTALLY making s*#t up--I mean, I'd worked far enough ahead into the Geometry unit to know the material we were covering, and Algebra--I have some ... I had some good ideas about things we can do. There are a couple of more reasons that today could go well while tomorrow might be dicey. Today I had Periods 1 and 3; tomorrow I have periods 2, 4, and 6. My Period 1 Geometry class is huge, but it's also quiet--and there are just a lot of solid students in there. My Period 4 Geometry class is doing much less well, so far. I don't know why that is, but I'm concerned about it. It was in discussing that Period 4 class that the whole issue of my cool-ness or lack thereof came up in the first place. In fact, I think that Period 4 may NEED to do marshmallow towers just to get kicked out of their stupor, their complacent resentment of me, their self-satisfied collective decision to say, "F this" ...
My Period 3 Algebra 1 class may have gone well in part because I have a senior in there who told some of the freshmen to "shut the f@!k up." I might get parent complaints because I didn't do anything about that; I should have had the freshman come talk to me after and I didn't. I could move his seat elsewhere, but I just basically whispered to the senior that he overdid it a little bit--in other words, keep up the good work, enforcer. Glad to have you on the team. Can I name you team captain? Gotta be careful there.
I don't have anybody like that in my Period 2 Algebra 1 class, and that class is also a bit bigger, a little more attitude, a little more discipline problems. I don't know if my new "being cool" outlook can solve all my discipline problems that easily. I think it will help, because if there is one area in which my needy, hate-being-rejected failure to be cool hurt me, it was in discipline and classroom management. Filled with self-doubt and lack of certainty, I couldn't confront anybody about anything, or I would nudge my way into every such confrontation with a heavy dose of cringe. Now, if I'm cool, I can do everything unapologetically, including calling students on their behavior.
Now, this might be a little boring, but I want to remind myself of the agenda I used in these two classes so that I don't do wildly different things with my Wednesday classes. With Geometry I gave a pop quiz, and then I went over the homework, and had them discover the theorem that every point on a perpendicular bisector is equidistant between the two endpoints of the segment bisected. And then I gave them another set of constructions, this one requiring them to draw a perpendicular through a point NOT on the line. They struggled with it, but one of them got it, and I had that one show his method up on the projector. Then they had to discover the theorem that the shortest distance from a point to a line is perpendicular to that line.
As a distraction, or as something else fun to do, I used the Fry's Bank three-act on Dan Meyer's site. I kind of muffed up Act One, though, and I could feel it as I did it. I played the video, and then immediately, as soon as it was over, I asked my question. And that kind of made me pause, almost slowing to a stop--because I saw how I'd kept them from owning the activity. (I did a much better job soliciting "noticings" and "wonderings" from the subsequent period of Algebra 1). I did NOT assign anything else for homework, as they already had some other constructions to work on.
In Algebra, I took my scattered mind to the front of the classroom and told them, "Alright, there's a number of things we could work on." And I wrote like the first four possibilities that came to my mind on the board, and had them vote on one order we'd cover them on. The agenda we came up with was like this:
1) Go over the HW on one-step equations
2) Receive the flier which outlines their project on Symbols in Math
3) Take notes on how to solve equations
* 3a) Practice this
4) Take notes on how to graph on the coordinate plane
* 4a) Practice this
5) (I forgot about this, didn't put it on the board, and ended up inserting it into the agenda last-minute--pass back tests)
The order they ended up choosing was ... well, it was the order above ... And we ended up not getting to 4 ... which was fine. Fry's Bank was a great other activity--I had them make their guesses on index cards, which I collected, and then I never did get around to telling them the answer--maybe they'll be motivated to--gasp--look up how to do it on their own. (That's what I did. Oh, and this is important--I had fun doing it!) The homework we went over very quickly. The flier they pretty much accepted without much comment, and the notes on how to solve equations went pretty well; my comedic stylings on them becoming equation detectives were enjoyed by some. The stick figure I drew next to a pool of blood on the board elicited a few smiles. Not for the faint of heart. And then I passed back the test and went over it ... And I caught myself going over it way too fast, and slowed way down.
ANYWAY, can I replicate all that tomorrow? Possibly. Do I still need to plan Thursday and Friday? Most definitely. Did I just realize that my Marin County BTSA workshop and my school's Back to School Night are on the same night, this Thursday? I most certainly did! Well ... awesome! That will be ... insane! I'm off to Toastmasters, where tonight I'm the grammarian. The word of the night is ... triangulate!
No comments:
Post a Comment