Well, that's not entirely true. I do know which day today was, but I'm not as focused on that as I was last year; last week I lost track of what day (out of 180) we were on almost all week. Anyway, enough rambling. How today went:
1) Geometry started with the perplexing disappearance of my Geometry text. Did I drop it in another teacher's classroom? Did I leave it at home? This was an improvement upon yesterday, which started with the perplexing disappearance of my wallet, a disappearance that did not reverse itself until about 12 hours had passed, when I got home to find it on a top shelf in the closet. I needed new credit cards anyway. Stay away from my mailbox.
Overall, it is troubling how I'm barely ahead of the class; they're nipping at my heels. I need to get into my Geometry planner (lost with textbook this a.m.) to rectify that situation. To-Do #1) Plan rest of Geometry unit--subject is Triangle Congruency. The class structure today was better than usual.
2) Algebra. Algebra was even more of a mess than Geometry. There were a few reasons for this. What went well? What went well was that I was persistent and engaging. Oftentimes when things aren't going well I just plod along unenthusiastically; today, I caught those moments and responded to them, once with a mini-monologue about awkwardness (which I am SO good at!--I am an awkwardness stud!) and then later by calling for a lot of student response. Call-and-response ... woke them up a little bit.
But the plan, or lack of one ... That was unfortunate. I had told myself I was going to give them more notes and practice on proportions and rates. Over the last week, they are supposed to have learned Proportions and proportional reasoning, but I have never really seized on one way of teaching this, and as a result, no surprise, they haven't learned it. Meanwhile, in our Algebra planning meetings, we are already moving on to the next unit. Maybe the best thing I can do is to mix it into a lesson that focuses on the next unit, but emphasizes the proportional reasoning required when we learn, say, the idea of SLOPE.
What did I do, absent a plan? Spent ... damn, this is embarrassing. I spent upwards of 45 minutes going over a warmup that I gave out--grabbing a stack I'd copied a month ago from Key Curriculum Press--well I spent 30 minutes on that and 15-plus minutes going over a homework assignment that most of them didn't do. I had moved to do it myself 15 minutes before class started and was crestfallen to see how overly difficult were the problems that I assigned. I really felt irresponsible and probably should have copped to it in front of the class and issued them all an apology, and just given out Red Vines to everybody that suffered through it. I mean, damn. I can do that with my OTHER Algebra class tomorrow, and can issue said apology with today's class when I meet them again on Thursday. I can and I will.
Over the weekend (or maybe it was late last week), I went back over the first Geometry Unit that we just completed and re-wrote it, so that, for the first time, I have something to look back on that I'll want to use in the future when I teach the class. I need to do the same thing for Algebra and for Algebra 1A. Right now, I'm just muddling through. I am inspired to do that now, but at the same time there is a powerful urge to GTFO here. It's my easy day--my last class exited three hours ago, and I've been here attending to little errands and reading blog posts ... It's possible I will be more productive at home; it's also possible that I will look at my luxurious bed and just ... climb into it. It would be nice if I trusted myself to work at home. Maybe I'll give it a try. As I noted, it's not as if I've been wildly productive here.
But that's been a drawback to my approach, constantly pushing myself for increased productivity, increased efficiency. Efficiency and productivity don't really mean much if I'm climbing the wrong ladder. I wonder--maybe there was one guy who was famously good at rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I can picture him, racing at the last minute to grab that one last chair and jamming it into the closet at the last minute. Kind of heroic, no? A tragic hero.
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