In the Classroom

This week I was very worried about a particular class of disruptive students. With the help of our department chair, a far more successfully written lesson plan turned things around amazingly quickly on Tuesday. Today, I have also become one of "those teachers" who can make the picture shown below freehand, in one sweeping motion. It's not like that was one of my goals ... but it's kind of fun. Also, note the bilingual word wall in the top left corner.

It's interesting how things here are somebody else's fault. Below is a fairly common type of conversation from the end of the day today.

     GIRL: Sir, no disrespect but you messed up.

     ME: Oh? What did I do wrong?

     GIRL: I'm in pre-AP math and I'm tutoring her. I can just calculate this problem directly.

     ME: Yeah, that's the same thing as what I wrote down here.

     GIRL: With Ms. Richard we just do this all at once.

     ME: Right, and these are the steps that break down the process to make it easier.

     GIRL: But see, I just multiply like this.

     ME: Great, and not everyone can do that all in their head in one step.