So, I've gotten to the point where I have no idea of password (or, for that matter, my username/email registration) for my original reflections blog (useless math.blogspot.com) . But, Google's now letting me log in to this account, which is tied to my personal account. Fair enough. Starting over...
... Which is, fair enough, what my teaching situation is like. After 10 months in central office, and starting last year in the crazy situation of beginning one quarter in, I've got a full year of teaching mostly still ahead of me. Calculus, which is nice-- it's always fun teaching calculus. It's a great opportunity to get very conceptual, and I definitely think I'm doing a better job than ever before of stringing the ideas together.
Note for next year: introduce limits as a way of talking about discontinuities. Start with the asymptotic and removable discontinuities, and use them to justify the need for a concept of a limit.
There was some talk, last Spring, of developing a highly engaging senior "elective", for students who didn't want to take any math their senior year, with me doing a lot of that development work. Instead, I got talked into sticking with Geometry, which is sort of my least favorite, because it's relatively limited in application, and so steeped in ancient Greek thought, none of which is intuitive to modern students.
I got talked into Geometry, on grounds that sophomore year is where a lot of kids make a decision about whether or not to stay in High School. If you're a kid who missed out on credits, one way or another, during your Freshman year, then the Sophomore year is probably where you either get back on track, or cut bait and drop out of school.
Last week, another teacher and I agreed to shuffle our 11th period classes, consolidating the students who are least engaged, least prepared, and most at-risk for dropping out in my class. That'll be an interesting challenge, to be sure. My existing 11th period class already has a lot of that, so really, the consolidation is effectively me sending my better students to another teacher, and picking up his most challenging cases.
Today, on the last day before the switch, I was observed by my principal. Not a big deal-- but it's astonishing the degree to which student behaviors changed: they were much "better behaved", and made moves towards at least looking engaged (if I'm honest several students still blew off the notes, even while trying to look like they were on-task). By the end of the class, I was feeling like I would like *more* of that sort of behavior in my classroom-- but I'm not really willing to build it on a basis of fear of reprisal. It seems to me that students were exhibiting what they know to be "good behavior" because they didn't want to be punished (by the principal, or by me) for "bad behavior".
This is an issue of classroom management, obviously: how do I build a productive, engaged classroom, not based on threat of reprisal, but on a real love of learning? The answer, obviously, is to tap into the students' own love of learning-- but for this group, that love of learning is buried pretty deep...
