180 Blog: Day 5

First week is in the books and I am very pleased with how the week went. Today was rather eye opening. I was chatting with a fellow math teacher after school today in my classroom, when a student came in and asked if she could sit at one of the desks while she waited for her mom. Of course this was OK. The student is in the other teacher's class so they started chatting. The student told us about all the health problems that she has had, all the school that she has had to miss, and how teachers at the school have been very uncooperative. The student has had medical complications and multiple surgeries in her life. She missed all but 5 days of her freshman year and most of 8th grade as well. She was on Home and Hospital and worked with a tutor during that time. She said she emailed her teachers while on Home and Hospital and she couldn't get a response. It made me realize that some of these kids are dealing with issues that would cripple many of us adults. It's not enough to teach our subject, we have to teach each student. It is hard, but we have to place the person first.

No picture today. What can I say, I'm a (forgetful) rebel.

AP Stats
We did JellyBlubbers today. I didn't anticipate how long it would take to show students how to use the random number generator and random number table so we ran out of time with the stratified and clustered samples. We'll finish it up on Tuesday. This actually works out pretty well for me since I forgot the value of the population parameter. I can't find the digital copies of the material that I use so I'll try to remember to scan the materials on Tuesday. It's a nice activity to show the different sampling strategies.

A student told me that today is the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters and that she and her friends are dressing up as Ghostbusters and going to see the movie. What a cool kid.

Algebra II
We went over properties of exponents.Nothing special here but I did see an A-ha look in a student's eye when talking about negative exponents. That was a first for me. I started with
x^2*x^3 = xxxxx = x^(2+3)
then
x^3/x^2 = xxx/xx = x^(3-2)
then
x^2/x^3 = xx/xxx = 1/x
x^2/x^3 = x^(2-3) = x^-1


Algebra I
Yesterday, I called home on two students who aced the quiz and left a message telling their parents home awesome they were. I heard the two students talking about it today. The messages I left were super awkward. I am absolutely terrible on the phone in general, and even worse with parents but I'm glad I did it.

The student that I pulled out of class to talk to on the first day is getting much more involved in class. He's been up to the board several times, raised his hand to answer questions, and today, even smiled!

The student who got suspended on the second day of class returned. It's definitely going to be tough getting him on track but we had a good day today. We talked. He was respectful and compliant, though he struggle with he classwork. Got to play the long game.