Celebration

Tomorrow my students take their midterm exams.  Historically our students do very poorly on their exams (across the board, not just in math).  So before the potential downer that tomorrow may bring, I thought I should take a moment to celebrate the good things that are happening in my classes.

- My IB juniors are getting better at problem solving and explaining their solutions, which was my goal for the year.  Last week I gave them a bunch of very challenging problems and it was a pleasure to watch them bounce ideas off of each other.  It was hard not to give them help but it was worth it to see their delight when they figured it out by themselves.

- One of my Precalc students memorized the unit circle.  (If you don't remember, the unit circle contains all of the basic trig values like sin 30 = 1/2.  You probably once had it memorized too.)  We don't require our students to memorize the values because it would be impossible for some of them, but anyone going on to Calculus needs to know them.  So I made it an extra credit opportunity for students who could take the test without their circle.  Only one student took me up on it but it was a pleasure to see her figure out all of the patterns and grow to a deeper understanding as she figured out how to commit it to memory.

- Another Precalc student has turned around from barely passing first quarter to getting A's on every test.  He attentively takes notes and asks excellent questions.  His parents and tutor get all of the credit on this one, but I get to reap the benefits.

- My students were quiet and focused during our review day for the exam.  Typically these days have been a disaster for me as some students just don't care enough to pay attention and end up disrupting the students who want to learn.  This year I am really blessed with studious kids - maybe the exams won't be so terrible after all!