Money for Grades

At the end of every marking period or right before exams students start bargaining for grades.  Several always try to offer me money for an A.  I don't know if this is a universal teenage trait or more specific to my school where many kids are used to being able to buy anything that they want.  Even though I know it's a joke, there are some who would truly pay me if I'd let them.  I used to get really annoyed that this is their response to adversity and angry that they would think their teachers could be bought.  Now I've gotten better at rolling with the joke.

This year I pretended to be insulted that they only offered me $20 - you think I'm so poor that $20 is worth lying and not doing my job?  They upped the ante to $1000 at that point. :)  When that still didn't work, one boy offered to let me adopt him!  I'm still confused about how suddenly having a 17-year old son is beneficial to me, but this display of his "logic" may explain why he is having trouble in math in the first place.

Despite all of these discussions, no money (or children!) has ever actually changed hands.  Not so for my colleague who received a $1 bill stapled to one boy's midterm!  I don't think $1 will buy you any points but the laugh we got might be worth a couple.

Is it Christmas break yet?

This last push until exams is always exhausting.  On top of all of the normal work, we have to update exams and review packets and work with students who are starting to panic as the marking period comes to a close.  I've been staying up late working and it's starting to have some strange effects.

For example, yesterday one of my students asked to borrow an eraser to use during his test.  (My poor IB students are always wearing out their erasers in my class!)  I grabbed something out of my box and was halfway over to him before I realized that I was holding a paper clip!  I'm so thankful that I did not actually hand him a paper clip - I would never have lived it down!

The Benefits of Sleep?

I don't know who was in my classroom today during second and third period, but it sure didn't seem like the same Precalculus students that I had before break.  In each class there was a good 45 minutes in which they quietly took notes, worked on the problems, and asked good questions.  You could have heard a pin drop - I didn't have to stop side conversations or refocus their attention up front. 

They were remarkably good on Tuesday as well, but not quite as extraordinarily quiet.  I think one reason that they were paying so much attention is because this material is new (the first truly brand new concepts of the year) and yet also very do-able for people with mediocre algebra skills.  They didn't care about when people would use this in the real world (though I tried to tell them) - if the material seems manageable they will happily do it.

Or maybe they were just well rested after Thanksgiving break and things will be back to normal on Monday.  We shall see...