Lightning in a Bottle

This is the kind of thing that teachers love - students getting excited about something you are teaching and just running away with it.  I was teaching them how to find the derivative of x^x (do you use power rule?  is it exponential?  aaah!).  After we found the first derivative, I showed them how taking the second derivative was easier.  Then some of them thought they noticed a pattern and away we went - taking derivatives that ended up looking like this -

- trying to predict what the next one would be.  Then someone noticed a pattern when you evaluate the derivatives at x = 1 and we started trying to figure that one out as well.  We were all disappointed when the bell rang and we hadn't come to any conclusions.  By the time we return after spring break the interest level will be gone but for a while there we were really DOING math.  Not just learning about it, not looking for patterns that we already know exist, not proving things that we already know to be true, but just playing with something because it looks interesting.  It was awesome and unfortunately there's just no way to plan for that kind of thing.  I can throw stuff out there but the best investigations happen when they question something I would have never considered.

Culture Day

Some things I learned at Culture Day today:

- With enough charisma, one can get 15 students to pretend to enthusiastically conduct the William Tell Overture as a recording is played.  The entire student body will then give you a standing ovation.
- The maraca player in La Bamba has clearly not taken his ADHD meds today. 4th period is going to be fun!
- I must not know what House of the Rising Sun is about because I'm the only one who finds it strange to hear it sung by an earnest kid wearing an oxford and khakis, accompanied by a ukulele.
- Hip Hop is apparently Asian and best performed by strangers who walk in off the street.
- The best Latin dancers are of Irish descent.
- Asking a girl to prom via a poster held up in the middle of your dance routine is a sure-fire success.

Seriously though, the hour long assembly was a lot of fun.  House of the Rising Sun was actually great (once I stopped chuckling), the hip hop was cool (though the student from another high school who was there for no apparent reason was probably the best), there were a couple of beautiful performances by the sign language class, and there was a lovely duet (part of which I think was sung in Tagalog).  They all worked really hard, there were no obvious mistakes, the audience was appreciative, and I was happy to see these kids in another capacity.

T.G.I.F.

Some things that I experienced today...

- A senior started by forgetting my name and then asked, "Can I re-take that last quiz?  I am dangerously close to a C."  (In case you are wondering, "dangerously close" means a 67%.)

- Two seniors in free period asked, "Can we go write our English papers and then come take our makeup quizzes?"  (They never returned.  Note that these quizzes were originally given in February!)

- One senior tried to turn in a math project that was due in January. 

- A teacher poked her head in and asked if I could send an email for her.  She was subbing for another teacher and didn't have her laptop with her, but one of her students had disappeared and she wanted to know if it really was taking him 20 minutes to get Advil from the health room.

- A student had placed her backpack on top of her desk in a way that blocked my view of her hands - cell phone #1 (automatic two hour detention).

All of the following interruptions happened during last period...
 - One of the disciplinarians came to hand out a detention.

- One student, who I had been repeatedly asking to refocus and stop talking, asked to go to the bathroom in the middle of the lesson, when he easily could have gone in the 20 minutes before I started teaching new material.  Of course I said no, despite his insistence that it was an emergency. After each 1 minute problem, he put his hand up again, as if I had forgotten that he wanted to go!

- A student left for a doctors' appointment, requiring everyone to say goodbye.

- At the beginning of class a student hung his art project on the whiteboard next to him.  In the middle of our notes it fell down, which somehow caused him to hit his funny bone, leading to acute pain and bleeding. 

 - I noticed a blue glow under a students' desktop - cell phone #2.

- I finally got everyone calmed down when one of my seniors came to the hall window and mouthed "Can I take my quiz now?"  I told him no.  The last thing I needed was him disrupting class by dragging a desk out into the hall.

- Another student left to see his counselor.

- A student seemed very interested in his right hip - cell phone #3.

- Mercifully the bell rang.

It's the most painful time of the year...

Every March I rediscover that the end of the third quarter is the worst part of the school year.  Then I forget about the stress until it hits me again a year later.  I don't know why this is always the worst - some combination of hitting the toughest material, students being out for field trips/retreats/college visits and not making up the work until the last minute, and early onset senioritis.  This week is particularly bad because it's the end of the quarter, many classes are trying to get in one last test or paper, and it's also tech week for the spring musical.  My poor IB juniors have been hit very hard and although I've backed off on their workload, I'm still trying to get them to do related rates and optimization word problems (if you've taken Calculus, those words probably bring back bad memories - sorry!).

Today students were struggling to complete their word problems and one student had his head propped up on both hands, just staring at his paper.  I walked over and said, "How can I help you?  You have a look of despair - I know that look well by now."  Some other students heard me and started laughing.  One said, "this is the best class!"  I wasn't aware that "causes despair" was a positive quality but if I am going to cause my students mental anguish, at least they are happy about it!

Donating

On a lighter note than the last entry, here's a conversation from my last period Precalc class...

Steve:  Would you like to donate blood?  I have to get 10 people to sign up.
Paul:  Will I get paid?
Me:  If you get paid, then it's not donating.
Paul:  Would anyone pay me for donating blood?
Me:  The Red Cross won't but maybe somebody would.
Steve:  Someone in a back alley maybe.
Paul: Well, what else could I donate for money?  Do we have two livers?
Me: No, but your liver does regenerate, so you could donate part of that.  But I don't know if anyone will pay you.
Paul:  What about a kidney?  I'd be willing to sell it on the black market.
(I gave up and walked away at that point and when I returned I heard...)
Paul:  The problem with that is that 18 years later someone might walk up to me and say "hey, I'm your daughter!".
Kevin:  Or you might end up having to pay child support.
Leah:  I think you get paid more for donating eggs anyway.
Paul:  Hey, that's not fair!

I decided not to explain why eggs might be worth more.  I'd already cleared up the biological fact that we only have one liver - it was well past time to get back to math.

Tough Day

Yesterday was a tough day at school.  One of our students who graduated last year had been diagnosed with cancer during his sophomore year.  He was in the hospital for most of the next 3 years and received two bone marrow transplants during that time.  Amazingly, he was able to graduate and was in remission at the time.  We heard in the fall that the cancer had returned and earlier this week he passed away.

I never taught this student but I often saw him in the math office last year getting help to pass Precalculus.  He was polite, kind, funny, and hard working.  Just by talking to him you would never know what he had been through.  Like many children who have been that sick, he hoped to become a doctor one day.  As recently as November he was still looking ahead to college when he emailed his old math teacher to get some review material.  That's the anecdote that gets to me the most - all of that potential and those future plans cut short.

We are going to have a prayer service for him and his family tomorrow (one of the perks of teaching in a Catholic school) which will provide closure for many in our community.  I have to remember that many of my seniors who were close to him will be grieving for a long time to come.

The Overhead

Despite the digital projector built into every classroom ceiling, the teacher who shares my room sticks with using the (literally) old school overhead projector.  I think that she has to buy her own bulbs and she definitely buys her own pens, but it's worth it to her to be able to look at the class while she is writing down notes.  Anyway, the other day some of my students "discovered" the overhead and its remarkable capacity to blind unsuspecting passersby.  This resulted in the following prank...

Matt (sitting casually with his hand next to the projector power switch)
Dave (looking into the top of the projector):  What is that thing in there?  I can't tell what it is.  Hey Kelly, can you see what that thing is?
Me (as Kelly naively attempts to stare into the heart of the projector while Matt goes for the power switch):  Noooo, don't do it!

Poor Kelly...luckily she was not permanently blinded...that thing is dangerously bright.