Sine curves, like and EKG....

Reading my last post made me laugh. Of course I didn't get hearburn, I was on my way out the door to five days of no teaching bliss! Five days of which I only worked ONE. That's amazing. (Did I mention I was with Zack and my whole family?)

And that learning thing? Well they forgot it all when they went home and ate turkey, stuffing and chitlins (which apparently they want me to try).

I mention sine curves because we are working on them in Algebra 2. Or rather, I am showing them how to plug values into the calculator. They have NO clue what it means, what it's for or how they would do this without a calculator, but when I tell them it's like an EKG, their ears perk up a bit. (let's be honest, I don't remember the how, why etc--it would take a lot of time for me to re-learn that-I am following the method of just showing them the process/shortcut so they can pass their test)

What I really mean though, is that teaching has its own sine wave. I was somewhat up that last week. Somehow they felt like learning (not that they showed it on their tests). This week, they do not. This week most of my students are as unhappy to be back as I am. This week many of them have conveniently forgotten how close we are to exams (even though I tell them there are only 9 teaching days left), and they certainly do not see the correlation between how they act in class and how they perform on an exam.

I talked to Litsy who has been doing this for a while. I needed to curb the disillusionment (yup, it's now December and I am still in that terrible trough). She said look, you are a bad teacher, it's ok, you are new. You need to find a way to get your kids to care, you need to invest them or they will not work for you. Right now you are probably up there miserable, and it shows. Duh. How can they learn from someone who just wants to get on the next plane to SF? How can they learn from someone who doesn't help them see the value in what they are learning?

Then there was the wack-a-mole analogy. Another duh....No matter how much you wack the mole to get it back in the hole, it's going to keep popping up. It likes the attention of the mallot. Instead, you need to say, "mole, thank you so much for staying in your hole, you are doing a great job'...ie, when a student is doing well, praise them publicly. This will hopefully prevent the whole "be quiet!" "Put away the cell phone!" "Pay attention!" "You have nine days till exams but you are not acting like it" "How does no one get this?" (yes I've actually said that).

Today I tried to say 3 positive things for every negative one. That lasted 10 minutes. And then I got pissed. I will try again tomorrow.