I was observed this morning by my University Supervisor. After the lesson, I felt like I bombed… and honestly it was the worst teaching job I’ve done with my 9th graders so far (out of about 10 days). But here’s what my professor wrote:

You did a nice job and I like the confidence and commanding voice that you use in front of the classroom…. You did a great job of trying to solicit class participation and trying to make the atmosphere more student-centered, but I can tell that this is not what they are accustomed to. Your lesson was creative and I enjoyed it. Keep up the good work….

I had to exclude some sentences as they were personal and were not meant to be public. But yeah, good observation

he’s taking over my playlist and he finally impressed me in a live performance. watch him here on ellen. he is justin beiber.

a thousand days without your love.

my weekend schedule for the rest of the semester:

November 6-7: Grady (hired by tournament)
November 13-14: Fayette County (running tournament)
November 20-21: Carrollton (hired by Johns Creek)
December 5-7: Ohio Valley
December 12: Griffin (running tournament)

Yay for money!

A month from today is the Fayette Classic. This tournament gives me soo many sleepless nights and tireless days. It’s so worth it. This tournament is one of the reasons I do debate. I enjoy running the tournament so much. This year I am having to give up control of what I’ve done for the past 4 years because of student teaching. Instead of running the tab room for the policy divisions, I will be running IE’s.

Ugh, nerves are going crazy already. Crazy dreams/nightmares… tournament’s filling up. I’m ready for this to be over.

This weekend was absolutely amazing. It was my first non-school / non-debate dedicated weekend of the school year. I finally had time to sleep / have a social life / enjoy life. I did all three, to the maximum degree. On Friday, Craig came up and we went on an adventure… let’s just say we ended the adventure by making $ 200 each – haha, sounds like prostitution… It may have been? Saturday was Lisa Lampanelli + Football day.

Let’s talk about football. You wanna know what irritates me? UGA fans. They talk sooo much crap before games, about how they’re the best in the country.. and then after getting blown out by one of the worst teams in football… silence. Or even worse (and what I encountered Saturday) someone telling you they’re still the best team in the country. I’m sorry but I think UGA may end up not even bowl eligible this year. I feel comfortable guaranteeing three more losses (Florida, Auburn, and Georgia Tech) and if they manage to win the others, they’d still be 6-6, ending up in a very early bowl at best. They’re not good. Joe Cox is horrible. The defense is a joke- it made Crompton look good. UGA fans, get over yourself… this is a bad year for UGA Football. I wish that was the end of my UGA rant… the UGA fans then went to harrass me on Saturday morning about how UF was going to lose badly to LSU. Not true. They said that even if Tebow plays, the Florida team has no rushing game and will lose. I’m sorry but who was 5th in the nation in rushing going into last weekend? That’s right- FLORIDA! They’re the fastest team in the country! In a world where Tebow didn’t play on Saturday, Brantley still would have won the game – he’s a better QB than Cox, Crompton, and many other SEC first string QB’s. I’m sorry, but Florida is the team to beat… and the 2010 National Champion.

My thoughts for the rest of the season:

SEC East Champion – Florida. South Carolina will be a close 2nd, and I think they beat Bama in Week 7.
SEC West Champion – Alabama. Believe me, it will be a mess before we get there.

SEC Champion – Florida defeats Alabama in a close game, but Tebow will be heading to a 3rd National Championship.

Big 12 South Champion – Texas. They have 2 real games left. I hate the Big 12.
Big 12 North Champion – Kansas. I think Nebraska will lose 2 more.

Big 12 Champion – Texas. Seriously they have no competition.

Florida beats Texas in the National Championship. Although I think Texas may lose to Oklahoma this weekend, Sam Bradford is back and apparently doing fine. If they do, I’d look for Va Tech in the National Championship against Florida.

…I just didn’t know what to do

I am teaching the third subunit of the second unit in Mathematics I. The third subunit focuses on rational and radical expressions. The goal of my unit was to make the students feel like radical and rational expressions are not scary, and in fact pretty fun. When I was told what unit I’d be teaching, the first sentence out of the teacher’s mouth was, “Good luck, the kids hate fractions.” I am hoping that I can change the student’s perceptions regarding rational and radical expressions.
The first day I am teaching, we will be working through and discovering rational expressions using polynomials in the Just Jogging Learning Task. The learning task is a great way to let the students discover how to manipulate rational expressions. The students are given something familiar that they have seen before, the distance formula, and simply manipulate it by adding variables. In order to increase conceptual understanding, the students can work in pairs and communicate math to each other.
We have four days allotted for operations on rational expressions. Although the resources I were given were extremely procedurally based, I have added conceptually challenging questions and thought provoking statements in my lessons. I am hoping for the students to not just accept what the text book tells them and try and fully understand the material. To support conceptual understanding, I have reworked some of the Lassiter worksheets and instead of 30 “procedural” problems; the students will have a limited number of problems to do outside of class that will still check for understanding of the material. The first week is wrapped up with a Jeopardy game to review the operations of rational expressions. Although the worksheets and exercises may appear to be conceptual, students will continually be challenged to think why they are doing steps of solving rational expressions, rather than just following the textbook’s rules.
The second half of my subunit deals with radicals. I never really thought about how fun radicals could be. The students and I will be discovering the rules of the radicals through many trial and error steps. We will discover why rationalizing a denominator is helpful, and why simplifying radical expressions can help mathematicians. Helping the students understand why teachers ask them to simplify will hopefully help motivate the students to actually want to learn how to simplify.
The unit conforms to the GPS and NCTM standards by continually challenging the students to reason through their problems. Instead of just listing the excluded values in a rational expression, the lessons challenge the students to know what the excluded values tell us about the expression. I am a huge technology person and wish there was more I could do with technology. If this were my own classroom, I would try and do as much possible with technology. I believe that technology is one of the best ways to keep students entertained and keep their focus in mathematics.
I have been met with some resistance regarding procedural and conceptual understanding. By going into a very successful school that has taught procedural for years, it is hard to justify the importance of conceptual understanding; however I believe that after my unit the students will desire to know why they are performing operations, rather than just performing them. If this were my own class, I would rather create future mathematicians, and not just mathematical robots.

It’s late. I know. Where are my days going? I feel like I am getting nothing accomplished and yet I have so much to do. My to do list keeps growing and my accomplishments list isn’t. Lesson plans keep stacking themselves up, and yet I feel like I have so much to do.

Okay a confession – the past three days I’ve been listening to 1 song hardcore.  I’m so ashamed of it, but its irresitible.  For some reason, it makes me smile. It makes me happy. It makes me want to get up just get crazy.  The song is “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus.  It’s a song that will just make you bod your head, move your hips, do whatever it is you do when you’re feelin’ a song.  The music video was released last night for it and I was highly disappointed.  She’s slutty in it… but it still makes me happy. And that’s what counts.

So my life consists of lesson planning, class, debate, and sleep.  I don’t have a social life anymore. At all. It’s starting to bother me a little but I think I can get over it.  For a social life, I’d need to cut one of those aforementioned activities…and only 1 is eligible to be cut.. and we all know I can’t do that – my body won’t let me.   I do have to say, I”m very proud of myself for not forcing myself to go to some tournaments – it will be a battle this year, but I’m going to make it through this.

I need to get back to this blogging thing. Its something that is different in my day. I need different right now.

I’d just like to say how much you piss me off. I had my first day of student teaching on September 17. I wanted to share with you the details. I text you, you promise a call that night. Five days (almost six) later, still no call. Not to mention, the flood happened in Kennesaw… who knows if I’m all right? Or what is going on.

For someone who cares so much about our friendship, a five minute phone call wouldn’t hurt.

Just some words of advice.

Best song of the moment right now.  Lil’ Wayne actually is the one that makes this song fantastic.