The Calculus of Friendship

The Calculus of Friendship was a very neat book.  It is a story of a math student and his high school teacher.  The student is a gifted math student who goes on to do great things in math.  He keeps in touch with his high school teacher by writing letters back and forth about interesting problems that they run into.  Then one day the student realizes that he never knew his long time friend in a personal way, and decides to go meet with him to have a real conversation about their lives.  This is a good book for high school calculus students to read becasue the caluclus that is presented in the book shows real world applications of calculus.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I read the five people you meet in heaven and I could not put it down.  I am not a person that enjoys reading, but this book was that good that I could not stop.  The story is about a man who worked at a carnaval and died in a freak acident.  After his death he meets five people that he met throughout his life.  Each person he meets is a person who he met during his time on earth.  Some of the people he met was just a one time chance meeting, while others were people he had known for a long time.  Before he could move on to the next person he had to listen to that person tell him how he affected their life.  The moral of the book is that everyone you meet in your life, you affect in one way or another.  I think this would be a good book for high school students to read so that they can realize that how they treat people will affect them in much deeper ways then they realize.

Thanksgiving!!!

Thanksgiving is finally here and I am so relieved to have a little break.  This first year of teaching has been more trying than I ever thought it would be.  The funny thing is that its not because of bad kids or anything like that, its the fact of how many other tasks you must perform along with the teaching.  I have been lucky enough to have an amazing mentor that helps me keep on top of all of the extra work and keeps me jumping through all of the hoops that have to be jumped through.

Target Test

So I got the results from our first target test back today, and I was not very pleased with the results.  There were a couple of questions that I understood them not doing well on.  The wording was difficult and/or the set up was not very good for the question.  So when I saw that they had trouble with those questions I understood.  However, there were some questions that I know we covered and I thought we had covered the material very well, but according to the test I did not cover it as well as i should have.  I don't know if it is a result of the kids not trying very had because it was a target test, or if I am just doing a bad job of teaching them the geometry.  At this point I am taking the blame uppon myself and I will try to do a much better job of teaching during this 9 weeks.  I just hope that I can do a good enough job, that is what scares me about being a teacher, especially a math teacher, I do not want to screw these kids up.

its been a while

well its been a while since i've posted anything on here cause I still do not have internet at my house and the internet at my school is so blocked that I can't get to my blog to write on it. One week ago yesterday I got married and putting the wedding behind me has opened up more time for me.  My classes are going good and everything seems to be falling in place.  We have parent teacher confrences this week and that makes me a little nervous, only because I do not know what to expect.  Well thats bout it.

Getting Started Late

I never thought that I would be so busy in my life.  By the time you put class preperations, MAT, football, and planning an October wedding together there is not enough time in the day.  I catch myself wanting to complain about how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it, but then I realize that i'm not the only one that is doing this or that has ever done it, so there is no excuse.

I have enjoyed my classes so far, I am teaching five classes of high school geometry and one class of A.P. Calculus.  The one frustrating thing is the geometry kids that just don't care.  I try to encourage them and get them, but I just can't seem to get them to care about the class.  I'm not real sure what to do.  The majority of the class does care and they are great.  The are engaged and take good notes and ask questions and make class a joy to teach, but I have to find a way to reach the ones who want to just sit and wait out the 45 minutes until class is over.