But first - -
The Oct. 6, 2008 issue of the New Yorker magazine included this great inch worth of copy:
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Statistical Department
From an article in the Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain about a retired schoolteacher seeking a seat on the State Board of Education.
"The top half of the students are well-educated, the bottom half receive extra help but the middle half we are leaving out," she said.
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Gail suggested that "What out for that Middle Half" be a candidate for my book's title, or at least a chapter.
But back to the classroom.
I knew how to do every problem on the quiz, but I was slow and don't know why. A few of the students blasted through the five problems and turned in their papers before I was even through reading the first.
I plodded through using extra typing paper and graph paper. I think I got the answers right. Hopefully John will have the papers graded and will return them on Monday.
I missed only one thing on the first quiz -- that dumb mistake adding 3x2 instead of multiplying. John only took off half a point so I got 14 1/2 out of 15. Not bad.
Meantime, I was concerned that we would not get through the book and be unprepared for college algebra if we landed there next semester.
What to do about it?
Well, since I know how to organize better than solve linear functions, I worked up a schedule for the rest of the semester including exactly when we do each chapter and when quizzes, tests, and the final should take place. I took language from my own syllabus and rewrote it for a math environment and found out and included information about all the tutoring and video support help Pima College offers.
John couldn't have been a better sport. He thanked me for doing that work and agreed that we'd have to make it through a chapter a week for the rest of the semester.
Steve Cox
put it in perspective. "So you're the annoying old guy, huh?"Well yes, but I still hope John takes some of my suggestions. I like him a lot and I have a lot to learn from him. Plus, he seems to be a nice guy who wants to do his best.
The class seemed to hold together better on Wednesday than it had. It's settling into about 12 students who stay for the whole session and seem like they want to get what they can out of it. The others are resigned to having to take the quizzes and tests to get the credit. Not bad.
Even though I am slow and have spent way too many hours on the computer doing practice problems, algebra holding my attention and I don't know why. Is it the starkness or simplicity of right or wrong. As complicated as it looks on paper or on a blackboard, this stuff, at least at this level, is really straightforward. If you do this and then this and then this, here is the right answer. If you don't do exactly that, you get the wrong answer. It feels good to solve a problem, but there is no real human emotion involved. It worries me a little that I seem to be enjoying that.
It couldn't be more different from the teaching world I live in the rest of the time. One of my students is writing a profile about her brother who at age 17 is just returning to high school after battling drug addiction. Another is writing a story about a teen-aged mother who is trying to cope with her own problems while trying to learn to be a mom. Still another is profiling a nun who teaches at a girls' Catholic high school in Nogales, Ariz. and how she has affected young women's lives for half a century. Many of the students are writing about people who have emotional and profound stories to tell.
They have about 1500 word to tell those stories. And there about a thousand ways to do it.
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