Reward > Struggle

WOW! What a week! As many of you know, I had a very intense week last week and felt some INTENSE pressure about the coming week (this week). Well, I made it out alive and it was everything I expected, and everything I didn’t expect in one. Monday and Tuesday were my official pre-assessment days. Wednesday was supposed to be a discovery lesson. Thursday was supposed to be an activity that would solidify their discovery from Wednesday. Finally, Friday was supposed to be a graded assignment. Although this week did not go as planned AT ALL, it ended SO well.

Monday went as planned and I was able to keep the students engaged the entire time and got some pretty awesome feedback.

Tuesday, we finished the pre-assessment by presenting their Trig Vocab Mind Maps and once again was able to get a ton of invaluable feedback. I realized how many people need to be completely re-taught the Trig Ratios.

Wednesday was supposed to be the discovery lesson day. I had planned to get through an entire discovery activity, do a commit and toss, discuss the commit and toss results, conclude that the ratios of the sides of right triangles are important, give those ratios names, talk about the reciprocals, and complete a Trig Boat exit ticket that I stole from Cacey. This did not happen. We only got through HALF of the discovery activity, some people got to write their hypotheses for the commit and toss, and obviously the closing exit ticket. I had to make some tough calls Wednesday evening as to how I would proceed. I was conflicted, for sure. I wanted the students to be able to have a blast with the puzzle activity that literally took me hours but I had to reevaluate my priorities and realize that I have actual human brains in my hands right now and I need to cater to their needs, not my plans.

So, I shifted everything back one day and decided to build some more scaffolding into Thursday so that maybe they would be able to do the fun puzzle that literally took me hours on Friday. Once again, this did not happen. Thursday went –ok­–. I was able to finish the commit and toss activity, but the discussion was rushed and not as productive as I had hoped. We also were able to conclude as a class that the ratios are useful to us and name them, I scaffolded the class maybe a bit too much through the reciprocals (although now I think it didn’t hinder them at all since they understand the basic 3 ratios pretty well), and we did another Trig Boat exit ticket. At the end of this day I was feeling pretty down. I did not think that the lesson ended very smoothly and I feel like I could have done better if I had more time–alas, I did not. After talking with Telannia, we decided that the students were not ready for the activity, that literally took me hours, yet. I pitched an idea to her about doing a practice (not graded) assignment on Friday instead of focusing on the activity, you know the one that literally took me hours. She agreed that that plan sounded best and off I went creating a worksheet that totally was not fun. Thursday evening was my hardest night. I realized that sometimes the students need discovery AND practice in order to solidify their conceptual understanding (and eventually use it in application situations).

From this realization, I made it my goal to make Friday as engaging as possible even though the students were just doing a practice worksheet where they found Sin(A), Cos(A), Tan(A), Csc(A), Sec(A), Cot(A), and all the same for angle B for three different triangles. I opened the class by answering some of their silly questions from the day before. “Is the earth flat?”, “Do you have any pets?”, “How old are you?”, “Do you go to college?”, “What kind of foundation do you wear?”, and “What is your favorite food?”. All of which I was able to get either a standing ovation for my response or a resounding group chuckle–SCORE. By this point, I am pretty close with these students so I am comfortable enough to joke with them and give some freedom. So, after I revealed that I would like some fried chicken for my birthday in September, I introduced the day’s task. I said something along the lines of, “Okay, we need practice [to which everyone agreed]. You have your handouts and everyone in this room to help you figure out your life right now, but there are a few things you need to know: One-You have to ask 3 classmates to help you before you ask me, once 3 of you are confused, that’s when you ask me to come over and guide you to your solution. Two-You don’t have to do this assignment, however if you fully complete it by the end of the day, I will give you 10 bonus points on the graded assignment on Monday. If you don’t think you need to practice this stuff and don’t want the bonus, you can come get this fun activity that literally took me hours to make. You can also do the activity after you are finished, if you wish.” *cue another standing ovation because they never get bonus points, but they also never try very hard to finish the practice assignments–WIN* The students were communicating mathematically ALL HOUR, working together ALL HOUR, and students who never do anything in that class, actually did the work. In fact, there is one girl in that class who hasn’t initiated a conversation with Telannia or I the entire semester up until Wednesday. She asked me 5 questions today. I am so proud. I don’t know what it was that made her so engaged, but I hope I continue to make it happen. In the end, I had 12 out of 26 students get the 10 bonus points, and I am still on cloud nine.

Overall, this week was tough, but honestly, I am just excited to see all of my students on Monday and struggle again through next week.

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Dreamland Burning~ Text-to-self: My entire life, I have been an incredibly empathetic person. It has been the backbone and the downfall of many relationships (friends, family, and significant other). So, reading this book is challenging for me because I feel everything so deeply. My experiences as a white person do not compare to the experiences exemplified by the people of color in this book or in my life. However, as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I am able to draw many parallels between how my friends of color feel and are treated. The magnitude of the impact of our struggles are vastly different, of course. You can visually see that my friend is Black, but you can’t visually see that I am gay (most of the time). So, there are definitely many areas that I truly cannot understand (and vice versa), but also many areas that I have also genuinely felt.

Text-to-world: Similarly to the aforementioned answer, this book beautifully reveals the sexuality of an asexual character, which is f—ing AWESOME. You don’t get more real-world-application than that! What an amazing way to shine light on such an underrepresented and underappreciated group of individuals.

Text-to-text: I hate to admit this, but I don’t think reading is fun. I get WAY too invested and always fall into a book depression after I am finished reading something, so I don’t really have a good response to this prompt. I do remember, however, my EDS class at OU being exceptionally in tune with this book (someone should tell the instructors that they should have their students read this). That class didn’t necessarily change my view points on anything, because I am super progressive as is, but (like this book) it provided me with countless resources and ideas of how to better integrate social justice into my future classroom.

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Goals and stuff: I WAS successful in planning and teaching my lessons this week AND I have everyone’s names memorized (see last weeks goals). In fact, today a student asked, “How do you know us already?”, to which I lovingly and jokingly replied, “Well, when you care about people, you tend to remember their names,” she laughed.

For next week, I want to focus on my lesson planning still, but also be more prepared for the changes that I saw this week. Standards wise, I am going to stick with number 3. I want to continue to emphasize on and encourage positive social interaction and mathematical communication. Also, next week I WANT TO DO MY FREAKING ACTIVTY THAT I LITERALLY SPENT HOURS ON.