My dad....

My dad, a wonderful man, is dying. In the spring, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, so in April, he had his bladder removed. All of the tests were perfectly clear and things went very well. Then, 2 weeks ago, on Sept 17, our world fell apart. He had been having some coughing and congestion, so they did a chest xray which showed spots on his lungs. Since then, he's had a CT scan, a PET scan, and a MRI, which all show intense involvement thoughout his entire body, including a spot on his brain. The doctors can only make him comfortable at this point, although they are doing radiation for the brain to slow that progression.

My dad is a great guy - he was a Marine and served our country in the Korean War. As a member of the "Frozen Chosin", he was lucky to make it out of there with just some shrapnel and frostbite. He received a Purple Heart for his service.

My dad married my mom when I was 4 years old and literally raised me as his own. My biological father often remarks that he could not have picked a better man to take care of us.

Some of my favorite memories...
I remember when I first met him. He was sitting on my mom's piano bench wearing a ball cap. After hiding behind my mom for a while, I went over and took off his ball cap, revealing a very bald head! I screamed and ran back to my mom :)

I remember, soon after they married, he built me a playhouse. It was dark red and the bottom level was a sandbox (not a good thing in the country btw - lots of barn cats and sandboxes dont mix!!!). The upper level had a railing all around it and a little tykes kitchen. I *loved* that playhouse!!

I remember a lot of weekend afternoons spent fishing. We would go to the hilltop store and get bait and lunchmeat for sandwiches, then spend the day going from pond to pond. Dad liked to walk around the entire pond while fishing. If he caught something, he'd stay for a while, if he got all the way back to the truck, it was time to go!

I remember one Easter Sunday when we had gone to church, dad sat with us as always. When we got home, the entire yard was decorated with eggs and toys and candy. It always amazed me how he must have gone back home, decorated, and back to church in the time it took for Sunday school.

I remember a Christmas morning when I got up and there were ashy footprints all over the living room carpet, cookie crumbs on the table and a piece of red velour hanging from the fireplace opening as if Santa had ripped his pants open..

I remember when I was in 2nd grade, one of the convenience stores in town was giving away a Cabbage Patch Kid. You could sign up everytime you bought a coffee. Dad went in *every* morning to put my name in. On the day of teh drawing, I had actually gotten sick at school, so mom came to check me out of school and take me home. She stopped at the store to get some 7-up and my name was posted as the winner of the doll. They said they had actually drawn 3 times and my name was all 3 tickets!!

While he obviously showed love, it wasn't until about 10 years ago, that he ever said "I love you". What an amazing man.... I will miss him so much :(

Frog Ponds :)

Ok, now that the rant is over, it's time to share ideas again!! Tomorrow should be a fun day - I hope!!

This summer, I found the following frog pond game at Dollar Tree, so I quickly bought 8 sets for my class. Tomorrow we will be using them to gather some data. Here's a picture of the frog pond setup:


This year, I am trying to make a real effort to "teach" using data we collect in class. Here's the datasheet for the frog pond.

In Geometry, we are playing a review game as well, so I'm hoping that tomorrow is a nice, easy day overall :)

Now to go veg and watch some TV - I'm at a stopping place early for once!!

A Mini-Rant

Do you ever feel that your best just isn't good enough? Sometimes I feel that way. I bust my ass every day, spending evenings and weekends finding creative ways to teach my students, but we rarely hear a "wow, you guys did a great job! Thanks for all of your hard work and effort".. instead we hear "Cool - let's see if you can do better"

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for continuous improvement, I do push myself to do better, I am a mostly self-motivated person... but it's still sometimes hard to constantly hear how you could have done better. Eventually you wear down and wonder "why even try?" *sigh*

This mini-rant is a product of test scores, which all districts now use to determine too much about the classroom. Rather than celebrating that 89% of our on-level Geometry kiddos passed their state-mandated Geometry exam (compared to 68% overall throughout the state), we are given a list of our "weaknesses" and asked to create a plan to do better. For me, one weakness was right triangle trig. Now considering that I covered SOHCAHTOA on Friday before the exam started on Monday, I know this was a weakness, but I was tickled pink that my students overall got ANY of those right!

I really try to be a positive person, so I apologize for this rant, but I'm tired and frustrated of demands placed on teachers without so much as a pat on the back.

A couple of updates :)

Ahhh - can I start the weekend over? I had a fairly relaxing weekend at the lake (minus a snafu with my dad), but with no time to grade, now I feel under the gun :)
However, before getting my nose to the grindstone, I wanted to give you guys an update on a few items around here...

The Professional Day....
The presentation went VERY well. I was pleased with how it turned out. Major kudos to Dan Yates, who had already typed many of the AP questions and sent them to e so that I was able to copy and paste the stem of the problem and graphics and then just add in the adapted questions for the Algebra and Pre-Calc classes. The handout ended up being 12 pages front/back and the other teachers seemed to really appreciate it. I was so nervous, but in the end, it was worth it.

The Geometry Challenge....
When I posted the pictures of my classroom, one was of a bulletin board called the Geometry Challenge. This is my Geometry extra-credit board, where kids can weekly earn extra credit for answering a problem (problems come from the NCTM calendar from the magazine Mathematics Teacher). I print the posters using a free software called PagePlus and paste the pages together. The kids seem to really enoy this weekly puzzle. Here's a pic of the board w/ the PagePlus pages:


I hope things are going well for all of you! Off to grade a mountain of papers :)

I need your help!!!

I was oh so proud of my accomplishments this weekend... until at 6:30pm on Sunday I remembered that I'm scheduled to present at a Staff Development day on Friday! EEKKK! So now I need your help in brainstorming :)

When this year's AP Stat exam was released for teachers to see the questions, I noticed that there were 2 questions that had parts that were related to Algebra content. One of them had students creating a scatterplot and the other had students describing the slope of a regression line. Of course this was in May, so I asked the AP Calc teacher if she was interested in co-presenting a pre-AP math session for the math teachers at my school. Of course with the extreme busy-ness of the summer, I didn't think too much about the session...

Of course, now it's August and that session is just a few days away! So I need your help. The title of our session is "Adapting AP Materials to the Pre-AP classroom". I have about 25 minutes to fill and I am at a loss as to what to do.

So pretend (ha!) you are a pre-AP teacher (Algebra/Geoemtry/Pre-Calc).... :)

What would YOU like to get out of this workshop?

My class is *finally* done!!!

Holy moly - it took *forever*, but my room is finally done! I left school at 7:40pm and the first bell will ring Thursday morning at 7:45am! This is the longest it's ever taken me, but I did do a bunch of new decor, so I'll blame it on that! heheh

Here's the view of the front of my room. Notice all the new posters (woohoo! Thanks to the free poster site!) - you'll also see that I decided to matte them! The hanging thing on the left is where I place makeup work each day, sorted by hour. Behind my podium chair, I wish you could see the spaghetti tangle of cords - I did the best I could to bring order to an unorderly mess :)
Working our way counterclockwise, this is the "cabinet" side of the room. Class sets, turn in box, staplers, etc. The four small posters on the right side came from Walmart for $1 each (woot!)

Moving on around, I must give kudos to hubby for his 1/2/3 posters that he made me. These correspond to Costa's Levels of Questioning. The gray box below the 1 poster is for their POD folders (Problem of the Day). The corkboards are where I post grades.

This is the back right side of my room. Notice the bulletin board still to be hung on the wall :) Student bulletins will go there. Our back walls are both magnetic and writeable, so that's where my birthdays go. The file crates are where my aide files papers to be returned. Also, more free posters!!!

The other back corner. More posters :) Also on the back wall is an "In the News" banner that I got from Dollar Tree. Under it, my aide (who came in today to help me - is that not amazing!) put up articles and comics that I cut out of the newspaper that pertain to math or statistics. You can also see my lame attempt at a bulletin board - give me some slack here, it's been 10 years since I taught middle school! I want to do a Geometry Challenge of the week where I post a math problem (this one is from the NCTM calendar this month). Correct submissions will earn a bonus point on their test.

And finally back around to my desk area. Not much to report here - just lots of storage LOL

I am so glad that is done for another year - what a mess it was! :)

Now to bed - 5:45 will come too durned early for me!!!

Study Skills....

OMG - School starts *TOMORROW*....

I am sooo not ready! But ready or not, the kiddos will be here on Thursday... EEEKKK!

So, in my last minute style, I am working on the study skills information I want to give to my classes (Stat particulary).

As I've mentioned before, I don't think that many of my students have been taught how to take notes, etc, so I want to think it out here if you don't mind!

AP Statistics
Thursday:
First day of school!!!
Passing period - I am at the door welcoming them and handing out a student information form for them to fill out. A first-day seating chart is on the board with textbooks and syllabus on their desks. Bell rings. Students continue filling out info sheet. Then we get into "What is Statistics" to give them a taste of what data is all about. Their homework assignment is to read Chapters 1 and 2 (10 pages) and take notes on it for discussion tomorrow. If time allows (12-15 minutes), do AP question 2000-#1 (or give as homework???)

Friday:
Students come in. A notecard is on each desk with a warmup question on the board (Why did you take this class maybe? or something about their mathematical history?). I'll go around the room to look at their notes from the assigned reading and take up the 2000-#1 if I give it as homework. We will then briefly discuss how to take notes from a textbook (see handout). After that, we are ready to jump into the lecture for Chapter 2, so start with a handout about notetaking, then they take notes while I lecture. Also discuss notes posted online.

Not sure yet where it fits in....
- Discussing policies from syllabus
- Assigning study groups - want this in place while discussing notes - want to use the "compare notes w/ your buddy" as a study strategy and working through examples in class.

*sigh* Can I go back to May and have a re-do???