I had gone to D.C. to visit a friend last weekend, and while I enjoyed my time there, I came home on Sunday afternoon and knew I was behind. No groceries, no meals prepared, no laundry cleaned, no lesson planned, no grading complete. A lot of no's and Monday was coming fast. Of course, I was overwhelmed by all of this and decided the sensible thing to do is shut down and watch hours of Netflix. Am I proud of this? No. Should I be less harsh on my students who do the same thing? Maybe.
Monday morning, I woke up at 4:00 AM after procrastinating my Sunday away. I quickly prepared a lunch for the day and then sat at my computer. I have a 100 minute class to account for and. one. blank. screen. I was introducing trigonometry that day. Most of my lesson that I had created needed me to guide my students through concepts and notes. It was going to be a boring day for my students. I teach four sections of geometry. I started teaching the lesson and one of my classes was continuously disruptive and challenging to work with. I wasn't in a great mood either because I'd been up since 4 AM. In the last five minutes of class, I shrugged and said, "If you don't want to learn, fine. I'm done." Five minutes passed without me doing anything. They left. I felt... like a horrible teacher. The next day I decided to go to some lecture on geometry and space by a renowned math professor who had a math thing named after him. I had tried to get a few students to come with me, but since I found out about it last minute, they were unable to make it. It's all for the best though. I understood... zero percent of what was said. What was worse, the professor literally read a wall of text at us. I say literally, because there was literally a PowerPoint with the exact same thing written on a giant screen behind him. I looked around at the math undergrads, grads, professors, and teachers. 100% of them were bored to tears and trying to look moderately polite. All of us hoping that it would end soon. Slide 48 of 62. 1 hour in. I secretly high-fived myself for bringing my textbook so I could plan the next day. I quickly went home, glad that I took none of my students. I started the next day telling my students that I didn't like the previous day. They were disruptive. It was hard to get started. Transitions were rough. My kids looked at me annoyed. Then I said, "I'd like to apologize as well. I went to a math lecture yesterday where the professor talked nonsense to us for 90 minutes, and the audience members were all in math related fields. It was really hard to stay focused. In fact, I didn't. Now, I don't think the lecture wasn't QUITE as bad. (Some students scoffed). BUT, I also don't think it was fair for me to just talk at you for 100 minutes. Today, we're going to be doing a lot more problems. You'll spend time trying to understand and not just trying to jot notes down." Some students looked surprise as at an apology. Others nodded. Either way, I had them bought in. My mentor came into my classes a few minutes later. He left me this note:
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