A little 'tude.

So this morning started out a little shaky (again). We had two students - the student whose mother I called a couple of days ago was not there. We think something may be going on at home. Our faculty advisor is looking into it. One of our students had some major attitude, clearly not thrilled to be there. When it was my turn, I attempted my incredible motivational speech that I had been formulating for the previous 10 minutes (in my head - next time I'll take some notes...) - it began with "Who wants to spend their summer in summer school next year?!" Raising my hand to indicate "I do!" and asking this in a very sarcastic tone. I highlighted the fact that the test is two weeks from today and that we need to have a sense of urgency. I then tried to squeeze in the fact that we need them to say things in class with confidence, not just muttering answers under their breath so they have more confidence when they rock the test. "You know the answer, I know you know the answer, so be confident and say it!" Although it could have been smoother, I think it served its purpose.

The morning hour had drawn to a close, and it was my time to conduct my lesson. I hoped to spark the interest of my students with dramatic hand gestures, energy, and an enthusiastic tone. It worked a little, but in the future I need to find more sustainable and predicable investment strategies. For example! I planned my method for rational and irrational numbers for next week this afternoon. Relating the idea to girlfriends or boyfriends, you want one that is consistent and predicable, spends alone time with you, and in the end, is absolutely perfect - rational decimal numbers have either a consistent pattern or are terminal - unlike irrational numbers with that infinite, random drama at the end of them. Rational numbers, like super significant others, spend alone time with you, with just one of you in the numerator or denominator of a fraction without endless friends hanging around (can be expressed in the form of an integer over an integer - and they are perfect, because radicals with perfect square radicands are rational. Hope it goes well.

I handled the attitude with a firm, relatively harsh, approach. I also coupled it with warm, one-on-one interactions, however. In the future I must try to leave emotion out of it and calmly explain how students are being disrespectful and precisely what they can do to get back on track. Today N. kept making errors adding radicals with like radicands together. I said that this is what happens when we are not focused or tired - blaming her addition errors on her lack of focus. Almost too late did I realize that the real problem was that she cannot add and subtract negative numbers. So we spent the rest of the period reviewing how to add negatives - remember this is 8th grade - yet another example of how these students have been done a horrific disservice by their education.

Overall a good day as I look forward to giving my lesson tomorrow using the Jordin Sparks' song "One Step At A Time" to talk about how we need to take problems one step at a time so we don't rush into things and make mistakes.