Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

Woo, I’m safe

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The Day Events
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clearance

It took me about 75 bucks for the Department of Justice and the FBI to confirm that I’m totally safe to work with kids. I’m glad they didn’t decide I was crazy, which I am.

Phewf!

Here kiddie kiddies!

Also, I got into Cal State Long Beach for the credential program. Yay, at least I have somewhere to go now. Half the weight on my shoulders gone.

Holiday Teacher Perks

The Day Events
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Last year, I made reindeer candy canes for a lot of my students because I had like…three classes on the last Friday. This year, I only had one class.

This year, I made little snowflake candy…thingies. I really wanted to do something but didn’t have a clue what to do until the last minute. I made 30 of these in 30 minutes.


Tropical Soda Candy. The kids always love them because it’s different from the candy you buy at the regular store.


This is the best card I’ve received. She spent a lot of time on it and you can tell.

WoW is everywhere

All in a Day's Work, Gaming, The Day Events
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Today I wore my BlizzCon08 shirt to work today, over a long sleeved shirt. I got through the first class without incident, and I went up to the teacher and he said

Mr. S: By the way, Mrs. M (the other teacher I work under), her husband plays that game. He gets together with friends and they like…play. WoW right?

Me: Oh! Yeah. Does she play too?

Mr. S: Nooooo noooo…she…..she hates it. It’s the bane of her existence.

Me: Ooooh haha…I know how she feels…

Later on, in the second class, this kid goes

Kid: OMG you went to BlizzCon too?! What, what do you have?

Me: oh…..<sheepish> a priest…

Kid: I’m Undead Warlock! Dude! <calls out to other kid> She plays WoW!

Other kid: What?

<unintelligible shoutings back and forth of I don’t know what but it had something to do with the armory…and the fact that Kid1 was still level 72, and he was denying it…>

Then, I went to Mrs. M’s class

Mrs. M: Do you play World of Warcraft?……

Me: Yes…

Mrs. M: I’m a WoW widow…….okay???? It’s…..it’s just….wow. I catch him sneaking around to play that game…he gets together with his friends, because they work at Blizzard…

Me: >_<

Girl: ooh my brother plays too, he used to play Everquest also…

I think if you got all the WoW players together, they would be a small country…like Sweden or something. That might have changed since last year by now though. A little bigger. Soon, nobody will do anything but play in the alternate reality of WoW. Raiding is a full-time job and we’ll be fed by tubes in our chairs. And conflicts between countries will be resolved by 5-man arenas.

Mad about math

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All in a Day's Work, The Day Events
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So I’m walking around in one of my classrooms, and this girl is doing binomials.

(x^2 – 2x – 15)

Okay, so we know the answer is (x+3) (x-5), but this girl had the signs mixed up for many of her answers, and she was rewriting them on her homework. Plus for minus, and minus for plus. So I’m looking over her shoulder, and I ask

Me: Hey, so what’s going on here?

Girl: Ooh I just got these signs wrong, I mixed it up.

Me: …so…what happened, do you understand it now?

Girl: oh, yeah, if they are both negative in the question, then the answer will have a negative and positive, I forgot and made them both negative…

Me: …..(wth…)…so wait, you’re just looking at the signs to determine what the signs in the answer will be?

Girl: Well, yeah, that’s what our teacher told us…

Me: (….what kind of lame cheap shortcut is this teacher teaching?) So, you understand that you have to find two numbers that multiply to the 3rd number, but add up to the 2nd number right? -5 and +3 multiply to -15 but add up to -2, that’s why you use those signs, not because of just memorizing how they should be. You should know why they are like that…

Girl: …….mm..yeah…

Me: You can also check your work by foiling again to make sure you get the right numbers too…then you’ll know for sure you have the right signs…

Girl:…well..yeah..i mean…but our teacher told us we could just do it like this…

And that, my friends, is why I get depressed working at schools sometimes. But! I’m glad I got to snap some of these kids out of it. You know some kids aren’t even writing their math homework correctly, working horizontally instead of vertically? With lines written haphazardly in different areas of the paper? It kills me when I see it and it makes it hard for me and the student to follow. Did no one teach them an organized and logical way to do their math? Grrrrrrr…I’m dedicating a lesson to how to write in good math format when I’m a teacher.

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