Summer~~what happened to summer?

Well, here in my fair city we had two week "natural disasters" during the school year that totally destroyed our summer. In my fair city we have no built in snow days, because we get very little, if any snow, during the winter. However, we were plagued by a huge windstorm in the fall that knocked out power all over our city for over a week and put the school system on a week one break. Then during the winter we were hit by a freak ice storm that once again knocked out our power for over a week in places and put the school on another week long break. The result of these "natural disasters" created a disaster of another type as our "last day" on May 26th came and went and we still went on teaching. Not until June 3rd did we see the last of students, with June 5th being the last day for most teachers and not until June 9th (I'm a master teacher so I have more days than regular classroom teachers) did I finally get to have my "last day".

So, with June seemingly almost have over did I finally get to summer....

Life is multiple choice....not!

As I sat correcting a worksheet on using the calculator to find the mean, median and mode of a set of numbers I was "almost" shocked when I discovered that one of my student hadn't found the mean, median or mode. Instead, the student had merely gone through each question and instead of writing the mean for the set of numbers next to the word mean, instead of writing the median for the set of numbers next to the word median, instead of writing the mode of the set of numbers next to the word mode--the student had circled one of the three words as if the answers to each question were in the form of a multiple choice. So, for question 1 the student had circled mean as the answer to the question... Find the mean, median and mode for the following set of numbers: 18, 16, 15, 15, 16, 17, 15, 14. Is it any wonder why I suffer a headache at the end of every school day?????

When I teach this concept to a new group of students this next semester I must remember to remind them that worksheets, like life, are not multiple choice.

McDonald's--I'm so sorry.....

As a math teacher I'm always pushing my students to see that math is a very useful tool that may someday be the difference between having a job or being unemployed...or at least I always thought that until I had a conversation with one of my students that made me almost reconsider.

"....but you will need math in your job." I stated firmly to a rather disagreeable student.

"I don't need math. I'm going to work at McDonald's after I graduate."

"You still need math to know how to count change, even at McDonald's."

"I don't need math. Ya see, theys got 'dem pi'chures of da foods on 'da bah'ttons. 'Da machine telleds the people how much money they got to pay. I's just swipe 'deir card. I don't need no math for 'da."

Yes, I thought to myself, you probably won't need math--but some English classes couldn't hurt!!

My life as a teacher......the beginning.

My fellow teachers and I often joke about how we should write a book someday because we might actually have a best seller on our hands. But in the same breath we realize that we can't always share the stories of school, not because of privacy issues, but because no one would believe some of the things that actually happen at school. And thus, a blog is born.

Now there will be things that I share over time that will make you wonder if I'm telling the truth or just pulling your leg--that will be for you to decide. Just remember, crazy unbelievable things happen in schools these days and there just may be more than a grain of truth in the words I type.

So, let's begin!