Once again, its been a long time

[mahf]

Seems like all I do is update once every couple months or so, but I suppose that's ok. Life has been so packed with new things. Since my last entry I got married and started teaching high school physics and physical science. The wedding was perfect, and married life has been wonderful. People have asked how I've been able to manage two big life

Comments

[mahf]

Well, for me lecturing aint so bad, and truth be told I don't do nearly as much of it as you probably do, and the stuff is so basic that it really doesn't require a whole lot of preparation for me to talk about. What requires preparation is the other activities I need to have them do to learn the stuff. Labs, group work, how do I make everyone in the group actually *do* the group work, etc.

But the worst thing for me is dealing with discipline issues. As much good advice as I've heard, I'm really really bad at following through with what I know I should do. I just want to let little stuff go and hope they figure it out. But they don't. They just keep pushing you. So I have some parent phone calls to make. I'm really not looking forward to that.

The problem with your first year is that you don't know what exactly you should punish. Its like when someone gives you directions by saying "Its just *before* the mall" when you don't know where the mall is. You want to draw that line *before* the students actually annoy you with their behavior. So if I did this again, I'd be a lot stricter in the beginning. Everyone told me to do that before the first day of school. Now I know why because now I know where the freakin mall is.

Anyway, good luck with lecturing. I hope you either find something to enjoy about it or stop being required to do it at some point. Maybe you just need a better audience. I've found I'm probably not cut out to teach lower performing kids, at least not yet. Maybe you just need to be teaching upper level students.

[mothwentbad]

Ugh, discipline. That's a whole new dimension of teaching that I hope I never have to deal with. I don't envy you there. The worst I have to deal with is statements that they "didn't do it that way" in high school.

College algebra is pretty basic, too. It's just that explaining things is such an open-ended thing, and I can't seem to think of and settle on exactly one way to do it.