1. No more pair work In normal years, my classroom is organized as pairs of students sitting at two-person tables. Sixteen tables, each with an A-P letter boldly written on a piece of paper taped to the tabletop aforemost (the taping having been performed by some eager student/assistance at the beginning of the year, a trick […]
Monthly Archives: December 2020
Just Ask
Wed, 30 Dec 2020, 07:59 PM (-06:00)
1. The check-in questions At the beginning of the year, all the students were remote — either online or working on “paper packets”. The online kids had several ways they could officially get marked present. (Attendance is a very big deal for some not-so-obvious reasons, as some of you undoubtedly know.) For my classes, the […]
Recent In Retrospect
Wed, 30 Dec 2020, 02:10 PM (-06:00)
1. Then He would go to the library from time to time. It was at the end of a hall and around a corner, downstairs from the high school main office. (His brother will undoubtedly remember this better and have a more accurate recollection of where the library was.) Who knows how he found time […]
Yes, Coffee
Tue, 29 Dec 2020, 08:28 PM (-06:00)
She asked me if I had seen Jupiter and Saturn. They had been gazing skyward. The warming winters being what they are, I imagined them standing in their furrowed field in shirt sleeves in amaze at the star-strewn sky. Ours was cloudy, so my envy had to settle on an approximate conjunction the night before. […]
Just In Case
Tue, 29 Dec 2020, 02:36 PM (-06:00)
Just in case it’s wasn’t obvious to you, either… I know, right? What a coincidence.
Avatar Fail
Tue, 29 Dec 2020, 02:21 PM (-06:00)
Did she ask about it? I don’t remember. She was standing at my desk in the front of the room, and somehow we started talking about my Google avatar. “It’s kinda me,” I said. “Do you know what he’s doing?” She stared at it for a moment. “No.” “Saturday Night Fever?” I asked. “That help?” […]
Quiz Review
Mon, 28 Dec 2020, 09:45 PM (-06:00)
It’s the day before a quiz. The kids are reviewing — working on math problems from the last week or so. Here’s the promise: Know how to do these, and you won’t be surprised tomorrow. Two kids in the back are working together. That’s fine. When they are at work in a few years, this is […]
On The Inside
Mon, 28 Dec 2020, 11:33 AM (-06:00)
That day I said something about my father’s childhood. Perhaps the story about counting the cattle when they came back through the gate at the end of the day. After class, a student came up to the desk. He looked at me through the light of the document camera. “I thought you were Hispanic,” he […]
You Ok?
Mon, 28 Dec 2020, 10:27 AM (-06:00)
He had missed a lot of tests while he was remote. Homework, too. Pretty much done nothing for many weeks, and his grades showed it. Now he was working hard to get caught up. He fished around in his backpack and pulled out a few papers: test corrections for a make-up test that he had […]
Möbius Strips
Sun, 27 Dec 2020, 09:49 PM (-06:00)
1. An Activity What was it that day? Maybe there was a planned fire alarm. Or maybe a lot of kids were out testing. Whatever it was, we didn’t have a lesson. We had an activity, instead. In the morning, I had cut strips of blue paper for the in-person students — two inches wide, […]