Weirdness.

Sometimes it's the Adults

The teacher sitting next to me is a nice lady. But she sits like a poodle on its haunches, "sitting pretty" for a treat.

The day before she smelled smoke coming from next door to her room yesterday, right before a pep rally. I asked her what kind of smoke, cigarettes or pot. She said, "I don't know the difference."

"You know what cigarettes smell like?"
"Yeah," she said.
"Was it that?"
"I don't really know anything about anything like that."

Anyhow, fast forward to today. We had a "professional development" day, all day today. It was surreal. We sat, for 8 hours, and were trained. We listened to people talk extensively about collaboration and sharing of ideas, techniques and so on. Good stuff those people were talking about.

This lady took out a note book and started writing down notes about what they were saying. They said the phrase, "Power Objectives" or something like that. She wrote that in HUGE letters, underlined it and colored around it.

Then the group really started talking about how collaboration was helping their school. This was 3 hours into the presentation, without a break. It's in the cafeteria. Your arms stick to the tables, not sure what that substance is!

My neighbor said, "Oh, I love collaboration."
I shared the sentiment, but commented, "We're not collaborating, we're talking about it."
She said, "Well, we just don't have the time."
I said, "Now would be a good time."

She wasn't phased. I couldn't rain on her parade.

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Then we had a short lunch. I ate at my desk, trying to get some work done, but mostly escaping the cafeteria. Steven King should write a book that takes place with a room full of teachers. It's creepy!

After lunch we had "break-out sessions." In these we got to learn about things like Special education 101, Discovery TV in the classroom ( would be cool if we had the technology to use it) and then, classroom management by an administrator. Classroom management is NOT like riding a bike, you lose it, immediately...even over a weekend. :D

In the first, Special Education 101, the instructor had her belly showing the entire time. It was worse than the material she was telling us.

The second session was held in a computer lab by the most passive aggressive woman I've ever met. I don't know who she was, but when a woman had trouble with her computer, the passive aggressive woman said, "Well, why don't you just sit there then," in the sweetest voice possible.

After a while of listening to her commercial voice (can't tune it out), she said, "Now I'll give you some time for self exploration."

yeah, I'm like 11 or something. I pushed my friend and he almost fell out of his chair.

Either way is different

I have 13 freshman that are in remedial math for two hours a day. I do as much relationship building with those kids as I do actual teaching of math. To reward them when they work hard, we sometimes talk about various things.

One day I decided to teach them a few come-backs to common insults. One come-back was to any insult towards one's mother. The come back is, "At least I have a mom and not two dads like you."

The other come-back I taught them was when someone said, in Spanish, "Your face." The come-back was, "At least I have a face and not two butts."

Today, the most hyper, most immature kid I have ever had, was in a bit of a cut-down war that broke out during the progress of a game we were playing. Someone said to him, in Spanish, "Your face."

He said, "At least I have a face and not two dads like you."

I think he missed the point.

Thumb Tack and Cookies

There's a freshman boy who is single-handedly rewriting the definition of edible. He eats EVERYTHING...or did eat everything. Girls would find various items on the floor and hand them to Mike (not his real name) and Mike would eat them.

Pencils were a particular favorite of Mike's. By the end of class, he'd have a lead left, all of the wood was consumed. Pens, paper, gum wrappers, you name it. It was past ridiculous and annoying and I half hoped he'd get sick on something.

One quiet day, while all were working, I yelled, "Mike, where'd you get that?! Spit it out, do NOT swallow that thumb tack! Mike, oh my...what the ..."

And of course Mike denied it...he hadn't eaten a thumb tack, never had one. I made it up. However, his sheepish look that says, "I think I just got away with something," didn't convince a soul.

Then I said, "You know, that could very well puncture your intestine, causing blood poisoning. This could turn our very bad for you Mike."

All of his friends were very mad at him. He continued to deny, just like he denies everything he is accused of, though he's almost always guilty. So, of course, nobody believed him.

Funny thing is...since then, he's not eaten anything, at least not in my class. Doesn't even chew on a pencil anymore.

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A girl I've had in class for 3 straight years bought some cookies from the culinary arts' fund raiser. She had the cookie on her desk and I swiped it when I walked past her desk. I figured she'd notice immediately, but nope.

About 10 minutes later she says, in spanish, "Where's my cookie?"

That was my cue. I walked to the front of the room, took the cookie out of my jacket pocket, and ate it in front of the entire class.

Luckily, it was a stolen cookie because I never expected that culinary arts would be abstract. The girl, she, for once, had nothing to say...just sat there like a trout, jaw open.

FOIL Sucks...

FOIL is a conceptually free algorithm, at least as it is retained by students. It's effectiveness is limited to multiplying binomials with integer coefficients. Anything more complex is a new "concept." Further, the reverse, factoring, especially by grouping, is extremely difficult to understand without first understanding the distributive property (where the FOIL method originates).

Example:
(a + 2)(b - 3) = ab - 3a + 2b - 6 by the FOIL method.

(a + 2)(b - 3) = a(b - 3) + 2(b - 3)= ab - 3a + 2b - 6

By the distributive property (which states that everything in the first parenthesis multiplied by all in the other).

So, in this example, FOIL is faster, if you write everything out.

Example:
(a + 2)(b + c -3) = ...with FOIL, nada, zip.

(a + 2)(b + c - 3)

With distributive property ...nothing new, everything in the first parenthesis multiplied by the second.

(a + 2)(b + c - 3) = a(b + c - 3) + 2(b + c - 3) = ab + ac - 3a + 2b + 2c - 6

Example: Factor x^3 - 2x^2 -9x + 18

Looking at this as the opposite of distributing is easy:

Factoring

x^3 - 2x^2 -9x + 18
(x^3 - 2x^2) (-9x + 18)
x^2(x - 2) - 9(x - 2)
(x^2 - 9)(x- 2)

Last example:

(sqrt(x - 1) + 1)(sqrt(x -1) + 1)
FOIL...even college algebra students are stuck. Distributive property, easy.