Anyway, we started the morning with a meeting with the other high school that shares the same building with us. We met in our content teams and discussed differences in our practices and curricula. Our school creates all their own math curricula. They use a variety of textbooks and spend lots of time making photocopies and typing their own material in order to create a curriculum that works for them. It seems like a really great idea to me, because they can pick and choose which lessons are most important and rearrange things as they see fit. However, they discussed how some of the negatives are that students are not prepared to read math textbooks when they get to college, because they never had a math textbook in high school. That definitely came as a surprise to me, because it didn't even occur to me that reading a math textbook was a skill. But it's a skill that I have that I certainly take for granted. I suppose I'm going to have to start noticing the assumptions I have about teaching and learning and figure out how to deal with them. The math team from the other school just changed their curriculum too, so we are all interested in seeing how it works out for them. Hopefully, the teams will keep in touch with each other during the year so we can collaborate and learn from each others mistakes and triumphs. We discussed the MCAS and the SAT and how to deal with those standardized tests in the classroom. There was a general feeling that they've improved significantly every year in getting more and more kids to pass the MCAS, but they all feel that SAT progress has flatlined. I hope I'll be able to help them somewhat with their SAT prep, but they all seem so competent that I'm not sure what more I can offer them.
Then we had an inclusion workshop with the learning center, so we discussed a few case studies of students that we will have in our classes. It appears I have already been assigned to mentor one student with severe emotional/behavioral problems in our math class. I sure hope I'm up for it! At least I had an introduction to special education this summer. I won't be completely clueless in the classroom when I get such high-needs students, although I still think it will be difficult for me to figure out how to build a relationship with a student who doesn't trust adults and often walks out in the middle of class. But I guess that's what I'm in for if I wanna be a teacher!
After that I ate lunch with my mentor teacher, and we began discussing the curriculum for Math 5 - the calculus-like course. So the curriculum currently begins with logarithms and exponents with the first lesson being on compound interest. Honestly, I cannot possibly recall what specific topics I studied and when in high school, so I have no idea if it makes more sense to start with this as a topic. However, after reading through the first lesson, I already started thinking about how I could make it better. Basically, compound interest is just dealing with how you accumulate interest over time with your money. So the formula we start with is the formula for interest compounded annually: A=P(1+r)^t, where A is the total amount accumulated, P is the principal amount of money, r is the interest rate, and t is the number of years. For example, if you start with $5,000, and you have an interest rate of 5% over 5 years, you write A=(5000)(1+.05)^5=6381.41. (I just made that up and used the google calculator, so please double check me.) The point is you make lots of money if you invest at high interest rates over long periods of time. However, sometimes interest is not compounded annually. For instance, sometimes interest is compounded biannually, monthly, or even fortnightly (I love this word). So in this case the formula is A=P(1+r/n)^nt, with all of the above variables being the same and n being the number of times it is compounded annually. In other words, they're really the same formula, but the n is invisible in the first equation because n=1. (r/n=r/1=r and n*t=1*t=t) However, I think it's just mad confusing to give the students two different formulas to memorize, plus memorizing when to use which one. Not only does that not even bring up the question of where the equation came from in the first place. I feel like I need to go back and think thoroughly about how this equation was derived and start the students from there. If the students don't understand why the equation is what it is, then they haven't really learned the math just by memorizing it. Any tips would be super helpful!
Later in the day, we had a very intense discussion on exactly how tutorial works. Tutorial is a new thing at my school. They used to have a different type of program called support and enrichment, but due to budget cuts that is gone and tutorial is here. All students must attend the short tutorial period in the classroom with their seminar teachers, and today's discussion was what do they do in tutorial if they are required to attend. I found this logic slightly backwards already, because I couldn't understand why they were trying to define this new period after they had already restructured their schedule to fit in tutorial. Theoretically, the reason the decided to add tutorial was because someone somewhere had some idea of what purpose tutorial would serve. However, everyone today seemed completely clueless and out of sync about how tutorial should be run. Then there became lots of debates about whether or not they should be working on seminar work first because they are in tutorial with their seminar teachers, whether they can visit their other teachers if they are struggling to complete an assignment from another class, whether they can use electronic devices as agendas or headphones as a focusing tool, whether they can eat or sleep during tutorial, and whether all the classes and grade levels would have to have the same rules. School starts in two days, and no one seems to have made any decisions on how tutorial is going to work. It seems like a good idea, but no one can agree on logistics, so it may end up being unsuccessful. Honestly, I'm not sure what the big deal is - I thought people were getting in rather heated debates over nothing. Anyway, I think tutorial can be a useful period for students to catch up on work, and I will do my best to help keep kids focused and on-track during this undecided-upon period.
Afterwards, the interns collectively rode the T back to school for our first classes of the fall semester, and I went to the gym after class for the first time in a billion years. We'll see how long this all lasts. There was also a brief moment today in which I thought I might lose my mentor teacher and be switched to someone else so that I could act as his sub more frequently while he was out of class for leadership team meetings. However, I think they decided that it was both not a good idea to switch mentor teachers after a week of getting to know each other and not a good idea to throw me into substitute teaching consistently my first semester. So I'll be doing my best to figure out how to best teach this calculus course and learning how to build relationships with students with behavioral problems. Can't wait for Thursday!
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