Teaching Thursdays #13

Let’s talk about grades.

Grades can be a hard thing for me to deal with.  I don’t believe in a gradeless system, but I sometimes wish I didn’t even know how my students were doing individually.  It’s hard to watch students fail, and it’s hard to watch students choosing not to strive for good grades and just doing the bare minimum.  I never have a lot of students in those groups, but always, always some.  I’ve had a couple of students fail my class, take me again the next semester, repeat the same behaviors, and fail again.  Ugh.

It’s also hard to know I am affecting my students’ permanent records, even though the grades are really their responsibility not mine.  It’s hard to be the one who puts the B in the system that takes away their scholarship because their grade point average went one-hundredth of a point below what it needed to be (and yes, that actually happened).  I am always fair, meticulously so, and in the end I will give them the benefit of the doubt if they are close to a higher grade.  But when all is said and done, I’m not going to “give” them a grade they didn’t earn, even though I’ve been asked to do so more than once.  I even had a student tell me that he had a lawyer when I refused to “have a heart and just pass him” because his final grade was somewhere around 26 percent.  The joys of teacherhood?  (Thank goodness for a department head who backs me up!)

On the flip side, I’ve had many students who get their first A’s in math under my watch.  Oh the delight!  One of my students put her first A exam on her refrigerator at home, and several students have had to step out of class to call their Moms when they got A’s on tests!  And it’s particularly rewarding because many of them walk into the semester saying they just want to pass so they can graduate, but when they realize they can understand math and do well — really, really well — their motivation rises and they study harder and achieve even more than any of us imagined.

Medical Stuff

I’ve seen ten episodes of “House M.D.” in the last three days, so I may be approaching medical overdrive here but thought I should update on a couple of things.

We increased one of my meds slightly last month to try to slow down my bleeding, and it seems to be working nicely.  No bruising lately, and I’ve only had one nosebleed in the last few weeks.  For the first time ever, I tried to take my other bleeding medicine (which is a pill) while my nose was bleeding, which almost made me laugh out loud because it’s very awkward to try to drink water while you’ve got blood pouring out your nose.  But it helped me feel like I was doing something in a situation that can otherwise feel kind of helpless, especially if the bleeding doesn’t seem to be stopping.

Prayers continue for Candice (who is having chemo embolization today) and for Katy (who is home from the hospital).  Katy has a new niece!  Her niece is one of four blog babies who I have been watching for lately.  Two have arrived (Lily and Annelise) and two are still to come.  Have I mentioned that I love baby news?

Pear Trees

Have you seen the cost of purchasing the gifts for the 12 Days of Christmas this year?  It’s upwards of $30,000 for the whole deal, and the cost of the pear tree alone has gone up a whopping 44 percent since last year!  It somehow never occurred to me that you’d have to buy the tree in addition to the partridge (that’s two gifts on day one!).  Perhaps I should aim to find a true love who already has a pear tree.

Reunioning

My high school class reunion was yesterday.  As awkward as I always feel in social situations and as uncool as I was in high school, it’s a wonder I attend these things.  But I always go, perhaps to represent the math geeks.  Only one of my good high school friends ever attends.

I did have to give myself several pep talks before I went, and I made a trip to the library in order to work up some courage (which might not make sense to anyone but me!).  And, try though I might to be fashionably late, I was the third person to arrive at the reunion, which meant — as usual — I got put to work at the welcome table.  That turned out to be OK because at least I talked to people without having to initiate a personal conversation with them.

My old classmates look remarkably similar to how they did 15 years ago.  That’s what struck me most this time.  We all decided we look 25, not 33, and that made us feel better.  *giggles*  And I did mingle a bit once the welcome table closed, mostly talking with people I knew since elementary school or junior high so there was a longer history there.  We talked about the old neighborhood (ha! — I sound like my Dad!), classmates who moved away, teachers, and so on.  A couple of people asked me for advice about math and one wanted to know just how fast I can solve that darn Rubik’s Cube!

So, I did OK.  I stayed until almost midnight, shared a little bit about myself, smiled at everyone, and hung on to the good feelings I have about my life right now.  And in another five years, we’ll do it all over again.

Day after Thanksgiving

I spent much of my family’s Thanksgiving gathering yesterday playing with — and taking pictures of — my cousin’s little boy Lucas, who is almost 17 months old.  I realized after I left that I didn’t interact much with the adults, which I guess isn’t that unusual for me (I am definitely a kid person!).  I fed Lucas pie crust, read him a book, followed him around with my camera (which he is used to by now!), and helped give him a bath.  He was fascinated with my empty cookie container and would open it, pretend to eat the nothing inside (and laugh hysterically if I said “Num num num” while he did so), and close the container and then repeat the process again.  He played makeshift basketball over the back of a chair with my Dad, graciously tolerated several people bouncing balls off of his head (poor kid!), and wrestled with his Grandpa.  He definitely makes everyone smile.

I am off work today but spent most of the daytime hours working anyway — trying to get my teaching prep done for the rest of the term (up to final exams) because my schedule is completely insane in the first eight days of December.  (And December is next week, guys!) I also cleaned the dreaded back corner (*insert scary music here*) of my bedroom. I will take the evening off and watch “March of the Penguins,” which I just picked up from the library!  (I have a feeling I could write every day about the joys of the library!)

I hope you all are enjoying some peace this holiday weekend!

Teaching Thursdays #12: Thanksgiving Edition

On this Thanksgiving Day, I offer my teaching gratitude list… 

I am thankful for opportunities to share math and all of its quirky, delightful nuances with a portion of the world.

I am thankful for my teaching colleagues who have listened to me when I needed to vent, shared in my excitement when I have new ideas, and let me learn from them when I was lost.

I am thankful for comments from students who let me know that I am doing something right, just at exactly those moments when I was sure I was doing everything wrong.

I am thankful that I’ve had eleven classes of students who have worked with me to create respectful, caring environments in my classrooms.

And perhaps most of all, I am thankful for having a chance to make math a little less scary for the absolutely terrific human beings who I get to teach.

For the love of the library

At the risk of having my cousin Amie dis-own me, I have to confess that I have lived within walking distance of a library for over two years now and didn’t go in the library until last week.

Now, I have a good excuse!  I was thoroughly embarrassed that my library card expired many years ago and I never renewed it.  Well, OK, so maybe that’s not a good excuse.  I do have library privileges at a couple of universities and do use them, but nothing could ever be more convenient than a library close to home.

The final push to go in the library came the day I learned you could borrow DVDs from the library for free.  I like books, but I love movies.  And free movies?  I’m there, baby!  So on my way home from work one day, I stopped at the library and bashfully walked up to the desk and said I need to get a library card.  I started to ask if I have to wait (maybe through a probation period because I was a library drop-out??) but the librarian said, “Of course not, you can get one right now!”  She was nice.  And I didn’t die.

Once I was at the library, I also found out that you can borrow TV shows on DVD.  Oh. My. Gosh.  With my handy dandy library privileges, I asked them to hold the first season of House on DVD when they get it in, and well, let’s get the Cars movie too (I love Pixar’s DVD “extras”).  And a couple of books.  One of the books came in on Saturday, so I waltzed right over there and picked it up.  The whole trip took maybe seven minutes, and I saw one of my old students there too!

So, dear library, I’m sorry I ever left you, but boy, have you changed since I last knew you well!  I have a feeling you’ll be seeing a lot of me.

Who? Me?

I just found out for sure that I’m going to be teaching an upper level math course next semester.  It will be my first.

This makes me want to jump up and down.  But it also seriously makes me want to hide under the covers.  I’m only six years old, right?…says the 33 year old.

Upper level?

UM vs OSU

The rivalry between the Univ of Michigan and Ohio State football teams is often billed as the greatest rivalry in sports.  The UM vs OSU game is always the last conference game (and usually the last game) of the regular season for both teams.  Year after year, this game is huge — and usually one team or the other is going after the conference title, and some years, a national title.  I heard years ago that the OSU coach gets specific bonuses based on the outcome of this one game, as if none of the rest of the season matters.  It’s a crazy thing and a really nasty rivalry.

This year…oh boy…the teams are nationally ranked at #1 (OSU) and #2 (U of M).  So, this year BOTH teams are going after a national title.  It could not be a bigger game!  I’m not a huge college football fan, but it was impossible not to get swept up in the palpable combination of tension and glee as this game approaches.  It is this afternoon.

Yesterday, a legend in U of M football — former Coach Bo Schembechler — passed away after decades of battling heart problems.  In his 27 years of coaching (21 of them at U of M), he never had a losing season.  His Michigan teams won 13 conference titles.  He gave a passionate, fiery press conference the other day about this game coming up, and he spoke to the team on Thursday night, nobody having any idea it would be his last team talk.  I’m pretty sure he’s shouting “GO BLUE!” with a strong voice among the angels today.

* * *

OSU beat Michigan 42-39.  What a game!  There’s an off-chance that they’ll meet again in the National Championship game, but more likely, Michigan will play in the Rose Bowl on New Years Day.  Go Blue!

Ha! I’m not dumb.

Remember how I had to give a talk in the graduate course I’m sitting in on, and the professor was not happy with what I planned to talk about?  (He actually told me before the talk that my ideas were irrelevant.)  Well, without telling me, my boss (also a researcher in this field) e-mailed my thoughts to a big researcher in Europe, who says he thinks I am on to something.  He gave several resources for me to track down and invited me to perhaps expand on a paper he’s recently written but has not yet published.  So, ha!  I didn’t really need to be right about my idea (and it still may be that we’ll hit dead ends), but I didn’t appreciate being treated as though even having the thoughts I had was a waste of time.  You know?