Dancing, Day 10

This was an “Oh Happy Day!” type of day at my dance class.  We did SIX dances!  I loved it.  And one of the guys in the class took it upon himself to make a CD of all the music from the spring class plus all of our summer music so far, and he made a copy for me and two other people.  So, I can dance everything to the right music at home now.  Yippee!  I was particularly excited to get “Cupid Shuffle” and “Come Dance With Me” on CD — I love both of those songs and the dances that go with them.

There will be a third session of the Line Dancing class in the fall.  I originally thought there’s no way I can sign up for that because of school.  But then I started thinking what a great stress reliever it would be.  No matter how bad my day has been or how stressed I am, anticipating the dance class always makes me smile and actually going to class makes me downright giddy!  I am still the bounciest person in class!  It’s just FUN.  So, I started thinking maybe I will sign up and even if I can’t go every week, it will still be a nice break from studying when I can.  And then, the teacher said today that someone has invited her to bring her fall class to perform at a city-wide dance show in the fall, and I was like, “Ooooh baby, I am so totally there!”  I would LOVE to perform in a dance show.  Sign me up!  I should probably get some cowboy boots now though because performing line dancing at a show in penny loafers might not be the best idea.  *laughs*

 

Three

My cousin’s little boy turned three today!  He had a great party and continues to be an absolute joy to everyone around!

Thank you, Uncle Sam!

I would like to thank Uncle Sam for stimulating my economy and allowing me to buy a digital SLR camera.  Thankfully, the lens and flash that I had for my film camera work with this one too, so I only had to get the new body.  It’s quite lovely!  This camera is so much like my film camera that I was able to pick it up and use it right away, which made me very happy!

My new baby:

 

 

Teaching Thursdays #84: Grand Finale

My students had their final exams earlier this week.  This was my 20th class of students, and I told them on the first day of class that they would be my last class for awhile because of my plans to return to school myself.  I told them of my mission to fix math education and especially to make a difference for students who struggle mightily with math.  I told them all of these things on the first day of class, and then I didn’t mention it again.

We went about the business of learning.  We learned about data, about analyzing data, about putting data into Excel and doing cool stuff with it.  We rolled dice (rollin’, rollin’, rollin’!) to learn about probability.  We used compasses, protractors, and great geometry software to learn about circles, bisect angles, and figure out whether the diagonals of a kite are perpendicular (they are).

We had a lot of fun!  I had such a great variety of experiences in class during this fourth year of teaching — from a class of freshmen who I am not sure I ever did win over last fall to two classes during winter that were fiercely protective of me to this spring class who made the semester fly.  I ordinarily have a love/hate relationship with these accelerated terms, but I never did hate this term.  I wanted to memorize every day, to do my very best every day, to show them all the good that I’ve learned these last four years.  And I’ve learned a lot.

And then, this past Monday, I joked about all the points that I have left over as I finished up this chapter of my teaching life.  They had forgotten, as I hoped they would, that they were my last class.  On Tuesday, right before their exam, I thanked them for being a most excellent Grand Finale and I reminded them of my plans.  As they turned in their exams, one of them handed me a card.  I waited until nearly everyone was finished with their exams before I read what she wrote inside.  It was a long and beautiful note that told of how she had a bad attitude about math her whole life, but my enthusiasm helped her have fun with math for the first time.  She said that she now understands how much a teacher can impact a student’s experience, and as she goes into student teaching, she hopes to create a fun environment for her students to learn math.  What better way could there be to close this chapter of teaching than with that great letter.

As I walked out of the classroom, I turned around to look back at the chalkboard and glanced around the room and thought about how my next semester in a classroom will be as student, not teacher.  I will teach again, but I don’t know when that will be.  In the meantime, I know that I’ve had the best first four years of teaching that a person could ever hope for.

 

Teaching. It ends.

My students had their final exams today, and I got them graded immediately and tabulated final grades.  (Everyone passed — yay!)  I have one student who took an incomplete from me in winter term who needs to take an exam to finish the course, but other than that, my teaching year is over.

Yesterday, several of my students forgot that they had one last assignment due.  So they wanted to bargain with me.

Student:  If I turn it in tomorrow, can I get half credit or something?

Me:  How about this — turn it in tomorrow for full credit!

Student:  Really?  Full credit?  Even though it’s late?

Me:  Why not?  I have all these points left over and I won’t have any students for a long while, so I might as well give the points away!

[And I really just wanted them to DO the assignment for their benefit so the points weren't the important part!]

Anyone else want some points? 

 

Dancing, Day 9

We learned a very fast, continuous motion dance today at my line dancing class.  It. Wore. Me. Out!  It was a good challenge though.  Then we did three other dances that we already learned.  It was quite the work out!

I told the instructor that I found another song that goes with one of our longer dance.  Johnny Cash’s “Get Rhythm” goes perfectly with a dance we learned in the spring called Red Hot Salsa.  She likes to have options of songs for dances so she was happy to hear it!  I’m still waiting to learn a dance that goes well with KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse & The Cherry Tree” — that song seems tailor made for a dance but I haven’t found one that fits yet.

Next week, we learn a Cha Cha.  And the music for it is a song that I particularly enjoy.  Can’t wait!

 

Odds and ends of updates

This has been a wild and crazy month!  Lots of extra things going on to keep me busy.  Here are a few random updates (most slightly crabby, as it turns out!).

1.  My office at my research job is still not habitable.  (My office and several others were destroyed by flood on June 7th.)  So I’ve been working from home for two weeks now.  Thankfully, my boss was able to retrieve some of my paper files the other day, so I have most of the things that I really need to work at home.  It’s been frustrating and disorienting to not be at work though.

2.  I dropped my second dance class.  The instructor was very formal and strict, with a long list of rules we had to follow (some of which made sense, some didn’t).  Halfway through the first class, I realized that I wasn’t smiling or having fun and it just felt really restrictive and uncomfortable.  Not the fun summer class that I hoped for!  So, I’m back down to just one dance class again, but my line dancing class is pure JOY!

3.  Every summer, it takes me a couple of weeks before I re-remember how sick I feel if I leave the AC on overnight.  It happened again this year.  I left the AC on around the clock for several days earlier in the month (it was HOT!), and I felt sick every day and thought, “Oh no, this is going to be a loooooong summer.”  And then one night when AC was truly unnecessary, I turned it off and felt fine the next day.  And I was like, “Duh!  I DO remember now that I can’t have AC on at night!”  (My hydration disorder makes me very sensitive to anything that dries the air — AC isn’t nearly as bad as dehumidifiers which make me sick within a minute or so, but overnight when I’m not drinking, the drying impact of the AC is enough to mess me up.)  I seriously think I’m going to set up my computer to remind me next spring about this because I just don’t remember from one year to the next.  Some kind of mental block there!

4.  On a happier note… I think I’m going to buy a digital SLR camera this week, thanks to the economic stimulus check that came my way!  I have a birthday party for a certain 3 year old to shoot next weekend, and it would be nice to have a new camera to play around with at that party.

 

Gymnastics Olympic Trials

The gymnastics Olympic Trials for our U.S. athletes take place this weekend.  The first round for both men and women is already complete.  I “watched the meet” on a text-based forum for three hours last evening — all we got was written reports about the performances and the scores (no video).  Nobody on the forum was reporting the standings after each round, so I took it upon myself to set up an Excel spreadsheet to put scores in as they came up, and then sorted the gymnasts by their all-around scores and posted the standings myself.  Yes, I am obsessed with gymnastics!  And the U.S.’s top three female gymnasts are all former world champions, so this is quite an amazing group of athletes!  The competition will be so worth watching.

The round of competition that took place last night will be on TV this evening (NBC, 8 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Central).  And the finals will be shown LIVE (eek!) on Sunday evening starting at 7 p.m. Eastern (6 p.m. Central).

If you haven’t watched elite gymnastics for awhile, just be warned that the scoring has changed.  A difficulty score is now added to the traditional 10.0.  So the gymnasts get scores like 14.9 and 16.3.  Anything in the 16s is amazing and world-class.  (One of our gymnasts is capable of getting a 17 on uneven bars which is totally mind blowing!)  Scores in the 15s are good, and scores below 15 are kind of average for this level of gymnastics.  So, watch for the gymnasts who mostly score in the 15s and 16s — those young ladies will be on our Olympic team.

And just FYI… my very favorite gymnasts this year are Nastia Liukin, Shawn Johnson, and Ivana Hong.

Teaching Thursdays #83

I gave my last regular lecture of the semester and of the academic year today.  The topic?  Surface area and volume.  Not an exciting topic to end on, but the activity that I designed to go with this lecture involved math cubes that snap together (they are like Lego but they connect on multiple sides).  It’s always fun to play with those things, and my students understand surface area soooo much better with the hands-on play than they ever would just looking at the formulas.  I’m all about hands-on play, and if we could do the whole geometry unit without me ever lecturing, that would be perfect!

Next week, we’ll do a day of review and then they have their final exam.  And that’s it!  Year Four of teaching will be over.  I can’t believe it’s been four years already.  It has gone by so fast.

Guys and Girls: PEI Edition

I went to a dinner party with my teaching colleagues this evening.  We were seated at three tables and the meal was long, so I had an incredibly long and varied conversation with the three male colleagues who I sat with.  We talked about sports (including cricket — that’s how long the conversation was!), the local summer festivals, music, and teaching.  And we talked about travel.

One of them asked me if I planned a big trip for before my PhD program begins.  Kind of a last hurrah before the stress begins!  I said that I had wanted to do that, but due to lack of time off from my research job as well as other circumstances, there will be no such trip this year.  I said that if I could have planned a big trip, I would have either gone to California (for a family wedding) or to Prince Edward Island (a trip I’ve wanted to take for several years now).

Two of them said, “Oh, I’d love to go to PEI too” but the third said, “PEI?  What’s the attraction there?”

I said (thinking I was stating the obvious), “Well, Anne of Green Gables…”

And all three of them said, “What?  Who is that?”

*gasp*

After I picked my chin up off the floor, I said, “Well, for girls, that’s the main draw to PEI.  Anne of Green Gables is a fictional character who grew up on PEI.  There are several books.”  I raised my eyebrows as if to say, any of this ringing a bell?  But no bells were rung.  They looked at me like I had lost my mind.

So, I suppose we can add this to the list of things that guys just don’t get.