My 6th grade math class is currently studying a unit on scientific notation. We have learned powers of ten with positive, negative, and zero exponents. We have learned to represent values in scientific notation and numbers written in scientific notation as their values. However for some of the students, this information is review, and I could feel that they were bored. If my students, students who are accustomed to being held to low circumstances because of their race and socioeconomic status, feel as though they are not being challenged and held to high expectations, then I am not doing my job. So, for those students who were bored stiff I attempted to increase the rigor of the lesson by incorporating two-step word problems that involved scientific notation. For example, "In the United States, there are approximately 91,000 species of insects. Ms. Hahn has been bitten by about 25,000 of them! How many species of insects has Ms. Hahn NOT been bitten by? Write your answer in scientific notation." and "Mr. Hasty owns 105,000 ties. If 18,000 of his ties are pink, how many of his ties are NOT pink? Write your answer in scientific notation." Well, it was a disaster.
The morning began with whisperings that Wendy Kopp, CEO and Founder of Teach for America, an organization that she drafted at my age in her senior thesis, was going to be visiting our school for the day. When she arrived, I saw her standing in the hallway with a dark haired man and it was like I was seeing Oprah and Gayle all over again. She observed a few of our curriculum sessions and then disappeared. I breathed a sigh of relief because I had heard that she was going to be observing a few lessons and I was teaching next. I assumed she had left the building. Yet just as I was setting up my materials for the day, in marches Wendy Kopp and her dark-haired companion. I later found out that this man is the Executive Vice President for TFA Institutes all over the country. This man has power, yet lucky for me I had no idea who he was until he had already left. Trailing behind them was my advisor, my collaborative teacher Mr. Hasty, and my mentor teacher. It was quite the audience.
My lesson began smoothly, the students completing the Do Now that begins each day's lesson. Yet because the previous day's lesson had been so simple for so many of them, I attempted to make every aspect of this lesson more rigorous, but without much experience I was unable to find the balance between rigor and feasibility and I overshot. I got so many raised hands about the third question on my Do Now that I finally stopped the class and said, "I have been getting a lot of questions about number 3, so let's go ahead and do that one together on the overhead." I proceeded to begin the problem, and about two steps in I realized that I couldn't even solve it without a calculator. It also involved rounding off the last digit to make it a zero so that it could be converted into scientific notation, a skill which I have not yet taught them. My wet erase marker paused. I tried to keep my cool but in my head I was panicking. I couldn't solve my own math problem, my work was projected hugely on the whiteboard, and Wendy Kopp and company were in the room watching me! I paused and said, "You know what, this one is tricky and I think we should come back to it after we have completed today's lesson! I think even Ms. Hahn needs to practice her scientific notation!" Then I was so flustered that my thinking cap, yes a real thing (see photo below) fell to the ground. I snatched it up and had no time to waste before moving on to our partner work activity. All I could think was Wendy "Oprah" Kopp was in the room, watching me make fun of myself. Luckily my students are lovely and didn't seem to care that I was making such a fool of myself.
We began our whiteboard activity, in which the students work with their partners to solve a problem, write the final answer on their whiteboard, and hold it up into the sky. This was not as smooth as I had hoped with the stream of raised hands causing me to bounce around the room answering questions like, "I can't get the marker off," or "mine is dry." Thankfully during this time, Wendy Kopp and the Dark-Haired-Director left the room. Wendy Kopp even gave me a little nod! I can't ever take a shower again or I might lose her scent!
With only fifteen minutes left of class, I called out, "Ladies and gentleman it is time to move on to our independent work. Please pass your whiteboards to the left while I distribute the assign..." Where was my assignment? I rifled through my papers and found no stack of the assessment that I had spent so long perfecting the night before. I had no time to think or waste. I turned to the students and said, "Please take our your homework, you have five minutes to work on your homework silently while I look for your assessment." Where was my assessment?!?!?!?!?! I had made so many photocopies the night before I know I must have copied it. How could I have been so absent minded? Oh wait I remember how, I haven't slept in two weeks. But I am responsible for administering a daily assessment to track my students' progress. All hope was lost. Wendy was gone, but my advisor and my summer mentor teacher were still watching and typing away. My only friend in the room was Mr. Hasty, helping me search and typing no notes about my wild screw-up.
Sadly, the assessment was no where to be found. I told the confused faces of the students to put away their homework again and I gave them another blank sheet of paper. I threw back up extra practice word problems onto the over head and asked them to complete the problems on their papers. Hands shot into the air.
"Yes?" I asked, knowing this could not be anything good.
"I can't see!" replied one student. No students could even see the problems.
"I will read them aloud," I answered, knowing that this was beyond saving. I called a few students to the overhead to complete the problems, but they were as lost as my hope. There is no nice way to say it, this lesson had sucked. And Wendy Kopp was there. Watching. Me.
After the lesson, I walked over to my summer mentor teacher. "That was a disaster," I said. She told me not to worry, that it was my first week as a teacher and if the head of the organization had come to watch her she would have done the same thing. I realized I had two choices: I could cry or I could laugh. So I laughed, and now the whole experience seems quite amusing. I must remember that the thing about teaching is there will always be good days and bad days but there will also always be a tomorrow and a new chance to learn.
No comments:
Post a Comment