The Daily Grind

We are in a part of the school year that I think is the toughest to get through. Early in the year we seem to hit holidays at all the right times. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Winter Break. February is easy and we get a long weekend for President's Day. But getting from March to Spring Break is a grind. We've been with the same kids for about 22 weeks and I'm pretty sure we are sick of each other a little bit. Thay are sick of me and I'm a little sick of them.

Today I'm trying to deliver a whiz bang standards review lecture on the really sexy topics of proof by contradiction and the laws of detachment and syllogism. Every time I look at a face it is an ugly mix of boredom, frustration, hatred, despair, and a bunch of other words. I simply stopped a couple of times and tried to talk about something else for awhile, then I had to head right back in. Audible groaning. Today I didn't blame them. Today I bored myself.

I don't blame myself. I am told what to teach by the state of California and the Capistrano Unified School District and for some topics, there are no bells and whistles. No "woo hoo" moments. For MOST of what I teach, it is just a daily grind for the students as they wade through material they have no interest in. I don't blame anyone. I completely understand that my students couldn't get fired up for this and I completely agree that we should be teaching this.

I get it that it isn't always what we teach that matters most. Sometime its about learning. Just proving that we can learn anything that we get put in front of us. If something can be learned, why not learn it?

That said, today was a grind and tomorrow I get to teach how to graph
y = A + BSin(CX + D) Yeah, that ought to get them fired up. Woo hoo.