I was on it to start this week. I had new, fun, interactive lessons, the classroom is organized, the power point was pretty. I thought, well, if the administrators are going to conduct surprise classroom visits, this might actually be a good time.
Except, it was also that week. The one where the make-up assessment tests, and the counselor visits and flu and the cold weather and the deaths in the families and all the rest of adult life happened, and my largest class was four students.
*Sigh*
Sometimes, this is life.
This is particularly life in adult ed, where the student body are juggling a lot with little margin for error.
So my four students played like term-ominoes, and went shopping with ratios, and got lots of individual attention. I set up a spot to distribute missed handouts next week, and looked for the good things:
- The student with the great number sense patiently coaching a classmate through ratios (and the student who is struggling through ratios, but watching YouTube videos at home to get it)
- I challenged one group of students to make the biggest number the could using only sevens and math symbols, and the student with lots of complicated learning struggles came up with an answer 42 places long (for the curious: (7^7)^7 is apparently something like 2 tredecillion) ((Also good: The resulting mini lesson on scientific notation, which finally seemed useful to my students))
- The math anxious colleague I helped with some algebra, who emailed me after ‘It makes perfect sense’ now and the new group of colleagues I’ll be meeting with all spring.
- And, the student who reassured her classmate before an assessment test, and all the process goals I met getting ready for that week, and the student who was excited about Quizlet, and the one who showed initiative, and the one who came despite all the things, and, and, and…
Because, even those weeks, are full of those things.
