My senior credit factory seniors are going to be the death of me. I had one kid who does nothing day after day other than whatever he does while I’m standing over him complain that he is failing after checking his grade. He wrote his name on his quarter final and that was all. Hmmmm….
The [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2006
End of Quarter 1
31 October 2006 – 22:05
Conditional Catastrophe
31 October 2006 – 12:01
I received this email from another teacher who now teaches in another school district:
So, my students had to turn the following statement into an ‘if-then” statement. I got many idiotic answers, but I share the best.
Statement: Eagles are fish-eating birds.Best answer: If eagles are fish, then they eat birds.
The tears are streaming [...]
Presidential Math
30 October 2006 – 12:20
Take the child tax credit. If it is not made permanent – in other words, if it expires – and you’ve got a family of four sitting around the breakfast table, the taxpayers can be sure that their taxes will go up by $2,000: $500 for that child, $500 for the one right there; $500 [...]
College Costs
29 October 2006 – 15:12
It now takes more than an average salary to pay for one year of college at a private school (see the middle graph). I’ve been under the assumption that colleges tuitions have been raising much more than they actually expect students to pay, but according to the New York Times, just less than 80% of [...]
Really Dumb Kids
29 October 2006 – 09:21
Another teacher came by to tell me that one of his better students was just expelled from school. Apparently, this Muslim girl and two of her friends wrote some anti-Islamic things on another Muslim’s locker. Why? To frame some black kids that they didn’t like. I’m not sure what was going on there exactly, or [...]
New Kind of Fresh Start
28 October 2006 – 06:33
A fellow math teacher of mine was talking about a email that was passed on to him from an assistant principal here at school regarding a “problem kid”. Apparently, the kid has been out of school more than here, and is failing all of his classes.
His mother emailed the assistant principal and asked her to [...]
Beauty Queens
27 October 2006 – 21:13
My honors classes are filled with good looking, healthy kids. Too bad that some of them know this.
At the beginning of the school year, I was having kids go to the board to put some geometric sketches on the board, and I told them that I was going to sit at the “good-looking table” and [...]
Foot in Mouth
26 October 2006 – 12:46
Today while out in the hall greeting my third hour students as they were entering, a chronically absent kid (who puked in my class on Friday) walked up to me and asked to go change her pants because they ripped. I don’t think that there was any skepticism on my face, but she decided to [...]
My Stolen Textbook
17 October 2006 – 23:32
I had a substitute yesterday because of a district math meeting. I come back the next day to find my textbook missing from one of my senior credit factory classes. It is just a regular textbook – the teacher’s edition is put away, but this is the book that I use during class.
Anyhow, I go [...]
Five questions
16 October 2006 – 18:48
Most common questions from my pre-IB geometry students
“But why does that work?”
“Can you help me with this?”
“Will you be here after school to help me?”
“Can you show me [whatever] again?”
“What is the homework?”
Most common questions from my senior “credit factory” students
“What do I need to do to pass?”
“Is there any extra credit?”
“What did we do [...]
