Busy, but not much exciting to note...
If I've been silent for a while now, it's not that I don't want to write (although at times I do wonder how people can stick to doing these things), it's really that I haven't done anything worthy of mention. The last few weeks I've just been busy with work, and haven't gone out to do anything exciting.
Our semester is winding to a close. Students write their exams next week; the week after that is for marking, completing reports, and wrapping things up. Graduation is on the 9th of December after which I've got three weeks off.
I have been too busy to really plan any sort of trip, but the "plan" is definitely to hop on a flight to Borneo and travel the jungles of the last frontier (yes, by myself). There are way too many things I want to see and do in Borneo; I did a rough calculation and figure I need 8 weeks to see things properly. So I'll have to cut some things out. Not sure yet how I'll do it. I'll figure it out on my flight over...
As I don’t have anything too interesting to say, I think I’ll take the opportunity to discuss my job. This is mostly for my teacher friends and, of course, ma; Those that aren’t really interested can log out now!
I’ll probably make one more post before I fly out.
A few weeks back, the director of the school asked me to teach a condensed version of the Math of Data Management course. Instead of beginning in January and ending at the end of May, a group of students would begin mid-March and finish at May’s end along with the “regular students”. This means that the students would have a “double-class” of math everyday. Yep: a 2.5 hr math class. I think it’s crazy…and I’m the teacher. I can’t imagine how the students will feel. Anyhow, after some thought, I agreed to it. Not because I think it’s a good idea, but because it is an opportunity that I will not get elsewhere. I think it will be very stressful for the students to absorb, understand, learn to apply, and retain that much info in that short a period of time. Also, I don’t know how we’re going to survive those long classes.
Because it was going to happen whether I wanted to teach the class or not, I decided that I may as well be the one to do it. Plus, it will give me an opportunity to do a little action research on the learning of mathematics under these types of constraints. Because the students will write the same final exam as everyone else, I will have quite a large control group, though my sample will be relatively small. Of course there are many variates that are beyond my control; this leads me to the next major change for the coming semester:
We just found out that the director has decided that next semester we will run longer classes from Monday to Thursday, with no formal classes on Fridays. She neglected to inform me of this when she asked me to teach the double class. So now I have a 3 hour Math class every Monday to Thursday. In addition to my other two Geometry classes, I will be in class for 6 hours of the day. I figure I’ll be ok though. All I need to do is somehow cut the amount of time I spend on marking, planning, thinking about assessment, teaching and learning strategies, and all the other stuff down to about 2hrs per every hour of in-class time, and then I’ll still have 6 hours a day to sleep (that is, if I cut out eating, working-out or any inkling of a life that I might like to have, and manage to teleport myself to and from work to save on travel time). Note: I am ready for all the “boo hoo; I’m a teacher; I get lots of holidays and job security, etc, etc” comments that are sure to come my way after that rant...specially from some of my non-teacher-friendly friends (You know who you are).
About Fridays: they are not a day off. All staff are expected to be at work in some capacity. Though we will make the 110 hours per course (required by the ministry of education) with just the Mon-Thurs classes, Fridays will be days for extra-tutorials, field trips, one-on-one work, presentations, lab-work, and extra-curricular activities. Organizationally, I’m not sure how well it will work. I.e., how to organize what students will partake in which activities on the Fridays. There are definitely a lot of bugs that need to be ironed out. I have a feeling that the first few weeks of next semester will be chaos until (if?) we get things figured out.
Overall, I am most concerned about those students that I will be working with beginning March. How we will survive 3 hour math classes, 4 days a week for two-and-a-half months will require creativity that I’m not sure I have. But I am looking forward to the challenge of re-organizing the teaching and learning of a course under those constraints. I think it’ll be fun; Stressful, but fun. And the one thing that I’ll have to remind myself is that, as stressed as I’ll feel, it’ll not compare to the stress the students will experience.
But that’s all about next semester, as this one is not yet “finish” as they say in Malaysia. My current students have exams that they are stressing over. To those students that are reading this: all the best with your studying and with your exams, and What Are You Doing Reading Blogs! Get back to studying!
With that, I too must get back to marking my last assignments for the term, and then only the exams left to mark! Yahoo!
Our semester is winding to a close. Students write their exams next week; the week after that is for marking, completing reports, and wrapping things up. Graduation is on the 9th of December after which I've got three weeks off.
I have been too busy to really plan any sort of trip, but the "plan" is definitely to hop on a flight to Borneo and travel the jungles of the last frontier (yes, by myself). There are way too many things I want to see and do in Borneo; I did a rough calculation and figure I need 8 weeks to see things properly. So I'll have to cut some things out. Not sure yet how I'll do it. I'll figure it out on my flight over...
As I don’t have anything too interesting to say, I think I’ll take the opportunity to discuss my job. This is mostly for my teacher friends and, of course, ma; Those that aren’t really interested can log out now!
I’ll probably make one more post before I fly out.
A few weeks back, the director of the school asked me to teach a condensed version of the Math of Data Management course. Instead of beginning in January and ending at the end of May, a group of students would begin mid-March and finish at May’s end along with the “regular students”. This means that the students would have a “double-class” of math everyday. Yep: a 2.5 hr math class. I think it’s crazy…and I’m the teacher. I can’t imagine how the students will feel. Anyhow, after some thought, I agreed to it. Not because I think it’s a good idea, but because it is an opportunity that I will not get elsewhere. I think it will be very stressful for the students to absorb, understand, learn to apply, and retain that much info in that short a period of time. Also, I don’t know how we’re going to survive those long classes.
Because it was going to happen whether I wanted to teach the class or not, I decided that I may as well be the one to do it. Plus, it will give me an opportunity to do a little action research on the learning of mathematics under these types of constraints. Because the students will write the same final exam as everyone else, I will have quite a large control group, though my sample will be relatively small. Of course there are many variates that are beyond my control; this leads me to the next major change for the coming semester:
We just found out that the director has decided that next semester we will run longer classes from Monday to Thursday, with no formal classes on Fridays. She neglected to inform me of this when she asked me to teach the double class. So now I have a 3 hour Math class every Monday to Thursday. In addition to my other two Geometry classes, I will be in class for 6 hours of the day. I figure I’ll be ok though. All I need to do is somehow cut the amount of time I spend on marking, planning, thinking about assessment, teaching and learning strategies, and all the other stuff down to about 2hrs per every hour of in-class time, and then I’ll still have 6 hours a day to sleep (that is, if I cut out eating, working-out or any inkling of a life that I might like to have, and manage to teleport myself to and from work to save on travel time). Note: I am ready for all the “boo hoo; I’m a teacher; I get lots of holidays and job security, etc, etc” comments that are sure to come my way after that rant...specially from some of my non-teacher-friendly friends (You know who you are).
About Fridays: they are not a day off. All staff are expected to be at work in some capacity. Though we will make the 110 hours per course (required by the ministry of education) with just the Mon-Thurs classes, Fridays will be days for extra-tutorials, field trips, one-on-one work, presentations, lab-work, and extra-curricular activities. Organizationally, I’m not sure how well it will work. I.e., how to organize what students will partake in which activities on the Fridays. There are definitely a lot of bugs that need to be ironed out. I have a feeling that the first few weeks of next semester will be chaos until (if?) we get things figured out.
Overall, I am most concerned about those students that I will be working with beginning March. How we will survive 3 hour math classes, 4 days a week for two-and-a-half months will require creativity that I’m not sure I have. But I am looking forward to the challenge of re-organizing the teaching and learning of a course under those constraints. I think it’ll be fun; Stressful, but fun. And the one thing that I’ll have to remind myself is that, as stressed as I’ll feel, it’ll not compare to the stress the students will experience.
But that’s all about next semester, as this one is not yet “finish” as they say in Malaysia. My current students have exams that they are stressing over. To those students that are reading this: all the best with your studying and with your exams, and What Are You Doing Reading Blogs! Get back to studying!
With that, I too must get back to marking my last assignments for the term, and then only the exams left to mark! Yahoo!
posted by Leon at 8:58 PM
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