For each school day of the 2020-21 school year, I will be writing two sentences to capture some of the impressions, feelings, experiences, or thoughts I had that day. This is the 21st post in the series.
Monday (Mar 1)
Decent energy all around today as we explored factoring trinomials through my Dunkin’ Donuts spilled coffee problem. In 5th period, we debated whether soup was a snack and even did a poll to decide the matter (the numbers don’t lie: 60% of students responded NO); somehow we concluded the debate with the question of whether we humans should be considered soup whenever we take a bath.
Tuesday (Mar 2)
I’ve been having some thought-provoking conversations with colleagues about the role compassion has in our teaching. Ended the day with back-to-back affinity group experiences, which concluded at 9pm, that left me hanging by thread.
Wednesday (Mar 3)
I was so tired today that I forgot about a scheduled meeting with a colleague during sixth period. She was graceful in reminding me about our meeting, which I luckily was still able to attend; she’s doing a “case study” of my instruction and curriculum for her grad class.
Thursday (Mar 4)
I had a strong urge to play tic-tac-tie with my students today, which I took full advantage of. I publicly played at least 5 students in each class; after suffering an early loss in each, I bounced back to tie, except in period 9 (I lost to the last student, which caused me to have a losing record).
Friday (Mar 5)
My cogen had 4 new members today and orienting them to the space took more time and energy that I imagined; we had a small takeaway for next week, but I was hoping for more. Spent an hour this afternoon debriefing with a MfA colleague about the first white antiracist affinity group we facilitated earlier this week; she’s GREAT.
bp