Computer work

I've done quite a bit of work in the past 4 hours.

Curriculum work, class grade stuff, class assessment stuff, and some worksheets for class.

I'm so tired, and it's not even 9 o'clock yet. I'm OTB this evening (on the ball, that is).

Chocolate Milk

Man, I LOVE chocolate milk!!!

The lost file and the wave

On Monday, a file which contained a lot of the grades from my classes went blank for no reason I can think of. It really freaked me out, when I discovered the problem on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday was a blur to me, because all I could think about was that file. I think I've been abel to salvage grades though, as long as my calculus students can give me back what I have graded.

The missing file set back a lot of work that I was hoping to do this week. I can't work on the math and language paper for next week, because I have other things that are more pressing.

On a lighter note, today, in the MPS class, we did the wave project. It was fun for me (may more than it was for the students). I think it's great when I can get a class to do something that would be emberassing, if it weren't associated with getting a grade. That's what learning is - doing things that may seem odd, only to come away with something in the end. My favorite problem is still getting students to figure out the height of the flag pole. It's so useful (not the height of the pole, but using trig to find distances and lengths), so I'm disappointed when students just copy off of someone who actually did the work.

I would like to post more pictures on here, but don't know what to post. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.

No Work Saturday

I did no De Anza work today. First day since mid September.
Instead I bummed around, skimmed a few papers on math and language, and watched Michigan State get their butts kicked by Northwestern. Northwestern?!? When did they get good again?

The evening of grading

Today has been long, even though I just had one class.
I had a meeting with people interested in the MPS program. The meeting went on longer than I thought, I and felt that I shouldn't have been there. A lot of questions were asked about administrative stuff, and the beginnings of the program, things I know very little about.

After the meeting I came home and graded, and graded, and graded. My mother has always said she doesn't like the way my father takes up the living room floor when he grades papers. I'm glad Lauren is not home, becuase I did just that; having papers all over the place, all in different piles, meaning different things (you can see from the picture below). Except for Geordi getting in the way, the grading went well.



Tomorrow, I attempt to start working on a paper on the mathematics of everyday language. We'll see how that goes.

2nd week of classes

So, I'm being really bad with my postings. Only one since classes started. Shame on me.

This quarter is turning out to be a heavier work load than I thought it would be. I feel like each day goes by so quickly, and every night I feel guilty for not doing everything I had planned to. Grading is kicking my butt. It's a constant stream. Each class I teach has stuff for me to grade after every class meeting. The worst is when I don't get stuff done, and then the grading piles up on the next day.

MPS is going well. I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. I was dreading teaching MPS, but I enjoy teaching that class more than my calculus class. I've always loved calculus, and I think it is truly beautiful, but to teach it for the 3rd time in 4 quarters makes me feel like I'm going through the motions. I think if I taught a calc class using the MPS format, it would be really cool. I think there was some talk of making a pre-calc MPS class, but maybe I'm just imagining that.

I'm supposed to be working on an assignment for calc right now, but, of course, I"m not. I promised it would be posted by thursday at 1:30, and dammit, it will be!