Constructivist bitching.

2004-06-03 at 6:24 p.m.

Shit.

I was so excited, because in class last night, Senor Prof announced that since he was teaching us again next fall, if we weren't done with our interview paper* we could work on it over the summer. Whoo hooo! That meant that, since I had turned in my paper, my take-home exam, and had my lesson plan presentation ready that day, I was done done done for the next week!

Alas. It appears: not so much.

The microteaching went very well. Gah, I'm really starting to hate that word, "microteaching". I understand developing lesson plans is a big part of the whole Becoming a Teacher shtick. But let's be serious here: it's not like we're going to actually be using these lesson plans, unless we're really really lucky. So presenting these as "microteaching", having to do basically 20 minutes of a 60 minute set, is really frustrating. All the moreso because I'm trying to teach the concept of slope and linear relationships to people who haven't taken math in more than a decade.

Senor Prof (I'm not sure how to make the squiggle appear above the n, you'll have to do it yourself in your head) is also big into the constructivist method of teaching, where basically every concept, every method, can be constructed by the students if you give them the right tools and projects. When it works--dayum, it's just magic. He's used it on us a couple times. Students experiment, prove, disprove, manipulate, and create their way to understanding pi, understanding slope, understanding sine and cosine. And it seems that kids who can create what pi is for themselves are unlikely to forget. (Ha. Dreams.)

But I've never learned math this way, you haven't learned math this way, my cooperating teacher in my practicum doesn't teach this way, so while intellectually I understand how this method works, in reality it's so damn frustrating trying to come up with a lesson plan that works this way.

Ideally, the class period would progress from experiments that everyone can get right to progressively harder and harder exercises until students have to stretch what they know.

Trying to put that into practice? Fuck.

Last week, even, when my microteaching was due, I was bitching and moaning about it to my classmates. ** Queen Paul, Spit-take Russ and Sweet Amber all (separately) offered to let me "teach" with them (an option offered by Senor Prof). I was floored. Here they'd done all this work already, and they were offering to let me essentially ride their coattails? (Was my bitching and moaning that annoying? Heh.) So much more cooperative than any other school experience I've ever had. Nicer, even, than I might have been, were I in their shoes. I would have been much more likely to sympathize and say, "That's a bitch!" while privately being glad it wasn't me. I did consider it for a while, but finally sheer Midwestern Guilt won out.

I went to see Senor Prof.

"I've been trying," I said. "I really really have. And intellectually I understand how this lesson plan would work, but I can't come up with an experience that you haven't showed us. I just haven't come up with anything. So... I'm not prepared for today."

He chuckled, we talked, I didn't present.

And as it turned out, we didn't get to everyone's presentation last week, so if I'd kept my damn trap shut he wouldn't have been the wiser.

Ah well.

So in the intervening week, I thought about it--sort of. And then Tuesday night, I realized that shit I'd have to present, or, more embarassingly, not present, the next day.

Crap.

So I was sitting in the classroom at my high school where I'm quasi-student-teaching, and I was paging through this geometry book, and I came across the coolest experiments. I'll spare you the details (for now... cue wicked cackle) but they were cool. Granted, in a math geek kind of way, but just what I needed.

I was set.

I went to class last night, all prepared for my presentation. There were three of us that were left to go. Spit-take Russ did great. He's going to be such a good science teacher. His curiosity is infectious, and he explains this really well, and he's so at ease with questioning that I can imagine him being The Good Science Teacher. Every school has one, if they're lucky.

But then.

Oh, M., if you ever find this journal, I'm so sorry but: I fear for your future students. M. went next and dude, I'm a math geek, I even wear a shirt that says "I (heart) Nerds" but I had no idea what you were doing or where you were going or how what you did tied to anything. I can see you as that math prof that's so brilliant no one understands him, but I can't see you explaining how to multiply fractions. Dear sweet lord.

To make it worse, his topic was the same as mine (purportedly). Basically, we were both trying to explain pi. You know, pi, 3.14159265... blah blah blah.

If this were a competitive program, I'd be glad because him doing so poorly before me made mine look even better by contrast. But it's not, and my heart just ached watching him bomb so terribly. If he were a stand up comic, he'd have been thumping the mike, saying, "Is this thing on?"

Then I went, and I was short, and fun, and I rocked. (Hey, no cracks about the "short", please.)

So anyway, this (superlong!) entry started because I thought I had finished in a (muted) blaze of glory, when instead I have more work to do.

Dammit!

Anyone want to write a constructivist lesson plan on how to explain how to add fractions?

No?

No?

Hell.

*This footnote, a la mimi smartypants is just to note I have a dilemma: should I put a comma there? I have recently read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, which--and this is no typo here--is a hilarious investigation of, yes, punctuation. I seriously devoured this book. (Note that I didn't say literally, because the book is indeed sitting on my bedside table and not in my belly at the moment.) Anyway, as a result of reading this book, I'm very paranoid of every comma, every quotation mark, even colons and dashes. As an aside: I once mentioned to my friends that emails without paragraphs and punctuation drive me up the wall (seriously, it's like listening to that friend you have who will never stop talking!), and now they won't let it rest. Read this book, you'll understand my pain!

**another side note: because I missed the first two weeks of class due to poor communication and (let's be honest) my own stupidity, while most of my classmates had the option of the take-home exam or a microteaching lesson, I had to do both. Commence Operation Bitchandmoan!

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