Good Things

This week was a good week. Do I say that every week?

I'm trying to write more, I really am. I mean to, but it gets busy, and suddenly it's 9PM and I need to go to sleep. I did manage to get in a full workout twice during this work week, so next week I'll workout at least twice and blog at least three times. I need to prioritize blogging. I think it's harder to keep it up because I have less stuff to vent at the end of the day.

It was definitely stressful week, though.. I spent several hours this week on the phone with a lovely woman at the NJ Department of Education, and let me tell you, she really knew what she was doing. (That was sarcasm.) I spent a lot of time explaining to her that some colleges don't calculate GPAs, and other asinine conversations. It didn't help that in order to talk to her, I have to call up the DOE, traverse the automated menu, wait on hold for a customer service representative, and then have that representative send an email to my "Application Examiner" that I wish to speak to her. I then wait for a return phone call. It's really fun (also sarcasm) and it doesn't help that I occasionally have to put my phone down, like to teach.

Fortunately, my Director of Operations (a.k.a. Staples Liason, a.k.a. Fixes Photocopier, a.k.a. Is Generally Awesome) supported me the whole time, offering to answer the phone for me if I was teaching and guiding me through the whole process. It's still not solved, but I've reached a place where I've done what I can and can comfortably wait for bureaucratic processing.

The last two days' lessons have been on why the oceans are salty. Yesterday, the lesson was half a period of independently reading an article and taking notes, and the other half was answering questions in a classroom discussion format. And the kids were amazing. After 25 minutes of reading, they (almost) all knew exactly how the oceans became salty, and their discussions helped cement the concept for the other students. The kids are really supportive of each other and help peers work their way through difficult concepts, within a formal classroom discussion setting. It's beautiful.

Today, due to our half day for work time, we had a modified schedule. I taught my three classes consecutively in the morning, which involved a lot of preparation and a little anxiety. It turned out awesome. The lesson started with a demonstration, in which I had a flask full of water with red food coloring boiling on a hot plate. The kids correctly predicted that as the water boiled off, the remaining water would become a darker red, because the food coloring does not evaporate, so the concentration of food coloring increases. The color of the water really didn't change noticeably, but the kids were expecting it, so they saw it. Who says I can't use confirmation bias to my own advantage. So, other than teaching for 3 hours less 10 minutes with a slightly burnt thumb, from moving the hot plate without looking, the demonstration was perfect.

The rest of today's class was a short video on ocean water, which I stopped every minute or two so the students could answer and discuss a concept that was mentioned. It certainly wasn't the most exciting video, but the kids loved it. I even had to add in a moment for "silent excitement" (a way we allow our students to express excitement, a "spirit fingers" sort of thing) for the scientists using a salinometer to send salinity measurements via satellite right to the laboratory. (It was really cool.) It was a high school level video, and the kids were really thinking hard. I could see them thinking. And they came up with brilliant connections to every day life and last year's science class. I love them. These kids are amazing.

To top it off, my IL returned and observed a class. She gave zero real-time feedback and met with me afterwards to tell me that not only have I shown huge improvement and consistent ability to implement feedback, but that other colleagues have commented similarly.

I really love this job.