If you're wearing someone else's shoes, you're gonna get blisters.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
SNOW
It's snowing!!! Okay, so they are tiny and sparsely gathered, but it is snow!!! Yeah, I love snow!
Posted by Theresa Peele Smith at 11:48 AM 0 comments
Friday, November 14, 2008
Math Problems
October 29th
Today I am the substitute for a high school math teacher. As an English teacher by degree, I consider myself to be the polar opposite of a math teacher. As I look around this classroom my theory becomes abundantly clear. Every poster or announcement is placed on the wall with calculated precision. Each morsel of information is presented clearly and without excessive verbiage. No extraneous articles live in this classroom. Even the teacher’s desk is a sparsely utilitarian table with no drawers or cubby holes. Is this neatly ordered environment an outward manifestation of the mathematical mind? My workspaces are rarely neat and orderly. Certainly, at the end of the day, I like to leave my desk with neat piles of paperwork or stacked books awaiting readers; however, in the midst of my workday you’ll find loose papers with illegible scribbles, opened books and magazines, open packs of crackers and half empty Pepsi bottles. I fill my favorite environments with warm embellishments, pillows and throws, flowers, whimsical pictures, cut out cartoon and newspaper clippings.
I earned good grades in math, but that doesn’t mean I understood what I was doing or more importantly, why? I always joke that I could never complete mathematical word problems in the time allotted because I was more concerned with the details of the story than the distance between two points and the time of arrival. “If Johnny left station on train A at noon…” What I really wanted to know was what were they serving in the dining car and why was Johnny going to Peoria in the first place? Not the method for a numerical answer, but definitely the basis for a good short story.
At the end of this day, I determined that the substitute for Geometry should be someone who had actually thought about angles and degrees in the last thirty years. Thankfully, my students have been proficient in peer instruction. From now on, I will limit my mathematical problems to determining the ratio of sugar to water in my sweet iced tea.
Today I am the substitute for a high school math teacher. As an English teacher by degree, I consider myself to be the polar opposite of a math teacher. As I look around this classroom my theory becomes abundantly clear. Every poster or announcement is placed on the wall with calculated precision. Each morsel of information is presented clearly and without excessive verbiage. No extraneous articles live in this classroom. Even the teacher’s desk is a sparsely utilitarian table with no drawers or cubby holes. Is this neatly ordered environment an outward manifestation of the mathematical mind? My workspaces are rarely neat and orderly. Certainly, at the end of the day, I like to leave my desk with neat piles of paperwork or stacked books awaiting readers; however, in the midst of my workday you’ll find loose papers with illegible scribbles, opened books and magazines, open packs of crackers and half empty Pepsi bottles. I fill my favorite environments with warm embellishments, pillows and throws, flowers, whimsical pictures, cut out cartoon and newspaper clippings.
I earned good grades in math, but that doesn’t mean I understood what I was doing or more importantly, why? I always joke that I could never complete mathematical word problems in the time allotted because I was more concerned with the details of the story than the distance between two points and the time of arrival. “If Johnny left station on train A at noon…” What I really wanted to know was what were they serving in the dining car and why was Johnny going to Peoria in the first place? Not the method for a numerical answer, but definitely the basis for a good short story.
At the end of this day, I determined that the substitute for Geometry should be someone who had actually thought about angles and degrees in the last thirty years. Thankfully, my students have been proficient in peer instruction. From now on, I will limit my mathematical problems to determining the ratio of sugar to water in my sweet iced tea.
Posted by Theresa Peele Smith at 11:10 AM 0 comments
Labels: math, order, story tellers
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