Mostly Good

Today was a pretty fun day for the most part. I taught a lesson on motion and it went really well during first period; however, it didn't go over as well during 5th. It just felt like I couldn't make a good sentence or go in a good order. Luckily, I had a small amount of content to deliver so I was able to reteach the concepts that were a bit confusing at first. Over the next few days I'll also be able to revisit the lesson during the first few minutes of each class to make sure the students understood it.

The better part of the day was the students' behavior during 5th period. This is the last period of the day and thus the students are usually quite fidgety and talkative. Today, each one received his or her job in class and seemed to take to it well. Homework collection, attendance, board preparation, paper return, etc. were all carried out by the students and it made everything much more efficient. It also improved the in class participation of one student who had been giving me some attitude in the past few days. The student no longer had a sour look on her face through class and participated 3 times (which is 3x more than usual).

My Faculty Adviser came through for our collaborative group in a big way, as well. We are doing simple machines tomorrow and Thursday and no one brought his or her incline plane, wedge, screw, or wheel and axle (among others) to Institute. Our FA found the school's incline plane, force and motion kit, and many other cool simple machines for us. It looked like Christmas in the room as we now have some really cool stuff to use for demonstrations tomorrow and Thursday.

The best part of the day, though, was the end. After school ends we usually have another hour at school for various workshops, lessons, or lesson planning clinics. Today we were told we were going to have a session on "work life balance." Most thought we were going to get another Power Point presentation on how we should work to find "me time" while being quite busy. Instead, we boarded the bus and went home one hour early. We were then met by a carnival type setup put on by TFA at Moody Towers: food, massages, DDR, karaoke, a bounce house, and many other fun things to do. It was a really nice gesture as tomorrow marks our half-way point through Institute.