Tuesday, January 26, 2016

#onegoodthing: When Students Come Back for Help

Amidst the hustle and  bustle of the end of semester and all its craziness with finals, I had several opportunities to stand back and celebrate #onegoodthing but this is the one that stands out the most.

I had an opportunity to tutor former students before their Pre-Calc state exam. I had several students who wondered if they could stop by after school one day to get my help on PreCalc. I have only done student-teaching in Precalc, but they knew I loved the topics and wanted to get some help to review. We had a great afternoon and I loved getting to delve into a class I hope to teach some day. I particularly loved the moments when I talked about how the other trig identities come from sin^2+cos^2=1. They hadn't made those connections and seeing those light bulbs go off is why I love doing my job. We also had some fun looking at patterns in polar equations to help remember what the graphs look like. Overall it was just a great chance to spend time with some lovely former students in a relaxed way and talk about some awesome math. What gets me the most is that a couple of the students weren't always super responsive in class (i.e. I didn't get the vibe they totally loved my class), but they were practically gushing about how much they missed my class, interactive notebooks, and the way I taught overall. They also talked about various things they still remember learning (!!) and that a lot of the beginning of Precalc was review from what we talked about. There were also shout outs to dividing polynomials with the box ;-). All in all - a win win and something to celebrate.


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