February is here, along with the new semester. The weather alternates between just above the freezing mark and just below it, so every morning begins with a decision on whether to shovel out the car, and risk finding one of the valued parking spots at school or standing on a frozen snow bank waiting for the bus to come.
I have almost mastered the bus time app. It allows me to remove my finger from my gloves to check my cell phone repeatedly to see if the 6:47 bus will come at 6:47, 6:48, or 6:49. The first day I tried it the bus arrived and left as I looked at the app. I decided I wouldn't look again, but just wait and watch the street as I've done for six decades, but alas- I am addicted to the damn phone - just like everyone else.
I am back to teaching a geometry self-contained class. The new semester, almost surely my last semester, brought a slew of changes of our teaching schedules, so, at least for 45 minutes a day, I end my career just as I started it, teaching students with disabilities the "general" curriculum in a separate classroom. The topic I was given first -logic.
I am fairly convinced that nothing in education today has anything really to do with logic. Otherwise I certainly wouldn't be teaching if p then q, to high school students who are not really sure what folding your paper in half means. (The professional small learning group community had a discussion on rigor, and I posed the question -was asking whether a paper that was folded down the vertical center line was an equal representation of half as one folded down the horizontal line. I was assured it was rigorous.- by three of the people in the group- the other four were asleep).
But I spent the week with questions like: If its Tuesday, then it must by Belgium. ) Okay - not really - because that is anachronistic joke akin, to calling out second floor ladies lingerie - when the elevator door opens and no one gets out. But surprisingly to me at least, so was the sentence from the text book: Jedi warriors do not use light sabers. (One of the girls insisted I spelled it wrong- it should say light savers like the candy. (Lifesavers?)
Bernie had his head down - he was too tired to learn he told me, he had worked until 3:00 am in the convenience store by his house. I made him pick up his head. It sounds so mean as I type it. But that's how it goes- you come, you learn- with your head up.
The snow fell in spurts outside our window yet again, and in an attempt to derail the logic discussion we talked about where we came from (as in the country we used to live in versus the topic of evolution which was being hotly debated in the Teacher's lounge along with a chorus of Bob Marley songs- but again that is not the main topic- and since I have been sitting through many workshops on writing non-fiction, I am going to attempt to stick to my topic).
Five out of six of the students were from the Dominican Republic. They talked wistfully of an Island with beaches and mountains and a climate that never required one to decide whether or not to shovel out a car or take a bus. (Of course- the economy did limit one'options which is probably why everyone was sitting in a classroom in New York- even after working until the wee hours of the morning, watching snow fall.
I wrote the sentence: If it snows then its winter.
Unless you live in DR Ana said.
True- even if that wasn't what the answer the textbook said it was supposed to be.
But Bernie's head popped up and insisted it does snow in the Dominican Republic.
The class was skeptical. I didn't know for sure, but I was once in Hawaii when there was a snowstorm on Mauna Kea.
Off topic- again.
We went back to finding inverses and converses and contrapositives- because that's what were supposed to be doing
.
- Constanza. Bernie called out, That's the place in the DR where -it snows!
How did he know? He texted his mother.
Yes he's not supposed to have his cell phone out. Yes he's not supposed to be texting- he's supposed to be folding his paper in half ( Ana gave him a sheet, he didn't have a notebook he wouldn't be paid until the evening). But he was with us now.
And I know where it snows in the Dominican Republic.
Rigorous? Maybe. But its our kind of logic .
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