Algebra Class?

I always get asked the most random questions in Algebra class. Often I’ll be in the middle of explaining a problem and Jeri (my doodler student, that’s in love with birds) will ask me something completely off the wall. I think her favorite is asking if I’m homesick. Do I look homesick? Oh it will be some weird geography question. It gets a little frustrating, because I know they totally wasn’t paying attention. But at the same time, I love seeing what kind of random question they're going to come up with.

Today they (my students) asked what I’d majored-in in college. I thought they were asking because that would explain why I was so bad at teaching Algebra. So I told them, very cautiously, that I hadn’t been to college yet (which they knew already). They were taken aback by that a little. They’d thought I had a degree in teaching, due to how I was explaining something on the board. Then they thought it was cool that I was 20 and hadn’t been to college. That totally made my day!!

Algebra was not a strong subject for me in school. So it’s ironic that I’m teaching it. Carol Iverson (the principle and team leaders wife) has a gift for stretching her short term teachers, and then believing in them enough to get them through it. I just wish I understood it well enough to really teach it to my kids, so they could really get it…..