A Little Friday Miracle

I have been teaching kids how to calculate the distance between two points for what probably sums up to be a couple of weeks now. I've tried going at it the intuitive way (Pythagorean Theorem) and the formulaic way (Distance Formula), but the kids that weren't getting it, still weren't getting it. Fiiiiinally, through a combination of coordinate proofs and coordinate projects (steeped in real-world application), my lowest-performing kids now "get" how to calculate distances.

It's amazing. Thank goodness for little Friday miracles.

Addendum July 2, 2010: Here is a project that worked well to give the kids some practice of calculating angles and distances. Feel free to use it! I also prefaced the lesson with a little bit of discussion about sailing, and why sailboats often zig-zag across the lake. The kids found the idea that sailboats can travel against-wind very interesting!





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In other news, I found out today that I will probably not be teaching Algebra 2H next year, due to the fact that our school is experimenting with the idea of letting one teacher (Mr. C) take his cohort of honors kids for 4 years, all the way through AP Calculus. It's probably for the best, because I want to expand my teaching horizons past the comforts of Algebra 2 anyway. (Even though, to be sure, Algebra is my love.) I cannot tell you right now what I might be teaching instead, because none of it is official until it happens. But, I suspect that I will be pretty happy with the resolution, as long as I end up with fewer than 3 preps*. (A big IF, I suppose.)

Keeping those fingers crossed.

*For you non-teachers: "Preps" are the types of classes that you need to prepare for. For instance, right now I teach regular Geometry and Alg2H, so that's 2 preps. Your number of preps is inversely related to your sanity as a teacher.

Disco Party and Driving in El Salvador

I like themed parties, because I think that the people who actually participate in them take having fun "seriously", and therefore that attitude always contributes to a good party. :)

The past weekend, our friend Andrea had a Disco / "Crazy Accessories" party. Geoff and I have no disco-wear down here in San Salvador, but we decided to do our best to show up in costume anyway. To that end, we made our own disco shirts! It was pretty silly, but we just printed out a picture of floppy disks arranged in the shape of an "O", and taped that to our shirts. ("Disc-O"... get it?) We also dug up some accessories from around the apartment: Geoff's Avatar-3D glasses, my "2010" New Year's glasses, two pairs of suspenders, and my bright striped tie, and we mish-mashed everything together and showed up in good spirits.

The disco party was good times! Afterwards, some of us went on to dance the night away in Zona Rosa, at a bar next to our favorite Jungle. I got to do a lot of dancing -- to electronic music in the basement, to Spanish pop on the first floor, and Geoff and I even salsa-ed for a brief bit while waiting to be picked up. :) It was a great night out!

Next Friday, there will be an 80s party at the Marines house. I'm not sure whether we've decided to go yet, but if we do, I'll have to start planning our costumes now, since it's only 5 days away!

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This morning, I drove -- for the first time in years! It was very... needlessly exciting. I already get nervous driving in the States, and here they've got steep curbs and ditches and roundabouts, not to mention impatient Central American drivers. I'm going to keep practicing with the hope that I can soon navigate myself to go to yoga lessons, to start in (hopefully) 2 weeks. Wish me luck!

Encouraging things

I've been feeling pretty discouraged about teaching Geometry. It's not my favorite sub-area in math, and teaching proofs is even less fun than it sounds. The congruence theorems are not applicable to real life, and the kids know it, so sometimes their negative energy brims over despite their niceness, and I feel terrible knowing that it's a reflection of my mediocre lessons.

Well, I'm keeping a positive outlook on it, at least. Teaching something the first time around is always difficult, because you are laboring just to get through the material. It is never until Year 2 that you can actually pick-and-choose from all the topics to make everyday the most fun / efficient that they can be. (I am, obviously, trying to make the class as lively as possible, in the meanwhile. But, it's not so easy when you are working with no Geometry experience under your belt.)

So, it was really nice recently when I got a Facebook message from an old student of mine, telling me that he is absolutely kicking butt in all his high-school math classes because of me. That made my day.

Then today, another encouraging message came from one of my current colleagues. I had taught my Algebra2H kids to sing the Quadratic Formula Song (set to the tune of Pop! Goes the Weasel), and had given them a homework assignment of singing to -- and getting signed off by -- another teacher or staffer on campus. One of the teachers emailed me and told me that he loved the singing, and that one of my kids told him that I am "the best teacher."

Goodness. I have to always remember that teaching is a craft, and that it takes 10,000 hours to get really good at something. That's about 7 years of 8-hour work days, for a teacher of 186 school days per year. I still have ways to go, and besides being patient with the kids (which is my new goal for 2010), I should also be more patient with myself.

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PS. I found a really fun visual demo of math with complex numbers when I was researching on the web: in this link, click on "Dimension_6_Engl" in the chapter links on the right-hand side if you wish to check it out. :) It's SUPER FAB!

Addendum July 2, 2010: I created a transformation worksheet for complex numbers out of the concepts in the video -- and it was a hit with the kids! Afterwards, they really understood why multiplication of complex #'s is a rotation, why addition/subtraction of complex #'s is a translation, etc. Here are the thumbnails for the file (it has 2 pages), and you can leave a comment if you want the original word doc.

Winter Holidays

Geoff and I had an amazing trip back to the States for the holidays! Not only did we get to see a lot of friends and family, but we also got to spend some time in the city, revisiting our favorite restaurants and checking out the current Broadway shows -- and we even managed to swing-dance for a hot second! It made us miss being back in the States, for sure, but also helped us appreciate things back in San Salvador (ie. the ridiculously warm weather and things being reasonably priced). In any case, it will likely be a good while before we get to take another vacation to the New York area, so we cherished this opportunity to catch up with everyone.

Since it is costly to fly directly from San Salvador to the States, Geoff and I had decided a few months back to try instead to fly through Guatemala. On paper, that saves us about $200 per person round-trip, which is a kickass deal. But, in reality, the bus + extra nights in a hotel + extra food expenses just about balance out the savings we would have had. And actually, the hassle of traveling by bus through Guatemala isn't worth the savings, regardless of how comfortable and luxurious those busses may be.

Still, Geoff and I thought this particular trip through Guatemala was well worth it, because we got a chance to check out Volcano Pacaya, which had been our only regret from our previous visit to Guatemala. There is a reputable tour group that takes people up the volcano at night, camps overnight, and then hikes up to the flowing lava just before sunrise. But unfortunately, 1. they're not too flexible with their dates, since they need to rally 4 people in order to make it worth their effort to lead such a trip, 2. the boss is kind of an asshole to his employees. In the end, we booked another day trip instead. The day trip only costs $10 per person, plus about $5 for entrance fee to the park and tips for the guides. The afternoon hike, which Geoff and I had gone on, left at 2pm and was supposed to catch the sunset as we were descending the volcano. But, since our group had a few old ladies and children, the group hiked extraordinarily slowly, and it actually worked out to be to our benefit. We didn't get to the flowing lava until sunset, so we saw an amazing sunset right over the lava stream, and we got to enjoy the lava in the dark before descending the hill! (Most other day-hike groups only see the lava in daylight, which just isn't the same.)

The experience was truly phenomenal, and I would highly recommend it. Although, you definitely feel when you are up there, that you are tempting fate. Even as we were climbing the volcano, the local guide pointed out chunks of rocks where lava had flown only months -- or weeks! -- ago. He said that the lava flow changes its direction or location sometimes within a day. Then, when we got to the mini-crater about 200m from the main (top) crater, the hot river of lava was breath-taking. At one point, the rocks near where Geoff had been standing collapsed, and everyone was pretty freaked out from the keen awareness that we were standing on only a thin shell of rocks above a huge reservoir of hot lava. Later, as we got further away from the lava, and we looked back, we could see two different places where the volcano was erupting, and see heavy smoke coming from the top crater. One of the guides told us "no es normal", which only hastened our steps down the mountain.

Geoff and I spent the next couple of days just relaxing in Guatemala, getting over our sickness (which we had acquired in the below-freezing weather of New York) and easing our way back home to the tropics. I posted the complete set of vacation pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/averyseriousmimi/sets/72157623154596774/show/ , which you can watch as a slideshow.

Take care! Hope you (whoever and whereever you are) had a lovely holiday season. :)

Movies and Down Time

Geoff and I have been watching a lot of movies, because he has recently cut back (ie. temporarily stopped) drinking, in hopes of getting back on track with a healthier lifestyle before Christmas. As a result, neither of us has been too excited about hanging out at bars the last couple of weeks. Instead, over the weekend, we went to the movie theatre twice and watched Julie and Julia and Unglorious Bastards.

Unglorious Bastards was an excellent film about the Nazi occupation of France (set during WWII, but it's actually historically inaccurate, so it doesn't matter). The entire film kept us on the edge of our seats, and the plot twists were clever and intricate. To add to the experience, much of the movie was spoken in either German or French, and Geoff and I had to rely on our ability to read the Spanish subtitles to follow the plot. Fortunately, reading is always easier than listening, and we were actually fairly surprised by our ability to follow most of the film! (Our Spanish is getting better, for sure, but when native speakers begin to speak fast, we still have trouble understanding sometimes. Thus, watching dubbed movies is still very challenging.)

Julie and Julia is a much slower film. It got me thinking, however, about the blogosphere. I used to read various blogs written by friends. Over the years, as everyone got busier, the frequency of both their writing and my reading of their blogs had waned. Once in a while, I still go through short phases where I would follow blogs of some random teachers or swing dancers, to keep me in the loop of what others with similar interests are finding and exploring. But, there is nothing out there that really keeps my interest consistently as a reader. I would, however, be interested in reading in real time about someone else's ambitious undertaking of a task, similar to what Julie had set out to do in the movie. Are you familiar with some such blog? (Google seemed to fail me in finding anything of interest. But then again, I couldn't think of good keywords to use to help filter out the bloggers who blog mostly about their careers.)

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Anyway, as for my own life, things are going slowly. School has almost slowed to a halt, with kids taking midterms and teachers grading only idly before the holidays. I'm looking forward to having a few days off between school and going back to the States to unwind, read some books, watch some Law and Order, and maybe even get a haircut. :)

Nicaragua!

Geoff and I had a fabulous time in Nicaragua! It is a breath-taking country, with friendly people and very affordable tourism options.

Since Geoff's visa was approved recently, we booked last-minute tickets for Thanksgiving to go to Nicaragua. We caught a good deal, and paid only $167/person for our round-trip flights on Copa Airline! And, thank goodness for the foresight to fly instead of taking the bus, because on our way back, we heard from other passengers at the airport that the Honduran borders had indeed been closed because of the elections. (Our friend Andrea had vaguely mentioned that as a possibility, but even she had not really believed it. I had decided to stand my ground and to refuse to take those chances, since I couldn't afford to be back to school late again after the Guatemalan shinanigans the last time we had undertaken a weekend getaway. Thus the decision to fly, despite it being the more expensive option...)

Anyway, Nicaragua was excellent. We spent one night in Leon and two nights in Granada. Both were colonial cities, but Granada has a more vibrant night life, a far richer history, and more character overall. While in Leon, we went "volcano-surfing", which is basically sliding down the sandy side of volcano Cerro Negro on a board made of wood and removable plastic. We hiked up to the top of the active volcano (it has erupted 23 times within the last 160 years) with our boards, walked along the rim of the crater to the sandy side of the volcano, put on our protective gear (jumpsuits and goggles), sat down on the boards facing the bottom of the hill, and then braced ourselves as we slid down the 45-degree incline. From the top of the hill, you can't see the bottom half of the hill, because the hill has a sharp dropoff after that halfway point. We could only see what appeared to be a tiny white speck at the bottom, which the tour guide explained was our truck, waiting for us at the bottom. The actual "surfing" part went rather quickly. Even though I was very nervous, once I started sliding and the wind started to blow tons of dirt in my face, I had forgotten all about the fear. Of course, I had to be the only person who actually lost balance and fell off my board halfway. :) Geoff took a video of me at the end, but that being after my fall, I had already lost most of my momentum and was easing my way down the rest of the hill. Still, it was an awesome experience! I would highly recommend it.

In Granada, Geoff and I also did a canopy tour, since neither of us had done it before. I was nervous, once again -- not because I didn't trust our tour guides. In fact, our tour guides lead about 150 people through their setup each day, and are very professional. Instead, I was nervous about messing up myself. In the end, it was amazing, and for being out there for about an hour, plus the rides to and from the beautifully lush forest, it was only $30 for each of us! That's an awesome deal!

Greg, Andrea, Geoff, and I also had a good time just hanging out at the local bars at night. I have developed a brand new appreciation for Flor de Caña, a type of Nicaraguan rum. :) I also particularly enjoyed the local "nacatamal", which is a tamale stuffed with juicy meat. Yum!

And now, happy December! I really cannot believe that Christmas is right around the corner. I cannot WAIT!

Visa!

Geoff's visa app finally got approved yesterday! yay! I cannot tell you how long and grueling this process has been. We had started it months before moving here, but he actually had to go back to the States to gather additional paperwork in September, because his lawyer had been unclear about which papers were needed the first time around. (It was v. fortunate that this trip coincided with M&M's wedding, so he could just extend the wedding trip to take care of the stuff instead of making a separate trip just for the sake of gathering papers...)

The problem is that he currently lives here on 90-day tourist visas only, and every time he exits the country (to go to even a neighboring country for a short trip), he would have to go back to the States to obtain all of those docs again; the docs required need to be date-stamped around his latest entry to El Salvador.

He and his lawyers had been down to the immigration offices several times, and each time they would ask him to obtain more paperwork, mostly from the States. It would take weeks to pull together and get mailed here, and the process would repeat itself. Finally, yesterday his stars were all aligned, and they accepted his application! yay! (It actually helped out that I am working for the American school, because apparently my work visa is issued by a higher authority -- something like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- and so it helped legitimize both his overall application and his particular reason to wish to stay in El Salvador.) It still was a pain and took a whole day, but at least for now they've accepted his money and taken his picture, so we think it's going to be all good. :)

So, in celebration, we took his lawyer's assistant out to dinner. It was good times, and the steaks we had were amazing... :) Afterwards, Geoff and I were both feeling serious food coma, so we called it a quiet Friday night. We watched "Changeling" at home, which is really intense! Much better than what we had expected based on its RottenTomatoes ratings. I would definitely recommend it.