Getting Friendlier

This is only my second week into projects, and I've already gotten used to this new schedule. I'm attending five periods each day, alternating between Mr. Griffin and Mr. Clark's classrooms--usually my time spent in each classroom is divided equally. I honestly feel more comfortable in the math setting than in band and orchestra. I've never conducted, read a conductor's score, or know anything about any instrument besides the Clarinet. I can't even read the music of the violas. And even though I have played the saxophone and violin before, I very well have forgotten a lot of it by now. Plus, a class of everyone who takes band is hard to manage--I'm better with smaller sections. I really want to take the clarinets out one rehearsal and work with them as a section. That'd be most useful for them, and I'd actually know what I would be talking about.

In math, I've definitely had more time working with small tables of kids rather than up in front of the whole class. I like it better that way. Sometimes, these two girls in one of my classes would do the same problem separately and then when one gets it right and the other gets it wrong, it becomes like a "HA!" moment and a little friendly competition doesn't hurt. They actually do the problems that way. The one thing I wish I knew better was everyone's names. I remember some people because my sister used to be friends with them back in elementary school (After my sister went to Fay, she lost contact with most of them). But a lot of the kids have come up to me and asked if I was related to Christine Yang, which, I am. That means they still remember her. Christine's taking Algebra I now too. I know this because I stayed up last night with her to help her with her homework on quadratic equations. But I didn't really help her. I just stood there because she told me to and told her when she wasn't quite writing things down the right way. She was exhausted this morning when she woke up because she didn't sleep much last night. Psh, seven hours...

Anyway, today was another day of MCAS for the whole school, so I don't have much to do, except be quiet while everyone is taking this test. I can't answer questions, eat, drink water, or really make eye contact with the students. Silence is taken seriously during testing. If I could, however, give them a tip today, it would be to try plugging in numbers listed in the multiple choice into the calculator and seeing if an answer works. That's what I did yesterday with one question in my BC calc exam. I had never seen this type of equation before, or the type of question, but taking it word/sentence by word/sentence, the plug and chug method hopefully worked for me.

Wow, I thought I wouldn't have much to write about today because MCAS is not very eventful, nor does it really teach me anything when I'm just asked to be quiet the whole time...