Main

November 30, 2010

Can Teachers Be Afraid of their Students?

I know that students can be afraid of their teachers. But can teachers be afraid of their students? Not in terms of kid brings knife to school. But just personality wise. I am the type of person who gets easily intimidated by people. I was bullied when I was in school, so that feeling of being judged or made fun still lives with me.

How would a teacher deal with that? Just wait it out? Wait until they go to another grade? You can't confront a student, and say "Can you not be like that?"

It's a strange question to ask because it is assumed that ALL TEACHERS can discipline their students. But can they really?

Posted by rom559 at 01:58 PM | | Comments (0)

November 05, 2010

Permission to use the washroom?

I have had numerous students ask the infamous question at least three times in a period. "Can I use the washroom?"... It seems they've been programmed to ask the question. They have that feeling of guilt without asking, so hence they must have permission. And when they do have permission and they wander in the hallways, they feel like criminals getting away with something mischievous.

The only reason these students are asking this question, is because they're bored in class. When they don't ask within the hour, that means you're doing something right in the classroom. That should light a lightbulb.

I just find it so entertaining the number of times that these students need to have an excuse to leave the classroom.

The system is flawed. We treat our classrooms as cages. If a student wants to get some fresh air.. then just go. It's a free world. It's a real world. In society, we don't ask to use the washroom. I think there needs to be a change in where and how our students learn. It needs to be more relaxed. Give students more responsibility. We can't continue being drill sergeants. The hallways can't always be empty at all times. Classrooms need to work together more. Noise is good.. it's not always bad.

Here's a test:

Ask them when they ask to leave the classroom, "Are you bored? Why?" Make a list of the reasons.

Posted by rom559 at 11:25 PM | | Comments (0)

April 13, 2010

A Mathematician’s Love Letter

I found this neat site http://fuckyeahchemistry.tumblr.com.

I stumbled upon a love letter. This is for the math lovers.

My Dear Love,

Yesterday, I was passing by your rectangular house in trigonometric lane. There I saw you with your cute circular face, conical nose and spherical eyes, standing in your triangular garden. Before seeing you my heart was a null set, but when a vector of magnitude (likeness) from your eyes at a deviation of theta radians made a tangent to my heart, it differentiated.

My love for you is a quadratic equation with real roots, which only you can solve by making good binary relation with me. The cosine of my love for you extends to infinity.

I promise that I should not resolve you into partial functions but if I do so, you can integrate me by applying the limits from zero to infinity.You are as essential to me as an element of a set. The geometry of my life revolves around your acute personality.

My love, if you do not meet me at parabola restaurant on date 10 at sunset, when the sun is making an angle of 160 degrees, my heart would be like a solved polynomial of degree 10.

With love from your higher order derivatives of maxima and minima, of an unknown function.

Yours ever loving,

Pythagoras

Love and Math.. the best combination..

angular_momentum.jpg

Posted by rom559 at 04:54 PM | | Comments (0)

August 29, 2009

Completely amazed..

I recently came across a revelation when learning trig identities sin and cos. Here it is:

Trig Reference Angle Cheat Hand
Observe...

20090806-f2fn14qw45ai8jky41xcnnw5na.jpg

Flip down the finger that corresponds to the angle whose sine and cosine you need.
The number of fingers to the left gives you the sine, and the number of fingers to the right gives you the cosine.

So if you flip down your index finger which corresponds to 30 degrees...
there is one finger to the left.
and there are three fingers to the right.

Try it for the fingers that correspond to the other reference angles. For example, if you flip down your pinky, there are four fingers to the left (sin(90) = radical 4 over 2 = 1) and zero fingers to the right (cos 90 = radical 0 over 2 = 0.) It works!

It's just another way of organizing the cofunction behavior of sine and cosine to remember the values of five reference angles, but adults and kids both flip out when I show them. Kids especially feel that they "don't have to memorize" if they know this method.

credit: Kate Nowak


Posted by rom559 at 09:09 PM | | Comments (0)

August 27, 2009

Note to Self

So, I have thought of a brilliant idea to combine math and drafting together. House Design!.. When I was in high school, I took Home Ec and Drafting, I absolutely loved it. The only problem was when I had my plan, I had to draw it out, it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to be.

So I have been playing the game "The Sims" for a couple of years.. and recently the new "Sims 3" has been released. I purchased this game, and the features are amazing. The one feature is the house building, personally I hate designing houses without a plan. When I was in highschool this game/program would have been perfect for me to visualize my plan. Offering this tool to students will greatly increase their vision of what they want to create. The only problem is getting funding for games "legally" on school computers. I thought I would state this idea here and now. Until later, I will keep this idea in my mind to further pass it on to someone who can benefit from this unique idea.

Posted by rom559 at 10:58 PM | | Comments (0)