Egged on my First Day of School

Tom reminded me yesterday that it has been, like, forever since I posted about what I've been up to. And there have been big changes, certainly worth posting about. So, here's my news.

I finished up 3 of my classes about 3 weeks ago - they are front-loaded in the semester so that people can student-teach in the end of the semester. I think it is a good design, because I was quite ready to be done with them. I still have 2 classes that meet regularly, but they're not so bad.

This first semester, I am technically doing my "Phase I Student Teaching", which for most people means that you observe a teacher's classroom for two periods a day for 6ish weeks and then take over (1 period a day) for three weeks on your own. Usually your "master teacher" gives you lesson plans and materials. I was all set to do this, and had started my observing period at one high school in San Jose, when one of my SJSU professors asked me if I'd be interested in a long term sub position at a different San Jose High School.

So I volunteered. The Physics teacher I am temporarily replacing is having surgery and is going to miss ~4 weeks of the end of this semester. He teaches 2 sections of AP Physics (no calculus) and 3 sections of Junior-level Physics. The teacher and administrators seem very happy to have me - they were preparing lesson plans for a non-Physics substitute, which is an extremely daunting task. Especially when there are two sections of AP classes to consider.

Last week I started attending and assisting in classes full timeso that I would be up to speed by the time the teacher had to leave. I started teaching 1-2 classes a day (using his lesson plans) so that I could get the butterflies out and start getting to know the kids and get comfortable in front of a class.

So as of today, I was on my own. I wrote my own lesson plans for two different "preps" (or class titles) and taught 5 sections all by my lonesome. I'm exhausted, but happy - the day went as well as I could have possibly hoped for.

I didn't want to start a new unit today, so I decided that Fridays would be "fun Physics" day, where the classes do some sort of hands-on activity that reinforces the material from the previous week. We were just finishing up a unit on momentum, so today we calculated how much impulse (change in momentum) was required to break an egg.

We broke lots of eggs today. Nearly 4 dozen when all was said and done. We dropped them, crunched them in our hands, smushed them under weights, bounced them off of sheets, and even threw them at walls. I took an egg-bath at least three times over the course of the day, but I have a few students that got it even worse than I did. At least they were warned. And through it all, I managed to keep all the kids under control, interested (I think), and hopefully even learning some Physics.

So now I am home, showered off, and happy not to be smelling of egg. I am already smothered under a mountain of grading so I'm going to sign off for now. Later, gators.