Teaching

Well, it is Tuesday. Only three more days of work for me. I've finally started getting used to the 3Hr 45Min classes.

As you may recall, I'm teaching at New York City College of Technology this summer, teaching a class for students just entering the college out of High School. These are students who got lower than 18 on the Math ACT exam, which is required to enter the "for credit" math classes. CUNY (City University of New York) offers the class I am teaching for free to give these students a chance to get back into regular math curriculum.

The class starts at 8:30 and runs until 12:15, so it is something of a marathon. The hardest part of teaching so far has been keeping the students interested. One way I've done it has been bringing in candy. I know it is silly, but it does seem to wake the students up when I am throwing a mini snickers at them. Alicia gave me the idea, saying one of her Law Professors did it and it was very effective. I usually give the candy away if a student catches one of my mistakes, or answers a trivia question I'll occationally throw out.

As for the math curriculum, I'm trying something different. I'm teaching them about polynomials without using subtraction or division. I'm hoping it will simplify things.

I'm giving an exam every single Thursday, so I've already returned one. The average was 86, which is pretty good. There were students still getting 62, and I'd love to reach them. I just hope the exam wasn't too easy.

Of course, the hardest part so far has been waking up. The subway ride is only about half an hour (CityTech is in Brooklyn), but I can't be late as I'm the professor. So I usually leave the apartment by 7:30. As a result, I'm awake around 6:30. Sunday night darn near killed me though. I couldn't get asleep until about 1:30am, so waking up at 6:30 was harsh. I ended up going to bed around 9:30 last night, thus the reason I'm up at 5am today. Oh well!