Mr. B Yells Into The Void™

This is it. My final week of internship. I can't wait to be in the class for a whole week straight!     Fuck, I shouldn't have jinxed it. That's right, this last week was fully online for me. I feel robbed. I did my best with what was handed to me, all things considered. But I didn't really get a fair send off. Seems kind of anticlimactic. To rectify this, I'll be going an extra day next week to have my official last day. A real chance to say goodbye to the kiddos. But for now, I'll talk a little bit about my final week at Southwick via Zoom! This being the final week, I ended up taking over a large chunk of most of the classes. They all went off without a hitch... mostly. Overall however, Mr. Ready and I were able to get around some online difficulties in very creative ways as co-teachers. The week had up’s and down’s. The first period of everyday was math. A warm up, a difficult problem to discuss with the class, and then a lesson or quiz is par for the cours...

Let me start by saying  I am not a trained math teacher. Hey, I’m technically not even a trained teacher teacher. But my biggest struggle has been trying to teach my students math. I know that this year has been taxing on everyone (and I’m thankful I don’t have to do my student teaching this year) but to no one's surprise, it’s really hard to just get kids to work!  So assuming that my student shows up for his online classes AND is willing to work is just the tip of the iceberg. Being able to effectively teach him my own struggle subjects (specifically math) is a whole new beast. I’ve never had a good math brain. Math brain smooth. No wrinkles. No thinky. But now, not only do I have to understand the concept well enough to tutor a student, which is bad enough, but also to convey those lessons over the internet. I can’t do that teacher thing of leaning over the shoulder to correct an equation or make a minus mark into a positive. I have to share a screen and write online. My ...