It was a day without anything to mark it, anything that made it different from any other day. I woke up late after getting to sleep around 1:00, as I had since the semester had started the week before, with just enough time to shower (How little I knew how long it would be before I got another shower!) and get dressed before I went on before-school supervision at 7:15. I did all the usual things I do for supervision. I especially like being on duty in the morning because it is the longest duty and gives the greatest opportunity to talk to the kids, especially the middle schoolers with whom I have no other interaction through the day. Playful banter, sometimes a few fun science facts thrown in, and discussions about life and school dominate those forty-five minutes. It's a pleasant time, time to just be with the kids, hear their opinions, chit-chat about things other than classwork.
It was probably the first day since the semester started that I was really feeling good about everything. So much didn't seem to be going well the first week of school and there had been some serious changes in the schedule for the seniors, including holding my physics class during the period which had always been lunch. This took the students some time to adjust to and it created a situation for me where I was teaching four periods in a row. I'll just say that it took me some time to adjust as well. But this Tuesday I finally felt, well, adjusted. I was able to go through all my notes and assignments for all my classes and copied it out on one sheet. Prior to that I had kept my notes only on my computer due to my dislike for printing things out. But this day I had a handwritten page with all the days assignments on it, which would save me a few minutes here and there. Everything went well. By the time I had to leave my room for second period, I hardly had anything to do so I went to the library to do some more reading on alternatives to Riemann sums. Not that I was going to be teaching that but, well, it's interesting! I include that to say that I was considerably more relaxed and on top of things than I had been the week before or even the day before.
I told both my algebra classes that I wanted to include a sort of challenge section within the class, something akin to “honors” algebra, for those who would naturally be excelling at the subject. I wanted to give the advanced kids in the algebra I class a chance to stay ahead of the curve while inciting my algebra II students to really rise and show what they are made of. The physics class had a good discussion about conductivity and several students brought up the question of why it's safe to be in a car that is struck by lightning. It was fun. They were really settling into the idea of having a class that period. (“Sixth period is just another period...) The calculus students had a quiz on the Trapezoidal Rule, which took far longer than it should have but everyone did well on it. That was an encouragement to me and, I hope, to them.
I was feeling very good about the day. It had gone well, everything had gone better than I'd expected and as well as I could have wanted. I was tired, but not as tired as I'd been on previous days. But I had nothing that I needed to do that day. I'd been to Caribbean and didn't need groceries, though I'd thought about going back that afternoon for a few particular items. I remarked to Cathy Rosema, the high school English teacher, that I was going to take a nap. We both hadn't been sleeping well since the semester started. So I went home at around 3:45 fully intending to go to sleep.
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