It was a long day of grading homework today while my calc kids took their Check Up. I was kind of dreading today because I have to quickly grade these assignments (and there were a lot) and get the kids back their notebooks before the end of the hour. The pro is I’m caught up on grading by the end of the day. The con is…grading.
The con is always grading.
(I don’t need a sermon on feedback here, please and thank you. Let me pout.)
But as I was grading and honestly expecting to see the same questions missed that I’ve seen every year…I didn’t. There were several problems that maybe one or two out of every ten kids got or even attempted in the past…and today that ratio was flipped. What? I mean that’s an incredible change.
Obviously I’m inclined to give most of the credit to flipping (again). Yes, we have more time to work questions together. But more than that, I think this environment fosters self-advocacy and ownership of learning. When kids ask a question, I encourage them to seek (a specific example from) their notes. I usually get “Ohhh, yeah yeah!” and they sweetly wave me off like, “I got this now, Mrs. P. Go drink your coffee.” Whereas before when I’d point them to the exact same example but from the lesson from maybe twenty minutes ago, and I would often get, “Yeah. You lost me on that one. Can you walk me through it again?”
Of course I lost them. I was going at one speed for 37 different kids. Of course they needed more time to process. Of course they should have the option of pausing, taking a break, rewinding, and processing. Of course they should have the autonomy to move on to the next example when it’s good for them, not when it’s good for me.
So all this time…all these evenings of leaning a tiny bit of a calc…have added up to something big and something way beyond math. And that’s exactly what calc is about anyway—the sum of the infinitesimally small pieces eventually adds to form the whole, beautiful picture.
one good thing 