My Second Day of Teaching

Pohnpeian Word of the Day: net (pronounced like "netch") = "to buy, sell, trade or shop"

I came home last night to find Matt and Lucas sitting with Tanja in our living room. They had come into town to stock up on CashPower, and had decided to stay the night - it was good to see them, and I had a chance to discuss plans for this weekend. It looks like I will be going down to Madolenihmw tomorrow morning (Nick and Beth are coming in from Kitti tonight, and we're all going to Karaoke), and staying Saturday night in their little house. They claim to have enough bedding for everybody, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Today I gave my first real lectures, and I was even more nervous than yesterday. For my Prealgebra class, we discussed place value, rounding, addition with carrying and subtraction with borrowing. I couldn't tell if I was boring them or confusing them - I've never had to teach anything that basic before. About half of them kept jumping ahead, and the rest seemed tuned out. It's like pulling teeth to get them to talk, but I knew it would take me a while to figure them out anyway. At least it wasn't a total disaster. :)

At lunch, George told me that they need me to take another MS96 class. I had mixed feelings about it - I all but begged them to give me more sections if they needed to add them, but they didn't want to do that because I'm just a volunteer. Either they bought my reasoning (I don't have a family here, or anything else to do, so why not), they've developed more faith in me since I showed them my syllabi, or they were just pushed up against the wall and had no choice. At any rate, I've lost my cushy two hour lunch breaks, but at least I feel a lot more useful. Plus, teaching two sections of the same course will help me get better at it faster.

In Elementary Algebra, we discussed the real number system. It's the usual lecture I've given at the beginning of each MAC1105 class I taught at UF, so I was on a lot more familiar ground. I even came up with a cool analogy, relating the integers to Pohnpei and the rationals to the FSM, so that I could explain how "every Pohnpeian (integer) is a Micronesian (rational), but not every Micronesian is a Pohnpeian". When it came time to talk about the reals, I drew a big map of the world and talked about how the irrational numbers like pi live in places like South America outside the FSM. I saw most of them taking notes, and a lot of people have started chiming in with answers, so I think the ship is on the right course there.

I was confirmed in this suspicion when one of my students came to talk to me in my office after class. He asked if I taught any earlier sections, since all his other classes are in the morning and he doesn't like staying so late into the afternoon. I told him about the new section they just assigned me, and also suggested he could find another MS96 instructor at an earlier time if it was a big problem... but he assured me that he liked my class and wanted to stay with me. I felt very put at ease.