Good luck and congratulations.

Congrats!
I always really liked math. Just not having to actually do it.

Good luck! Do intro to vectors. That should be easy

That's awesome Kyle.
Good luck dood.

Congratulations! I wish for more teachers like you. Seriously been worried these days about teachers here in Japan and how I don't want my children taught by them.

awesome!!! congrats, and good luck on getting the lesson plans together....

congrats man.
i had an AP calculus teacher who had never taught it before. he just stayed a few lessons ahead of us and it was all good. some days he'd get stuck on some stuff so we would all work it out in class. i thought it was pretty cool. i still sucked at calc though.

Awesome dude. Now you can tear it down from the inside!

And buy that SS 'cross bike!

Way to go TA! I wish you the best and am pretty sure you'll be an awesome teacher.

Hopefully the actual job will involve some meeting/collaboration with the math team, and things will go smoothly(er).

congrats

i suck at math

its always interesting to meet teachers. sometimes i meet them while im 'out' at night at bars and whatnot getting drunk. for some reason its just odd to think about them going back on monday and passing along values to kids. moreso if they are an elementary school teacher. i just always regarded my teachers as like...people to look up to morally and they seemed to do no wrong because they were the enforcers. it blew my mind when people my age started becoming teachers and i realized they were just like anyone else. it would also be a little weird to date one. i never thought about the fact that my single teachers probably boyfriends. the married ones i could understand.

Pookie was a kindergarten teacher at a catholic school.

When I was in 5th grade our teacher got married*. When we shared our journals of where we saw ourselves in five years, she told us she wanted to have babies and the whole class groaned and started shouting things like "you're nasty!" She ran out of the room crying and the principal subbed the rest of the day. We didn't get in trouble. In fact, it was never even addressed.

Same teacher came in sick one day and projectile vomited in front of the blackboard. Principal subbed the rest of that day too.

*He was a magician and he came in and rubbed quarters into the elbows of his tuxedo.

I've been working on my plan for a few hours now. I'm totally stressed about incorporating group-work and exploration. Thats the crap that they want to see me doing. But I have no idea how many kids are in the class let alone how to divide them into groups (would suck to get one group full of the smart kids and another one full of the slower kids).

The lesson is all about rational functions. Basically a ratio of two polynomials. We're going to work out how to solve them and then how to graph them. They make hyperbolas when graphed so I'll be able to throw down some knowledge about binocular sight actually causing us to see the world through hyperbolic geometry (even though it is really spherical) and how Euclid was full of shit. I found that kids like it when you go off on tangents sometimes.

My big worries have been about transportation (no vehicle x expired license collabo) and clothes (had to borrow roommates suit for the interview). I'm going down to my dad's today to pick up his old truck which starts most of the time. And he's gonna front me some cash to get some new shirts. Gonna get my license renewed on saturday. Hopefully no one will ask to see my license before then.

And I bet most of you thought your teachers had it all together...

Thanks for the encouragement.

And Kaido, move to Chiang Mai, Thailand. You'll get teachers like me and my parents will tutor your kids after school. They've been taking only Japanese students to tutor for the last 5 years.

Congrats and good luck! Teacher, that's what I want to be.

For Pookie's first full-time teaching position, she inherited the 3rd grade class from hell around the middle of the year. Needless to say, it was a behavioral management challenge, and she'd also never taught 3rd grade, so no lessons plans at all. That and the prior teacher was a douchebag, didn't leave any plans. She'd work all day, come home, and work on lesson planning all night while crying.

It seemed to help her when I stroked her hair and gave her lots of bourbon. I don't think you have much hair, but there's always bourbon.

Now we all know who to PM to get halp... especially w/ those nasty math problems! ;-)

Dude, I just teach math. I never said I was good at it.

Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.

But one thing to remember is that you will almost always know more than they do when it comes to the subject matter.
I freaked out a bit when I was thrown into teaching public speaking at Illinois with about a week of 'prep.' Luckily i had mostly freshmen, so you could see the fear in their eyes. The kids will likely respect that you at least know about math compared to the long-term sub.

I am sure it will take a little bit of time before you are totally comfortable, but I bet it will be sooner than you think.

Even kids as they enter college don't understand that we can be regular people, too. Granted some of us are only a few years their elder, but you need to tell them it is okay if you see me on the street to say, 'hi.'

Congrats on the job. You're going to do great because the entirety of Tarck is behind you!

best post in a long time. Nominating this for POM

Best movie ever.

Thats totally me. School needed a teacher to fill in immediately for a class I'm not prepared to teach. Gonna turn these kids into my own track team and we'll tour in an old school bus with the bikes on the roof kicking ass at every velodrome we can find.

nice goin teach'

save the run-over-by-a-garbage-truck story in case you ever need a quick cred boost

it would be funny if you had a student or two on this forum, and you didn't know it.

My first reaction to the idea of having a student in here was to think it would be impossible. It is an inner city school and the last time I taught in one (5 years ago) the kids had no idea that you could ride skinny tires on the road. I did a backward circle in the classroom one day and it freaked them out (it was actually my first back circle ever). But then I got to thinking that I no longer know anything about the current trends among young black kids. Maybe they all have track bikes since Kanye got one.

Just remember that kids are a lot like people...

Fuck that noise. If it weren't for all the damn kids, school would be great.

yea! congrats, Kyle!
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and remember, i love Andre 3000, so if there's like some sort of Outkast appreciation day and you can invite a guest, please invite me. thank you.

wow! congrats!!=)

I now know who to PM when I can't figure out my Calc I stuff.

So Cool!

Though this whole thread I thought you said Andre Nickatina, not Andre 3000. Bummer.

The part about being dropped into an AP class is intense. It'd be my instinct to level with them your knowledge and work stuff out together, but my instincts might suck when it comes to long term working relationships with smartass little kids.

Oh, obvious question: too far to bike? And also, once you've got the job, teachers don't wear suits. They wear khakis and polo shirts and shit.

I remember the first time I found out one of my highschool teachers had 3 DUI's and had been arrested for domestic abuse.
I also remember the first time one of my profs bought me beer when I was 19.
Completely different reactions, but kind of shocking when you realize these people arent untouchable saints.

mention something about gucci mane and they'll think you are cool . . . .or a giant douche. yeah actually don't say anything lol

Weren't you already a teacher in Thailand??

Yeah, but this will be the first time I've got my own class here in the states. It's exciting.

So no more downs syndrome karate savants?
But seriously good luck today! Please don't mention Gucci Mang, maybe name drop Major Lazer to see if there are any cool kids.

Good luck, and congrats on the position. Given you are teaching at a magnet school, and teaching AP Calc I would assume most of your kids are going places.

You have a great chance to really influence and effect their later academic success. Really shoot to make sure they understand conceptually what is going on in calculus. Whether that be through working through proofs, or applications (research to see if they are taking physics concurrently; since calculus was basically created for physics deriving velocity and the other classical mechanical stuff really helped me understand both the physics and the math) . I meet people all the time now in my college classes who just memorized the formulas and got by, and are now struggling with some of the more abstract multi-variable stuff.

Anyway, again congratulations. Hope all your kids get a 5, since it would look great for you and for their sake

Paddle them. Mmmmm, yes, paddle them.

Congrats TimArchy, you are going to do a great job. Just pray to god they don't find Tarckbike. Guilt by association!!

Congrats.

Also, the lady had never seen this and this this thread provided an opportunity to look it up. Lulz were had.

Just want to add, make sure you use units and be consistent with them if you're trying to integrate Physics into Calculus, many of your students will be taking both. I was always annoyed how my AP Calc teacher was so careless with units after taking Physics the year before, it detracted from the whole purpose of the exercise, which was to make Calc less abstract. Just my gripe. I hope it goes well!

Totally know what you mean. I dated a Jr high teacher for awhile, and went to some of the parties. It was hilarious seeing them out of school. The councelors were AWESOME!!! They were the life of the party. Also, someone mentioned forking someone's lawn, and they got crazy excited about how they loved to do that should do it again. Then again, I do know a school librarian who is just as conservative and quiet as you would stereotypically think.

i am still confused as to why timarchy said fuck you to all of us and then we are congratulating him

Nickatina is coming to Salt Lake in a couple weeks. So stoked.

Went in today to teach a demo lesson. There were like 9 kids in a class that was supposed to have 25. They have had random subs for the last month so most of them just stopped coming. The kids that were there were cool though. Not exceedingly active, but they did answer questions without me having to goad them. Obviously there will be a vast gap between the faster and slower students. Some kids could factor quadratics in their head and others couldn't solve basic equations. This was in the Advanced Algebra/Trig class, not AP Calc. My time management was crap. I had no idea going in what their ability level was, so I took a long time on the opener assessing what they could do. As a result, I only made it about halfway through my plan before they stopped me. They asked the kids if they had any feedback and they only said positive things (like they would actually say something negative about a teacher with administration present). The people observing me commented on the time management and that I tended to be teacher-centric. But they understood that it was mostly due to me being out of the classroom for so long and being given barely any time to re-acclimate myself.

But they said I got the job. They asked if I wanted to start tomorrow, but I asked if I could wait till monday so I could properly prepare.

Horray for me. I just went from a dream job and mega discount to one of the most thankless jobs in the country. Went from being able to leave work at work to working from 6:30 to 3:30 and then doing more work when I get home. I know it will be worth it though.

How come now one made this joke yet:

"Is that where you guys met?"

WACKA WACKA

Hah!

Aww man. Biting my tongue here about our debaucherous behavior while she was teaching. Not really my place to tell those stories.

Kyle, congratulations man. Remember what I said about the bourbon.