A Week off in February

A moment.
I find myself having a couple of moments in the morning. I am awake, showered, have cleaned the apartment and am packed and ready to get on a bus to go to Binghamton (Berkshire). So… I am never without something to do, so now I’m writing for my blog and watching the Today show on NBC.

I taught Venn diagrams in math this week. My students were confused about the fact that I require a box around the two or three circles. We haven’t done much with the world of “sets,” but instead, I’ve given them enough information to do a few questions if they are posed to them. They can read the Venn and could determine some probability after looking at it.

My students took practice math exams this week. I have one student that is going to have a difficult time getting out of the lowest bracket of scores on the state exam in March. I will work with her when we get back. I also have a student that is going to receive a score in the highest level bracket.

One student did so well on the exam that I was in tears after scoring his exam. I looked back and he has never done so well in the past on his math. Great Gains are what make me the happiest. He has the most disabilities of all of my students. It’s an amazing “high” to have students do that well. It also amazes me to see the students write their math the same way I write my math, which is the same way Jim Gulick taught me to do my math. His legacy lives on into NY City.

So now I have a week off. Unfortunately (fortunately) Scott has the week off also. He is on a furlough because his business isn’t doing so well. The newspaper business is losing money and so they have cut people’s work year by cutting weeks out and not paying them. So we’ll enjoy the time together, but not the reason why we get an entire week together.