Friday 11 July 2003

My first semester teaching at Holmen was a dream. I love teaching high school kids, and this was the first time I was doing it in eight years. My style is fairly informal, with some joking around, off-subject conversations, and a lot of hard work along the way. Math is not everyone's favorite subject, and I know that... so if there's anything I can do to make it seem not so scary to enter a math class, I'll do it. I play music during class. I dance badly. I congratulate people for good effort. And... in my first two years there, my lines were longer than any other teacher's during parent-teacher conferences.

Holmen uses a block schedule, four 90-minute class periods each day. Teachers teach three of the four periods, and use the other for prep or duty shifts. My first semester I taught two sections of Algebra I and one Algebra II. The Algebra II class was easily my favorite, as the majority of students were juniors or seniors... catching them at the age when they really start to become interesting. One day in Algebra II, I was in a goofy mood when reviewing factoring methods. I sang one as an aria. I sang another in the blues. The kids asked for a rap, and somehow I free-styled how to factor a difference between two squares... after that, I owned the school.

As an example, I went to a lounge one night in June 2002, and when it was discovered "that teacher who raps to his students" was there, I couldn't buy a drink for the rest of the night.

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