## A Day in the Life

November 14, 2012

6:00 – Alarm goes off; set snooze timer for 7 minutes.
6:07 – Snooze timer goes off; reset for 7 minutes.
6:14 – Snooze timer goes off; turn on the radio; decide to get out of bed. Shower, get dressed.
7:00 – Head out the door
7:20 – Arrive at school. Realize that while I remembered to bring a new box of kleenex and my lunch, I forgot to bring the bag that held a check I wanted to deposit using my scanner and some paperwork I need to fill out for a friend. (Which wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t forgotten to do anything with the paperwork since Friday. **sigh**)
7:35 – 1st period begins. This is my conference period, and I want to make sure that the quizzes I made last night will actually work. A friend and I learned about the coolest thing on Saturday: GradeCam, an online program that lets you print out your own scantrons and scan them using a document camera. Very slick. Unfortunately, my scanner is having problems this morning, and it takes me until almost 9:00 to get them straightened out. I realize that I don’t have time to go by my inbox, so I ask the AP’s attendance clerk if one of her office minions can pick my stuff up during 2nd period.
9:13 – 2nd period, which is Geometry, begins. I decide to have some fun and have them do order of operations practice without a calculator as a warm-up. They whine as expected, but they eventually do it. Then they take the test with the new scantrons. After a couple of glitches, we get it worked out. After the quiz, I give them some notes on coordinate proofs, which is a section I’ve never taught before. A little awkward, but I think it worked out. The office minion brought my copies by in time, so I pass out the worksheets as homework.
10:42 – During the passing period, I talk with M, my friend who is also using the GradeCam quizzes. She actually lets her students scan their own quizzes, but her doc camera is playing a little nicer than mine is. Darn.
10:49 – 3rd period, also Geometry, begins. They are doing the same thing as 2nd period. I like my notes a little better though, because I actually brought in proving two triangles congruent by showing that the lengths of their sides were the same using the distance formula.
12:19 – Lunch! I heat up my lunch in the microwave, and as I walk back to my room, I see my department leader. I had asked him earlier if I could borrow an iPad to work with it before I try to do anything with them in class, so he checks one out to me. I take it and my lunch and go to S’s room to chat and eat. I gush about how much I like the GradeCam stuff.
1:15 – 4th period, Algebra 3, begins. We are starting a unit on exponential and logarithmic functions, so I remind them about the properties of exponents (which they seem to have never heard of before — yay), and we practice solving equations that have the same base. I also introduce/remind them about compound interest, and we practice solving some problems using the nSpires. We finish up with about 15 minutes to spare, so I assign them about 5 problems for classwork. I think just about everyone finished before the bell rang.
2:45 – I am the UIL Calculator coach, and M is the Number Sense and Math coach. We just went to a meet on Saturday, so all we do today during our practice time is hand back the tests from Saturday.
3:30 – M and I start talking about numbers in other bases. I had finally remembered to bring my notes from my Discrete class I took for my master’s degree. The UIL Math test usually contains some non-10-based problems, and M wanted me to help her refamiliarize herself with them. We started off doing addition and subtraction, and then we moved on to multiplication and division. We really had fun, however, when we were trying to figure out a procedure for solving a type of mixed-base addition problem that often occurs on the test. For example, $4\mathrm A_{16}+32_{8}+23_{4}=\textunderscore\textunderscore\textunderscore\textunderscore\textunderscore\textunderscore\textunderscore\textunderscore _{2}$. Once we deduced a possible algorithm, we had to do a couple more problems to make sure we had it right. Very fun stuff — we were both giggling with how pleased we were that we figured it out.
5:30 – Clear off some of the papers on my desk and decide to head for home.
6:00 – After stopping by Walmart to pick up some soup for lunch tomorrow, I remember that I was supposed to meet the heater service people for my semi-annual inspection and service. Oops.
6:30 – I call them when I get home to reschedule. After eating some peanut butter for dinner, I type out this schedule. Whew!