First post of the New Year!

Alrighty. So I'm a bit behind on the posts. I think I'll always have these small periods of lulls with this thing depending on what all is going on. Well, we're back in Jersey and getting back into the swing of things. It's quite frigid here! Supposedly in the next couple of days we're going to have some of the coldest days in many years. I'm still waiting on the snow. It says it's supposed to maybe snow tonight and tomorrow, but I've learned not to get my hopes up. The weather forcast here is never accurate. At least in Texas if it's going to rain, it pours and if it's going to have sun-shining beautifulness (which I am starting to miss!) - just look at this beautiful day in Austin when we were there several weeks ago! - then the forcast is mostly correct. I've gotten burned the last couple of times it was supposed to snow. We'll just have to see.

So I've learned that some students of LHS are checking out the blog, so I'll be careful what I put on here now. No badmouthing students anymore I guess. Bummer. But I'll be more likely to keep up with things and take (steal) little things off of their pages. For example, I was looking at one student's blog and saw that she had music playing on it. Well, naturally, I was jealous, so I found last.fm's "gadget" so anyone can enjoy my kind of music while they peruse the good 'ol blog here and I put it up top here. (Gran, I'm not sure if you'll be able to use it - and honestly, I'm not sure if you'll like the music on it anyway - although most of it is pretty soothing - this is becoming the longest run-on sentence ever - sorry Mr. Abram's if you're reading this - this is why I'm not an English teacher, but stick to the beautiful concepts of mathematics -*sigh*, so beautiful).

Well, I've recently learned that I'm going to be observed tomorrow, I so need to make sure I have everything ready. I'm going to try to use my wonderfully-awesome blog (www.fowlermath.com) and have the students do some online stuff. I'm still trying to fiddle with what to do with it and how to use it in a math class. I eventually want to make class more student-centered where I'm just a facilitator instead of instructor but that's still an unrealized dream. We'll see how well it goes tomorrow. It may be more preparation up front, but should result in easier times in class. Then after all of that, I still have butt-loads of grading to do to catch up since the break. Any students reading this have no idea how long it takes to really grade stuff and write notes (plus the whole getting myself to stop doing stuff online and actually do it - but i digress). :-P Let's end on a happy note of fun Christmas break pictures:





paz,
-fowler out!