I Love Morning

This is the first time in a long, long time that I haven't taught at 8am. My first class is at 9:05, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Today I want to use worksheets* in both of my classes, and I couldn't make myself create them yesterday afternoon. Last night I watched three episodes of Veronica Mars on DVD (from season 1) and went on a walk to see the construction**. This morning, as is my habit, I woke up in time to be off to school in time to be ready to teach at 8am. But I don't teach at 8am anymore! I made worksheets! Took me about 20 minutes. Yay!


*These are not the worksheets that you remember from elementary school. In one class, I'm doing a Keynote, and we'll pause every few slides to practice the techniques, and I've typed up the practice problems on a separate handout. In the other class (calculus), I've nabbed two problems from Hughes-Hallett*** and typed up eight integrals that are a bit trickier than what appear in our textbook; we'll use those as directed practice to break up the lecture.

**Now that walking weather has resumed, I may return to photo-documenting the construction.

***Stewart's Concepts and Contexts is not reformy enough for me, so I steal problems from Hughes-Hallett and use them as worksheets. All those questions that tell you what the function models and then asks you what its derivative or a definite integral of it respresent? Love those. The questions that give you a function and its meaning and then give you a related scenario and ask you to model that in terms of the function, its inverse, its derivative or a definite integral? Love those, too.