I'm Caity! I am a New Yorker who married a Kiwi and moved across the world to New Zealand. I'm a math teacher who enjoys the outdoors, photography, video games, music, and general geekery.
I have not been so excited about singing a song in such a long time. I stumbled on this song the other day and I was like GIMME GIMME THIS SONG.
I am going to sing this in a few weeks at my choir concert. I want to nail it. I just wanted to show you all because this song is amazing and so is Sutton Foster.
Earlier this year, I joined the local Bridge Club. Yes, my town is so cool that it has its own Bridge Club.
At this point, you are probably doing one of two things:
1. Trying to figure out what Bridge is and why it has a club.
2. Wondering why I am playing Bridge since I’m not a little old lady.
Well let me answer these questions for you. First of all, Bridge is a card game. If played correctly, it takes a great deal of wit, skill, probability, and other mathematical competence which sounds right up my alley, doesn’t it? Good, that probably answers your second question.
A colleague of mine from the English department is a seasoned member of our Bridge Club and apparently tries to recruit new members each year. This year, I jumped on the bandwagon with a few other friends and we have been taking lessons from him for the past few weeks. I was the first from our little group to play my first night of competitive Bridge last week. I told all my competitors that I was a spy and that I was really a Grand Master. (Can you believe that there are really rankings in Bridge and that the highest rank is seriously called Grand Master?) They all thought I was so charming even though that’s really the only joke I had all night.
I wasn’t too shabby either. I managed to win a couple hands and although a couple hands were played quite poorly I ended the night with a fairly decent beginner’s score according to the club members. I also wasn’t last which was shocking considering I was the only new player there. I am eager to play again and work up to Grand Master rank, although at this pace would probably take until I’m an old lady. Maybe that’s why you see so many old ladies playing Bridge.
What’s your favourite card game? Why?
I am loving my job. I love the classes I teach. My students are great and keep me entertained. I love the people I work with. I am passionate about the subject I teach. I love my school. I love my town. I love education itself.
I love it so much that I have had to start putting it on my schedule to “leave work.” Otherwise I’d happily stay there all night. Or come home and work more and not do anything else and that’s just weird. So I’ve started leaving everything at work too so I’m not tempted.
That doesn’t stop me. I just have too many ideas. I can’t stop working. I’ll just browse math sites or grab tiny pieces of paper that are meant to be for the shopping list and make up more math problems for tomorrow. I can’t just let good ideas go to waste, can I? No. I can’t.
I’m pretty busy. This week got a bit crazy, can you tell? I am still getting the hang of things and sometimes I plan poorly and have to move everything around. I have learned to leave it there instead of printing a new sheet out so or writing in pencil so that I learn from my mistakes. And sure, I have got a lot of free spaces there but being I’m still in my first few years teaching, I’ve got heaps to do. I think it’s great that New Zealand give teachers in their first two years of teaching one less class. Thanks, New Zealand. I still get a House Class though which I love. (That’s homeroom plus I get to have them after assemblies on Monday.)
Most teachers I know, including my own mother, have uttered the following phrase at some point in their career:
I could write a book.
The things we see and hear on a daily basis can induce bouts of hilarity. Plus, teachers love to talk and share stories. If we didn’t love to talk, then we would certainly be in trouble because the majority of our job entails standing up in front of a room of people and talking. Some subjects require more talking than others and some teaching styles require more talking than others but there is still a lot of talking required.
I recently taught the Statistical Inquiry Cycle to my Level 3 Statistics class. I don’t normally have to check their books like I do my other classes. By their last year in high school they don’t have to be told things like “take notes and stop drawing penises in your books” because these are the students who have actually elected to take math but once in a while I’ll peek just to see what they are up to.
Here are the notes that I gave:
The Statistical Inquiry Cycle
Problem
Plan
Data
Analysis
Conclusion
and here is what we see:
Maybe there was just no conclusion since that step 4 seems to have been a bit rough.
I think I’ll follow suit with this blog. I have a lot of work to do.
caitysparkles
caitysparkles
caitysparkles
caitysparkles
caitysparkles
caitysparkles