(Also, hi, Emily! It's been forever since we posted together! How are you doing?)

Hi! Um... doing. Totally up and down, really swamped. This lesson plan thing is more exhausting than I thought -- it's not that I can't think of things to do, I just can't think how to write them down!

How are you, lovely Israeli lady?

Irony O. Cutthroat and Lovelorn E. Bloodsuckers

Oh, all the spam I got lately was for the middle east peace process and the (then upcoming) elections. Can I at least get the names from your spam? Especially with JZ's theory of my future pirate-dating.

it's not that I can't think of things to do, I just can't think how to write them down!

The phrasing, putting in exact order, including imagining the responses of the class and how to take them from point A to point Z through all the relevant points on the way - that's more often more difficult than actually deciding what to say. At least for me.

As for me, well, the usual. The elections mess is soon going to be gone (and will probably show that nothing changes), Passover mess is soon going to devour us all, starting from the bottom (where most crumbs and dust are hiding, of course), and I'm way too behind on my research.

Are you getting to actually teach now? Which classes? What material? [Edit: oh, and you're lovely!]

Nilly!

Did everyone* remember to turn their clocks forward?

Heh. Thanks for the reminder.

The cat was in fact poking me at the usual time to feed her.

Kristin! Good luck with the move to the new school! And how are you doing otherwise?

The cat was in fact poking me at the usual time to feed her.

At the usual hour as the new clock showed it, or the usual hour according to the old clock?

These clock-changes things shouldn't be so complicated. How come they are?

Snerk. An article about Jews and the werewolf mythology, which a bunch of Buffy references. (This article is making me roll my eyes, a lot, and remember a bunch of papers I wrote in college where my aim pretty much became "stretch this metaphor far enough that I can get another two pages out of it.") [link]

Nilly, doing well overall. I'm really sad about leaving my students and my department, though. It just is the best move for me, I think.

It just is the best move for me, I think.

Well, if you stayed there and were unhappy, it wouldn't be good to any of you, right?

The phrasing, putting in exact order, including imagining the responses of the class and how to take them from point A to point Z through all the relevant points on the way - that's more often more difficult than actually deciding what to say.

Yes! And figuring out that probably we'll run out of time, so deciding what I want them definitely to do and what they should do if they have time... and then, once I'd done most of that, I thought, they're going to get confused, so I'd better write somewhat detailed instructions. Not that I expect them to read them, but if they get lost they'll at least be there. And then I thought to myself, oh, fiddlesticks. I've got a couple of English learning students in each class who are having serious language problems (that is, they're really good English speakers, but throwing in math language as well is like saying, "Okay, time to take the water wings off and let you swim on your own! Also, do it with your hands tied. Go!"). Are these instructions going to be any help at all? Oy. So, we'll see. Mostly, tomorrow's class is explicitly to get them familiar with the software, so even if all they do is play around, it's okay. Except I also have to figure out what I'm going to say when my cooperating teacher asks, as he always does five minutes after class is over, "What would you have done differently?"

Um. Sorry, that's what happens when I get started. Two sections of basic Geometry. I need to take over at least one section of Algebra II probably this coming week, but I'm totally not ready.

And then I thought to myself, oh, fiddlesticks.

One of the disadvantages of Hebrew is that I can't thing "fiddlesticks" to myself.

that's what happens when I get started.

Which is what I had hopped would happen when I asked my question, because I sit here and nod in front of the screen in agreement to everything you post.

You're teaching them with a specific software, written for the subject?