there's a quantum leap I'm missing, and keeping on with the same approach is what'll make me mad and dispirited.

I could've written this about physics. I had one fellow student who'd try to explain something to me the same way over and over and over...we'd both end up pissed off and yelling. I tried to avoid asking him for help. Sometimes my profs looked at me as if I was growing horns when I explained my thought processes, but would concede them legit.

That will last until Thursday night, when I remember that people are coming to visit.

You know we won't care as long as we can see the TV.

Man, I want to be sent home!!

Seriously. We were discussing the likelihood of our boss not coming in for moderately bad weather (she moved to the suburbs last week), and that would be almost as good as staying home myself!

Men were supposed to react well to being told a task they hadn't mastered was easy, and women better to being told it was hard.

Huh. I hadn't noticed a gender difference. I'll have to watch for it. Although, we tend to have mostly male students (I guess it's the guitar machismo thing) so my view may be skewed.

Sometimes the problem for me with teaching is the repetitive nature of what we do. We teach beginning instruments, over and over again. We do get advanced students, but that work by its very nature is more varied. But I can sometimes forget how difficult it is to learn to read music, and forget what methods I've used with what student (because it's always the students I don't know that I'm teaching this bit to). Last night I got a lot of blank looks, but because I was able to sit down and take time with each of the kids, I really think we got much further.

It's easiest in that environment, where I don't have to switch age communication styles. I can put teenagers at ease pretty quickly, but not if I'm switching back and forth to little'uns.

You know we won't care as long as we can see the TV.

Well, that's all right, then. We never let anything block the TV.

there's a quantum leap I'm missing, and keeping on with the same approach is what'll make me mad and dispirited.

I used to tutor calculus in college. I found that if the way I was explaining things wasn't working, I could easily switch gears and explain it a different way, so I could almost always make people understand the point. In fact, people often told me, "You have a way of explaining things that makes sense."

Hmm... maybe I should have been a teacher....

Ape foot found in dump

Authorities have determined that a disembodied foot found at a Spotsylvania, Virginia landfill over the weekend once belonged to an ape. After landfill workers first uncovered the foot, three dozen deputies and volunteers, thinking it was human, dug through more than 60 tons of trash looking for the rest of the body. Disposing of animal parts is apparently a misdemeanor and police will not continue the investigation. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

The sheriff said the foot bore no hair and that officials from the state medical examiner's office in Richmond also thought the foot belonged to a human upon initial inspection. Spotsylvania Sheriff Howard Smith said X-rays by the medical examiner's office revealed a bone structure that belonged to an ape species, not a human.

Huh?

On the flip side, I have a pouty and stubborn streak, and sometimes when I'm sure I've said it right, I won't say it any other way. This is usually saved for short sentences. So teaching will go like this:

"Keep your hand up."
[blank look, hand down]
"Keep your hand up."
[hand still down]
"Keep your hand up."
[hand not up]
"Keep your hand up." [said more slowly with wiggling of the hand]
[hand up]

I have no idea what transpires in the learning centres of the student's brain in a scenario like that. There are complicated motions where it's hard to keep your hand up without letting everything else fall apart. I don't do this during those. I do it for easily measurable scenarios, where they can look down while motionless and see that their hand is, indeed, not up.

And I never do it on a first correction. It's a sign of me becoming frustrated, because I've tried explaining it, I've tried moving their hand myself, and I've tried showing them what a hand up looks like.

It does end up working, and I have to hope it doesn't fracture the teacher-student relationship any. I just..I just get all "THAT'S WHAT I SAID."

Was worse with computers, because the things were much simpler. Keeping your hand up vs. hitting enter twice...should be no contest. Why in dog's name should I have to repeat the hitting enter thing while walking someone through a process? Usually because they want to argue with me, and aren't really paying attention. That totally brings out the bad in me where I go monotone and keep repeating verbatim and refuse to stop until they, say, hit enter twice.

"Keep your hand up." [...]

Gods, I hope I wasn't that much of an ass when I went.

Look at these ornate, hand-carved wooden eyeglass frames: [link]

Pretty! Almost too pretty to wear.