Mrs. Evans Blog

I saw an interesting picture that someone posted on Facebook that made me think, so I thought I would share my thoughts in writing. I don't think this blog will have anything to do with teaching, but that's okay : ) Here's the picture... My first thought was, "Would he? I really can't picture kind mild shepherd Jesus holding a gun." I realized I had this crazy picture in my head of a younger skinny white man with a beard looking apprehensively at the gun in his hand like it's going to hurt him. This is a ridiculous picture of Jesus! Jesus was kind, fair, righteous, loving, and sinless, when he walked the Earth, but He was also God. God doesn't mess around. He gives people chance after chance after chance to screw up and be forgiven. He has more patience then I can even fathom for putting up with all of us humans and waiting patiently for us to stop being so stupid and obey. There are times and circumstances, however, when God will use violence....

I occasionally have upset parents. Knock on wood, I haven't had very many, but I found this and thought it would be worth remembering! Conferences are tomorrow and while I always hope the parents will understand where I'm coming from and that I'm doing my best, different opinions, disagreements, and misunderstandings can always come up. To deal with an upset parent, the most important thing you can do is diffuse their anger as soon as possible. This is the strategy that worked for me when I was in the classroom. Once I ascertained that the parent was upset (doesn't take long), my first statement was, "I wish I had more parents like you." This stops them in their tracks since they are expecting you to disagree, defend yourself, or even question their motives. I go on to explain that I wish I had more parents like them who cared enough about their child to come to school (or call) about their concerns. It's amazing how this simple and true statement wor...

I've been swimming through boards on Pinterest with ideas for teachers, and this drastic difference between elementary pins and high school pins struck me... Elementary: "Great for Pond Unit!" "Thanksgiving Pilgrim Fun!" "Snowman Math" "Bald Eagles" "Ivy and Bean Break the Fossil Record" "Groundhog Unit" "Community Helpers Unit" High School: "Unit Circle" "Using Mileage Problems to Teach Ratios" "Deductive Reasoning Game: Fun Activity for Geometry Class" "Common Core Activities" "Geometry" I found a few things that looked like fun. Upon further reading I discovered they were middle school or elementary school lessons... It would be so different to spend two weeks learning about planets. I wish we could just spend two weeks learning about a topic without having to learn these two formulas on Monday, these two more formulas on Tuesday, these combi...

  So this picture shows one of my favorite things about my classroom!   We can use the desks as white boards, and they erase with just a simple tissue. We've found that students who won't write something down on paper to save their life will do 10 problems in quick succession if they get to use a white board marker and write on their desk. If you have the students do group work on a worksheet, one person usually ends up doing the writing for the whole group. If white board markers are involved, everyone wants to write it themselves! Fun Fact: We can also use the white board markers to write on our windows which are visibile from the hall! Sometimes we write messages to the other math class for fun.

On Friday we wanted the kids to learn about area and perimeter ratios. We had them make rectangles that took up a fourth of their desk. They saw that even those the sides were half the size of the sides of the desk, the area of the rectangle they drew was 1/4 the area of the desk. They did the same thing with a rectangle who's sides were 1/3 the size of the sides of the desk. They saw that the area was actually 1/9 of the actual desk. Then we gave them two rectangles and had them calculate the perimeter and area for both. Then we had them find the similarity ratio, perimeter ratio, and area ratio. Then they had to make a prediction about what the area ratio would be of two shapes with a similarity ratio of 5/6. It was AWESOME to see the kids work together throughout this activity to make guesses, question each other, and think logically for a good 15 minutes. This was really encouraging, but then I had to have them spend 5-10 minutes putting an example in their notes and writing th...

Today I was so encouraged by a few of my students. They came in after school to get help with math. We only got through a few problems, though, because we got side tracked talking about recycling. Our school has recycling bins in every room and every student knows that whatever goes in the recycling goes right into the trash with all the rest of the garbage. The three students that were in my room were all upset about that. They didn't understand why we would make it look like we were going to recycle but not. They all agreed that recycling was something very doable that would make a positive improvement in our school. We also spent a while talking about school safety, school food, bullying, and a few other similar topics. They all really cared about the school and seemed to have a real sense of ownership towards it. They were so open and honest about what they liked and didn't like and what questions they had that I felt honored to be a part of their conversation. We actually ...

The other day a fellow Geometry teacher and I were frustrated about how boring the next few days that we had planned seemed. We thought there should be a more hands on and inquiry based way to teach the ratio and proportion lessons that were coming up. That night I started to get a very simple idea while walking Chuck. I asked God for help. (He's definitely answered this prayer before. He's even shown me things I had forgotten about from previous years on the day that I needed them.) I ended up cutting out some shapes and sleeping on my simple idea. I shared my idea with the other Geometry teacher and she really liked it. One of her strengths is finding ways to tweak activities to account for logistics or mistakes the kids might make. We came up with a pretty simple activity where each group of 3 students got a construction paper cut-out of a quadrilateral, a ruler, and a protractor. We had typed up very simple instructions. I didn't actually say any instructions. I just ha...