Last Day of Withdrawal

I got back from Dallas on Sunday afternoon. Thank goodness for the end of daylight savings time, I needed the extra hour of sleep. I covered the nuts and bolts of meiosis in bio. It was kind of a rush job since they would be tested on it the next class meeting. I had to use a lab from the past since my chromosome beads had disappeared. Of course I found them a few days later inside a milk crate under a cart.

At first sight, my third exam looked super easy. But after seeing their group scores I was a little shocked on how poorly they did. It was shorter than normal so I could lecture a bit on genetics afterward. I had a whole hour for my Monday class but I have one very thorough student in Tuesday's. So I only had thirty minutes in there. I never seem to have enough days in the semester to cover everything. I would really like to jettison the water and pH sections and jump right into organics.

I was very proud of myself in physical science. I wrote up a quick activity on glaciers. I started Tuesday's class finishing the Alabama geo activity I invented the previous week. One problem with that class is they like to visit, text, check facebook, and not work. It took the whole lecture period to finish and even then I had to start a countdown and make them turn it in before their 9:15 break. They sort of cruised through it with ten minutes left in the period so we played jeopardy with questions on glaciers.

There is a funny scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where a teacher dies at his desk halfway through the school day and no one notices. He had his students do worksheets all period. He had no interaction with them at all. They came in, picked up their work, sat down in their desks, which were pointed away from the teacher's desk and then dropped off their work on the way out. So here is this teacher, dead at his desk and class after class comes and goes without ever noticing he is deceased.

I would like to sort of imitate the dead teacher for the rest of my PHS 111 class and not lecture but just do activities. For the glacier activity, I went through my lecture and wrote questions based on the slides. I threw in a few figures and facts along the way so they wouldn't be completely lost. It worked out great! I am going to try to repeat it for the next five classes.

Today I got my teeth cleaned. They have a new fluoride treatment where instead of rinsing for a minute they paint on a varnish. Mine was caramel-flavored. And I didn't have to wait an hour to eat or drink again.

Brian told me that he sleptwalk last night. In the middle of the night, he got up, unlocked and front door, walked across the front porch and fell off. His wife found him in the front yard staring off into the night. She asked him what he was doing. He turned around and said he fell off the porch. She got him back to bed. This morning he had no memory of it. He thinks it is a side effect of his cholesterol statins. He used to sleepwalk as a kid and then a few times in graduate school. He said his neck and back are sore due to his face plant. He said he woke up with dirty palms and knees. Poor guy.