Flashbacks and Another Injury?

So these last couple of weeks have been quite busy. I've been diligently trying to figure out what material my students missed out on last semester and bring them back up to par (I found out the day before a test on linear inequalities that my students did not know how to graph linear equations). For the most part, it's been fairly easy with my Algebra class. These students remind me of all my friends back home and some of the good times we had in high school. It actually made me miss how easy life was back then. Never had to worry about bills, never needing to plan my life more than a few days ahead, sports practice after school, skipping track practice to play Euchre and eat all of Corinne's food on Friday's, hanging out at Caribou Coffee, high school dances, Super Bowl Parties, skipping AP Composition to get McDonald's for the class (including the teacher), good times.


They have so much energy and the smallest things make them smile, just like we used to. Unfortunately, my Pre-Algebra class is a different story.

Majority of the students have little to no motivation to succeed. Homework assignments are rarely turned in and it's like pulling teeth to get some participation out of them. I've dealt with situation before, but that was with an Algebra class. Pre-Algebra is a whole new can of worms. The math seems so basic, but most of the students lack the skills needed to be successful in the class before. I really need to use this upcoming weekend to research some "math games" to hopefully inspire them to learn the basic skills they seem to be missing (times tables, operations with negative numbers, writing your name on papers, etc...)

A couple other interesting things about this teaching job. I have a student that just moved to the U.S. from China. He speaks almost NO ENGLISH. It's definitely a new challenge that I really enjoy. His math skills are phenomenal, but he cannot understand any of the word problems. Vocabulary that's so elementary to us like exceeds, at most, at least are completely foreign to him. So I've paired him up with a teacher assistant to help him through those problems and found a website to translate some of the story problems on assessments into Mandarin for him. I was really surprised he could understand what babelfish spit back out since it's French translations are horrendous.

On the weekends I've been working up at Winter Park. It's been awesome so far this year since majority of the supervisors are some of my closest friends. Every Saturday and Sunday for the next weeks I'm doing Barracudas which is a 3-week special program where you get the same kids for one day, every weekend, for three weeks. You actually get to build some rapport with the students and parents (just like teaching in a public school).

Weekdays have been dedicated to getting better at skiing. I took a clinic at Winter Park the other day and the head supervisor of Ski and Ride School told me I "ski like a snowboarder." OUCH! I need to start reading up on my level 2 materials and possibly think about completing my level 2 exam this year.

(View from about 500 ft. below Union Peak Summit, the road is the bottom of Copper)

Yesterday, I went skiing over at Copper and hiked up to the top of Union Peak to drop one of the back bowls. It was the first time all season I've skied in that much snow on that steep of terrain. I loved every minute of it until I made a quick cut and pain shot through my calf. Earlier that day my ski boot was bothering me a little bit. It was putting too much pressure on the outside of my right calf, but I decided that it would probably loosen up after a few runs. Unfortunately the exactly opposite happened. It was the same pain that I had felt when I broke my arm at A-Basin last month.


I still refuse to ever ride down the mountain in the back of one of the ski patrol sleds, so I rode the rest of the mountain on one ski, loaded up my car, went home, iced and elevated my leg in excruciating pain for the next 6 hours. I really couldn't believe that I possibly broke another bone during the same season. I decided to wait it out since I need that leg to ski this weekend, and frankly I'm in no financial position to miss any work. Luckily, I woke up today, and it feels remarkably better. Nothing a few Ibuprofins can't take care of on the slopes tomorrow.