In it up to here

I know (self), I know, I’m behind in recording what’s going on! Let me just say here that I just handed back the first quiz, the first artifact that fits with SBG, and you know what? It felt pretty good. Everybody nodded in the right places when I explaind that “what’s it out of?” was maybe not the right question, even though a good answer is “4.”

The next quiz is Tuesday—I wanted to follow up immediately with a way for them to see how demonstrating mastery works—and I have just shipped off some practice problems. We’re redoing the material from the first quiz—the first three learniong goals—and adding one learning goal (rates), this one with items written by them in class today as part of the prep.

Meanwhile, it’s Back to School Night, which is traditionally one of my favorite events; I only hope I’ll be awake, as the last few have been Bad Sleep Nights, dominated by my having Dvorak Symphony #7 stuck in my head (only the first 8 or so bars, over and over, so not an interesting intracranial concert) and my revisiting a memo I wrote to the head of school about our evolving mission statement. The mission-statement process got me all het up the way you can get upset by comments you diagree with on political blog posts, when you feel compelled to write some pithy, intelligent, counter-comment. Unlike in the poliblog situation, however, our comments may actually have an effect, so I took the time to write carefully about it, which makes me a good citizen and community member—but the damned thing wouldn’t let me get to sleep.

Some things I need to write about soon:

• The first “Claim” assignment and its revisions. I’m really pleased with it, although I’m not sure what people learn from it.
• The need to say less and less and less. I know this, why do I have such trouble doing it?

Enough for now! Time to go find the food and set up my room!