Logic and the Illogical

The ninth grade class did really well with today's lesson on conjunctions and disjunctions. (For those who are not versed in formal logic, that's "and" & "or" statements.) Starting with everyday examples that were obvious to them really helped, situations where you have to do both ("and") as opposed to situations where it's okay to do one or the other or both, as long as you do at least one ("or"). Then when we started doing it with mathematical statements, it was pretty clear.

We'll see how they do next week on conditionals, though. It can be hard enough normally to explain why an "if-then" statement can be true even if the hypothesis (the "if") is false -- let's see if I can explain it in sign!

You know what I love about that class? The way two out of the three students (and sometimes the third does, too) will continually go back to their notes as they work on practice problems or homework. They actually get the concept that "hey, we did a problem like that during the lecture, and it made sense to me then -- maybe I should look back and remind myself what we did." It's nice to see.

On the opposite end of the logical spectrum, I survived my first SST (Student Support Team) meeting today. An hour and twenty minutes after school with all the teachers who have this kid, the principal, another administrator, school psychologist (I think), a counselor, and a couple other people whose jobs I'm unsure of. I walked out of the meeting with my cooperating teacher and her sister (who's also a teacher there), we went back to the classroom, and the sister said, "So what exactly am I supposed to be doing?"

All that time, and no one in the end could say what specifically had been decided on. I realize now that I've been spoiled with administrators who really knew how to run a meeting. People who wouldn't finish a meeting without declaring, "So this and this and that have been settled, and so-and-so will be in charge of this and get back to us, etc."

Regarding the same meeting ... I really hate hearing about parents who won't accept their kid's deafness. (As in, Dad says the kid's not deaf.) What do they think they're accomplishing by denial? Fine, maybe they see it as a traumatic situation and difficult to accept, but come on -- be the adult, get over it, and do what's best for your kid!

Now I get to make sure I'm ready to videotape my lesson with the 6th graders tomorrow. I don't really mind it, because it's good for me to be able to see myself and find ways to improve. But I'm not especially thrilled about it either. And since all my classmates are going to watch it during the week after student teaching is over, I've decided to also tape a lesson with the 9th graders next week, on the chance that one of the two will be exceptionally good.