Category: ECA

Anything related to El Camino Academy.

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In the Swing of Things

Well, I’m four weeks into school now, and I’m starting to feel like I have an idea of what I am should be doing.

I’ve realized a few things in teaching middle- and high-schoolers:

  1. They’re not adults yet.
  2. They’re not necessarily interested in the same things I am. They may even think there’s something more important than computers or math.
  3. There’s a fine balance between challenging your students and pushing them so hard that they want to give up. At least, I presume there’s a balance. I’ll let you know if I find it.

This week, we had open house. As it worked out, the one hour my students’ parents came to, I gave a test. I made sure I had enough copies for the parents to also take the test. Here’s a sample question:

Give the equation, in point-slope form, of the line that passes through (2,1) and is perpendicular to the graph of y = 3x + 31.

In other news, I’m learning the importance of balancing my personal life few hours of sleep with my school-work. I’ve had a few people remind me that I need to be realistic in the expectations I set for myself or I will get burned out here. They’re probably right.

Occasionally, I get a chance to do something that doesn’t involve grading or lesson-planning. One such occasion was last weekend, when a number of us teachers (and one non-teacher friend) went out to eat in honor of Suzette’s birthday. Here’s our happy bunch:

ECA Teachers eating out.

I hope you’re all doing well! Drop me a line and let me know how you’re doing. It’s always nice to hear about things back home, even if I’m not there.

God bless,
Mark

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Staying Alive

Well, the first full week of classes has passed, as has the weekend, and I am still alive.

It’s the littlest of things that can make your day go poorly—things like the network not working so that you can’t (a) print a syllabus or (b) have all your students go to Google maps at the same time. Then there’s standing up in front of class and realizing you forgot to prepare a lesson for them (OK, that one hasn’t exactly happened yet).

Everyone who says anything about the first year of teaching says that it’s difficult. I guess they’re right, so I’m trying to survive.

Of course, I’m hoping to do more than survive, since there are also many things to enjoy about teaching as well. Certainly the most enjoyable is that I get to work with people. It surely is a privilege to be able to interact with so many students, other faculty, and staff each day.

Another thing I enjoy about teaching is that I can help students realize that the world is much bigger than they may have thought (e.g. there’s more to the Internet than Facebook, email, and instant messenger).

I’m looking forward to pushing students to learn more about computers. I’m teaching the tenth graders some web things: HTML and eventually programming (PHP) and maybe even databases (MySQL). We’ll see how far we get. I’m also hoping to introduce some of the younger grades to programming, including Alice and logo programming.

I don’t have any pictures of myself teaching yet, but here’s one of me near the top of a mountain that borders Bogotá:

Me on Monserrate.

I’ll try to write more about that weekend when I get a chance. In the meantime, you can see some pictures from that trip over here.

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La Batalla de Boyocá

Tomorrow is El dia de la Batalla de Boyocá (The Battle of Boyocá Day) here in Colombia. It is also the first day of school for students at El Camino Academy. Just as the battle of Boyocá gained Colombia’s independence from imperial Spain 190 years ago, so will tomorrow mark the students’ independence from the oppression of summer break. I am sure you appreciate this parallelism as well as the students do.

Tomorrow is a half day, filled mostly with a picnic for students, parents, and staff. There will also be an hour’s worth of classes, meaning that I will see my Algebra II students for ten minutes.

I apologize for not updating recently; I’ve been quite busy preparing for classes to start, attending meetings, addressing people’s computer problems, attending meetings, practicing my Spanish, being ribbed for my Argentine accent, attending meetings, eating many new types of food (particularly fruit), drinking many kinds of juice, attending meetings, and living out of a suitcase in three different homes.

Also, I’ve had a few meetings.

I hope you are all doing well. I’ll try to post some pictures soon.