24/09/10

My studens think I am crazy, I've gotten over this. Today they just wouldn't remember a relationship so I repeated the rule "an inscribed angle is equal to the corresponding arc divided by 2" about 9 times. Most of the students started to giggle by the end and I told them, "you guys are laughing, but in 3 minutes I'm going to ask you what the relationship is and you will have all forgotten." "Oh no teacher!" But I did and they had. So i repeated the relationship another 6 times or so. They might think I'm crazy, but by the end of the lesson at least most of them had learned the relationship. And for those students who still hadn't, I have no idea what I can do and I told them this. "Should I have repeated it more times?" I asked them. The class emphatically responded "NO!" I am sure all teachers have encountered this--no matter how many times you say something or how explicit you are there are still students who will misunderstand your instructions. Like 20 minutes into a 45 minute period today when the students are taking am open-note test and you ask one student why he isn't using his notes and--despite the fact that you said three times at the beginning of the period that they could use their notes and that all 44 other students in the classroom have their notebooks open on their desks--he looks at you completely and asks, "we can use our notes?!" For the third time since I've been here a Mozambican, this time some of the older girls from the orphanage, say a picture of me and said "oh you look so pretty in this picture, before you had all those scars on your face." I responded "these aren't scars, they are freckles (no, I don't actually know the word for freckle in Portuguese), I have had them my whole life, I always will, and I happen to like them." "You like those things?" one of the girls asked and when I said yes she scrunched her nose and said "oh." I responded in English and stormed off. There are some days when the tactless brutal honesty of Mozambicans is just too much to take.