Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Yesterday I had my second lecture session in Mathematical Methods 1. Since David and I are sharing the same textbook (even with the other teacher in Trigonometry Applications) I had to bring to class with a different textbook (the one, in fact, used by Maila last school year) that had a similar approach.

This was somewhat good because the class I handled was a predominantly repeater class, with only a smattering of new transferees. Both of the sections are really, but I don’t know if David has students who somehow have full notes on the previous class (I don’t want to assume that the notes are theirs because that would only lead me to the conclusion that it would have helped them pass the course in the first place) and were very active in the recitation and the class participation because for them it was déjà vu all over again, with cue cards.

At least even if I do give the same examples as they had last time, it would be considered as some educators as reinforcement.

But when it comes to exams, we have to give new questions and not the same as the ones given last term.

To go a little further, David, today, asked that we should give the same questions when it comes to seat works and assignments, if only to prevent the situation where an item in the book I chose as an example and solved in class turns out to be the same as the one he gave my class as a homework. I agreed, and we’ll start on that next week.

I’m a little behind in the topics with respect to David – after all we agreed to just finish the same number of topics per week instead of per meeting as outlined in the syllabus they used last term. But I plan to make it up in next week’s sessions.

In the Trigonometry class immediately afterwards, I delivered the same starting lecture as I had last May and last January. Since I only vaguely remember how I executed the whole discussion four months ago, I can’t say if this was smoother than I had given before.

This time it was MY OWN failing students from last term who were active and reciting, even though some of the classifications of angles they remember from last time (relying on memory and not notes) were wrong. Their own classmates teased them about answering as well, even though during the exercise, I heard them telling each other that they hoped it wouldn’t be like last term where they could answer the exercises but not the exams.

When I told the class about next week’s fifty-point quiz, one of the new students (those in whose flowcharts MM1 is a pre-requisite to Trig-App) asked if it was multiple choice. Again it was one of my second-time students who answered, from their own experience last term, “No.”

In my first mechanics lecture, some of the upperclassmen sophomore students continued their deception of the freshmen that they failed in that class before, and still attended. They went so far as to answer the exercise I gave the students after talking about basic and secondary quantities and units, conversions, metric prefixes and scientific notation.

I’ll have to give details next time though, because it’s time to go.