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

On the second day of classes, not just for the new term but also for the first week of the new term, I finally had to give a lecture in Mathematical Methods 1. But first I gave the title of the main reference (again with the understanding that calling it a text book means it is required for the class – although I did give them the option of borrowing from the older students or the Young Educators’ Society, who also lend out scientific calculators), my class policies in terms of exams and absences, automatic withdrawal and failure and the grading system.

I started with sets, the different divisions of the number system, then went to set builder notation, interval notation and the number line. At that point I went to the room of one of my co-teachers handling the same subject and asked if she mentioned the diagnostic test we were going to request not to be followed, but which we still tentatively scheduled for the Friday class.

After all, I had told the students that just like what I did in the second term of last school year, I will be holding fifty point quizzes every Friday about all the topics discussed during the week. That is, except for the first week of classes, when the quiz will instead be at the end of the second week, covering two weeks of topics and worth a hundred points.

My co-teacher said she hadn’t told them about the diagnostic. It also turned out, when I asked her, that she was already discussing integer exponents of variables. So after giving a short review on absolute values, I proceeded to the same topic.

As usual, I reserved the last fifteen minutes of the class time to the exercise, which I admitted to them was for their attendance but also used to gauge their understanding of the lecture, I said, so if they had any questions, they should go ahead and ask them. Better than asking during the exam, which would not be answered, I told them.

What I forgot to say until a few minutes before the bell rang, was that those who were finished could pass their papers and leave.

In the afternoon was the first meeting of the Science Fiction class, required for Communication Arts students, but a free elective for Computer Science majors. My co-teacher Rae, who will be leading this team teaching effort, met them, and asked that she preferred that I wasn’t present, so I gave in to her wishes, although I was very much interested in their initial ideas of the subject, especially some of those who had been my students in mechanics two terms ago.

Rae did tell me that Ross, one of the surprisingly noisy, computer game playing but high scoring students is quiet in her class. She also found his idea insightful, that what makes a story science fiction, other than, say, ordinary romance, action or horror, is just ONE science fiction element, such a spaceship, cloning or time travel. Innovation Week king Mon, on the other hand, said science fiction blows such things as a simple mathematical equation out of proportion.

That wraps up session 606. For now, class dismissed.