Month: July 2017

How Important is the Silence?

At our church this past Sunday one of the members of the congregation gave a thoughtful sermon about what it means to keep the sabbath. At least that was the primary framework of her conversation. Much of the time was spent talking about learning to take care of herself and what that looks like. Is it listening to a sermon at church? Is it staying home to garden instead? Is it taking a long walk? Is it listening to an inspiring TED talk? Naturally, there is no universal answer for this, but it sure got my mind spinning thinking about what it means for me to take care of myself.

I have engaged in a number of twitter exchanges recently sharing podcast tips. I have become hooked on a number of them and I listen while walking/jogging outside. I listen while I am on my Airdyne in the basement or on the treadmill in the basement. I was listening to Marc Maron and Randy Newman talking to each other just half an hour ago while eating my breakfast here in the airport (I am heading to TMC17 today!) Last month I was visiting my last hometown in New jersey and I went for a long stroll in a park where my wife and I used to walk as a pit stop on the way to pick up our son from day care. At the urging of an old friend – again, through a twitter conversation – I unplugged for that walk. For about 30 minutes I was strolling through this park, remembering cool fall days walking with my wife, listening to the sounds of the park and the neighborhood. It felt energizing. However, I have to admit I have not unplugged like that for another walk or run since. As energizing as that silence felt, I also recognize that I draw a great deal of energy from taking in ideas/content/entertainment through my podcasts. I tend to have music on in my house most of the time I am there. My wife and kids bought me a hammock for Father’s Day. I always bring a book with me to the hammock. I wonder (worry?) if I am just hiding from silence and from being with myself this way. I justify it by recognizing how much I enjoy being tapped into a number of conversation. By recognizing the joy I find when something I hear about that seems brand new suddenly starts popping up all around me. I am excited that I have been spending more time and energy listening to new music again due to my summer DJ gig (which I hope will turn into a fall one as well!) However, I also worry that this is making my time and mind feel even more crowded. I worry that I should put that aside and be quiet. I worry that I should be goofing around with my daughter at home more often instead of curling up with a book while she plays in her room or watches a show on TV. I justify this by thinking that I am ‘taking care of me’ by indulging in books, music, podcasts, exercise so that I can be better at helping others – wife, kiddos, students in the fall, etc.

I am in the last few weeks of summer here and I have taken on a teaching overload for the upcoming year. I’ll be teaching five classes with four different preps. This is on top of being a department chair. I think that the looming concern about what this will feel like has also made this past Sunday’s sermon more meaningful. I mentioned earlier that I know that there are no universal answers to this question, what I am worried about is that I am not clear about what the answer is in my particular situation.

I work better when I set specific goals. Last fall I was waking up early three or four times a week and going for long walks before coming home to wake up my wife for coffee in the morning. I think that I want to commit this fall to picking one day each week, Monday feels like a good choice, to making sure that I go out on this walk with no earbuds. Take a long walk or jog with the silence of an early morning in my ear. Keep my mind clear thinking about what the upcoming week holds. By putting this in writing, I am convinced that I am more likely to carry through with this plan. At the very least, I will feel vaguely guilty or embarrassed if I cannot carry through on this commitment. Not a BIG game changer, but at least this feels like a start. I will check back in on this after the school year is in gear.

As always, feel free to join in the conversation through comments here or by poking at me over on twitter @mrdardy

 

Back in the Saddle

I gave myself the month of June off after a busy year. On July 2 I sat down and started a project that I was stewing about all year long. I am happy about the problem sets I wrote for Geometry, I think that they are a nice set of interesting problems. Many of them have been borrowed from sources all over the internet and I think that my students who took them seriously are more persistent in their problem – solving than they were when the year began. However, I also learned a couple of important things along the way. Not all of my students gained in persistence through these problem sets. In part, I think that the students found them a bit intimidating at times. I also think that they skewed a little long on time needed for thoughtful reflection. I have two solution ideas for the upcoming year. We purchased a license to Kuta’s Infinite Geometry (and their other course options) and I did not use this as often as I should have last year. I do not think that these are terribly thoughtful exercises, but I do know that they are flexible (for me) and supportive (for my students) and I need to use them more often. Since all of our classes in our new schedule are at least 50 minutes, I will be able to carve out comfortable space for in-class practice on basic skills as we are developing them. I also made a commitment to reviewing my problem sets and working on two improvements. I wanted to clean up the language and make sure that problems are a bit clearer in what I want my students to focus on. I got engaged in a great twitter conversation about how important it might be to have students answer y-intercept questions as ordered pairs rather than as a number and how important it is to talk about the graph of a line as an object that is distinct from the equation of a line. I tried to make sure I talked about points on the graph of the line whose equation is 2x + 3y = 12 instead of asking for a point on the line 2x + 3y = 12. Just one example of how I tried to clean up the language I was using. More importantly, I trimmed many of the problem sets by eliminating some questions. I have posted all of my HW problem sets on my dropbox and I am happy to share them with anyone who wants to borrow (or just outright steal!) from them. You can find those problem sets here.

I would love to hear any advice/questions/concerns about these HW assignments. Please reach out by commenting here or through twitter where I am @mrdardy