My morning class noticed my kicks1 and one of the kids joked,2

Mister Youn’s retiring? 34

Tomorrow our students take major exam number nine.5 This one focuses on inference with means, and shouldn’t be nearly as tough as our last major exam a month ago. Invariably though, students by-and-large perform worse on this exam. The two main culprits, by my estimation:

1. Lack of urgency — the last exam was just before the end of the devilish fourth six weeks,6 thus it demanded their honest best. This time around, the end of the marking period is another month away. A LOOOOONNNNNNGGGG month before any second semester high school senior dares to flip their brain on…
2. Spring break starts later this week. 7

1. Kobe VI’s… maybe the third time I’ve worn them out. [↩]
2. I think he was joking… [↩]
3. Kobe is retiring after next month… in case you don’t get the reference… [↩]
4. And as for the title – I will always associate Kobe with the number 8. Twenty-four forever belongs to Keifer… [↩]
5. of ten [↩]
6. good gosh how many blog posts can I write that reference the fourth six weeks? [↩]
7. For some it started a moon ago, based on the way they’re acting… [↩]

Mmmmmm hmmmmm.

(One week until Spring Break…)

There’s an extra class day1 leading up to Spring Break that I build into our class calendar, just in case.2

So since we had some space to breathe this go-round, I gave my classes a break earlier this week and did not assign homework.3

Two of my students — in different classes — asked, “What’s the catch?”

Some of them flat out didn’t believe me.

Well today, a few of them came back and said,

“Yeah, that felt really weird.”4

Three more lessons to go — all after Spring Break.

1. or two? [↩]
2. Née, 2014, anyone? [↩]
3. Technically I just moved it to the next day and made it “in-class work”, but most of my students simply heard “no homework”. [↩]
4. One kid who has never done any homework retorted with, “That felt normal.” -_- [↩]