I’m sick. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I do know that it came swiftly last night, and yet somehow I was foolhardy enough to go into school today. Bad idea. 2nd Period was really tough (today was an “even” day with only periods 2, 4, and 6)…my body ached, my focus was lost, and my energy was nowhere in sight (this was a stark difference from my usual classroom antics which sometimes include flailing my arms wildly around while teaching about inequalities). Even though I told my kids that if I looked a bit pale, it’s not just because I’m white, but because I’m under the weather. Anyway, 2nd period came and went and I’m less than convinced that the kids learned what I had hoped.

Anyway, luckily 4th period is my conference period, which is the one period I don’t have a class. I was able to lay out on a nice long couch in the teachers’ lounge and grab a few winks. I was able to do this, but unfortunately, this did little to avail things. By the beginning of lunch (which I skipped) I was seriously contemplating leaving school early and going home. However, I didn’t feel like finding two other teachers to cover a 108 minute class. And for some reason, I had a feeling that my 6th period students would persevere despite their teacher being a walking zombie.

The make an already long story slightly shorter, my 6th period kids came in and I was seated (something I never do) at the front of the class with my PC projected on the screen as well as a wireless mouse, a keyboard, and a bell. For the next 108 minutes, the students did an amazing job of learning the lesson (solving inequalities), working individually, and working in partners as I did not speak a single word out loud for the entire class period. Most of them thought it was fairly interesting to see how a teacher could communicate with them silently for so long, and I was grateful to my kids, for I found myself feeling slightly better by the end of the class period.

Anyway, that’s all for me for now…I’m headed to bed early tonight to recoup and hopefully get back on track with things tomorrow!

P.S. In the meantime, I don’t really know how to feel about Los Angeles’ new acquisition. Joe Torre, the former Yankee manager is coming to the helm with the Dodgers for the next three years. Now if only ownership would put some of that money towards actual talent on the field, the Dodgers might actually get somewhere.

P.P.S. For those of you who are either math geeks, science geeks, or music geeks, the following is a fairly interesting video. Apparently, someone with way too much time on their hands actually wired two Tesla coils to play at different frequencies and in synchronization. The result is an almost baroque-ish in nature rendition of an otherwise very romantic piece!