“What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.”
― Paulo Coelho
This week has just flown by. We came back from Thanksgiving break and got back to business. My general Pre-Calculus classes reviewed on Monday for their quiz on four sections about functions on Tuesday. I was very impressed by the overall performance of these classes. After Tuesday, we preceeded on to the key components of quadractic functions and maxima and minima. In addition, we began working on modeling with functions and using these models to answer real life problems. In my honors Pre-Calculus classes, the students learned how to work with the imaginary number i. They learned how to do basic arithmetic operations with complex numbers. Also, they have applied the knowledge of complex numbers for solving and factoring polynomial functions with real and imaginary zeros. I have been so proud of the students, because they have been performing well. They have even thought even more in depth about imaginary numbers asking me how we might graph these coordinates. It has been a learning process for both the students and me. In the upcoming week, my honor students will be completing a real life application project about polynomial functions. I am excited to examine their creativity and se how they create a polynomial function to represent time and height of a roller coaster. They will be working in pairs for this activity, and it will last the entire week. Even though I am almost to the end of the road of my internship, I am a little sad to be leaving what I have been fortunate to call "my students." Yet, they have taught me just as much, if not more, than what I have taught them. (:
