What I learned from Vicki White

I think the best sign of how I'm feeling right now is my hair.  Seriously.  I had this neat French braid that was tidy and lovely.  It fell out.  Like hard.  And a student just literally came by and stroked my hair and made it even worse.  Awesome day, man.  AWESOME. 

We were going over unit conversions today with students who just did not understand.  LIke agreessively not.  I got some students who eventually got it, but it was tough going.  I found my sweet spot later, where I figured out that ones who didn't know what they were doing weren't listening, but that comes to the question:  how to I get them to listen?   I know the stuff about making it contextual and bringing it into their lives, but I'm following someone elses' lesson right now, so I can't bring in inquiry right now.  Maybe I'll try and shake things up and try something out.  As a normal teacher, I feel like today went fine.  About 80% of my students got it, and that's great, but how do I reach the kids with attitude?  What's the buy in for unit conversions?  

On a lighter note, I do have names that I will name my future kids based on students who made my day.  Luckily, the name is in my family.  It's my sister's middle name, so that's great.  But those boys took it on board so quickly.  They are so focused, and just like they're improving, I'm improving with praising them on their hard work and progress than on just being "smart."  

Anyway, how does this relate to Vicki White?  I'm having a few of the problems she had in her Case Study in terms of making it relevant to their lives, but I was able to talk about why it's important to the future.  See, I learned something.  Now I just have to figure out the rest.