dy/dan

Peace Lates!

June 12th, 2008 by Dan Meyer

~~See you next year, kids.~~

28 Comments »

28 Responses to “Peace Lates!”

on 12 Jun 2008 at 3:08 pm1 peter thomsen

hot. congrats. i just finished showing off your summer staff slideshow from last year to andy—he was truly impressed.
on 12 Jun 2008 at 6:14 pm2 Christian Long

Echoing Peter: congrats! Well earned and looking forward to your next step(s), Dan!
on 12 Jun 2008 at 7:19 pm3 jose

Love the picture. Reminds me of Fresh Prince when they kick out Jazz, only much better …
on 12 Jun 2008 at 7:30 pm4 Ben

Congrats! Jose, you’re so right…it’s very Jazzy Jeff-y.

How many takes did it take to get that perfect paper-flying-manbag-swinging look?
on 12 Jun 2008 at 8:20 pm5 dan

Five on the manbag. Three on the paper. That’s four composited photos there.
on 12 Jun 2008 at 8:57 pm6 Ben

Magic = gone

(Respect for image editing skills)^mad
on 12 Jun 2008 at 9:53 pm7 dan

As long as I’m busting up myths, I may as well tell you that Santa Claus is a real jerk in person. FWIW, here is the composite.
on 12 Jun 2008 at 11:57 pm8 Michael

What?! Santa Claus is REAL?! That totally changes my world view.
on 13 Jun 2008 at 4:48 am9 Dina

You even caught the right angle of sunlight on your legs. Bellisimo.
on 13 Jun 2008 at 9:01 am10 dan

Well, y’know, it’s the little things.
on 13 Jun 2008 at 11:13 am11 Dina

Aha. You didn’t do it on purpose, did you.

:: gales of laughter ::
on 13 Jun 2008 at 12:17 pm12 dan

You’re kidding me, right?
on 13 Jun 2008 at 12:42 pm13 Paul B

Just curious, what did you use to build the composite?
on 13 Jun 2008 at 1:16 pm14 dan

Adobe Photoshop, natch!
on 13 Jun 2008 at 1:21 pm15 Dina

Yes, yes, major kidding, Picasso. Have some more absinthe.
on 13 Jun 2008 at 2:27 pm16 Karen

Congratulations, Dan.

I’m wondering so I have to ask. Did your students have any thoughts about your leaving their school? Did they reflect on your teaching methods since your instructional methods are so unique and they probably will never encounter anything like them again?

Inquiring minds want to know
on 13 Jun 2008 at 8:00 pm17 dan

Nah. I mean, we all patted each other on the back as this thing wound down but nothing explicitly related to teaching or learning. I mean, c’mon, it’s June.

Except, okay, there was this one particularly painful moment, which I swore I’d never blog, though maybe the comments are cool.

One of the two smartest kids in remedial Algebra — the sort of kid you wish wasn’t in remedial Algebra even though you’re really glad she’s in your remedial Algebra, you know? — came up to me after I first announced I was leaving. She came up all melodramatic and jokey.

“Mr. Dan, I can’t believe you’re going. I’m gonna cry.”

I was walking around, cleaning up, and tossed off my standard “Cougar to death” recitation: “Yeah, I know. Way sad, right? I’m gonna miss this place.”

But then she told me to quit moving around. “You don’t understand,” she said. And then she started crying. A couple of quick, loud sobs which she sucked back in as fast as she could.

“I can’t learn math from anyone but you. What am I gonna do after you go?”

This is because someone in her lineup of former math teachers convinced her, at some crucial moment, that she was dumb, that she would never understand math, a sentence which she’d serve all the way up until my class, where, upon experiencing the slightest acts of patience and encouragement, became the student she always was. Someone’s gotta get penalized, smacked in the face with a frying pan over this.

She ran out of my class saying she “felt like an idiot,” which is exactly the problem I’m talking about here.
on 14 Jun 2008 at 6:24 am18 tracy

One of the biggest obstacles I’ve found I have to overcome when working with kids who have been taught to think they can’t is dependency. That’s a tough one. I need to be more than a teacher with novel ways of thinking and learning, I need to teach my kids that they can do it with or without me.

Congrats on the end of the year!
on 14 Jun 2008 at 6:34 am19 dan

Right, the pendulum may have swung too far in the opposite direction, in my student’s case. She’s no longer averse to her teacher. But now she’s dependent.
on 14 Jun 2008 at 9:04 am20 JackieB

Dependent? Perhaps. Perhaps too she has learned that she can learn math. Hopefully she has learned what she needs in order to be successful and can advocate for that in the future.

Maybe.
on 14 Jun 2008 at 9:41 am21 H.

I hope she reads what you wrote about her here.

Some of my students from last year e-mailed me math questions last fall, when they were stuck in their new courses. Not that they’d never had a decent math teacher before me, I mean – the point is that you shouldn’t be surprised if this student or other of your students will stay in touch. You may have a chance to remind her of things she did that helped her master new material.
on 14 Jun 2008 at 10:23 am22 Math-itude « Continuities

[...] Filed under: First Year, Math — Tags: attitude, Learning, Math — Jackie @ 12:23 pm This comment of Dan’s started my thinking (he’s good at that, isn’t [...]
on 14 Jun 2008 at 1:17 pm23 Kris

Clearly I missed something – where are you off to next year?
on 14 Jun 2008 at 2:30 pm24 Michael K.

That’s the funny part. BTW: I swear you told that same sobbing girl story when you left Florin, Dan. That or something similar, no?
on 14 Jun 2008 at 7:05 pm25 dan

@Kris, I resigned my job in March and have been job-searching since. A lot of stuff will either fall into or out of place this coming Wednesday.
on 14 Jun 2008 at 9:10 pm26 Emily

Mr. Meyer, that is an amzing picture! Good thing that I read the comments because I actually thought that you did that!!!
But I wouldn’t be that surprised if you actually had.
on 15 Jun 2008 at 12:45 am27 Michael K.

Emily: It’s important to realize that, IRL, Dan is gangly. He couldn’t hurdle a hamster, much less a railing. Don’t let his edubrilliance fool you – Dan is basically a physical troglodyte.
on 15 Jun 2008 at 1:03 pm28 Emily

*Ouch*
~Are you going to take that Mr. Meyer???~

That may be true for all of what I know; Michael K. Thanks for filling me in!xP