A Feel Good Moment

This last Friday was the last day of the first trimester. The first third of my second year of teaching is already over. Shit.

There are lot of differences between last year and this year. I'm a little better at this game (I think) and certainly better prepared (I hope). Although I'm still working hard, I'm also working smart. I'm planning for time to think about my lessons rather than just being a mindless drone cranking out PowerPoint lessons and quizzes. I've learned I work best when I have the time to get creative, which is kind of insane because I had no idea I was capable of being "creative." Then again, number crunching 90 hours a week in Microsoft Excel wasn't exactly fostering creativity.

Most of my "creative" time this trimester was spent tweaking my Personal Wealth Management class (a.k.a. finance for teens). It's an elective course at my school that is only a trimester long (12 weeks). This class serves as my escape: it allows me to teach something I have experience with and enjoy. Plus, it's applicable to "the real world", meaning I won't have to imagine punching kids in the face when they ask, "When will we ever use this?" Not to mention, I really wish I had this kind of knowledge growing up. In fact, most parents who speak to me wish they knew what their kids were learning in my class. That makes me feel good.

Anyway, the students in my Personal Wealth Management took a final exam last week. On this test, I always leave one question at the end for reflection.

"What did you think about this class?"

I actually want to know what my students thought of the class and how it was beneficial (or a waste of their time) to them. I genuinely want to know what they think because this is a subject I'm passionate about, so I want to make it meaningful to them. I started going through the responses Friday evening and was kind of shocked: I didn't receive one negative comment. Not one. Kind of ridiculous! I took a picture of some responses of the responses (see below).

"I teach great." Please, elaborate. Don't stop there. I'm just starting to learn how to deal with compliments.

You can see my response there in the red. I like writing back to my students, makes it more of a conversation. Plus, I can appear cool by writing "WTF?" and "ROFL" next to responses that are simply stupid. Whoever said "there's no such thing as a stupid question" had to be pretty fucking stupid.

Thanks, brah. I appreciate it. I hope to continue the good work with this course, possibly by adding a stock market simulation or some other investing game. The problem is, the Department of Education blocks most of these simulator websites from school computer use. Okay, I'll stop here before this post takes a turn for the worse.