Ms. Tran was out today, and we had a substitute teacher in the class. I still came in to give my talk, and after the talk the students watched the beginning of the movie "Stand and Deliver." I basically swapped two of the successful talks from previous weeks to the classes that had not heard them yet, so I gave the shoe talk to the Geometry classes and the explosives talk to the Algebra classes. First and second hour went very well. The students were respectful and engaged in hearing about the running shoe that my team built last year to power an iPod. Third hour is always more talkative because it's later in the day, and while they were talkative, most of them seemed interested in the talk and we got through it without much trouble.
Fifth hour (the students who are re-taking Algebra I) was a different story, and it has really become frustrating for me. I showed a video of a land mine exploding in Iraq (which was extremely successful at drawing the attention of the geometry classes), and it got the attention of a few of the guys in the class, and we talked about the research I did on explosives back at Maryland. Despite everything I tried to get their attention, there were always about 5 side conversations going on throughout the talk. These students seem to simply not care about how incredibly rude and disrespectful they are being. One student who was actively involved in a side conversation started to butt into my talk with a "question" - while I normally welcome questions, I was really bothered by her disrespect and told her that it was very rude of her to do that. As usual, she started to give excuses and claim innocence, which really just shows me how little some students understand about respect and manners. I have tried so hard with this class and sometimes it feels impossible. I don't know what I can do in the two days I have left to make a positive impact on these students, but I will think more about it once I've cooled off from this incident. Anyway, I pressed through the talk and focused on the 4 or 5 students who were actually interested in what I was talking about, and then turned them over to the sub and the movie.
