January 20 Day 683: A Few Minutes Peace

What treat.

Sitting in a coffee shop. Drinking from a ceramic mug. Posting class notes. Catching up with friends. Chatting with acquaintances. It was good for the soul and a fine way to celebrate finishing in-person teaching for this week.

If you recall, two days ago I almost had 50 % in-person and 50% remote attendees. Today was worse. I’m tracking the data:

In-personRemoteMissing
1/18/2022781
1/20/20224102
Class attendance record for the last two days.

Group work was a little lopsided. I created break out rooms based on the student’s self-assessed index on the collaboration continuum. It was good to help them find like-

On today’s Miro board students read from guidelines for collaboration (adapted from Darryl Yong at Harvey Mudd College) and self assessed their collaboration index using sticky notes. Details on the index are given in the post linked above.

minded partners for their project. It wasn’t so good because one of the rooms was entirely remote and I did not realize it at the time. So when I gathered everyone back together verbally, I should have closed the breakout rooms to force them back to the main zoom room. Oops. It was being recorded, so they can go back and find out what they missed. It’s not ideal—every day I’m learning something new.

I close by celebrating the fun Valentine’s decorations in the window of my favorite coffee shop.

Metro Coffee, I love you.

Published by Jenny Quinn

Mathematician. Mother. Wife. Leader. I am the Executive Director of Seattle Universal Math Museum after many years working as a professor of mathematics at the University of Washington Tacoma. Mother of Anson and Zachary. Wife to Mark. President of the Mathematical Association of America 2021-2022. Past-President of MAA 2023.

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