If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
- Management speak has never been more truthful.
~Facebook quotes

Another day of teaching but today was amazing. Credit where credit's due, Michael was brilliant as he gave me a fantastic task to work with them today. Most of these kids just want to spend time on facebook all day and can care less about learning. But this morning, I got them away from the computers and we did a group activity of a 'Live Debate'. Half the class had to tell me Pro and other half Cons of downloading music. It worked a treat! They were allowed to go online for assistance but it turned out to be a verbal debate that everyone had input for and really got them talking about things including how big business gets hurt (who cares) but what about the song writers or the band members who aren't getting proper fees versus the pros of getting unknown people label deals because their song was downloaded x amount of times.

I was then suppose to go to another class, but due to one of the teacher returning, I was asked to stay with the same class. I really wanted to keep their creative juices going so went back to Michael for paper and we did another debate, but this time they worked as a team on the global question 'Why should the college give them unlimited access to Facebook.' It had NOTHING to do with maths but it got them talking, and thinking outside the box of the benefits of facebooks, but more importantly the way to argue a point without being aggressive. The debate allowed me to illustrate that sometimes to win an argument you need to lose a battle and *also* mention points that have nothing to do with them. It's opened their minds, if only for the morning.

The afternoon was a bit tougher as I had two class combined and lets just say they are normally separated for a reason. But I refused to let them ruin the good vibe from the morning and enforced good work before I would allow them to leave. I later found out that they must really respect me as they have been known to just leave with no warning.

I think the fact that I let them call me statute (ala Statute of Liberty) helps ...still it's better than Mark.

We even managed to have dinner as a family tonight after I picked Charlotte up from a friends house. This working stuff isn't affecting things as much as I thought.