so i was right...

it's fairly well impossible to run 3 identical classes.

my first section -- responds well, but it's early. they're answer questions, but they're not jumping out of their seats to do so.

my third section -- stares at me like i have 3 heads whenever i ask a question. when i add "i already did this in front of rooms of people twice this morning... you all need to tell me what *you* know", then i get sheepish responses... i don't know if they're hungry, shy, hate calculus, or some combination of those, but they're very reluctant to participate a large percentage of the time

my second section (currently my favorite) -- unlike sections 1 and 3, which have a decent mix of guys and girls, i have like 3 girls in my 2nd section, all nice but relatively quiet... and a LOT of rowdy boys -- boys who stay on task and ask good questions, but make a lot of noise... we get math done, but we get a lot of laughs out of the hour too.

my first and third sections were quite similar in the material we covered today, but my second section was in a totally different ballpark. good, coherent questions all around, just different groups of people need to see different things. and i'm more prone to cater to what the studnts are asking me than to cater to forcing them to participate in mirror image classes of each other. maybe i'm wrong, so shoot me.

quote of the day:
(as i was handing out today's quiz at the end of my second section, one guy asks)
student: so, do you give partial credit?
me: if you show you know what you're doing, but make an arithmetic error, yeah, i give partial credit
student: (quite loudly and excitedly) YOU'RE THE MAN!!!!!!!!!
(room laughs)
student: (looks around sheepishly) i mean... you're the woman!?
(i just let him keep going for another minute as i continued to hand out papers)
student: is there a way for me to dig myself out of this one?
me: um, no harm done, no offense taken, just quietly get started on your quiz.

dude... students are funny.

the end.