Señora Cummins' Reflections

Today in class we wrapped up Ch 1.  Ch 1 Quiz is later this week. I have found that many students have test anxiety.  I have weekly announcements I send out to my beginning classes that give study tips.  Hopefully this helps them feel more prepared as we go into quizzes and tests.  This point of the class is a natural time to discuss ethical usage of AI. Today we discussed ethical usage of AI with Spanish.  It was a great discussion.   A student pointed out it's helpful to use AI to make practice material to study.  This was new for me. I give them a chapter 1 summary that has everything on it.  In my mind, use that to study the material.  Make flash cards.  Practice them. I'm unsure how an AI can improve upon that, but if a student has found a way to learn the material, fantastic.

I tend to be hard on myself.  Especially as an instructor I expect myself to always be at 100%. This semester I have 2 different sections of the same face to face class.  I prefer to teach the same material to both classes.  That way, they have quizzes at the same time and the overall class schedule is easier for me to manage. However, when 1 section has a day off for a holiday and the other doesn't, this is tricky.  When this happened last semester I had 2 sections on Monday/Wednesday and my Honors section on Tuesday/Thursday.  When my "regular" classes had Labor Day off I made the class my Honors section had on that week a "fun" class.  I asked them what they wanted to discuss.  A student suggested the topic of Mexico City's issue of sinking.  We discussed that issue and possible solutions as well as the tomato festival in Buñol, Spain.  It was a great class. I chose not to go that direction this semester with my "regular" class that met on...