Guest Speaker in Mrs. Russell's Class

On Friday, November 12 I hosted the Department Chair of Mathematics from UTSA in my classroom. All of the middle school students got to hear Dr. Norman speak. I had no clue what to expect, as he never really filled me in during our emails. IT WAS AWESOME! He talked about geometry and nature's desire to save space. He demonstrated this using 3D outlines of shapes and soapy water. The kids were blown away. They are still talking about it, so I'm thrilled that it made an impression on them. Here are some photos from his visit.

Below is an icosahedron: a 20-faced polyhedron (vocab for the day)


A student holding up the cube's bubble with Dr. Norman.


You can kind of see the bubble that formed in this one. They call this a "saddle" shape in Math. The inner bubble would move up and down.


I got to take Dr. Norman to lunch at Turquoise with our Vice-Principal of Academics. (I must say I felt pretty grown up!) He's led an interesting path in Education. My favorite part of the day was when my students insisted on making him thank you cards. I got to read them and they were so cute. Several of them said they want to go to UTSA now so that they can have him as a professor. I told him to watch out for class of 2021 ;)