Einstein and Pie - I mean Pi

Today is a very special day for two reasons - Albert Einstein, and Pi!
Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879.

And today's date is the first three digits of Pi -  3.14 which are pretty much the only digits the typical person knows.  Pi is an irrational number, so the digits are infinite and non-repeating.

The best Pi ever... today I'm going to listen to this song, eat a piece of pie, and solve the area of a circle all at the same time. ;)

My favorite Einstein quotes:
"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and  knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."

"The only source of knowledge is experience."

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

Lastly, my personal and blog motto:

Videos for Einstein's Theory of Relativity

Happy Pi Day - go eat some pie!

Global Objective

In my Curriculum class today we discussed what our "global objective" is - the motivation for wanting to be a teacher and being willing to put up with all the crap of teaching (bratty kids, discipline issues, annoying parents, politics, crappy pay, etc).

So, my global objective is curiosity.

I want to help my students be curious about the world around them.  I want to teach them to ask questions and to know how to explore (and sometimes find) answers.  The world is too dang amazing to go through it without ever noticing the awe to be found in insects, birds, plants, animals, oceans, water, mountains, a sunset, or the stars.  I want to help my students learn to notice things and start to wonder about what they see- how did it get that way?  Where did it come from?  Why is it behaving that way?  What will happen in the future to it?  What will happen / how will it respond if ____ changes?  How does this affect other things in the environment?  Etc...

There's so much to learn and explore, and I hope to make a difference in the lives of some students to instill in them the desire to seek out that learning and exploration.  And the rest of them I hope will at least realize that science is NOT boring or hard, and they are all capable of succeeding.

And the other motive of a person who has little kids and loves to travel...summers off. :)