Attendance Follies

Lunch - students can be anywhere: gym, cafeteria, wandering outside, playing long-toss on the grass, teacher's classroom, library meeting. They decide, they go. No problem. Nobody takes attendance, duty teachers simply pay attention.


Next is a student-driven tutorial time (they decide their schedule and which teacher they'll go to).

"We have to take attendance for this study hall/tutorial time! Panic! Here's a roster! Here's a second roster! Find each name in three different locations, mark absent or present in two others."

Of course, right after this, attendance is taken in their next class.

Exactly why are we panicking over the one time period but not the other? What all-fired difference does it make anyway? This is a student-driven tutorial time anyway.

/rant

I've got to get back to work.

What's high school for?

In May of 2011, Seth Godin asked: What's high school for?

"Perhaps we could endeavor to teach our future the following:

1. How to focus intently on a problem until it's solved.
2. The benefit of postponing short-term satisfaction in exchange for long-term success.
3. How to read critically.
4. The power of being able to lead groups of peers without receiving clear delegated authority.
5. An understanding of the extraordinary power of the scientific method, in just about any situation or endeavor.
6. How to persuasively present ideas in multiple forms, especially in writing and before a group.
7. Project management. Self-management and the management of ideas, projects and people.
8. Personal finance. Understanding the truth about money and debt and leverage.
9. An insatiable desire (and the ability) to learn more. Forever.
10. Most of all, the self-reliance that comes from understanding that relentless hard work can be applied to solve problems worth solving.

Not a bad list, I suppose.  Goals, if you will. They're good goals, obviously, but if the Internet is any evidence, very little of this seems to be necessary to survive in America as an adult. To thrive is another matter.

You can make the case for each of these being necessary in the RealWorld^tm, but how many am I responsible for and can they be taught? How many should a high school graduate be proficient at before setting off and can we as educators stop them if they haven't demonstrated each one?

The first one. "Focus intently".  Exactly how do I teach that except by setting consequences for not focusing intently enough, or for not solving a problem quickly enough? That seems wrong. Too many kids will quit under the pressure. We can talk "grit" all we want. We can add this into our ever-expanding list of "Transferable Skills" and demand proficiency. We can bluster and pontificate but the student who falls short through ADHD or a conflict with a teacher ...

Postponing short-term satisfaction for long-term gain is a laudable trait. Pretending to teach it and measure it is unworkable. This will be a "Yeah, check that box and move on" situation. I can see the rubric now:

Proficient with distinction: "Held off eating the marshmallow for thirty minutes before succumbing."

"Reading critically" is a phrase that sounds intelligent but falls short in practice. You cannot teach students how to read critically. You can tell them of tricks to reading but that stops being productive quickly. High school kids CAN read; what they need is the background knowledge and worldly experience to be able to tell which parts of that text are bullshit.  They need extensive science courses to refute the VERY compelling counter-arguments. It's difficult to counter anti-vaxxers, for example, if you don't understand biology, chemistry, and probability and statistics. It's difficult to convince them if you haven't got a good handle on psychology, too. Fools are so damned good at being fools.

Being able to "lead". I like that one. Expecting every teenager to lead, or even work collaboratively with peers, is a fool's mission though.  Few kids are competent at what they do - that's why they are learning. As I've said before, learning is not the time for collaboration. Working with already learned information is the time collaboration can happen. Beyond collaboration, leading, is not for every kid.

Understanding the scientific method is why we have them take science. Not my fault if Organized Religion seems to be actively fighting that every step of the way.

Understanding this leads to
understanding self-management.

Multiple-form presentation - definitely. First, though, the kid needs to know those various methods and know all the things he wants to talk about. That's why we teach them Foreign Languages, English, Science, History, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics (FLESH TEAMS).

Project management - how much of this should we leave until after the foundation work is done? Science Fair is a great example of this. Give them the background, then have them experiment. I'm totally for doing science fair -- I think the parents do a wonderful job with those boards.

The expectation of universal self-management is a pipe dream for teenagers. There's a reason they're not allowed to rent a car, smoke cigarettes, take a pill without supervision, ... the works. They're learning self-management. College kids don't even have it yet. Hell, many adults don't have it yet. How much of society do you expect me to solve here?

Ah, yes. Consumer skills. Personal finance. The "Truth" about money. Kids know how many things work - and don't care about the rest yet. They get the idea of "I earn money. I save money. I spend it on rebuilding that 1959 Studebaker." Whenever my admin talks about "Consumer Skills", it's usually a stupid reaction to "Kids can't write a check" or "Look at the College Debt Crisis -- We need to teach them how to avoid that!"  I'm here to tell you they aren't that stupid ... and nobody understands how to make a amortization schedule, not even the bankers. 

"Life-long learner." What a meaningless cliché. All that aside, how exactly does one tell if a student is a life-long learner if he's only just beginning his life? Is that diploma retractable? Do we call him up in 30 years and send a repo squad for it if he hasn't learned something in the last ten weeks?


"Most of all, the self-reliance that comes from understanding that relentless hard work can be applied to solve problems worth solving."  Bottom line, looking at every graduate I've shaken hands with as they walked back down the aisle,

If you give them a problem they NEED to solve, they'll be just fine.

I look at this list, and many like it, and I shudder when I think of the teachers who will be pushed into focusing on this at the expense of teaching content. You can't think critically without knowing something to think about. You can't teach many of these non-measurable skills (which doesn't make them unimportant) but unless you stop expecting teachers to measure the unmeasurable in order to provide accountability to those who have no idea what schools are supposed to do, you're only perpetuating the problems we face.


End of Rant. Thanks for reading.

I've got to get back to work.

Priorities

Just a quick question ...

With everything that goes on in a public school these days, why has actual teaching been shuffled so far down the list of priorities, behind:

• Fire Drill/Police Dog Drug Search
• Professional Development
• Addressing Damage in the Bathrooms
• Sports in all its forms (mostly afternoon disruptions, but we're coming up on skiing and snowboard season, and spring has golf ... 8am meets and competitions are the norm.
• "Pardon the interruption for this announcement."
• Service Organizations.
• Class Fundraising going door-to-door.
• Class Meetings 
• Pep Rallies
• Anti-Bad Things Assemblies
• Teacher Education/School Visits/conferences/workshops
• Principal doing Teacher Evaluations (Major disruption when he sits clicking his laptop)
• Anything the Administration finds on their calendars.
• Send the kids to the office if they're late ... to get a pass and come back to class.
• Talk to the kid in trouble, set up a detention ... for missing class.
• Meeting with the State College Scholarship rep who tells them they need to be sure they're attending class. Said meeting happens during class.
• Anti-Drug counselor pulls them to have them sit in her comfy chair and eat cookies.
• Volunteer Fire Department Rescue calls.
• Field Trips for non-academic things.
• Family vacations and appointments.
• Illnesses that mysteriously occur on test days.
• Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice.

"Give them the assignment so they can make up the work. We'll be out all week."

"This is the only time we could schedule 'Bodybuilders Against Drugs' and I didn't want to let the opportunity pass by."

"I think everyone in the department should attend this workshop."

You might point out that teacher education and workshops and school visits are intended to improve the overall teaching and improve the school. I worry that the professional development is explicitly expected to take a couple of years to come to full fruition ... and this is the only education these kids will get.

Sure, I can take the long view, but what of that senior?  What will replace this year for her if we continually mess with it? It's part of what lead to my previous rant about research.  I WANT to use the best ideas, but I don't care to spend a lot of time trying to winnow out the chaff and uncover the lone jewel of future glory at the expense of the students I already have.

I'm expressly NOT wishing for repetitive, boring, lock-step, soul-crushing monotony. This isn't a prison and can't be run like one. That's not what this is about. It's about predictability and finding security in knowing what's coming and when, and that school, unlike many of their homes, is about habits of mind and habits of behavior and learning everything you can while it's still free.

You might think it silly, but knowing that "Every Friday is a quiz in History" is actually comforting to a majority of students. The worst thing in a high school is to change everything suddenly. When you call "everyone out to the courtyard for an impromptu dance to relieve stress", you frustrate everyone who was just about to get to work, you get the ADHD kids going on something new at the exact wrong time, and you raise the anxiety levels of everyone.

It's easy to sit in an office and look at a shiny new workshop proposal and find a blank day on the calendar to schedule it in isolation, but that's messing with the rhythm of the school. When there's no rhythm in a school, there's no soul and no quiet confidence.


When did teaching move so far down the list of priorities?

Hey Researchers!

Hey researchers. you know what would be cool?

How about if you settle some questions for us?  I've been in education a long time and I've heard what seems like infinite variations on the same questions, along with what seems like infinite new thoughts that came out of the blue.  Every time our principal or superintendent goes to a conference or a workshop, it seems they bring back a new idea, a new structure, a new way of doing things that "research has shown" to be the shiny new penny of educational thought.

When you look a little deeper, you find it was done on 65 elementary students in NYC ... and you're supposed to try and develop curricula for your 10th grade math classes that follows this brand spanking new paradigm.

Answers are NOT overrated. The whole point of research is to answer a question, either to prove or disprove it. Research that is only about finding something new is exploration, and while it does have it's purpose, it's not what we need in this country at this time in this industry.

We have lots of new ideas. I, for one, am sick of all of them. What we don't need is more new ideas to be trotted out, forced on the students and faculty, only to be replaced when the fashion statement of the month changes.

What we do need is to weed out the bad ideas, the bad policies, and the bad science that we already are following, used to follow and are considering going back to, or that we might consider in the future.

If you simply MUST develop new ideas and new ways of doing things, please in the name of anything you find holy, write the results down and save them for the next round of research on that topic.  

Researchers!  Instead of thinking of brand new things, how about you settle a few debates?

I know. It's boring.  You want to be "Fresh!" and "New!" and "Creative!" and here I'm asking you to determine the pros and cons of Semester Block vs 4x4 Block vs 40 min (8periods) vs 50 minutes (7periods).

That would be helpful.

Do a lot of research on it. Use a lot of schools and do it with HS students.  Settle the debate we're having at every goddamned school in the country and settle it so definitively that we can all tell our principals to go pound sand if they say something stupid. And make the research available so we can actually read it?

That would be helpful.

How about Proficiency-Based Grading and Graduation Requirements?  Do they work? If so, what did they look like when they did work and when they didn't? Is this just Standards Based Grading updated with a shiny new name for the new decade or is there really something good here?

How about getting into whether we should be taking statewide tests or home-grown final exams?

How about the use of technology in the early grades; in middle grades; in high school?

Don't tell me about your cutting edge research if it doesn't involve multiple grades and a full range of socio-economic levels encompassing thousands of students taking all the courses. (At least tell me what those grades are, in a font just as large as the headline.)

Don't tell me that research has shown that you shouldn't teach the subtraction algorithm ... unless you also tell me that the research was done exclusively on k-4th graders and was somewhat inconclusive.

Why not?  If you remember, I don't teach k-4 grades and my classes really should know the algorithm.

Hattie does this kind of thing all the time and my principals eat it up. Hattie puts out results with this really precise measurement that isn't very accurate. Why is nearly all of Hattie the stuff of nightmares for HS teachers?

Because our principals can't read. They see a big shiny number and say "We should do that, too."

They don't take the time to delve into the conditions of the research and merely assume that we should be changing RIGHT NOW so they can retain their jobs.

My district has gone to a half-day inservice every week to develop new initiatives .. and that's messing up the students something fierce.  We faculty, in the meantime, are going nowhere fast, wandering through tedious and worthless makework that the curriculum coordinator dreams up. Ill-defined terms, vague promises that "This will all make sense" and exercises that belong in a 6th grade classroom the day before Christmas break, all combine to make us want to tear our hair out.

Show me something that WORKED and let me build from that.  If it doesn't work, we need to have some way of reporting that back to the same researchers so others won't have to go through the same disruption and failure.

EVERY school that tries your new idea is now part of the research; all data should be kept. It never is ... in fact education is the only field where all of the research is case-control, the selection bias is ignored, the publication bias is widespread, and the results don't ever seem to matter ... all while the subjects of the research suffer through another set of changes and failures in the vague hope by the administrators that "Someday, we get it right." I'm here to tell you that "Someday" hasn't arrived yet.

My only consolation is that we're not experimenting on my kids.

"But it's backed by research!"

Yeah, show me. Prove it.

In the meantime, I've got to get back to work.

Foolish Consistency

A discussion with a student at the end of a calculus class began with her saying "I feel that I didn't learn my fractions AT ALL in middle school and elementary school." It made me laugh a little because she was, in the same breath, saying how confident she felt about them now.

And we all know where the errors in calculus are ...

But, her next comment nestled in nicely with something that's been festering in my brain for a while. "My teacher last year had us use calculators way more than you do. He wanted decimal answers instead of √2, decimals instead of fractions. I think I like fractions better than decimals now." (I'm paraphrasing, here.)

Coincidentally, I had had a discussion with him the previous day about why I had given an online quiz on simplifying radical expressions like √300 = 10√3. He didn't see the point while I feel that it's a good thing for algebra 2 students to understand and certainly within their wheelhouse. It helps build the understandings that I feel are important.  Additionally, it's on the SAT, ACT, AP.

His point, equally valid, is that the RealWorld^tm is increasingly going digital, demanding numerical answers and using computers to run simulations and solve problems. The diagonal of a square is going to be measured as 14.14 feet, not 10√2 feet.

In reply to my student, I said "We're different ... we focus on slightly different things and both are necessary.  Neither is a better teacher and neither has all the answers, but by having had both you can now apply either approach as appropriate and as suits you.  It would be terrible if you always had the same teacher for your entire career and never saw another point of view, another frame of reference."

Why do I mention this now?

Her comment had resonated with me because we're currently in the process of converting the grading system to Proficiency-Based Grading, and Carnegie Units to Proficiency-Based Graduation Requirements.

Transformations this extensive require long and elaborate discussions about how we measure, about what we measure, about how we justify our decisions to parents and colleges, and about how, whether, and when we teachers will measure.

Because our supervisory district administration aren't really teachers, and our curriculum coordinator used to teach elementary school and some MS social studies, everything must have a rubric or it isn't proper.  As well, everything we used to do was BAD and must be changed.

"We can't use the word 'Proficient' because it's not a growth word."

We're being asked, "Do we use a rubric?  Since your answer should be 'yes', which one of these four is the one you're all going to use?"

The fact that we spent nearly an hour discussing whether to use the word "proficient", "competent", or "skilled", and whether the top level would be modified with "highly", "advanced", or "with distinction" should give you a good idea of how divorced this all was from real students and real teaching. We never did finish that conversation, but we did begin to spend time arguing over whether the four levels should be considered five if there was a checkbox labelled "Not Enough Data to Measure" in addition to Highly 'word', 'word', Nearly 'word', Beginning 'word'.

The funny part is the explicit statement is that we will use the same rubric throughout the building, that every teacher, in every course, for every student, for every transferable skill (the non-content skills), will use the same rubric to determine proficiency.  If any measurement does not use the rubric, it isn't measured properly and cannot be defended as fair and consistent across the board.

This is foolish. A foolish consistency adored by little statesmen.

or, in this case, by administrators.

There are differences between students just as there are differences between teachers.  We cannot maintain absolute control over 18 year-old seniors in the same way we do 10 year-old elementary students. 8th-grade Algebra 1 needs a different approach than 11th-grade Informal Geometry. Some kids thrive on general questions that allow them to explore while others need more algorithmic approaches. We must allow some teachers to holistically judge an essay while others are focused on grammatical issues along with the content.

It wasn't that long ago we were all assured that it was right and proper to be adjusting our teaching to the "learning styles" of the students. Whatever happened to that?

Well, now we are to be consistent. Consistent in our teaching, consistent in our grading, consistent in our departments, consistent between departments, consistent across high schools in the SU.  Everyone consistent. Everyone using the same rubric ... as if a rubric were the only way and that rubric the only acceptable one.

Friends, the pendulum has swung towards "ROBOT", the French army is nowhere near Toledo, and the Inquisition is still safe from its enemies. I'm used to this quinquennial flip-flopping but I don't have to like it.

The Inquisition Administration has looked at teaching and decided that everyone needs to be consistent.  That's pure, unadulterated, bull.

The only consistency we should expect should be within a course ... but even that is muddied by IEPs, behavior plans, 504s, and other, very necessary, adjustments.

Here's the important point: Differences are GOOD.

Diversity in background is GOOD. Differences in approach are GOOD. Sure, you need to have a progression through the department that includes everything you've deemed important, but you also need to have individuals and their strengths.

Way back in the depths of time, when I was in high school, Mr. Corbin would just look at my essay and declare it a "B".  I thought him harsh until I looked at everyone else's in our little complaint session afterwards ... lo and behold, that "B" paper of mine was not as well written as John's "A" paper and was better than Peter's "C" paper.

When it came time to take English from Mr. Clark, we knew the rules changed.  Every grammatical error, no matter how insignificant, meant a full letter grade down.  One spelling mistake turned an "A" paper to a "B" paper.   To add to our teenaged angst, it was timed and, while we knew what day we'd be doing this, we didn't know the topic.  We would walk into the class on Wednesday, see the topic on the board, and then have 45 minutes to produce a page-and-a-half essay. (college-ruled, of course -- not of that wide-lined crap.)

Oh, how we bitched about that ...

... but we did learn to write. 

Was Mr. Clark a better teacher?  I would argue that he was because of his amazing command of the topic and the stories he could tell and the standards he set, but part of what made him good was the preparation we all got from Corbin and the fact that the two men were different. Corbin introduced us to American Lit. Clark introduced us to writers; Thoreau, and Frost, and Jacob Bronowski.  Corbin didn't mark down for minor grammatical mistakes; Clark did. We were students; we adapted. That's what you do.

"Yes, you can borrow this copy of Robert Frost's poetry, but make sure you give it back ... he and I wrote to each other by sending this book back and forth and making margin notes. I'm fond of it."

Trying to impose consistency on these two gentlemen would have been foolish and counter-productive.

Trying to impose a common rubric for AP Calculus and 7th-grade civics is foolish and counter-productive.

Trying to impose consistency even within our department is foolish and counter-productive. He's a math major; I'm an engineer; of course we look at things differently.

He uses the calculators more than I do; I ask for more mental math than he does. "Who's better?" misses the point that, over the course of four years, students get both.

"Who's better?" Why would you even ask that question?

In the long run, I suppose, it doesn't really matter what gets decided in these silly little meetings.  I intend to use the AP scoring style for AP calculus, a variation of it for Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus and I will probably do many of the same things that I've been doing for years ... the successful things, at least. I don't think I'll ever stop changing subtly.

And that's the point.  When I find something good, an idea from another math teacher or even one of the curriculum people, I insert it into the folder. As it becomes relevant, I work it into the daily routine or the once-a-week, or whatever.

When it comes time to taking advice on how to teach high school math, though, I don't have much tolerance for people who have never taught anyone older than 12 and who couldn't describe a data set graphically if I did it for them ... and they're going to tell me the words I must use and the forms I must use and the rubric I will use to declare proficiency in standards that we haven't even decided upon yet?


Thanks for Reading.
I've got to get back to work.

If that's a condition, I want nothing to do with it.

In a discussion the other day with one of the new teachers in the district, I mentioned that I was the NHS advisor, and that I was surprised that the dues for the school's joining for the year went from $85 to $385 per year. That got a strange look and a negative comment about the organization; I'm paraphrasing here: "I hate the NHS."

One raised eyebrow later, the teacher continued, "I was straight As, honor roll, did everything they expected of new members, the works. I and a couple of friends were rejected because our parents were divorced. Yep. The kids who were accepted all had married parents. Everyone rejected had divorced parents.  When we asked the advisor about it, he talked about the morality clause."

Unbelievable.

Things we need you to stop saying 4

I'm scheduled for a Tech conference.  This is one of the offerings:

Really?

I find this amazing, sad, depressing, and it pisses me off.

I find it amazing that any teacher doesn't know more about technology than students; decent and cheap personal computers that can play video and music and run Office software and play games, have been around for 20 something years now.  More basic machines like the TRS-80 and the PDP8 (with punch tape reader!) since the seventies.  The Internet has been a thing since '95 and smartphones since 2007.

What teacher doesn't know tech at this point? Are there really people that backwards and stupid who don't know Office, and video games and .... a concept of programming whether it's macros in word, Windows script, basic, html, php, javascript, excel .... Anything? Something? Do I know any of these people?

Yes, yes I do. And they're teachers.  That's the sad part. Sad because it seems like MOST of the teachers I deal with are technidiots. (Like that? I just made the word up.)

It's 2015 and this conference is charging $200 a day and this is the title of one hour's workshop and the title isn't considered odd or demeaning or out-of-place. That's depressing but not surprising.

Far too many teachers are STILL tech illiterate, even by comparison with their students.

Yes, I said it. The students are not "digital natives" endowed with magical tech-fu. They are mostly clueless about useful tech of all kinds. They're great at plugging in the computer and playing a video game, or installing Candy crush on their phones and mindlessly playing for hours, but that's not tech literate.  Sure, there are some who know more than I do, but not very many, and I'm not setting a particularly high bar.

So what pisses me off?

This:

Holy shit!  I've been told that I can't teach unless I have certifications and continuing education in all forms of my field. I'm supposed to have lesson plans ready and write curriculum and proficiency based standards and differentiate my teaching.

Programming, apparently, doesn't require any of that.

Programming doesn't need expertise.

Programming is something the smart kid can teach for you.

Students helped with instruction and debugging. They addressed multiple languages and "no one knows the entire curriculum" and "all learn basics together".

What is this, an after school program at the Boys and Girls Club?

Teachers: Stop being idiots. Go learn how to program. Do your budget on Excel. Figure out how to center your words both vertically and horizontally in a Word document.

PD Leaders: Stop encouraging the technidiots.  It's not cute. It's not helpful, and we really need you to stop saying it.

50-cent solution to Car Seat Deaths

The Weather Channel has been making noise about kids left in carseats and dying from the heat ... an admirable cause, to be sure.  They had a short segment in which they talked to some people, ran a clip about some parent who forgot, and then tossed off an industry statement that "Monitoring the back seat for infants would be 'too costly'."

That is utter trash.

$0.50 and a bit of programming would knock down the rates by at least a half.

You know that beep that you get if your keys are in the ignition when you turn off the car and open the door?  It goes for maybe ten seconds and then the dome light and the beep shuts off.

Here's the Keep Your Child Alive Solution: (edited after first comment)

If the LATCH system has a seat installed, when you turn off the ignition or open the driver's door, a beeper located behind the driver (in the dome light or even further back) goes off for a few seconds. It has to be a distinctive beep and it has to come from *behind* the driver. If the LATCH system cannot have a sensor in it, then place a switch there that turns on the system when the seat is installed. Sure, someone could turn it off, but that would take a direct act.

That's all it would take. Most of these deaths are caused by harried drivers, in a rush, forgetting that their child is in the back because he immediately fell asleep and hasn't made a peep for the last thirty miles. A simple chirping noise from behind or a flashing light on the dash is all that the vast majority of these cases would need.

No child in the back carseat? So what? You still think to check.

You're getting out at the gas station? So what? You hear a chirping noise from the back and you remember he's back there. It will become instinctive for parents to hear the beep, turn and check.

All this BS with reminder cards and BESAFE lists? Useless.  It's not that parents don't care. They are forgetting that their kid is in the back - why would a checklist help?

Putting a stuffed animal in the front seat to remind you? Marginally better, until you have more than one thing in the front seat, or you forget to throw that toy in the front, or your son screams for that EXACT toy and you hand it to him ...

Hanging an air freshener from the mirror? In addition to it being illegal in most states and a bad idea to obscure your vision, this "reminder" is constantly in your field of vision and will quickly be ignored.

The car companies can put in 12 airbags that are linked to the seatbelts and pressure sensitive seat sensors, coupled with instantaneous triggering mechanisms, they have hundreds of computer chips that monitor everything about the engine, they are all furiously installing driver-distraction devices like phone and GPS screens and computer-driven window and climate controls that can't be operated safely while the car is in motion ... I think they can figure this one out, too.


Come on, car people. THINK.

Precise speech is critical in math.

Here something just posted on twitter:

My first grader's INSANE Common Core math problem that literally requires 48 steps!

Here's the picture:

 

Now, I know Jack Diddly about teaching kids that young, but I do know this: They're not stupid ... but every kid in the room will read that and struggle a bit on the vocabulary. The font choice will explode the dyslexics' minds (I can barely get "birthday", and "edch" took me a second because the ascender on "a" makes it look too similar to a "d". Yeah, that says "each".)

It's cuetsy and I guess that's okay for first graders.

BUT

When you say "12 classmates", you are directly, explicitly and literally saying that there are 12 other people in the room; Glenda is the 13th student.

Precision in your language is critical. Clear and correct problem statements are essential.  These kids are barely in their comfort zone and you're pitching curveballs and changing it up with high heat?

This is precisely where kids develop their fear of mathematics, where they learn that they don't know how to read it, and where they learn to dread trying word problems because the words don't mean what the kids think they mean.

The teacher doesn't have a clue as to how dangerous this little problem can be.

Kids get confused when they try to understand and keep getting corrected for something that is actually incorrectly stated. Kids get frustrated when you say "at least 10" when you mean "more than 10" and then you don't acknowledge that 10 is valid for one but not the other.

They wind up just getting by and letting the confusion (and the understanding) flow right on past and out the window. Too much of this and we will have lost another generation. It's the fault of this and the next five elementary-level math-phobic teachers.

Thanks for nothing.

Yo, IT Department.

Just some notes for any IT personnel who may be reading:

1. If the accounts at a school aren't consistent -- the account names are different for network log on, powerschool log on, and email -- teachers are not going to be happy. Having mcurmudgeon as my powerschool account, curmudgeonm as my school computer account and math.curmudgeon@vtsch.net as my email is stupid. Do your job - fix that.
2. Changing the domain three times in one year is stupid. Expecting anyone to be happy when you're changing over all of the Google accounts and all of that stored class information from one domain to another should have happened over the summer, not a month into the year.
3. Training is not something you can throw together in two minutes. 



It's called a computer lab. Surely you've heard of that?

4. When conducting software training, it helps if the teachers can be logged in to a computer and can see what you're talking about. Waving your hands dramatically isn't a good way to convey the use of the four level tab and pull down menu structure.
5. Showing a random video to a roomful of teachers isn't software training.
6. Making a 100+ character link available on the school webpage works much better than attempting to relate it verbally to the group.
7. Your job is to make the technology work for the teachers and staff. Period. You have no other purpose.
8. My job is to teach. It does not include teaching myself how to use all this technology so that I can teach the rest of the faculty because you're an incompetent ass.

Have a nice day.

Smart is the New Invisible.

Actually, Smart kids have always been ignored in most schools.

Joanne Jacobs passes on this about Smart Kids:

Exceptionally smart students “are often invisible in the classroom, lacking the curricula, teacher input and external motivation to reach full potential,” writes Science Daily, citing a Vanderbilt study that followed gifted students for 30 years.  The 320 high-IQ students went on to become business leaders, software engineers, physicians, attorneys, and leaders in public policy, reports Who Rises to the Top?, published in Psychological Science.

Despite their remarkable success, researchers concluded that the profoundly gifted students had experienced roadblocks along the way that at times prevented them from achieving their full potential. Typical school settings were often unable to accommodate the rapid rate at which they learned and digested complex material. . . . This resulted in missed learning opportunities, frustration and underachievement, particularly for the exceptionally talented, the researchers suggest.

 This has been a constant irritant for me, for many years. We focus on the "bubble" kids, the weaker students who might pass if we give them a little more attention, and we tend to ignore the very weak as well  as the motivated and the smart.

"Heterogeneous classrooms" is the mantra where I teach, resulting in the kid up front twitching in boredom while the weaker students nod off, zone out, and then need the retakes and the constant nudge to hand in work, finish work, start work, etc.

Honors classes were replaced with CP "College Prep" because Everyone Must Go To College.


"That's the way those One-Room Schoolhouses did it. Why should we single out and spend more money on those kids? They'll be fine. They'll get their As."

It makes me cringe. Yes, they'll get a A, but the weaker kids don't get what they need, and neither do the strong. If you're going to have 5 sections of Algebra 2, why not simply let one of them be comprised of strong students?

Is it wrong of me to note that the people who ask why we should single out smart kids are invariably the parents of, or who were themselves, weak students?

Is it wrong of me to note that I haven't been able to get a whole class to participate in the Norwich Bridge Building Competition, only a few here and there?

"The smart kids can help the weaker kids ... collaboration is 21st Century teaching, you know, and it's the way the Real World works."

Let me channel my inner teenager ...

What if I don't want to do the teacher's job? What if I don't like many of my classmates. Why should I be forced to "teach" my classmates stuff they couldn't be bothered to learn in class the normal way?  Why should my grade depend on someone else's motivation?

Don't give me that "It's Real World" crap because I know that in the RealWorld, the dead-beats would be fired. No one pays people to sit around and wait for the one team member to do all the work. No one gets to wait until someone else is finished and lean over, "So, what did you get on number 1? And how about number 2?"

There's harassment and there's sexual harassment.

And this isn't sexual harassment ... They are six years old, in first grade. Yes, he needs to be punished. If the school has warned him more than once, warned the mother more than once, gradually ramped up the punishments as he repeated his actions ... then suspend him so the parents can do their due diligence.

But this is not sexual harassment.

The mother of a girl involved in the case of a 6-year-old Colorado boy suspended for giving a classmate unwanted kisses says the school did the right thing, ... did a "great job" protecting her daughter from repeated harassment from the boy.

First-grader Hunter Yelton was given a two-day suspension, with a sexual harassment infraction on his discipline record. The boy's mother, Jennifer Saunders, insists the punishment was too harsh. "He is 6 years old, and that is absolutely ridiculous for him to have 'sexual harassment' on his record, even it is (only on the district's) record," she said.

But Masters-Ownbey says the kissing was "not once, but over and over." She said she hoped people would not "start bashing the school that is doing a great job protecting my child from what is sexual harassment."

School officials insist the boy was repeatedly warned and that the punishment was warranted. Lincoln Elementary School Principal Tammy DeWolfe said the school would "never suspend a student for one minor little violation." No criminal charges have been brought against the boy.

Masters-Ownbey stated her daughter's older brother has felt like he needed to protect her at school. "In elementary school, when a boy kisses a girl, the usual response of their peers is 'ewwww,'" she stated. "So why do the other kids rush to tell? Because they've seen it over and over, they've seen him repeatedly get in trouble for it, they've seen the girl repeatedly tell him to stop, they know it's wrong."

I'm not sure how the girl's mother could be saying "did a 'great job' protecting her daughter from repeated harassment from the boy" when he's done this so often that the other kids rushed to tell on him and knew he'd gotten "repeatedly in trouble for it."

I think the boy's mother needs to do something about it, take some responsibility for disciplining and correcting the boy, without whining publicly about the label.  The school shouldn't allow him back until everyone is satisfied that he won't continue, but they should change the label. Feeling "sorry" and "apologizing" will probably be fake as hell because he's six, but worthwhile in the long term.

What kills me is that stories like this tend to blow up on social media and get the school-haters and pro-vouchers/anti-public school advocates going ... and it could have been so easily avoided.

LATER: I notice the school has changed it to "misconduct."

I hate this class.

So why did you take the class? You spent $3000 of your or your parents' money to enroll in it.  It seems pretty amazingly stupid for you to complain about it now, after 4 months.

Why didn't you

• Check out the course bulletin and choose a different course, one you're interested in?
• Check out the professor and make sure he teaches in a way you like; perhaps choose the one you'd like from the department?
• Rearrange your schedule to avoid this class?
• Choose a major that you give a damn about?
• Do something else?

If it was truly worthless, why did you take it? Why not drop it and take something else? No one is forcing you to get this education and, in fact, you'd probably be better off learning a trade than continuing with this very expensive farce.

School is still a valuable word, at least for Marketers.

I know that schools and teachers have been taking a bit of a bashing at the moment but I also think that, deep down, the people of this nation still fundamentally trust teachers and schools.

It's a small thing, but look at how this ad over the years plays to that, evoking "School Model" as if it were the epitome of rock-solid, good old American values:

2002	2003	2006
2007	2009	2009

Some "haters" are probably saying that this is hardly evidence ... I disagree. Marketers tend to take the tack that works. For this to still be used shows that they are making money off it. It came to my local mall this morning, and yes, I know that it's kind of a scam because they're trying to upsell you on the Teacher's version for $199 and the other model for $299.

But why do people respond to it?

"School Model."

Relevance and Student Engagement

I hate discussions of relevance in math class. "When will I use this?" is not a question that should take precedence over building a mathematical foundation. Students cannot learn foundational material by getting hit with RealLife™™ questions ... at least not until the later stages of the unit or section.

Follow the center of gravity.

Students who are taught in an appropriately scaffolded fashion will understand better, retain material understanding longer, and apply the material more intelligently in non-standard situations. They will see the action, realize the math behind it, and "use this in RealLife™" in ways that neither you nor they can possibly predict right now.

Throwing them immediately into the deep end, however, by giving them the incredibly messy RealLife™ questions with all of the ramifications and qualifications, coupled with seven different solution methods, actually blocks acquisition and development. The Gateway Arch is not a parabola but saying that in the quadratics chapter won't help the students.

The takeaway: Make the numbers fit the first few times. Your R²-value should be 1 until the kids get the hang of things. Your numbers should work out evenly for a while. Give them the messy stuff after they've mastered the simple.

It's not that simple.

That's why math books tend to look simplistic and abstract, why they have false-seeming questions ... they know that the kids can't handle the complex stuff yet. Word problems are deliberately simplistic - to make them realistic would lead only to needless frustration. That's why the students don't see five years down the road, why they can't see the long-term implications and utility of what they are seeing right now ... because they're still learning to drive this car and haven't gotten the basics of its operation down yet. Watch a young driver and think about that teenager learning algebra: they are overly focused on the minutiae of the work and not yet ready to drive fast and react to changing road conditions. If there's another teenager in the car, they'll get themselves killed ... that's why learners permit and first-year drivers are so restricted.

FalseRealLife is even worse. If you attempt to overlay a fourth-order function on a photograph of a cloud formation or a transcendental function on ivy-covered bushes, you destroy, in the minds of every student in the room, the utility and purpose of  a regression -- there is no possible natural reason for that edge of that cloud to have any relationship with a fourth-order function or for the series of leaves to follow that curve. If you attempt to overlay a parabolic function on a Norman Window (semicircle on rectangle), you demonstrate the uselessness of mathematics by being somehow unable to come up with an example of data that is appropriately modeled by the regression you chose.

The takeaway: If you want students to see the utility of math, you have to use math in a useful way, using actual numbers and actual results. Bringing in your extensive knowledge of physics and other sciences here is worth the time.

For this reason, I include Bad Numbers in the FalseRealLife™ category as well. When "Johnny" winds up to be 71 meters tall, you have done yourself and your students a true disservice. This gem from a worksheet encapsulates this perfectly: "Math Problem 16. My sister greedily lapped up 483 liters of maggot juice from a saucer. I slurped up 5 times as much creamy maggot juice as she. How much delightfully delicious maggot juice did we drink altogether?" Besides the stupid attempt to engage the boys with "gross" humor, we have to ask ourselves how we expect the students to ever get a handle on the metric system or their own sense of "reasonableness" if we give them problems with numbers like this.

The takeaway: If you want students to relate, it has to be relateable, it has to be understandable, and it has to be real.

When it's clearly not a fourth-order and you try
to put a quartic on it, what message are you sending?
That your math is bullshit.

But, then there's FantasyLife which uses crazy situations and wildly weird math to model it. If you use this at the very end of a section, it can lighten the mood while opening minds. It's so bizarre that the students can't apply their RealLife knowledge to it and they then can focus on the math. The math is so inappropriate to the situation is draws laughter and silliness.

I bring you "Love Mathematically."

Folk remedies are SOOOO much better than vaccines.

Said no doctor, ever.

It just boggles my mind that people still believe Andrew Wakefield's bullshit.

Technology is programmed but Teaching isn't. Can't Fix That.

Dan Meyer mentions Pattern Matching In Khan Academy, quoting Stephanie H. Chang, one of Khan Academy's software engineers:

I observed how some students made progress in exercises without necessarily demonstrating understanding of the underlying concepts. The practice of “pattern matching” is something that Ben Eater and Sal had mentioned on several occasions, but seeing some of it happening firsthand made a deeper impression on me.

I find these kinds of errors showing up often on the gray, blurry line between teaching and computing/programming.

Those who teach don’t necessarily understand programming so they tend to not be able to specify what works in a classroom and the processes or habits that the software is meant to address.

Those who program have never taught so they don’t know how to write the code that solves the problem because they fundamentally don’t understand the problem - or more problematically, don't understand the math they are "teaching" well enough to actually teach it. (That wisc-online tutorial about radians is still there 10 years on, still unchanged, still displaying the same problems I talked about in 2008.)

Unfortunately, those who have done both to a sufficient level aren’t writing the programs that most of us need.  Sometimes, the incompetence is on both sides, but ...

You see this in:
-- grading programs that ignore the ways teachers operate and get in the way instead of making life truly easier ... I just need to enter grades and I don't need a "Wizard" to do it. Why do I have to put this number here and why can't I delete it later?  Why does the thing insist on showing the entire gradebook at all times - I'd like to allow a sub or a student aide to enter attendance. Why does the program not allow me to copy and paste the progress report into an email? Why do I have to use a "wizard" to enter a note to student?

-- Moodle courses that purport to teach but contain things like this gem from a graduate-credit bearing course being "taught" by our "curriculum coordinator":

Google Apps Tutorial:
Watch this online tutorial introduction for Google Apps. (Hints: your screen may not be large enough, so scroll down to see the next button. Playback controls are near the bottom of the page in the center--a very small tab above the line.) Some things on this tutorial will look a little different. Don't let that throw you.
http://services.google.com/apps/resources/overviews/welcome/topicWelcome/index.html

That's it.  That's the sum total of her "teaching". "Follow this link and learn from it".  Must be nice to earn that much money doing so little.

Isosceles has a new definition in SKOOL.

--- software that doesn’t work or fails in bizarre ways ... did you know that Greece is an island? or that a 45-45-90 triangle can have sides 252-325-403? SKOOL says it does and anything named SKOOL.com must be correct, right?  It came with the SmartBoard, so it must be Smart.

 --- Tools and software that include limitations and drawbacks unnecessarily. One of the most puzzling is TI-SmartView, which allows the teacher to project on a IWB a very realistic, working version of the TI-84. The simulation has been deliberately slowed down to mimic the time that the actual calculator takes to graph a complicated function ... WTF? ... I have a quad-core machine and it takes seconds to do this graph? As a result, I use the thing only to show the students key locations and methods -  it's too damned slow and cumbersome ... I use things like Graph 4.4 instead -- better graphics, higher resolution, more colors, faster interface, free. Anyway ...

“I observed how some students made progress in exercises without necessarily demonstrating understanding of the underlying concepts.”

Yeah, like the people who made and those who take the at wisc-online tutorial about radians.

We’ve come a long way but not nearly far enough to allow the replacement of teachers; like one other of Dan Meyer's commenters, I see the best use of Khan as taking the rote memorization out of the hands of the teacher-in-class (though Flash Cards is the Number ONE “really cool idea” promoted by the parents I talk to, especially the home-schoolers).

Let them practice outside of class and bring basic skills to automaticity so that we can do some real work together in our limited time together.

Types of Homeschoolers

This rant was sparked by the comment described below about World of Warcraft.  Ignore it if you choose to, but I felt like a little rant was in order.

I figure that you can raise your kids in whatever fashion you feel appropriate within the limits set forth by the Division of Youth Services and the standards of human decency.  As long as you don't slip over into abuse or negligence, it's probably none of my business to tell you how to raise your kids.  And no, spanking isn't abuse. Schooling is one of those parental choices.

In my experience, homeschoolers' reasons fall into three basic categories.

1. Those who feel they can do a better job.  This parent is usually well educated and has the ability to spend the time necessary to do the job right.  Sometimes, this is a work-from-home parent who can work from some really neat places, so they travel a lot and take their kids on a grand tour of the world. Perhaps the child is truly superior and the parents are nurturing that ability and don't want their child to slow down in any way. These people I have no problems with ... take your kid out of school ... he'll be fine and go to a decent college (or not) and live a good life.
2. Then there are the religious reasons. These range from "the public school is too permissive and my kids are going to learn about all those horrible things and start doing drugs and forget about God" to a simple desire to have theology classes and a more spiritual approach to life.  This group, I have no problems with ... raising your kids in a closed environment probably isn't the best idea for psychological development, but it should be a choice that parents can make for their kids. Living a more religious life among the Heathens is a choice.
3. Then there are the assholes, the parents who "homeschool" for asinine reasons. These are the ones who take their kid out of school so he can play Guitar Hero "professionally" or who sign the papers and let the kid sit at home all day long or make him go to work for the family business because they don't want to pay a real worker. I'll include here the racist clowns who "homeschool" because they don't want their kids in a building with "spics and niggers." (A friend of mine was visiting his nephew and noticed them playing World of Warcraft early around noon.  He asked who everyone was and was told that they were all Texas kids whose parents didn't want them in public school for that reason ... although on WoW, they can't use that language, so they have to say 'S&Ns")

Of course, none of these reasons justifies the "voucher" idea. If your town opens a public school for all of those who wish to take advantage of it, it shouldn't have to pay to send your kid somewhere else.  If you want to buck the group and get something special, I think the town/state should allow you to do so and not make a fuss beyond asking for a description of the curriculum/syllabus, but you need to provide that something special at your own cost.

Experts in Education

... don't seem to have any experience in education. Occasionally, we'll get that rare person running professional development ... an actual teacher who has had recent experience at our level ... but mostly it's another "Bright Ideas come from Industry" kind of person or it's someone who was an elementary teacher twenty years ago who left the classroom to get a PhD in education and never looked back.

Education Experts

• are people who start foundations with profits from the computer industry (Bill Gates), 
• who taught a single summer course at a small private school in Massachusetts (Alfie Kohn), 
• who made a ton of money as a fund manager and made a few videos for his nieces (Salman Khan),
• who had a daughter with special needs (Bill Daggett) and now spends his time being on boards and shilling his research results. "We have found what the most-improving schools are doing ... but it'll cost you."
• who take a six-week prep course and are ready to "Save the Kids" from their drab, wretched lives as long as the saving doesn't infringe on their chance to get a "Real Job" (TFA-ers)

from NYCEducator

In fact, it seems that the one criteria common to all of these "Modern Wonders of the Education World" is that they've never been teachers. The second commonality is that they can't agree on the advice they give and spend most of the time contradicting the other expert.

• More tech, more tech, more tech vs. Less Tech, more Literacy
• "More Homework" "Less homework" "No homework"
• Back to Basics; Raise the Standards; Teach All Students the Same thing.
• Homogenize and Differentiate vs. Tracking and Splitting out the exceptional kids.

Why do these experts get pushed to the fore? I think it's because they made money, or on the case of TFAs had parents that made enough money to send them to IVY-league schools. To make money, you have to be a bit of an inconsiderate asshole with a tremendous ego streak and a certainty that your actions are always right. This works in industry ... just ask Donald Trump.

Interesting side note: Microsoft's first big success, DOS, was essentially stolen from its original programmer ... Bill paid a tiny fraction of what it was worth and immediately turned around and sold it to IBM at a huge markup.

So now what? I guess I'll just keep plugging along, teaching the kids and doing my job.

I'm happy to hear of the success they're having in college (gots lots of stories the other night at open house). I'm a little bummed when kid after kid comes to me and says how much they wish they were in my class again, how the other teacher is "so awful" and doesn't teach right and I have to help them realize that everyone teaches in a different way and that they need to adjust to a different style, "Different is not bad, it's just different." It's tiring to endure the "experts" who tell me, in not so many words, "You Suck. You don't Know What Works."

Bah.  I've got to get back to work.

History Channel Isn't Much

It's not as if no one ever noticed this before, but I really wish that History Channel would stop with the reality shows junk. I don't want them to go back to WWII all the time, but come on, there's no history on during Prime Time on History.

Can't we have a "Vicarious Jobs Channel"?

Sunday 2/26
8/7c Ax Men: Fists of Fury
9/8c Ax Men: Wake-up Call
10/9c Full Metal Jousting: Death Sticks & a Coffin
11/10c Top Gear: Muscle Cars
Monday 2/27
8/7c Pawn Stars: Guns Blazing
8:30/7:30c Pawn Stars: Pawnocchio
9/8c American Pickers: Knuckleheads
10/9c Pawn Stars: James Gang Rides Again
10:30/9:30c Pawn Stars: Ring around a Rockne
11/10c American Pickers: Odd Fellas
Tuesday 2/28
8/7c Pawn Stars: Weird Science
8:30/7:30c Pawn Stars: Learning the Ropes
9/8c Top Gear: Dangerous Cars
10/9c Top Shot: Shotgun Showdown
11/10c Top Shot: Shotgun Showdown
Wednesday 2/29
8/7c American Restoration: Keep on Trucking
8:30/7:30c American Restoration: Tyler's Promotion
9/8c Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy: America After Dark
10/9c American Restoration: Cold War Crusin'
10:30/9:30c American Restoration: Close Shave
11/10c Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy: Larry's Favorite Stuff
Thursday 3/1
8/7c Swamp People: Divide to Conquer
9/8c Swamp People: Monster Marsh
10/9c Mudcats: Boiling Point
11/10c 10 Things Yyou Didn't Know About: Abraham Lincoln
11:30/10:30c 10 Things Yyou Didn't Know About: Benjamin Franklin
Friday 3/2
8/7c American Pickers: Knuckleheads
9/8c 101 Gadgets That Changed The World
11/10c Mudcats: Boiling Point
Saturday 3/3
8/7c Full Metal Jousting: The Ultimate Extreme Sport
9/8c Full Metal Jousting: Unhorsed
10/9c Full Metal Jousting: Death Sticks & a Coffin
11/10c Modern Marvels: World's Sharpest