I believe that mathematics should be taught, not collaboratively explored; algebra and geometry are better than a vague course of Integrated Math; spiraling doesn't work nearly as well as learning it properly the first time; "I don't DO math" should be an incentive rather than an excuse. "I don't DO English" should be treated the same way.
Right from the front page of the Rutland Herald (VT) ...
When David Belock's car went missing, he told state police he suspected the men who delivered cocaine to his house on a weekly basis may have been responsible.
But wait, it gets better. How? Well, a man was found driving it. (There was also a passenger from Brooklyn) The driver claimed he didn't know the man in the other seat nor where the car had come from, but
When he arrived at his home, he found the man from Brooklyn in his house and the car parked in his driveway. He decided to go to the store and noticed the keys were in the ignition so he decided to take the car to the Grand Union supermarket.
And, all this time, I thought the New York Post made this kind of stuff up.
(story by Brent Curtis, Rutland Herald)
I find it amazing that this article had to be written ... then I remember times in class when I reference basic historical knowledge and I understand.
While fans of the "Harry Potter" series headed to the Web on Thursday to catch the London red carpet premiere of the latest movie, others wondered why the actors wore matching red poppy boutonnieres. Stars Daniel Radcliffe, 21, Emma Watson, 20, and Rupert Grint, 22, who play Harry Potter and his best friends, Hermione and Ron, all donned the red blooms. They were joined by attendees Tom Felton and Ralph Fiennes and none other than J.K. Rowling herself -- and not just because they looked dapper. The flowers have a special meaning in Britain.
Yeah, I know. I hate that old saw, too. But dammit, why do we have to have so many people confirming it? The Mrs. reminded me of a time last year when she went to a conference. Another teacher stood and spoke of their "adventures" hiring a third-grade teacher. The school required the applicants (13 of them? Number was implied, not specified) to write an essay and take the 8th-grade end-of-course math test.
It's been said before and it bears repeating. Jargon ("the language, esp. the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group") is used to make communication simpler and more precise.
Except in education.
Education "experts" use jargon to make simple things sound complicated, to change the inherent meaning of words and to appear (I guess) smarter than the speaker actually is. Education experts further abuse the English language by changing the meanings of simple words to either "be cute" or to obfuscate.
In what other field would a person who was speaking to a room full of professionals, requesting that thoughts and questions be "captured" (written down on sticky notes) and that the sticky notes be then attached to the "Parking Lot" at the back of the room (a large piece of paper decorated with an elementary school cartoon of a car and the words "Parking Lot" in large, multi-colored letters.
Teachers will never be taken seriously as professionals until we cease to find this clever, cute, or anything but demeaning and puerile.
"The 'cellphone effect.' In 2003, just 3.2% of households were cell-only, while in the 2010 election one-quarter of American adults have ditched their landlines and rely exclusively on their mobile phones, and a lot of pollsters don't call mobile phones. Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white — all Democratic demographics — and a study by Pew Research suggests that the failure to include them might bias the polls by about 4 points against Democrats, even after demographic weighting is applied."
This will make the "science" of polling even more suspect. It's a factor I hadn't really considered until now, but everyone that I know who has dropped their landline for a cell-only life is definitely in the Democratic profile.
On the other hand, those people most likely to skip voting entirely are also in the exact same demographic.
Joanne Jacobs notes that Rhode Island considers tiered diplomas: The best students in Rhode Island’s most rigorous schools may get a Regents diploma showing they’ve met state standards, while most graduates would earn a local diploma, reports the Providence Journal. Tougher graduation requirements linked to the Regents diploma are supposed to go into effect in 2012. But many districts — including the three largest, Cranston, Providence and Warwick — aren’t ready to teach to that level. Students aren’t ready either.
I've thought for years that a single diploma was too broad a brush to paint the picture of all of the graduates. I approved of the NYRegents diploma when it was actually a challenge to get one, when you had to work hard at a more difficult course and pass a more difficult curriculum to get it.
What I foresee happening in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations is a quick fade on the strict adherence to the standards they set up. Just as NY has fiddled with its tests until the NYRegents has little meaning, so will the RIRegents.
Maybe there will be some students who stand out while it lasts. It would certainly alleviate the problems of remedial word requirements in college and would allow employers and college admissions people to have a better feel for the true ability of the applicant.
doesn't mean it's aliens. Just because your feeble brain is stuck on something and can't come up with a reasonable answer, doesn't mean there isn't one.
So here's the moron who's convinced that he sees a cellphone using time-traveler in an outtake from a Charlie Chaplin film.
When faced with two or more conclusions, the simplest one is usually the truth. In this case, the simplest explanation is that this is an alien. No wait, it's a secret plot by time travelers. No wait, she's holding her hand over her ear because it's cold out. No wait, it's DVD distortion. No wait, it's a cellphone. No wait, it's photoshop.
Look, if we can make the entire friggin' Lord of the Ring Trilogy of Monsters, why is "time travel" the first thing this so-called intelligent filmmaker can come up with?
Okay, let's run with a time traveler: Why would someone with the technology to do time travel be wandering around Hollywood with a cellphone that has to be held against the ear and is going to buzz or ringtone at really inopportune times (like that wouldn't be noticed?)? Why not a subdermal subvocalization mic w/ bluetooth connected to a satellite phone to the geosynchronously orbiting time travel pod and the bevy of space-studs dressed in leather thongs? Because that would be ridiculous?
All that technology that I just mentioned is currently available. Even the studs dressed in leather thongs. Cellphones in the form the Irishman witnessed have only been around for 5-6 years. Previously, they were differently shaped and would have required a cellphone tower every three miles. Phones are even now beginning to look different from "this" one - smartphone, bluetooth, etc.
Why would technology from the current, and narrow, 5-6 year window be the one seen? Because this is a self-delusionary fool who has a little imagination and sees what he wants to see.
Or this is a stunt by the Irishman - maybe he wants to get himself a little exposure as an idiot, thinking he'll somehow get more "award-winning" film jobs.
Or this is a stunt by the DVD compiler, trying to sell copies of a boxed set to gullible idiots or people who want to "prove that Irishman wrong," i.e., gullible idiots.
Or this is a misinterpretation of 6 seconds of footage culled from millions of hours of Hollywood video. At this rate, even monkeys can randomly type a line or two of Shakespeare.
Santa Cruz Sentinel, today:
The City Council will consider a proposal today to establish a citywide pay-by-cell phone system that would allow motorists to start, finish and extend time for meters or fee-based parking spots. [..] Consumers would pay a fee of 35 cents per transaction, or 25 cents for frequent users if they are willing also to pay a monthly access fee of $1.75.
"Is pseudocontext a failure of imagination or is it a symptom of laziness? Because this sort of thing just isn't hard to find."
I think it's pretty lame of him to toss out this false dichotomy like that. (My browser settings and his comment system don't seem to be on speaking terms, so I'll mention this here.) And I notice that he's been teaching for how long and only now noticed this gem? (I know that's unfair, but so is the original question. I withdraw my snarky comment.)
No, the real problem here is one of timing, of not having this pop up in your newspaper on the day you need it, at the time you're doing the lesson planning. It's got little to do with a lack of imagination. In fact, a lack of imagination is probably the best trait for someone doing lesson plans. Teaching takes imagination -- why waste this limited resource on something as foolish as lesson plans? What God in whichever Heaven you stare at when you can't see a ceiling decreed that you must know what the kids will be doing during the 13th minute of your class period? What if you needed to repeat something or -- swoon -- got off on a really good tangent?
Besides, not everyone spends every waking moment solely focused on teaching and mathematics. Sometimes, I just read.
It does take a certain frame of mind to watch for these things ... an old teacher friend of mine used to clip articles ... this is similar. I never could get the hang of it with newspaper, but I do find it easier on the Internet. Now that I have been using the thumbdrive method of file transport, I have amassed a large library of these types of things, neatly sorted into the classes and folders so I can find them later when I get around to it. (Yeah, right)
Having said that, this "Real-World" problem is no more or less engaging to students than the cellphone plan that charges by the month or by the 100 minute-block or the psuedocontextual dreck in the book.
[So I had a five-minute bit of Photoshop fun at Dan's expense. Don't think nothing of it.]
I'm a high-school math teacher completely frustrated with new math, reform math, fuzzy math, the color of math, talking about math, literacy across the curriculum and all those other things that get in the way of students actually learning math, not to mention the ever-present "You need to help raise our scores by taking one day a week to go over test-taking skills" and other administrative folderol.
(He/Him/Mr.)
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