Journalism?

Like most schools we have a school newspaper. The students interview teachers and students about a variety of different things. Sports, clubs, "controversial" issues (is block scheduling good?) etc. Last year I was interviewed a few times for various things. The students who did the interviewing did a good job I thought.

This year things are very different. I've been interviewed twice. Both times I got an email with a list of questions that I was to type my response to and send back. Now I think this is a problem. First of all it becomes homework for me. Typing thoughtful responses is more difficult than simply talking with a student. Isn't one of the skills of journalism asking questions and taking down the responses? Condensing them and double checking that you have quotes correct? I think it is a shame that these students are allowed to do all email interviews rather than do one in person.

I Wish I Was in Your Class Again

As the year progresses previous students at times make their way back to my room to say hi. While they visit I ask how math is going for them this year and many of them utter the phrase I hate "I wish I had you again this year" or "I liked your class so much better." Now you might say why in the world do I hate that phrase. What a wonderful compliment. Here's what I don't know. When they say that it means one of two things

1. You were such a great teacher and I learned so much from you.

or

2. Your class was so much easier and I didn't have to try as hard and you didn't yell at me as much.

I hope when they say that they mean number one but I always fear they mean number two.

Things That Make Year 2 Better Than Year 1

• You now know 2 groups of students. Past students and Current Students
• Instead of learning names of all the faculty I only have to learn the names of the ten or so new people
• I think you gain some respect from other teachers for surviving your first year
• Coaching a team and having even more students you know
• Teaching a class for the second time and therefore having more confidence in your ability to teach it well.
• Not having the stress of house hunting or an hour long drive to work.
• Tests are already made now all they need is to be tweaked rather than invented from scratch
• Having the knowledge of who does what in the office and knowing who can get the job done for you.
• Not being called a first year teacher.

Busy Busy Busy

So being a second year teacher, first year coach, and in grad school all at the same time isn't the best idea. At some point I might get to write a real entry, hopefully. Otherwise I'll see you at the end of October when the season is over.

In Defense of Tenure

Let's get a few things straight. Tenure protects bad teachers. That is a problem that must be fixed. Also just so we are clear I myself do not have tenure yet. Now that we have that out of the way . . .

Tenure isn't as bad as everyone thinks. Absolutely there are plenty of teachers in the system that only have their job thanks to tenure. They are lazy and ineffective and schools are powerless to be able to fire them. I have no solution to this.

But there is a flip side, tenure also protects good teachers. Let me explain. Those of us who teach know that education is an ever evolving field. Every year there is the new "thing" that is going to change education. Differentiated instruction, multiple intelligences, problem based learning, guided discovery, etc. Some of these work, some of them don't. Some of these ideas are good in some situations others not so much. The problem happens because some administrator goes to a workshop and learns one of these new methods, thinks it is the educational penicillin so to speak, and tries to get all their teachers to use it all the time. This is where tenure becomes good. Those of us who are in the classroom realize that you cannot do something like problem based learning everyday. It doesn't work. Some days you have to have the back-to-basics-I-talk-you-take-notes-then-do-some-practice-problems type of lesson. The enlightened administrators don't like this. Lessons like that are ineffective according to them. Therefore if you do an "evil lecture" you must be a bad teacher.

Essentially tenure protects good educators from falling victim to the always changing fad world of education. Confidence in our jobs allows us to do what we know from experience to be effective without having to cower to the newest educational trend. (Not that this does not give us an excuse to not try new things, but the key word is try not accept as perfect without an evidence)

Now the automatic argument is that in a "real" job there is no tenure why should teachers be any different? Well take an editor for example. An editor essentially proofreads for a living. He has no tenure, nor will he ever. But his job is not ever changing. The grammar rules of today that he is in charge of using properly are not changing. His boss will never say to him, "how about instead of using grammar we have the reader 'discover' where the grammar should go. Get rid of all those pesky commas and periods." The rules of the editor's job aren't changing so he doesn't need tenure. As long as he continues to properly apply the rules of grammar he has job security (assuming the finances of the company remain stable and such). Expectations are clear and consisten from day one. We teachers are not so lucky, our "grammar" rules are ever changing at the whim of our administrators.

It leaves us with a not so rhetorical question, which is worse, tenure protecting good teachers or tenure protecting bad teachers? and how do we fix the system?

Charters Not So Great?

According to CNN charter school students are scoring lower in both math and reading. Interesting considering how many people are saying charter schools are the key to our education problems.

Personally I think this study is flawed because how different charter schools can be. For example in Deleware the charter schools are often the best schools in the state because the public schools are in such bad shape. The best teachers in Deleware want to teach at charter schools.

In many areas of Pennsylvania the situation is reversed. Charter schools aren't so great because many of the public schools are doing very well and also pay much better. So in Pennsylvania often the best teachers are working in public schools. This is a broad generalization and is not true in all areas. Also this is completely based on what I have experienced not on any hard data. Although I do believe this makes it hard to study charter schools nationwide when they are so different from state to state.

Coaching - Day 5

I made it through cuts and no one has threatened to kill or harm me yet. So far so good. There is a definite upside to cuts though. All of a sudden you have 20 very happy players and 20 very happy parents who are all willing to help out in anyway possible. I don't know what is in store for this season. It will be interesting to say the least since this is my first time as a head coach and it is the first time this school has ever had a volleyball team. All I know is I've picked a team I'm happy with let's see what happens from here.

Coaching - Day 4

Cuts.

Not fun.

I've done some coaching before but never as a head coach so I never had to cut a player. Tommrow I do. Pouring over my lists and going back and forth between cut this player, no keep them, no cut them, no keep them . . .

In my head I've been comparing coaching to teaching and they are very similar. Planning drills (lessons) that will improve the players (students) skills (math abilities). Cuts are not like teaching at all. In teaching you have to tell everyone that they are smart and can do it. It is unacceptable that someone might not have the abilities to do well in any course. In coaching it is completely different. Tommrow I have to go into the gym and tell roughly 20 girls that "they aren't good enough" based on me watching them for four days. I can't say that I am looking forward to tommrow.

Coaching - Day 1

So just finished my first day as a head coach. Now I've coached before, but never as a head coach where I was in charge. I have to say: hats off to those of you who have done this....especially those who have done it for a long time. I knew there was a lot that went on besdies practices and games but I have no idea how much. Rules meeting, league meeting, parents meeting, coaches meeting, physicals, emergency cards, parent issues, player issues, planning and running practices, getting equipment and the list goes on.

The good news is as hard as it was I had a blast and can't wait for day two. Although I'm not looking forward to cuts on Friday I am loving being a coach. I think the key to coaching happiness is coaching a sport the athletic director doesn't understand. It is like teaching if you were allowed to do it your way with no watchful eyes from an administrator. Plus if I say I need equipment he doesn't put up much of a fight since he doesn't really know what I'm even asking for.

In closing, thank your coaches today, they deserve it.

The Last Great Tech Generation? Version 2.0

Michael Anderson made a comment on this post that jump started my thinking and gave me the perfect example.

I have been told, harangued, and lectured repeatedly that our incoming
(college) freshmen are the Computer Generation, because they've "grown up with
computers."

Then they sit down to do Homework Set #1, which requires them to
construct a table and graph with a spreadsheet. Suddenly, they've never SEEN a
computer, have no idea how to use a mouse, and apparently have had even basic
arithmetic wiped from their brains.

This is exactly what I am talking about. In Excel there is a wonderful little graph button. So students enter some data and then mindlessly hit the graph button assuming that whatever graph pops out is what the teacher is looking for. They don't think about what the teacher asked them to graph or whether or not what they have produced even makes sense in reference to the data. If they do manage to figure out that what they have is incorrect they don't understand how the computer has used their data to get the graph and so they are unable to go back to the data and the graph properties to modify them for the proper result. The "graph" button has made it unnecessary for them to think.

Interesting Article

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elementary/?article=Myth_of_Americas_Failing_Schools
Most interesting part to me:

I find it interesting that in India, about 7 percent of the college-age population is in college. I'm thinking Indian students must work desperately in that last year of high school to squeeze into the 7 percent. American students are more lackadaisical because here about 63 percent of high school graduates go to college the next year and the others can go later--this is a country of second chances.

If you test two groups of students, one of which has been cramming for months and one of which hasn't, the former will score higher. But are they better educated? Will they know more in a year? Four years? Ten? It's not a given. A test score is a snapshot of a moment.

Why should I work hard in school when it seems that I'm going to end up in college anyway. Now I realize that in America there are probably more colleges and families have more money they can use to afford those colleges. Probably in India some students that have the ability to go to college can't due to financial reasons. But I strongly doubt that the finances account for the disparity in those numbers.

The Last Great Tech Generation?

Yes today's children have grown up with computers. Most of them have probably not had a day when their house did not have a computer. Computers have been a given since the day they were born. Yes these students are comfortable with a computer. No they aren't scared of them like many adults are. But are these students really tech savvy? I submit that they are not.

I'm in my mid 20s so I am comfortable with computers. I remember I was 6 years old when we got our first one and it was the greatest thing in the world. 20 megabyte hard drive, 486 processor, 4 megabytes of ram, both sizes of floppy drives (yes those 3.5" "hard" disks are actually floppy disks) Windows 3.1 and DOS. Now in those days to make the computer do anything worthwhile you had to at least know a little something:

c:
dir/w
cd games
cd keen
dir/p
keen.exe

commands like that were necessary just to load a simple game from DOS. I had to know what was going on to actually accomplish something. Later I learned how to write batch files and the like to speed that process up. I even had my own "operating system" at one point (a text file with a listing the names of batch files to run my favorite programs). The key here is I knew stuff to make this work. It was NEVER as simple as just clicking on an icon and boom there I was, and don't even get me started on how difficult it was to install a new program on those.

Now I'll be the first to admit: I'm a geek. I loved this stuff. I become more into this then I needed to. But my friends who weren't as geeky as me still learned the basic commands of DOS, could install programs, and even use a boot disk when necessary. The main point is computers required knowledge to be used properly. Not just knowledge of what buttons to press but what was actually going on in the computer. You had to know why you needed to do something. (The same way I try to teach my students it is important that you know why you are doing what you are doing not just which numbers to add or subtract but the reason behind them)

Today not so much. Everything is so user friendly that the computer does everything for you and you don't have to know anything. I mean you can click one link from a website and it will automatically download, install, configure, and run a program without prompting you for much more than to agree to that darn end user agreement. No thinking no knowledge no nothing. The result: students who are great at playing games, getting around internet filters, and playing jokes, not great computer skills. Today most of my students view the computer as little more than a vehicle to instant message, write papers, and browse myspace on. They have no idea how to use a computer for anything more.

Now some of you may say so what? You don't need DOS commands anymore. All you need to know to do what you want is what icons to click. Here is my quick counterexample. I am setting up wireless network in my house. I want to use MAC filtering to keep outsiders out. Well if you have ever tried to find your MAC address on your computer it is not an easy thing. There is a task that a "typical" person may want to be able to accomplish on their own and cannot be down without some computer knowledge.

What will this lack of computer ability mean for the future? I'm somewhat scared to find out.

Reflections on One Big Year (Part 1: Teaching)

So I made it. First year of teaching down and I'm coming back for more next year. It was fun, exciting, tiring, boring, challenging, frustrating, and so much more. What did I learn?

• Most students do want to learn (or at least do well) but you have to make it worth their time
• Not doing homework is a virus that can quickly spread through a class if one isn't careful
• I can only control what happens in my classroom so I better make good use of those 50 minutes
• ALWAYS take your lunch
• Bring as little work home as possible, your wife (and you) need non school time
• Only teachers really enjoy teacher stories
• You have to teach them not only the material but how to learn the material
• Get to know the other teachers as people outside the classroom
• A little food or candy can do wonders for the attitude of the class.
• Apparently I can actually get students to learn something
• I really am going to miss my students, I really enjoyed having them and I hope they believe me when I told them that.

I very much enjoyed my first year and am willing to go back but I am certainly glad to have this summer to relax first.

My (Two) Favorite Quote(s) of Late

"In Teaching you have a million bosses that can yell at you and no one that can fire you"
- Fellow Teacher

It most certainly is the truth. I can be reprimanded by my mentor, department head, either assistant principal, principal, any of 3 assistant superintendent, or the head superintendent. Can any of them really do anything to me? Not really. I guess they could fire me until I get tenure but they probably won't unless I do something really really horrible. Makes for an interesting profession that way. If no one can really do anything to me why should I listen to them?

Unfortunately I can't remember the other one at the moment....darn, it was good I promise.

Thankfully I remembered.
"Teaching is the only field in which everyone thinks they are an expert, and since they all went through 12 years of it, they kind of are"
-Another fellow teacher

This quote is so true and can make our jobs so difficult too. Everyone has a real experience and at least remembers what worked for them and what didn't. It helps because parents can help their children if they remember it but hurts us too because parents also have their own fears from school and without realizing it put them on their children. If I had a dollar for everytime I've talked to a parent about their child struggling in math and their only response was "I was never very good at math either" Like that is an answer. I didn't do well in math so my child doesn't have to either. Very helpful for a teacher trying to motivate the students to learn math if their parents gives them a free out.

Can't Be First

This will always amuse me. No one ever wants to be the first one to turn in a test. I have at least 5 kids sitting there with completed tests that don't want to be first. As soon as one brave kid (and its the same one in every class) finally decides they are done all of a sudden many students will finish too. Little things like this always seem to amuse me. I wonder if that will continue beyond my first year.

Robots vs. Thinkers

"That's not fair! We didn't have a problem like that on the homework!"

Yep, and that is the point. I'm trying to teach my students that being able to redo a homework problem with different numbers in it is not a reasonable test. I don't want them to simply memorize step one, step two, and step three. I want them to think about what is going on in the problem and what needs to be done to get from what they are given to what they want to find. Apparently making them think about what to do is unfair. How do I tell the parents that are mad that the school has been failing their kids by making them think that math is just learning the formulas and then doing the same problems with different numbers on the test? That isn't learning, that is training a monkey to count. I like to think my students are smarter than monkeys.

**On an unrelated note I'm looking for a good way for a male teacher to inform a female student that it isn't that his room is too cold it is that she is wearing far too little clothing**

Many Hats

I knew when I was getting into teaching that I would play more roles than just classroom teacher. Career advice, college advice, counselor, parent, etc. I never knew I also needed to be all knowing information source.

Apparently I should know among other things:

The weather
Every sports schedule (high school and pro)
Every student that was called to the office
Curriculum guide for all subjects not just the one I teach
TV listings
General Pop Culture Informer

Thankfully this does seem to justify my excessive TV watching.

The Wave of Panic

Quizzes and tests just seem to inspire posts. Maybe because I can type without looking at my keyboard so I can do this and still watch for cheaters

I call this testing phenomenon the "wave of panic" someone will ask a "stupid" question about a problem "just to be sure." Today it was this: "A regular hexagon has a side length of 6 cm." This inspires the question of "is six the side length or half the side length?" To which I respond it is the SIDE LENGTH. Other students overhear this question and start to panic and I get asked the same question or even sillier ones because of it. "Do you mean 6 is the perimeter?" "So 6 is the radius right?"

My other favorite from today. In one of my problems I made a mistake. The directions say find the area of the regular pentagon pictured. Then I have a drawing of a hexagon with parts labeled. So I tell the class to cross out the word pentagon and replace it with the word hexagon. No one listens and I get the questions asked 3 or 4 more times. I tell one student and she response with "oh I don't read the directions so I wouldn't have even noticed." Makes me wish that I could tape record that and play it back for her when she gets her grade. . .

Fundraisers . .

how I hate thee. Maybe I don't have a reasonable understanding of this having only worked in a classroom and never in an office setting but why in the world must we ALWAYS have AT LEAST 4 fundraisers going on at a time. Yes I want to save the whales, and the ozone, and feed the hungry, and support the homeless shelter, and the SPCA, and the hurricane victims, and so on. But is the answer really hitting up teachers and students everytime someone hears of a cause that needs help? I can't buy any more flowers, candy, pizza, discount cards etc. I am so sick of being asked to support every cause my students are doing. Isn't there a better way?

They Always Think They are Wrong

I have many students that do this. They go to turn in their tests in a folder at the front of the room and as they are turning it in they check their answers with the person who turned theirs in before them. No one is cheating here they know once they open that folder that their test is over, and I would prefer that they didn't do this but when I'm more worried about cheating I don't always notice it. The interesting thing is they ALWAYS assume that if they got a different answer from the person who turned it in before them then they MUST be wrong. They use this assumption whether the person right before them is the smartest person in the class or not. Where did they get this idea? How do they know there aren't different test versions out there? WHy don't they trust their own work?

It's Like People Watching...

Watching students take a test is one of the most entertaining thing. Many are hard at work pencils, paper calculators all going a mile a minute. Although the positions that they deem comfortable is "creative" to say the least. Then there are some (who probably will ask for more time when it is over) that are off day dreaming, playing with their hair, drawing pictures on the test, taking more sips from their water bottle then looks at the test. Watching how these students waste the time allotted to them is AMAZING.

I also love the frustrated sighs, staring at the board as if the answer will appear there, and the constant checks of the clock.

I feel somewhat wrong knowing I am causing all this stress but it IS entertaining.

Ain't it the Truth

I stumbled across, apparently its from men in black. "A person can be smart, people are stupid

Some Days it's all worth it...... and some days it isn't

Today my algebra kids made my day. This is a mid to low level algebra class and the students struggle with very basic number concepts like -2 - -9. Also they have been apparently trained by the middle school that if you answer isn't a whole number then it must be wrong. So they have often assumed that their answer of one half or .75 or something similar must have been incorrect (and if it was a negative fraction they must have made a big mistake!) Today I gave a test filled with answers that were not positive whole numbers and they kicked butt!!! I got fractions, decimals, negative numbers, it was incredible! They are finally more confident in their work than in their idea of what a right answer "looks" like.

My geometry students though.....apparently giving them problems EXACTLY like the ones we covered in class isn't easy enough and they need more time for a 25 question test where one quarter of those questions were vocab words where they just had to identify parts from a drawing. And why in the world would the CENTER of the circle be called the "midpoint of the circle." Did I even use the word midpoint once this chapter????

Privatizing Education

Here is an interesting post about making public education a thing of the past. The idea is that each student is worth a dollar amount and they can make their choice of any school to attend and whichever school they choose that is the school that gets the dollar amount (from the government). The idea being if schools had to compete for students then they would be better from the competition and poor schools would go "out of business." Capitalism of education.

The idea is very interesting to me. My question is would this mean that since students could choose their schools then schools could also in turn choose their students? Meaning if my school has a child that won't do any work or is a constant behavior problem can we "let them go?" Will we as a district also have a right to refuse to teach some students?

Obviously there is much that would need to be worked out. A school built for 2000 students that had 5000 students that wanted to attend it would have to turn some students away, but could schools turn away students even if they had the room? I personally love the idea! The kid who refuses to pay attention or even open his eyes in my class, gone. The guy who has been suspended more than he has been in school, gone. It makes my life much easier if I can essentially "fire" students.

BUT, who will teach the "problem students?" Who will educate those we let go? Anyone? Does it matter? (I'm not saying it doesn't I'm just saying it as a question.)

The other question I have is how does this dollar amount per student work? I think there is some flawed logic going on. I would guess that my school spends the same amount on my classroom whether there are 25 students in it or 26 students, but under this capitalistic style my school would have $x less because my class only has 25 students instead of 26. I would be intrigued to see a study that would show how the costs break down and how that would affect a schools budget.

Now all of this really is for nothing because I am very doubtful of any change as radical as this happening in the US because of how proud we are of everyone getting an education but it raises some very interesting questions.

Thoughts?

BINGO!

Inspired by Pre-Calc and Calculus Bingo I now present Geometry Bingo



And Algebra I Bingo



Play along while you grade your tests and quizzes!

When am I ever going to use this?

I love math. I think it is a fantastic subject that really does have many real world applications for people of all professions. I can even make the argument and not feel like it is a cop out that some of the math the students may never use in the real world but the logical and analytical thinking skills they will. So I'm okay teaching my students about factoring knowing they won't ever factor for a living some day.

But some days I just don't know. I'm teaching about circles right now in my geometry class and I firmly believe that I am basically giving them a bunch of formulas and teaching them which situations require which formula. Why? Besides the fact that the curriculum says so what is the point to it all? Why do they need to know how to deal with situations such as the intersection of two secant lines to a circle drawn from a common point? How can we get them the skills they need to do the real world math without boring them and shoving in a lot of state standards that really do have no real use?

For Homework Tonight

How in the world do you get kids to complete homework? My current system is to check their homework for completion on a random basis and award them points if they have completed it and no points if they haven't. Note this is just for doing it not necessarily doing it correctly. This system makes my life easier because I don't have to grade individual problems all the time nor waste class time checking it everyday, but hopefully the thought of it being checked is enough to make the students do it every night. Instead it has become a game of I'll try and guess when he is going to check the homework and only do it then, or even I'm just not going to do it at all. I even started giving homework quizzes in my one class when less than half the students did their homework and it did nothing but punish the kids who actually did the work because they have trouble understanding it but worked hard anyway. How can I make them see that homework is useful and is helping them learn the material and that it is worth doing well and not just scribbling something down for credit?