Month: June 2018

One-Man Book Club: Room 24

I kinda stumbled across my latest summer read. Because sometimes the driver don’t pick the car, the car pick the driver.

Mrs. Dull facilitates the middle school youth ministry at our parish. Last weekend I was riffling thru a stack of EDGE curriculum boxes, looking for something else, and there it was.

Room 24
Image via Goodreads.

I was not familiar with the book at all, but I am familiar with the author, Katie Prejean McGrady. I follow her on twitter and think pretty highly of her (which makes me a member of a not-so-exclusive club):

Room 24 Number 4

So in a split-second decision, I added it to my summer reading list. Helps that it’s a quick read at 138 pages. She’s pretty up-front that it’s not a “teacher book” but as the saying goes, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you are a teacher, every book is a Teacher Book.

Prejean is that teacher who absolutely loves her subject area. Now before you click away because she’s a theology teacher, her travails apply equally if you teach Algebra or World History or Literature. We fall in love with our subject and then wonder why our kids think we’re weird. And this book hit home because I’m human, not because I’m Catholic.

She relates the story of deciding on a major during a study-abroad semester in Rome (with the help of a trusted advisor)

Room 24 Number 1

She found that doesn’t always mean that her students will instantly love her content. In fact, many times the opposite was true. On the positive, she works hard (with some stumbles along the way) to build a relationship with her students, and she does it by being her authentic self. Teaching at her alma mater (and using the same textbook from her student days), she took a Ditch That Textbook approach to theology class. That allows for some flexibility when her 14-year-olds come to class with a stack of questions – thus the genesis of the days known as “Stump Miss Prejean”.

Room 24 Number 3

That Musical Cue is right up my alley, BTW. And “Stump Miss Prejean” is a brilliant way to honor student voice and curiosity while staying true to the curriculum and schedule.

 

Litany of Humility, in musical form, via Matt Maher:

Prejean is confident, and quick on her feet, but not every moment in class works out as well as “Stump Miss Prejean”. She relates a moment when she learned a harsh lesson in humility, driving her to resurrect a prayer devotion, the Litany of Humility:

Litany-of-Humility-
Image via His Mercy Is New

 

Earlier in her career, in her pride, she drove a student not only out of her class but out of the school altogether. That tale hit me like a ton of bricks. I had a student transfer out of my class after three quarters this year. Her style and my style just didn’t mesh. I felt bad that she wasn’t getting what she needed from me in my class, but privately I thought to myself, “Oh well, her loss. Let her go photomath all her homework in some other teacher’s class, and fail the final.”

Nice, huh? What a condescending, passive-aggressive jerk I am sometimes. She used to like math, get pretty good grades (as her mom told me) for most of her school career, and I probably poisoned math for her for life. When I read this from Room 24, I saw myself:

 

Room 24 Number 2

Yikes. Like Sully watching himself scare on video.

 

I’m constantly torn between “My Way Is Best” and “What Could I Have Done Different For Her?

Or is it best that she found a teacher that fit her better? I know intuitively that giving students a chance to discover is the best way for them to learn, and that in the world they will walk into they need critical thinking skills more than ever. I’ve picked up so much awesomeness from the #MTBoS that I can’t imagine teaching any other way.

So how do I stand my ground, doing what I know is best, without being a jerk about it?

I mean, true, we are the content area experts, and the pedagogy experts in the room. That’s why they pay us the big bucks, right?

Two of my classes this school year are Algebra I Lab, a second block of algebra for our struggling freshmen. (My people, by the way). When the class was pitched to me, it was with the expectation that I would break out everything I’ve learned about creating a student-centered classroom, with Desmos Activities and WODB and Three-Act Math and everything.

I’m looking forward to it. But I’m reminded in Room 24 that my students come stamped with an invisible “Handle With Care” instruction. And that going into the year a healthy dose of humility for myself might be a good starting point.

From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver Me Jesus….

 

Total Gift of Self

I picked up my fourth Chefs Around The Table pin last night.

Since 2015, one night a year 80 guys from the community set up shop at the Porter County Expo Center to serve up their signature dish for charity.

It’s a ticketed event, with a live auction. And tip jars at each serving station.

The fourth year was the best yet – $100,000 raised, an all-time high. Good thing, too. because there’s work to do.

 

Our Greater Good graphic

The money benefits the community programs of Our Greater Good. Under the veneer of an affluent Chicago exurb, my city has many of the same challenges facing most small-to-midsized communities. Our Greater Good is trying to face down those challenges from the ground up.

“Back in 2012, it became clear to me that the population of Valparaiso was becoming more and more diverse and that the economically distressed population was increasing more quickly than any other demographic.  While volunteering at a local elementary school, I observed the vast differences in the academic and social skills among children entering kindergarten. 

Our communities and families are facing so many issues including, but not limited to, substance abuse, affordable housing, and the number of single parent families.  As I considered these problems, it struck me that prevention is the best way for Our Greater Good to respond.   Our initiatives are focused on strengthening families and do whatever it takes to see that every child has great opportunities to reach their full potential leading to a fulfilling adult life.  With this mission implanted deeply in our convictions, Our Greater Good has found or developed programs to come along side our schools and families to accomplish these goals.”

–Garner Tullis, Executive Director, Our Greater Good

 

Like many communities, we have a small core group of committed individuals who give freely of their treasure – you can bet if there is a major need in the community that these are the people who will step up and fund it.

And that’s good.

Two things though: 1) we need to expand that group. It can’t be the same five guys every time there is a big need. And 2) we need to build a culture where everyone feels called to do their part, however seemingly small. Because it all adds up.

Which is where Pork Carnitas comes in.

Sold a couple of tickets, had my biggest tip year ever, and still (compared to the rest of the roster) I barely made a dent. There were guys who sold 10 times as many tickets, who brought in 10 times the amount of tips. But as a group, we crushed it last night.

Partly because there were people there who stepped up and bid on a weeklong trip for 8 to a resort in Belize. Or on a package of 12 date experiences provided by local businesses. (Full disclosure: Mrs. Dull is on the planning committee for Chefs and is responsible for dreaming up and sourcing many of those auction items). But also because there were folks who paid $50 for a ticket, stopped by my table, enjoyed my wares, and dropped a fiver in my tip jar.

Even better, I introduced my son to many of the fellow chefs, several of whom are on staff at my school, including his football coach. He also met many attendees and got a first-hand look at what giving looks like around here.

Not only did he serve as my sous chef, but he joined a couple dozen of his football teammates who volunteer to help clean up and tear down after the event.

He’s following in the footsteps of his older brother who served for four years as a member of the Power Of Youth council, made up of high school students from all over the county who put on fundraising events throughout the year, then accepted grant applications and distributed the funds to organizations that serve young people in Porter County.

Power Of Youth 2011
Power of Youth 2011. Image via nwitimes.com.

 

I think often of Karol Wojtyla’s Person and Act, written by the Polish philosopher, athlete, playwright and priest before he became Pope John Paul II. In this book, the future saint ponders what exactly is it that makes us fully alive. From a summary published online in 2017:

“Though certainly an exalted property of the person, freedom not considered by either Aquinas or Wojtyła as an end in itself. Rather, freedom is for love (117). Ultimately, the human person is defned by love. Love, for Wojtyła, is about being other-focused. It is an inner movement of the will for the true good of the other, and ultimately culminates in some form of self-giving. Self-gift is of the inner nature of love, and is its essential interior dynamic. Therefore, we can see that the fundamental self-determining potential of the person, which is progressively perfected in self-possession, is essentially ordered towards the possibility for self-gift. Wojtyła says that it is precisely in love that the human person reaches the fullest realisation of its potential, and thereby fully develops its being (66). This is the ultimate paradox of human nature, that to fulfl oneself means to give of oneself—to be truly oneself one must exist for others. These three potencies of the human person, which are all ordered towards and culminate in self-giving, became the focus of so much of John Paul’s writings, in his encyclicals and his catechesis on the Theology of the Body. And it too became the defning character of his own life, as self-gift for the sake of the kingdom. Love, for Wojtyła, is about being other-focused.”

–Robert McNamara, “Karol Wojtyla And the Importance Of Every Human Person“, Faith Magazine, 1/3/17.

To St. John Paul II, to love is to give totally of yourself.

“This is the ultimate paradox of human nature, that to fulfill oneself means to give of oneself—to be truly oneself one must exist for others.”

Our world could use a little more of that right now. A lot more, actually.

 

There was a lot of love in that room last night. Folks giving what they had – for some that meant writing a 5-figure check for an auction item. For some that meant giving of their talents, crafting a meal to share. For some that was buying a ticket. For some that was meeting new friends, welcoming them. For some that was giving of their time, on a summer night, to do manual labor of tearing down and stowing tables and linens.

Most importantly, for the students in attendance, they got a visual on how this town gives of itself. That’s the gift we hope that they will continue to open up throughout their lives. Maybe some will be in a position to write big checks for organizations that help others in this community. Maybe some will be in a position to lead and organize community efforts such as Chefs Around The Table. But all of them will be able to give of their time and model the Total Gift Of Self for their own families.

Gift

One of the co-chairs of the event is a former student of one of my math department colleagues. The other co-chair’s son is in my homeroom. Those guys are already modeling the total gift of self. Our job, all of us, is to scale that up.

This world right now is filled with opportunities to serve. If what we model for them takes hold, our kids are going to see those opportunities, and act. And that’s a gift for all of us.

Totally.

Flipped Learning

INDOE eLearning Definition
Connecting learners to one another and supporting new learning models for schools. It’s what the Indiana Department of Education’s Department of e-Learning does. Let’s Go…

Just finished up my second Summer of eLearning conference since school wrapped up. This week it was with somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 teachers and administrators thinking around those stated purposes of the IDOE’s Department of e-Learning at #eVillageNWI at Washington Township High School outside Valparaiso.  It was my first time attending this conference that is right in my backyard.

Both days broke sunny and warm. They are really big fans of #StrawberryWater there.

Also, dancing.

In other words, they work hard, they play hard, and they stay hydrated. That’s a good combination for June.

I presented on curating e-Learning day activities. Several local districts are already using eDays to make up snow days, and my district will join them next school year. While popular, it seems no one has quite got it right, everyone is trying to get better, and there are a lot of moving parts. This sounds like a good topic for a lot of smart teachers from different districts to talk about. Especially if it leads to more conversation later, back in their building, with their people.

Image result for thinking gif
Via GIPHY

One of my in-class catchphrases is “there’s a lot of firepower in this room from the neck up.” Truth. There’s really no point in me being the only one in the room talking and thinking on this subject, so I designed the preso so that the attendees would have ample time to group up and hash things out with each other. Then use the last few minutes for sharing out.

It was a diverse group, classroom teachers and administrators from across subjects and grade levels. So although my experience is at the secondary level (math, specifically), the attendees quickly dialed in on their experiences and their students’ needs.

It was awesome.

I had back-to-back presentations the last two sessions of the day. Now, adults are not that different than kids, especially when it’s close to quitting time. What I saw on Thursday at 2:30 was… notable.

When we debriefed at the end of my last session, the awesomeness came spilling out. And it kept going. It was time to head to the closing session (door prizes!) and they were still sharing thoughts.

I learned so much in that 15 minutes, and caught as much as I could in a quick twitter thread when I got home.

  1. Practice ahead of time seems like the critical factor, above all else, for the overall success of e-Learning Days.

We spend so much time building routines in our classrooms, then a snow day turns into a wildcard. What if we practiced eDays until they became routine? Logging in to sites, checking Canvas for directions, submitting work online, contacting teachers thru email or a Google Hangout. For teachers, recording a video with instructions, walking students thru the steps for the expectations for the day. The teachers I listened to told the group they thought that was super-important, to the point where one teacher said she makes every Monday a mock eDay in her classroom.

 

2.  Accommodations for students with IEPs require a lot of our time and attention before rollout.

As one teacher pointed out, you can’t just modify an online assignment the “traditional” way. If students skip questions, those questions will be marked wrong in a Canvas quiz or Flubaroo-graded Google Form or on MyMathLab. Plus, with the option to scramble questions, question numbers won’t correspond for every student. We need to make accommodations for extra time, when time was already a major concern.

 

3.  If we’re going to ask students to use a website or app at home, we better have introduced it in class beforehand.

A survey of students in my building indicated about 40% of students “sometimes” or “most times” needed help using an app or website that had been part of an assignment in class. The teachers in my sessions were adamant that dropping a new tool on students at home was a recipe for student frustration, meaning the eDay work would not get done. Goes back to building routines, and lesson #1 above.

 

4. Anything that makes the students’ job at home easier will pay big dividends.

One teacher said that when she sets up her Canvas page for her elementary-aged kids on eDays, she makes a colorful, graphic “flow chart” with links to each assignment (you can talk amongst yourselves if this qualifies as a “hyperdoc”, but let’s not quibble over small details. It’s clever, and effective.) My high school students will have to navigate their Canvas dashboard to find all their assignments, but maybe I could provide them a template they could use to collect all their assignments, then prioritize them on a checklist.

 

5. Sometimes it’s OK to leave a session with more questions than answers, especially if that leads to a fruitful conversation back in their building, with their planning group.

I was hopeful that would be the outcome of the sessions. I told them up front that I don’t have all the answers, that if they were expecting me to walk off the mountaintop with all the eDay secrets etched on stone tablets, that they were in the wrong room. That was super-empowering. So much sharing and so much learning happened in the small group discussions in the last third of the session time, that I know everybody has at least one big thing they can take back to their building and say hey, here’s something we need to consider doing with eDays this year. As always, 30 brains are better than one. I know the tech coaches and central office admins have been rolling around all the issues surrounding e-Learning days in my district when they roll out next year. I’m hopeful they’ll take into consideration what my groups shared out as well.

 

       6. I’m sure some of my attendees were wondering what’s with all the dancing at this conference.

Since I chaperoned a trip to the Motown Museum this April, we kicked things off (after lunch and all, got to get moving before we get learning) with the Temptations Walk. This photo was after the fact, but we had 35 teachers and administrators dancing in a classroom.

 

All these considerations are in addition to the things we talked about during the presentation such as appropriate length of time for assignments, and what types of assignments will work well on an eDay, or how to adjust for our students who have wifi issues or who have to take care of other family members on a day off of school.

There’s obviously work to do here, at an individual level, and as grade-level, building or district groups.

But if I have one everlasting takeaway from eVillage, it’s that I learned. Not just in the sessions I attended. I expected that. After all, there were some outstanding presenters over the two days. I agonized over choices during the same time period on both days. But the bigger story is how much I learned from the teachers and administrators who attended my sessions. I knew they were smart, committed learners. Hell, they willingly spent two beautiful June days inside at an e-learning conference. But it reinforced for me the value of a student-centered classroom.

The teacher became the student. I’d call that “flipped learning” in the best possible sense.

And my eVillageNWI people: Thanks. I’ll see you all again next June. Keep the strawberry water on tap, huh?

 

One-Man Book Club: Teach Like A Pirate

“Are we ready to start full speed?” Dave Burgess keynoting Day One of the South Shore e-Learning conference in Hammond, IN, June 6, 2018.

Yeah, I know. 2012 was a long time ago. Doing a One-Man Book Club post on Teach Like A Pirate is like live-tweeting an episode of The Office I’m watching on Netflix. But it’s what I’m reading right now and the thoughts are spilling out of my head onto my screen, and for many of my colleagues at the South Shore e-Learning Conference it was their first exposure to this loud, crazy SoCal guy. I wanted to watch the show through their prism, and the experience stirred up some memories.

Dave Burgess keynoted a conference I presented at last week. Leading up to the two-day event I went to the library and got his book. Even though I’d seen him outline his TLAP philosophy with Matt Miller on the 2016 Virtual Summit, I was pretty psyched to get the In-Person experience. I still wanted to read the words in black and white.

16226386
Image via Goodreads.

(Burgess runs at like 7000 rpm. My laid-back Vegas kids used to tell me I talked too fast. If they were in a room trying to listen to the Teach Like A Pirate keynote their heads would have exploded. Having read the book was like having built-in subtitles for the presentation. 10/10 would recommend.)

 

I just finished my 15th year of teaching. I was a pretty by-the-book guy at the beginning. Things have changed since those early years, thanks in part to a lot of reading, a lot of connecting, a lot of trial-and-error. And error. And error. Let’s just say I’ve been trying to get better for a while. Reading Teach Like A Pirate, my mind snapped. I recalled a long-ago online conversation I had with Matt Vaudrey, co-author of Classroom Chef.

If you’ve read the book or seen the TLAP preso, you know what started my reverie. The Six Words.

TLAP 2

“It’s Easy For You. You’re Creative.”

TLAP 3

I remember struggling with classes that weren’t buying what I was selling. I remember spending prep time and after-school time searching for activities and lessons that would get my students’ attention. I remember being amazed at what my fellow math teachers were rolling out to their students. Everything I found online was brilliant and clever and creative. I remember thinking, “there’s no way I could come up with stuff like that on my own.” I remember falling flat on my face many a time.

But I remember having success just often enough to keep trying. Which is good, because as one of my favorite UNLV professors used to say, teaching is like being a performer. And you have to nail 900 shows a year.

All these years down the line I should point out, she never told us how tough the audience would be for those 900 shows. Or that they’d be able to tune us out with a tiny little computer they’d all carry in their pockets.

As Burgess says: “Would your kids be there if they didn’t have to be? Do you have any lessons you could sell tickets to?” I felt like I had to work harder than anyone else because before I could teach my kids anything, I needed to make them want to show up for my class. I used to tell them, “someday I’ll be that old, bitter teacher who hands out a worksheet then goes to read the paper with my feet up on my desk. But today ain’t gonna be that day.”

 

 

 

I’m not a pirate. Not a good one, anyway. But I’m down with Lesson Design. Which, it turns out, once you get past the bandanna and earring, and the grilling analogies, is what “Teaching Like A Pirate” is all about. Intentional lesson design, every time.

I’ve got a certificate on my classroom wall from ETS. It’s a Certificate of Excellence for my score on the Math Praxis exam. Me and a couple of my UNLV classmates studied hard for that test. The semester of student teaching we met three times a week after school at a coffeeshop/bookstore near where we all taught in Vegas to work through problems from the study guide. But the State of Nevada also requires a passing score on the Pedagogy test for licensing. Ugh. That one is not as easy. My idea of lesson planning as a pre-service teacher was limited to:

  1. Check the section in the textbook
  2. Select example problems
  3. Select guided practice problems
  4. Select homework problems
  5. Rinse, repeat

That’s all. And on the Praxis or in the classroom, it wasn’t good enough.

I eventually stumbled across Dan Meyer and the greater MTBoS and started to get an idea of teaching with the end in mind. It’s a concept that Bill Hanlon of the Southern Nevada RPDP introduced to us. It was a unit design tactic he called BAM, but it applied equally to lesson design. Later on I was exposed to Desmos, and then Hyperdocs. All tools for designing lessons from the ground up, thinking deeply about what questions to ask, what I wanted my students to ponder, what tools and resources they would need.

I’ve claimed as a class motto for years, “You want better answers? Ask better questions.” Turns out I have common ground with Burgess there too.

TLAP 4

Then Burgess goes on to include a section with literally hundreds of questions a teacher can ask when planning a lesson, questions that can spark creativity and create hooks to student engagement. Pretty much everyone I know can take two or three or six of these questions and create something incredible in their classroom. Without a single trip to Goodwill.

 

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It turns out that once you get past the pirate persona there is a seriously good teacher who is passionate about not just punching a clock, but in creating learning experiences for his students. And Teach Like A Pirate makes clear that there is no secret sauce, except for a willingness to take chances, to accept failure as part of learning, and to recognize that nothing great comes easy.

TLAP 1

I don’t know about greatness. I’m still trying, still learning. I doubt I’ll ever have a “guest speaker”. But we sing and dance a lot in my classes, get up and move around. Use visual hooks. Stick crazy memes and GIFs in my slide deck. Try new things. Shift on the fly when it’s called for.

Maybe I’m not such a bad pirate after all.

Leyahs Card

 

You Do You

What kind of education conference did I attend this week? Well, one keynote speaker managed to work “Bless your heart…” and a Pusha T v. Drake reference into the same hourlong presentation. Literally, something for everybody.

(Side Note #1: Now keep in mind: you can say “bless you” like “thank you” and that’s one thing, but there’s no mistaking the meaning behind “bless your heart”.)

Via Bless Your Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments by Celia Rivenbark

(Side Note #2: “You do you” is the rough equivalent outside the South. Sounds like it should be a good thing, often kind of a sideways putdown. But not as clear-cut. Sometimes it’s just, “yeah, cool, man, go ahead, do your thing.” Which is fine.)

In a time when you can be anyone, reinvent yourself over and over, authenticity is a rare commodity.

As an example, the first-year NHL franchise Vegas Golden Knights are unabashedly Vegas – the pre-game show, the social media presence, the community outreach. Given a chance to build their brand from the ground up, they picked a 21st century combo of local flavor and connectedness.

Image result for vegas golden knights las vegas sign
Image via NHL.com

 

As I process the two days, I’m rolling around those keynotes, and teacher growth, and the idea of authenticity.

So, those SSeLearn keynotes – Dave Burgess & Josh Stumpenhorst. A little bit of contrast in style: Bombast and Thoughtfulness. The Pirate and The Teacher Of The Year.

There’s some blowback out there in the online educommunity regarding TLAP – like, do I need all this costume stuff, and do I have to be that loud?

Only if that’s “you”. Because kids can smell fake a mile away. But if Dave’s methods hit home, there’s nothing wrong with amping up the enthusiasm in your classroom.

If Dave Burgess is a Tony Robbins disciple, Josh Stumpenhorst comes from the Daniel Pink school. He believes there are things that motivate students, and those things are probably not what you’d guess. Especially if you were trained up with behavior charts and an emphasis on grades. And when you sit with him and listen, you just know he’s right.

The keynotes were great. Inspiring. And as for the breakouts, I really appreciate the teachers who took time to craft a session, to share what they’d found with us. The vast majority of the presenters at #SSeLearn were regular classroom teachers, sharing like they’d share in the faculty cafeteria or in a department meeting, just amplified to a larger audience.

At South Shore, teachers had a chance to figure out who they are, to get help with tools that can help them on the journey, and how to connect with people who have been there.

Teachers had 200 sessions from which to choose, giving them the opportunity to build their own brand from the ground up, to reinvent themselves, to “do you”. Cool thing was, I sat with Catholic school high school teachers from Illinois, kindergarten teachers from Hammond, tech coaches from Porter county, all in the same day. Sometimes all in the same room. Diverse people, diverse needs, and based on the feedback I read, everybody got at least something they could use out of the two days.

The day two keynoter dropped me a line to thank me for some of the tweets I sent out during his preso. Which was kinda cool.

Josh is more my style by the way. During his keynote he referenced innovation day at his school, calling it “a thing we’ve been doing for the last 11 years” and shared some photos and stories of student learning that had happened as a result. What he doesn’t talk about was how large a role (note: a Very Large Role) he had in launching Innovation Day at his school, and in helping other schools kick off their own editions. He’s an author and speaker and, oh yeah, a former Illinois Teacher of the Year who got take a photo with the President of the United States, but when you sit in on his session he’ll tell you he’s a librarian and a dad and a husband and a runner who has found out some things about teaching and learning, and wants to share them.

Being chill is so cool.

I don’t need to be twitter famous. I don’t need a million followers (although I like big round numbers as much as the next guy.) I’m pretty comfortable in my own skin, I’ve learned to listen more than I talk, and to offer help when I can but also to accept help when its offered. Which makes the South Shore conference way more than a chance to re-connect with teacher friends from my old district. It’s a chance to keep working at being me.

The South Shore conference has grown in three years from a one-day event for 300 or so School City of Hammond teachers to a stop on the statewide Summer of eLearning schedule with more than 1000 people in attendance. It only gets better from here.

As you might have guessed, I’m not the only one who feels that way. Ryan Eckert, an elementary school principal in Crown Point, was inspired to start a twitter chat to keep the learning going. The turnout on the first night was fantastic and the conversations led to further connections and sharing of resources. Share and support. That’s what we do.

So, my fellow #SSeLearn learners, you do you. Our kids are gonna reap the benefits.

 

P.S. Mad props to the team that launched this awesome event and keeps it flying year after year:

My Summer Vacation

Fight!

If you know anything about Twitter, you know you don’t have to spend much time there before stumbling into a spirited back-and-forth. Two conversations dominate my timeline these days:

  1. “How I spent my summer“: reading a stack of teacher books vs. sitting on the beach
  2. “What exactly are we doing here?“: the traditional math stack of Algebra through Calculus vs. Burn It Down. Like: Why Algebra II? Is Calculus every student’s Mt. Everest?

(Actually, those convos take place online every year at this time, but just like the first time the sunset inches past 8 pm, they catch my attention every time).

Futurist/marketer/author/blogger Seth Godin weighed in on the topic the other day on his blog:

“What would a year of hands-on truth-finding do for a class of freshman? What mathematical and vocational doors would it open?

Every day we spend teaching hand factoring of binomials to non-math majors is another day we raise mathematically illiterate kids. What are we waiting for?”

— Seth Godin, “More Better Math“, May 30, 2018

Since I changed schools and started teaching Algebra II to mostly non-college-bound students two years ago, well, I wonder if all my kids time is best spent on these topics. They vote with their brain cells and their focus of attention during most of the spring semester, that is for sure. My Algebra II finals sucked. Like, way worse than I expected. Nothing like anticipating the final day of school, then encountering a stack of tests that make you want to start a bonfire. In the middle of the classroom.

tenor
Via Tenor

My colleagues in Track 3 also had low scores overall, so I’m not alone, but still…

chart
Avg: 44%. There were two actual scores of 0/50.

Sometimes I have long thoughts about whether I’m doing this right. Which, well, thinking about that qualifies as a good use of reflective teacher time over the summer.

Buzz blinking
Source

Specifically, I have several questions:

  1. We’re detracking – what’s gonna happen to this group next year when everything gets faster and more in-depth?
  2. How do I hook the ones who were utterly disinterested?
  3. How do I hook the ones who don’t care if they fail because they’ll “just retake it in summer school or credit recovery”?
  4. How do I hook the ones with a really insufficient math foundation?
  5. How do I hook the ones who are used to playing the game of school and putting the right squiggles on a piece of paper for a letter grade?
  6. How do I get them to think….

 

I don’t have answers. I mean, if I did, I’d share, right?

I do have a lot of time to ponder the questions. Preferably while sitting on a beach or reading a book. Educational or otherwise.

Meanwhile, I’m just gonna hold on to a couple things from this year for a minute.

Because my summer vacation is here.