Month: August 2020

IFR

One of the things that caught me a little bit by surprise when we moved to Vegas is how dark the desert night is, even when you live in the Neon Capital Of The World. The city sits in a valley, and the mountains are pretty much invisible against the night sky. It always amazed me that pilots could drop a 747 over the mountains and on a runway at McCarran.

Source

Flying by instruments, I guess is what they call it.

I used to use that as an analogy to solving equations in Algebra I. If I give you something like x + 5 = 9, yeah of course you know x=4 because your third grade teacher made you memorize those fact families. But if the solution is like -11/7, or 0.38, you can’t just guess that, or solve by observation. You need a procedure.

Now that I’m teaching 6 hours a day of synchronous distance learning over Google Meet, I get it. We agreed as a staff and building leadership that we wouldn’t and couldn’t force our kids to turn on their webcams. It was the right move.

But I feel a little bit like I’m shouting into that deep desert sky sometimes. I have no idea who’s out there. Or if they are listening. I can’t read their faces for feedback. Or signs of interest.

I need a plan. On purpose. As Wikipedia says about Instrument Flight Rules: “Instrument pilots must meticulously evaluate weather, create a detailed flight plan based around specific instrument departure, en route, and arrival procedures, and dispatch the flight.”

I need a way to know if my kids are engaged with what we’re doing. Or if they are even in the same room. This is what that looked like in Algebra II today.

In Algebra II Honors we started with a Would You Rather in a Google Form, followed up with a Brain Dump on solving equations in a shared Google Doc, then after several students expressed a need for a refresher on Inverse Operations and the Properties of Equality, live notes.

Then a quick Desmos activity when we used some snapshots to play “Spot The Mistake” (introducing my kids to the concept of Math Fights and the idea that no one was going to laugh or yell over a wrong answer).

I also introduced my kids to Iron Chef last week. It was kind of a poor man’s breakout room, once my kids figured out they could chat in their shared slide deck, and I could eavesdrop on the conversation.

(Lots of my online teacher connects are doing really cool stuff with breakout rooms using Google Slides. I really should carve out some time to play around and see if I can duplicate their process).

Right now my main goal with lesson design is teaching and learning. But if that’s 1A, then 1B is making sure I have a way to know if teaching and learning is happening.

I stepped out and took a chance last Friday that Three Act Math could work in a remote environment. I’ll count it as a partial success.

One way I realized too late I could have really made that an engaging activity for my kids was to use Desmos Activity Builder as the format. Of course, someone thought of that long ago. Wish I would have done the search while I was planning instead of when I was doing a post mortem. But, new school, Google Classroom rather than Canvas, building the plane as I fly it. One of a million things that slipped through the cracks on me.

All I want right now is a way to “see” what I’m doing with my kids. And to “see” what they are doing with our math.

I consider myself an experienced pilot. Even in unfamiliar terrain. Just got to keep working on using the right instruments the right way.

Secret Ingredient

We used to watch a lot of Food Network in my house. And we watched a hell of a lot of Alton Brown. So Iron Chef America was right up our alley back in the day. Who doesn’t love competetive cooking? With a kicker – each show features a “secret ingredient” the chefs must integrate into their dish. And: the clock is ticking.

The authors of The EduProtocol Field Guide use the concepts behind Iron Chef the show as the shell for their digital version of jigsaw lesson design. It’s led to some pretty epic collaborative days in my Algebra II and Geometry classes over the last few years.

Chefs Around The Table aside, I’ll never be a chef. OK, maybe a Classroom Chef. But I feel like I’m in a real-life episode of Iron Chef the last couple of weeks. In a good way.

Those last couple of weeks before school starts always feel like a race against time, even in a normal year. Like I always say when somebody asks “are you ready?,” I mean, look. On Wednesday morning there’s gonna be 30 kids sitting in those seats looking at me, whether I’m ready or not. So, I’ll be ready.

This year, tho… well, you know.

My district was amongst the few that made the call early to pivot to full-time remote teaching. We’ve had more time than most to start prepping mentally and with our materials for an online semester (or more).

But we are in uncharted waters here. Nobody has done this before. Last spring was a dry run. There are laws and rules and regulations and guidelines that must be followed. The powers that be make those laws. The district leadership interprets those laws and passes along guidance to building-level leaders. And they let us know how that will affect what we do day-to-day in our (virtual) classrooms.

We had our two weeks to prep. Our secret ingredient was “remote teaching”. Now, go!

Source

And you should have seen it. Like seriously, we could have sold tickets today. My department chair has a group text set up and we kept in touch throughout the day. My math people killed it today. (And my Spanish people, and my History people, and my English people – even my teacher friends in other buildings).

At an optional PD day last week my principal addressed the teachers who came into the building for training. She related the latest challenges to come down from above. She’s Region to the core, but it was pretty obvious that the fight was taking its toll. And she said (I’m paraphrasing here), “But we’ll figure it out. We’ll get it done. We always do.”

Damn.

I mean, “We’ll figure it out. We always do.” is seriously like a family motto in my house. But when the person you work for stands in front of a room full of people she trusts to get the job done, no matter what, and delivers that message… wow. I knew right then our students were covered.

My district provides a three-day “jump start” curriculum of expectations to begin the year. My principal encouraged us to customize it to our building: “Make it ours”. She convened a quick meeting of all comers and an hour later we had a kick-ass plan for the first three days. The ladies (and a handful of guys) on that team pulled from all their resources to make sure we had a plan custom-made for our students.

Just like that. The judges on Iron Chef see the finished product. The viewers at home see the sweat and the cussing and the creativity. And the teamwork.

If the Iron Chefs were me and a handful of guys in the community, the dishes would be, well, OK, I guess. But when Bobby Flay and Cat Cora and Masaharu Morimoto and Jose Garces are doing their thing, well, that’s when the magic happens.

If my students are my judges, all I can say after a day is, “thank you, chef”.

A kitchen is more than a celebrity chef. It’s a team. I’ve got a steady stream of colleagues and instructional coaches checking in, making sure I’ve got what I need, helping me get up to speed on new student info system tools and new LMS. Videos and links and personal check-ins and Twitter shares.

That’s the real secret ingredient.

One-Man Book Club: Stealing Home

“Cotton Candy skies”. If you are a baseball person you probably read that in Vin Scully’s voice. If you are a baseball fan who grew up near Chicago in the 70s, and your team was awful, you got used to seeing the Dodgers play on TV on Saturday afternoons and Monday nights and of course in October.

You knew “Dodger Stadium”. Hell, you might have even seen a game there on the same trip to SoCal to visit family when you went to Universal Studios and Disneyland (back when there was such a thing as an E-ticket Attraction) and Knott’s Berry Farm and the Queen Mary and maybe the Peanut Guy who worked in your section tossed the bag to you from half a section away. Even as a junior high kid you knew what Scully knew. But it became a bit more exotic when you heard a TV announcer say “Chavez Ravine” as he referred to the Dodgers’ home.

“The contemporary Chavez Ravine has no geographic border and does not appear on any maps of Los Angeles. It is a place, but it isn’t. It is really a code word for the mysteries and pleasures of baseball. It is the metaphysical plane upon which Dodger Stadium exists, slightly outside the realm of daily life in the city. It is a state of mind. It is a vibe.”

Eric Nusbaum, Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught In Between, pg. xii
Credit: Aaron Meshon illustration of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles Magazine.

The idea for Nusbaum’s book Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught In Between was born when he heard a guest speaker in his high school history class. The speaker told the kids “Dodger Stadium shouldn’t exist”.

For Nusbaum, who loved baseball and loved the Dodgers, that got his attention.

I knew part of the story. I didn’t know the details. How the communities of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop were condemned, first as the location for public housing, and later for the home of the team that brought baseball west.

Chavez Ravine, pre-Dodger Stadium. Those houses (what’s left of them) are buried under the parking lots. (Source)

Nusbaum does a fantastic job of weaving together the stories of Abrana Aréchigo and her family and her community, of Frank Wilkinson (the high school guest speaker) who worked to make decent affordable housing available and in the process drew the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and of the Dodgers who picked up and moved across the country to make Los Angeles a big-league sports city.

The author is a native Angeleno and is not shy about calling out the racism and corruption of his city. He’s got a knack for humanizing his subjects and his decision to opt for short chapters alternating between Abrana, Wilkinson, and the O’Malleys moves the story along quickly.

Along the way we meet newspaper publishers and mayors and children of immigrants who wore the uniforms of the armed forces of the United States of America in WWII and Mexican generals and dogs who predict death and millionaire sportsmen and a native Angeleno who grew up in public housing and became a three sport-star in high school who bypassed a scholarship to UCLA to sign with the Dodgers and become one of the best-loved players in franchise history.

Willie Davis.

Of all the characters in the book, I identified with Davis most closely.

We were that family that shopped Woodmar in Hammond, or River Oaks in Cal City (my long-time Region people recall that “the Region” straddles state lines). Population and shopping habits in Lake County eventually shifted south and Woodmar died a slow death. In its place now stands a beautiful indoor sports facility that draws players and families from across the midwest for tournaments.

Probably a fair trade economically, and maybe we can chalk it up to progress.

But I definitely notice the “things that used to be here” as I drive through the city. Nostalgia, maybe, but something more.

The draw back home is powerful. Wrapped around a detour to a green leafy suburban school, this will be my 12th year at my current school. Combine it with my mom’s 28 years in the district as a school nurse, we’ve got 40 years in with the SCH. The “Family Business”. As I told some colleagues on the morning of a PD day this week, sometimes you just have to figure out where you belong, first, and then go from there.

The first game in Dodger Stadium took place on April 10, 1962. Nusbaum writes:

Willie Davis jogged out to center field as Podres took the mound. Everything was about to come together for him. Everything was always coming together for Willie, then falling apart and then coming back together again. His cleats sank into the soggy dark turf. The green dye rubbed off on them. He was on his way to the first great season in what would be a long career. In 1962 he would bat .285 with 21 home runs and 32 stolen bases, and make it clear that the era of Duke Snider was over. The position of Dodgers center fielder had been passed from a white man who was raised in segregated Compton and had blossomed in Brooklyn to a black man who was raised in a Boyle Heights housing project and would make his name in a stadium where, for one crucial moment, another housing project was supposed to stand. Brooklyn was over. Los Angeles was forever changed. And Duke Snider, playing right field that day, would be traded in the off-season.

Davis was a 60.8 WAR player for his career. Received MVP votes a couple of times. Made a couple All-Star teams. Won three Gold Gloves. Puts him in The Hall Of Pretty Good. But there’s more to a man than statistics.

Constantly working to get better, and connecting with the people of his city, past and present.”He would have been right there with that.”

Me too, Willie. Me too.

Gavit sunset. “You may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real”. Cotton-candy skies aren’t limited to LA. Photo credit: me.

“Are You Ready To Go Back?”

Clearly it’s August.

Because I’ve started having teacher dreams. Not the Luke LaLoosh dream, but dreams nonetheless. The stress dreams had gone away for a while, mostly I think because there was enough stress in my actual teaching life the last two years that it didn’t need to hide in my subconscious.

I woke up from a dream this morning. I had walked into my new classroom in my new building. It looked very familiar, down to the dim lighting and the chalkboards. It felt like home as soon as I walked in. I looked up, and saw student work covering the walls. My students. Things they had learned in that classroom through the years. It was perfect. Fit like an old pair of 501s.

I went next door to meet my new neighbor teacher. We chatted, I went back to my room and current students had taken down some of the items on the wall. I wondered why – I mean, I really loved that seeing all that old stuff, it reminded me so many students I remember fondly. They didn’t tell me why.

Across the hall I saw a meeting of teachers I used to know in another district. They were sitting in large circle. Distant, socially and otherwise. I wasn’t invited. And even if I was, I had work to do to get ready for the new year. Lots of work. I walked back into my classroom and…

… I woke up.

Its settling in.

S/O to my people changing districts this year and getting ready to start a new year virtually. You can read that either way, BTW. “Teaching virtually” or “getting ready virtually”.

I’ve got New Teacher Orientation scheduled the next two days. We were offered a chance to go work in our buildings in the afternoon, but my district will be virtual-learning-only for the first semester. I’m going to stop by anyway, see if I can pick up some equipment, but there’s not really much point in setting up a classroom right now.

Which is probably all for the best. I’ve got to learn a new LMS, new parent portal, create online lessons for Algebra II, prep online versions of first-week things like student informtion sheets and course expectations. All in like a week.

And, for the first time in my career, learn how to start a new year without being in the same room with my kids.

I had two books on my radar all summer, and finally put in an order this week.

Two math teachers who I’ve been following for a while put together a huge virtual sharing and learning session (#MathTeacherCollab) on Saturday. I wasn’t able to join in live, but there is an enormous crowd-sourced notes document which I’ll wade through this week.

So we start there, read The Perfect Blend and EduProtocol Field Guide Book 2 in the sun out on the back porch.

And then start sorting through my toolkit to see what will work best. As I understand it we are doing synchronous learning, and I’ve got plenty of things that I think will translate well to a remote environment.

There are the retrieval practice strategies described by Pooja Agarwal & Patrice Bain in their book Powerful Teaching. I made some pretty well-received hyperdocs for Algebra II a couple years ago, that’s definitely on the table.

In the spring, during Emergency Remote Teaching, I took the advice of Chevin Stone and embedded my videos into a Google Form, then asked questions and had them submit practice work to me that way.

Of course there is Desmos for activities and assessments. Julie Reulbach has put in a ton of time and effort in designing/creating Desmos assessments.

And there is Quizizz. The Fast and The Curious, anyone?

And I’m sure they’ll be some #WCYDWT nonsense like this, inspired by my “first time watching” a movie that’s 25 years old:

The go-to for folks making small talk with teachers as July wears on is “so, are you ready to go back to school?” That’s a loaded question in the best of summers. This year I’m 100% positive they don’t want to hear my whole answer. I mean, that’s kind of what this page is for, right? The short version is: “I will be.”

My biggest concern is: what does the day-to-day look like for me in my (virtual) classroom? That’s a question that doesn’t have an answer yet. And probably won’t, for a week or so.

I’m probably just going to have to come to terms with that, then be ready to roll on August 19.

And keep dreaming those dreams.

Walking In Someone Else’s Shoes

Late last week the Illinois High School Association announced a revised schedule for high school sports, shifting football to the spring as a way to buy some time for high-risk sports in an era of highly infectious respiratory disease. Meanwhile in Indiana the IHSAA opted for the status quo.

While all this was playing out, my junior-to-be was waiting out a pause in his team’s workouts due to a positive test for Covid on his team. And waiting out a diagnosis on a knee injury.

His team was state runners-up a year ago with Division 1 talent returning and high expectations for the season. They have been meticulous in observing the state’s guidelines for distancing and sanitation during summer workouts.

Everybody wants to play.

Especially the kid who worked like crazy to get his grades up last year, worked like mad to make weight for wrestling, only to have an injury end his season in January.

Of course, lots of kids lost out on a season last spring when the state shut down schools, and thus all spring sports.

Sitting there plotting out worst case scenarios for this latest injury, in the back of my mind I thought, “if Indiana moved football to spring he might be back in time to wrestle a little and play whatever football happens at the JV level.”

The selfish part of me thought that. The part that defaults to “not fair!” before looking around to see who else is affected.

The part of me that honors the hard work of the football seniors, the guys across the grades who have worked to get back to Indianapolis, that part was like, “no way do I want the state to move football”.

I called it “strengthening my empathy muscle”. Mrs. Dull called it “basic human decency” which I translated as “How To Not Be A Dick 101”.

One of the reasons we place such a value on high school sports is the opportunities we give our students to learn lessons they can apply throughout life. How to be part of a team, to accept a role, to accept being coached, to work towards a common goal, to face down adversity and to move forward when things seem unfair. I played exactly one varsity game in high school, and I’m still applying those lessons a million years later.

Of course Covid is still with us. We could have a lengthy discussion on whether it’s a good idea to play sports at all this fall. We might start the season on August 21st but there’s no guarantee we’ll finish it.

Districts in my area have been revisiting their re-opening plans as cases surge. My district board met Tuesday night to hear the recommendation from the superintendent and vote on a plan.

Based on the recommendation of our county health department, my superintendent recommended virtual learning for the first semester of the year, twice as long as any other nearby district . His reasoning was sound: “I don’t hear any scientists saying Covid will be under control by fall”.

Deep breath, as I ponder teaching Algebra II over Zoom and Google Classroom for 18 weeks in my first year in a new district. Not ideal, but I worked 11 years in this district and I’m up to speed on creating online content. I’ve got this.

But then:

The county health officer also recommended cancelling sports in the current environment. It’s a step no other district has been willing to make. Players from the four high schools in the district pleaded their case during the public comment session of the meeting.

They spoke of wanting to do the hard work to stay safe. They spoke of sports being their only connection to school, the only thing that keeps them engaged with academics, the thing that keeps them from getting involved with the streets, their chance to get out of the neighborhood, their chance to go to college, spoke of their teammates and coaches as family.

It was beuatiful. Hit me right in the empathy bone. Reminded me again why I love the city of Hammond in general, and the players, coaches, and teachers of the School City of Hammond in particular.

And in the end, it was futile.

The board voted 4-1 to cancel sports for the first semester. To their credit, the superintendent and board members were intellectually consistent. If you can’t have 25 kids in a classroom, if you can’t have singing or band, then you can’t have 50 guys in a locker room or 22 guys crashing into each other 100 times on Friday night for 10 weeks.

Coaches took to twitter to console and thank their players:

For two of our district schools scheduled to close at the end of the school year (incuding mine), it means they have played their last football, soccer, volleyball, and cross county competition in school history.

Everybody wants to play.

The coronavirus has other ideas.

None of this is fair. None of this is good. The loss of extracurriculars is one small part of the damage this pandemic has caused. We’ll count the families who lost loved ones, who face lifelong health issues due to Covid, who lose jobs and income, who scramble to arrange child care, small business owners losing their life’s work, students and adults dealing with mental health challenges, the collapse of an economy, maybe the collapse of the faith in America.

The chance to play some football games seems unimportant in the big picture, but it is a huge deal to the ladies and men who will sit out what would have been their final season.

I know I felt kind of small doing the mental gymnastics required to justify wishing away a once in a lifetime shot for other people’s kids, to get something I want for my kid.

As I get older I’ve gotten a lot less judgey. That came in handy this week.

If there is any long-term benefit to 10 weeks of remote emergency teaching last spring, it’s that a lot of folks learned how hard it is to provide all the services schools offer kids, when the kids are not in the building. That is definitely the rationale many districts offered for pushing so hard for an in-person open this year.

The trick is, keeping those lessons in mind this fall. I think a lot of us are going to get a lot of practice walking in someone else’s shoes over the next year or so.

Living With Uncertainty

Either this is all a big nothingburger, or one day soon we’re all going to look back on these photos and cry.

I’m betting on cry, though:

I live about as far away from that distrcit as you can be and still be in Indiana, but this teacher’s comments kind of sum it up:

“I most definitely felt like we were not ready,” said Russell Wiley, a history teacher at nearby Greenfield-Central High School. “Really, our whole state’s not ready. We don’t have the virus under control. It’s just kind of like pretending like it’s not there.”

And honestly, “not ready” doesn’t mean “didn’t plan”. It’s just that there’s some things that just can’t be open safely right now. And schools are probably one of those things.

This post from University of Colorado-Denver educational leadership professor Scott McLeod showed up in my feed this week. He offered some statements that every superintendent and school board member should read and ponder before making a re-opening decision:

“How many kids have to get sick before you shut down again? What are your decision-making criteria? [practice saying these out loud and see how they sit with you]

Well, if 1 kid gets sick, that’s sad but we’ll stay open…

Well, if 10 kids get sick, that’s terrible but we’ll stay open…

Well, if 100 kids get sick, that’s a tragedy but we’ll stay open…

If 50 kids at that one school get sick, we will shut that school down but the rest of the district will stay open…

Until 20% of our students are sick, we’ll stay open…

How many educators have to get sick before you shut down again? What are your decision-making criteria? [practice saying these out loud and see how they sit with you]

Well, if 1 educator gets sick, that’s sad but we’ll stay open…

Well, if 10 educators get sick, that’s terrible but we’ll stay open…

Well, if 100 educators get sick, that’s a tragedy but we’ll stay open…

If 20 teachers at that one school get sick, we will shut that school down but the rest of the district will stay open…

Until 30% of our educators are sick, we stay open…

Until we can’t get enough substitutes to adequately cover classrooms, we stay open…

How many kids or educators have to die before you shut down again? What are your decision-making criteria? [practice saying these out loud and see how they sit with you]

Well, if 1 kid dies, that’s sad but we’ll stay open…

Well, if 10 kids die, that’s a tragedy but we’ll stay open…

Well, if 3 teachers die, that’s terrible but we’ll stay open…

Well, if 20 teachers die, that’s a tragedy but we’ll stay open…

Until 10% of our staff are dying, we’ll stay open…”

Honestly, those questions should snap your head back.

I wouldn’t want to be in a role where I needed to make that call. I suspect that in many demographically similar communities to mine, parents really really really want their kids in school (because they remember last spring), until the first positive case turns up. Then they’ll really really really want schools closed, like yesterday. Because how dare you.

We have a special obligation to make decisions in the best interests of the health and safety of our kids. Which makes the school opening decision both seemingly simple, and at the same time incredibly complex. Our students rely on schools for nutrition and counseling and individualized education services that are multiple times more difficult to deliver in a remote learning environment.

Districts across the state spent all summer crafting their contingency plans for re-opening and operating during the pandemic. Then as the number of cases in Indiana accelerated during the summer, several districts have scrapped those plans and opted for a virtual learning mode when school resumes.

On Friday the district where I live announced plans to open on time for in-person learning. The teacher pages I follow lit up like a Christmas tree. It was a bit of a surprise as several nearby districts had already announced plans for a virtual open for the first quarter.

Meanwhile states have been sorting through options for high school sports. Associations in Indiana and Illinois both announced plans Thursday, keeping me (football & wrestling dad) obsessively scrolling my twitter feed for news.

The two states couldn’t have been further apart, philosophically:

One district in my son’s athletic conference, working on the recommendation of the county health department, opted not only to open virtually, it also suspended all extra-curricular activities during e-learning. That means the high school in that district won’t play a football game until the sixth week of the season. Who knows, by then the entire state might be shut down again.

Who’s right? I’ll guess we’ll find out.

Same story with school re-opening in my district and my son’s district. The superintendent in my new district is leaning strongly towards a virtual open. School board will announce on Tuesday. Either way, we’re both ready to roll. Between homelife and his football practices, he’s heard a drumbeat of “control what you can control”. It’s practically a family motto now.

And not just in our family. The latest episode of Jennifer Fulwiler’s podcast “This Is Jen” struck the same chord.

Jen feels like learning to live with uncertainty is a life skill that most of us struggle with. For a lot of us, it doesn’t fit our personality at all. But in our current environment, it’s one of the best tools we have. We kind of have to pick a lane, mash the accelerator, and go.

Of course it helps to do your homework before you pick that lane. Do your research. Ask the “what if?” questions. Play out the worst-case scenario. Use Colin Powell’s 40-70 Rule (Go get his book My American Dream. Summarized: in any moment of decision you’ll never have 100% of the information you need. If you can’t get to 40% sure of the outcome, that’s a no. Once you get to 70% sure, that’s good enough to go with.). Then go.

Her closing piece is underrated: In the darkest times, find the thing that you can control and can get excited about. That thing is going to vary from person to person. Julie Reulbach wrote eloquently about it this week. For teachers staring down a school year that may be filled with fits and starts of in-person instruction mixed with long stretches of virtual learning, that might look something like:

  • planning on paper or a GDoc for the first unit
  • thinking about planning for the first unit while drinking coffee on a rainy Sunday morning
  • touching base with colleagues (tough if you’re changing districts and aren’t on school email yet but an inbox message on social can accomplish the same thing) to get an idea of what you’re teaching
  • or if you are ready: build the slide decks you’ll use for each lesson in the first unit of the year. Now cut the video of you presenting each lesson (Screencastify or Screencast-o-matic is your new best friend).

Eventually you’ll be at the point where your students who are absent or doing virtual learning are covered. And if you get the call tomorrow that school is shutting down and you’re going virtual for the next nine weeks, so are you.

Because that call is coming. Maybe sooner than you think.

Of that, I’m virtually certain.