Month: August 2021

Posting My L

I’ve always been secretly envious of some of my teacher connects who plan semesters out over the summer and cut dozens of videos. It seems like there’s always some type of weird glitch that makes my planning very fluid right up until opening day. Like, I could do all that advance prep work and then end up not being able to use it because circumstances change. And then I spend all year playing catch-up.

This year it was a delay in being able to distribute chromebooks to our students. Fortunately I had already planned on using a lot of blended learning principles, and my connects have been modeling 2:1 device usage for a while, so I felt I was ready to roll even if I had to call an audible.

So the first full week of school I made my first attempt at implementing stations, or at least rotating activities between groups in class.

Fail Peter Rabbit GIF by Sky - Find & Share on GIPHY
I can fly!

I spent some time at the end of the day kind of being cold-blooded in my self-assessment. My sense of how it went ranged from “juggling flaming chainsaws” to teh thrills and chills of an 85-minute lecture.

I could kind of see it in my students’ eyes. I blew them a away, and not in a good way.

So here’s the set-up:

I have limited devices, ranging from 25% – 60% of my students connected in any class. I sold my prep, so any paper I hand out I need 240 copies of.

That’s a lot of paper

Right away I saw I needed to split my large classes into more intimate chunks, and create some situations where my students were self-directed.

The first block (which is repeated the following day) was an algebra review (more on that in a moment). I split the 85 minutes into

  • Bellringer
  • Live notes & guided practice with me
  • A three-student pod solving systems of linear equations three ways (one method per student)
  • A three-student pod solving quadratic equations three ways (one method per student)
  • 3-2-1 Summary

Documents here: Algebra Review Part II, Solving Systems Three Ways, Solving Quadratics Three Ways

I also made my seating chart that day so I lost maybe 15 minutes of class completing that while students worked on the bellringer.

I felt the design was good. It would get me and my students what we needed – Every student had a chance to ask teacher questions in a small group, and to work independently with support from classmates when I was with a different group.

But the reality was:

  • Several students (even with support from friends) would not start the independent work. The most common objection was “Mr. Dull, that was two years ago and we never learned it because we were remote”.
  • Several students would not engage with their classmates in a pod of three, instead trying to follow my notes with a group across the room.
  • I severely underestimated how long it would take to do live notes on systems and quadratics. The video I made was 12 minutes long so I thought I was good, but in answering questions and checking for understanding with individual students we blew way past that.
  • Students felt overwhelmed with paper (getting a new handout and a new set of instructions every 15 minutes).
  • Students got caught up in trying to figure out if the problems we couldn’t finish in class were going to be “homework”, how many points is this, do we have to finish all of this, and so forth.
Angry Schitts Creek GIF by CBC - Find & Share on GIPHY
Insert trendy Schitt’s Creek gif here

A lot of that is on me. I’m building a set of routines and culture in a class, and I threw a lot of change at them the first day. Clearly I needed to do a better job communicating my expectations. I need to organize my handouts better. And staple them maybe. I need to be more realistic about how long a task will take. The 85-minute blocks make it feel like there is a lot of wiggle room, but in reality the opposite is true. Honestly my geometry planning partners are seeing the same thing in their classes too. We had to adjust plans for the coming week on the fly because none of us were able to finish our planned activities on Friday. It will help when we can roll out devices. I’m leaning on Quizizz and links in Google Classroom that students can access from their phones, but until we are 1:1 or close to it, Desmos and my other go-tos, hyperdocs and EduProtocols, are on the shelf.

I’m hopeful I’ll be able to create time for 360 Math, Stay and Stray, using the Building Thinking Classroom principles. My connects who are building in VNPS to their classes are getting excellent outcomes. That will also get all of us what we need – collaboration, standing and moving, students working independent of me and thinking together. That will probably take the place of one of the “stations”. I wrote it in my plans two of the blocks this week and just didn’t get there.

Added Bonus: I’ll get to use the Ed Campos Jr. “Musical Cues” playlist. (H/T to Matt Vaudrey who also has a GFolder full of cues).

My other thought is: Learning loss is real. Call it “opportunity loss” if you wish. This is not a knock on students, or teachers. It’s the reality I’m seeing before me. When my district shut down in-person learning in March 2020, the decision was made to not present new material. So a student in algebra I did not see quadratics or rational expressions, for example. Last year we were remote for three quarters, then hybrid for the final 9 weeks, and in algebra II we completed probably 75% of the curriculum. No trig ratios, no triangles, no circles. There’s a lot of foundational stuff missing.

I knew this going in, that I would have to intentionally plan to spiral back to review, reteach, relearn a big chunk of algebra for my geometry students. In some cases, it might have been unrealistic for me to expect my students to independently complete work on a skill they may have never seen before. I’m using the rotating bellringers pioneered by Marissa Grayson. But as part of that rotation I’m committing one day out of each five blocks for a more “tradtional” bellringer of an algebra skill we are going to use or build on that particular day.

Like a lot of things this year, this is the hand I’ve been dealt. It’s up to me to create learning opportunites for my kids with the tools I’ve got.

And to keep reflecting on hits and misses.

There was kind of a cool moment at the end of the week tho:

Been holding that comment close to my heart all weekend. Like a loud foul ball in the midst of a hitting slump.

Ask Me in October

I sold my prep on Friday.

I’m a little old for that kind of thing, but our math classes are huge and my principal offered this as a way to break up the logjam a little. That’s just kind of where we are in education these days.

My district isn’t near the size of Vegas (where I taught for a couple years at the beginning of my career), but regardless of category, urban, suburban, income level, pick your metric, districts are hurting for licensed teachers, and hurting for subs. Bus drivers too. Last summer I had friends in public, private, and charter schools all asking me to keep an eye peeled for teachers for them.

Selling your plan period was big in Vegas when I taught out there. The day after ADM (enrollment count) at the end of September you’d get a new schedule and an extra class, and the extra pay would hit the second paycheck of the month following. Your October pay came right around Thanksgiving, and the giant pile of cash for the never-ending month of May was in your paycheck just as you were done exhaling in mid-late June. perfect.

But this decision wasn’t about money.

Not everybody is at a place in life where they can take on additional duties. Been there. But two of us on the geometry team agreed to teach an additional section to ease the class size load on everyone. The other option I guess was to wait out trying to bring on a new math teacher (good luck) or finding a long-term sub (also kind of rare).

So it was kind of a perfect storm of factors that moved me to take on the extra class: I like my teaching colleagues and want to ease the burden on them (and on myself – I had a class of 70 kids the second day of school). I’m young enough, energetic enough, and wise enough (like a cagey veteran pitcher buying an extra foot on his fastball with a variety of off-speed stuff), to handle it. I’m basically single-prepped (on-level geometry and honors geometry) so the additional planning is minimal.

Guys like Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron rank among baseball’s all-time leaders in WAR

But I also thought a little bit about a long-ago blog post from an administrator I follow, riffing on the sabermetric baseball stat Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which measures the value of a player to his team compared to a generic replacement.

“When we think of WAR, wins above replacement this makes me think of education.  Wins above replacement (a sub).  When I walk into a class are you providing a learning experience unlike any other.  What is your WAR?

When I first started teaching I always strived for a classroom that “ran itself.”  When I work with teachers and talk about “flipteaching”  teachers always ask “Well, what will they need me for then?”  

If you think a video can replace you, then it should!
The environment you provide, the relationship you create with a student, the desire to learn you grow, collaborating and connecting with students families and the community impact your WAR.

When you think about what you provide every day for students.  Are you providing an environment, an experience, a lesson that is statistically better than a replacement could give?  What added benefits are you bringing to the table? ” 

http://coachinandout.blogspot.com/2012/11/war-what-is-it-good-for-absolutely.html

What is a slightly less rested version of me worth, compared to the alternative? In my formative years one of my all-time favorite Cubs, Bill Buckner, offered to move to left field (his original position until a severe ankle injury forced a move to first base) so the club could get another bat in the lineup. (The Great Cliff Johnson, who hit moon shots but couldn’t catch a cold). I feel kind of like Billy Buck right now.

I know some really good long-term subs. My big thing is I want to make sure that my kids are taken care of, and my colleagues are taken care of.

The guy who joined me in selling our plan period is a Chicago-area guy too and we share that gallows sense of humor and kind of wry way of looking at the world. He walked over to my classroom door after we taught our first extra class today and observed, “Well, that wasn’t so bad. (pause) But ask me again in October”.

Just gotta stay focused during my work time, get stuff done before leaving school, automate what can be automated. Set a “go-to-sleep” alarm. And drink a lot of water.

One week in, this is shaping up as one of the more unusual school years of my career. But that’s good. Keeps me on my toes. And will make for an anecdote or two at my retirement dinner many years from now.

Year 19 Day One

Opening Day. A Cub fan writer I follow once said it’s his favorite day of the year because it’s the only day he’s 100 percent sure the Cubs are still in the pennant race.

It’s “anything can happen” day.

I still feel the same way about the first day of school. Giddy like a little kid.

For real. Minutes before the first hour bell I walked over to my next door neighbor teacher (Queen Star Wars Nerd, and I say that in the best possible way) for a fist bump, and walked back over to my door clapping like a point guard about to line up for tipoff.

My district is consolidating from four high schools to two, and that has kind of amplified (multiplied?) all the speed bumps that exist at the start of every school year. My principal was up front with us in her weekly email message on Sunday: “Everything is going to be not-perfect. All I need from you is to be positive, and to be there for our kids”.

Done and done.

My district has put a mask mandate in place for the first quarter, but I could see smiles in the eyes of my students walking into a school building for the first time in 18 months.

Kids are super-resilient, man. Due to a scheduling glitch, the classroom across the hall from me was triple-booked one class period, we just rolled with it. I joked with the teacher this was the start of cross-curricular programming – he was about to teach Algebra/History/Ethnic Studies. Adults smoothed out the rough spots, kids did school. Team effort.

My district uses a “suspended curriculum” approach to the first few days of school, each class covering an aspect of expectations and information. With some time left over for an activity of the teacher’s choosing.

I went back to a concept I first read about in the Daniel Pink book To Sell Is Human, known as the Pixar Pitch. Basic idea is, every Pixar movie has some plot structures in common:

Pixar story artist, Emma Coats has cracked the code and argues that every Pixar film shares the same narrative DNA – a deep structure of storytelling that involves six sequential sentences:
1. Once upon a time there was …
2. Every day …
3. One day …
4. Because of that …
5. Because of that …
6. Until finally …

http://www.workingdifferently.org/working-differently-blog/the-pixar-pitch-telling-your-story-crisply-and-with-clarity-in-order-to-compel-action

So we walked through the basics, examined an example using the plot of Finding Nemo, then as a group brainstormed what the Pixar Pitch for Toy Story might look like.

Then I turned them loose:

I was hoping they’d identify the “plot twist” that created conflict in their own math history, and they nailed it. Some made a micro point, a specific test or assignment. Others were more macro: their relationship with math changed when some guy started mixing letters in with the numbers.

We talked about doing math different, what we could do in an 85 minute block, and I think I may have whetted their appetites just a bit for Monday when we start content. That’s good enough for the first day, I think.

Source

Plus we got to get all nostalgia-trippy on some childhood favorite movies. Also a bonus. They wrote up six-sentence summaries for Cars, and Wall-E, and Ratatouille, and Coco, and Inside Out.

So about that mask mandate: for the last year and a half my district has been aggressive in making moves to promote health and safety of students, staff and families. The board decided over the summer that masks would be required in buildings for the first quarter. It’s not my favorite way to teach, but I’ll gladly wear a mask to help keep my kids healthy.

The county health department has also recommended masks in schools, but due to a recent change in state law, it cannot mandate masks. Only the local legislative body can do that.

News that broke today: the Lake County Council may take up the issue at its next meeting in September. So we’ll see.

I’ve got 70 kids on my roster for 7th Hour, but that’s a tomorrow problem. Day One is in the books. We rode the wave. There may have been a nap after dinner.

I’m hopeful we can all keep the attitude and enthusiasm I saw today. Happy New Year you all. And remember, on Opening Day, anything can happen.

Chaotic Overthinking Is My Jam

It’s pretty much a Family Motto: There’s two kinds of people in this world, and they usually end up married to each other. I caught the radio bug early, used to love scanning the AM dial for distant signals. Even now I love occasionally dialing in New Orleans or Minneapolis, New York or Denver on my car radio. Extra bonus points if the signal is interrupted by static from flashes of lightning from a distant storm.

Mrs. Dull would rather listen to a Pink Floyd song than hear static on her radio.

This last week of summer break my brain is filled with static. And I end up tweaking the dial all week, trying to fine-tune what my class will look like for the year.

This year, well, you know. Coming off 16 months of remote or hybrid teaching, moving to a new building, changing preps, and teaching on a 4×4 block schedule with 85-minute classes. That’s a lot of fine-tuning required.

Driving Marc Rodriguez GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

My geometry team brainstormed a little over the summer, mostly getting to know each others’ style and float some trial balloons about what class might look like. Everybody is gonna do their own thing, but as a group we know for sure we can’t do 20 minutes of notes/direct instruction and 60 minutes of class time to work on practice sets.

So where do we go from there?

I made some plans to do my homework over the summer. Still working my way through the Building Thinking Classrooms book but I have the gist – most of it matches up with my philosophy and I’ve implemented a lot of it over the years. Just need to be more consistent.

Also, my district put on a two-day retreat/mini-conference last week. One of my instructional coaches presented a four-part series to help us get ready for the changes needed this year. That slide up at the top of the post came from the “summer slide” session. She also presented on differentiating instruction through student choice, and planning out an 85-minute class period. Alas, that session was filled by the time I got back from Arizona and was able to sign up, but as she told me all four sessions kind of fit together and there is some overlap. I got plenty of ideas from the two sessions I did attend.

This last weekend before Back To School is when things have a tendency to fall into place, even if that is by the “Pick A Lane And Go With It” method. So, what I think class will look like this year:

  1. Thinking tasks for bellringer (can include algebra review topics)
  2. Get up and get moving (flexible grouping)
  3. As much VNPS stuff as I can fit in
  4. Stations (digital or otherwise)
  5. In-class flip
  6. Tools: Desmos/EduProtocols/Hyperdocs/Quizizz

Honestly, I can go to school on my plans for remote teaching from last year. I had 80-minute classes on Google Meet, so I intentionally split the time into three or four chunks. Just need to transfer that concept to in-person learning. I’ve got a couple days to flesh that out. Kids come back on Wednesday, but my district builds in an SEL-focused “suspended curriculum” for the first three days to establish some protocols and allow time to balance classes and accommodate our families in transition. By Monday I will be ready to go.

I’ve been at this long enough the panic of sorting through plans has devolved to kind of a low-level anxiety. I can definitely hear through the static.

As my instructional coach put it in her slide, a “settled thinking” approach. Deep breath…

Breathe Deep Breath GIF by swerk - Find & Share on GIPHY

And let’s be honest, all of us who came through last year in one piece? We’re just happy to be back in a classroom in front of real live human beings. Doing what we do best.

One last evening before heading into the building tomorrow. We’ve got a planning meeting for volunteers for our parish’s middle school youth group this afternoon.

One of the From Day One volunteers brought some tomatoes from her garden while I was gone. So tonight I’m going to give them back.

When life hands you tomatoes, make salsa. And share. Food is my love language, and cooking/prepping helps clear my head.

It’s a little like school year planning in that regard.

This Is Your Town

My oldest son and I share a trait of being born on the extremes of our generations. I’m amongst the oldest Gen-Xers and he qualifies with the youngest Millennials. So there’s some grey areas when you try to match us up to the sterotypes. He’s definitely got a little Zoomer in him.

Inspired by a tweet from Christopher Scalia, I spent a little time one day identifying my most Boomer trait and my most Millennial trait.

Like a lot of Millennials, I’d rather stab myself in the eyeballs with raw spaghetti noodles than make or recieve a phone call. But I share that Boomer thing for long car drives. Even made a playlist for roaring along the lake in Michigan with the windows down and the music up. Of course I don’t watch much Office so I’m uncool enough to have made Life Is A Highway the opener.

I’m an old enough Xer to kinda get the Boomer love for Route 66. The Mother Road, connecting Chicago to LA, subject of TV series and song and still a source of nostalgia across generations.

It was officially decertified as a US highway in 1985, and the TV series reruns were a staple of Chicago UHF stations when I was a kid, so that tracks.

My son’s housing situation on his Army base is changing, so I volunteered to fly out, and then drive his car, his dog, and his cat back here. A healthy portion of that drive follows I-40, the road that replaced Rt. 66 as the Interstate Highway System was built out.

You know the bit from the Pixar Cars movie, right? The interstate kills a thriving community all for the sake of convenience?

I felt a little like Lightning McQueen when I ran into car trouble in a remote area of New Mexico, four hours into a 26-hour drive. Windshield wipers straight-up stopped working on US 54 without another car or town in sight. Rain passed quickly but I knew I needed to address it. Tried a couple of quick fixes on the fly. Bought the wrong size fuses at a truck stop. Finally decided I would stick to my original plan of overnighting in Tucumcari and trying to find a repair shop there.

Didn’t quite make it.

Ominous storm clouds ahead on US 54

When I saw lightning off in the distance I knew we had a potential problem. When I got to Rt. 66 in Santa Rosa (near the junction with I-40) the storm was on us and I knew I was done driving for the day. Got the next-to-last room at a Days Inn as the hail started coming down.

Opened the phone book in the desk drawer (OK, Boomer) and saw a half-page ad for a wrecker/auto repair place that was right up the street, open Sunday, and took after-hours calls. Unfortunately they were out on a call at a huge accident on 40 (one that I probably would have been in if I had been 5 minutes faster – I could see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles from my hotel room. I wouldn’t be writing this right now) and asked me to call back in the morning.

Showed up at their shop 15 minutes before opening Sunday morning. One of the guys in the shop spent legit 3 hours working meticulously to diagnose the problem, with a level of care that was obvious. This is the kind of place that really only deals with folks with surprise car trouble. Everybody needs help right now to get somewhere else. The guys and ladies at the shop are problem-solvers.

Two anecdotes from the day:

Our Lady of Guadalupe and the St. Benedict Medal. That’s some powerhouse intercessors right there.

At that moment I was feeling pretty optimistic about the day. And then:

It was like a movie scene, for real.

The repair guy found the problem, but we had a new issue: all the auto parts stores for miles around were closed on Sunday. He tried to source the part from a salvage vehicle on his lot but no luck. So he’ll call for the part Monday, and I’ll spend another night in Santa Rosa.

Having some time to kill before I could check in to the local Super 8 (with a discount rate as an Ortega customer!) I headed across the street to a park for a picnic lunch and to get the animals some fresh air.

I wandered over to a statue and read the plaque:

I dig public art. That statue is Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless me, Ultima. He grew up in Santa Rosa until his family moved to the big city (Albequerque). He went on to teach high school English, continue to write, then teach at University of New Mexico, all amongst gathering acclaim. But his experiences as a boy informed his writing. He was, where he was from.

And all the pieces started to fit together.

The previous Sunday I attended Mass at the chapel on my son’s post, then sat with the old Slavic priest afterward as he heard my confession. Always a good idea to be in a state of grace when traveling, right?

So I began my confession the way I always do: “I’m a pride-filled, impatient, and judgemental man”. Which leads to a multitude of other sins. Father listened, and counseled, and absolved me of my sins. For a penance, he dispensed with the usual three Hail Marys, and instead challenged me to take a situation where I faced frustration, and to use that opportunity to learn and exercise patience.

Well, here we go. Served up on a silver platter.

Honestly, I’d been thinking about patience, and perspective, that morning. Waiting in the lot when I pulled up on Sunday was a man and his toddler daughter. Their car was damaged on the driver’s side and undriveable. I gathered that they were in the accident I saw from my hotel. It was clear to me that they had slept in their vehicle all night in the parking lot of a repair shop, in a thunderstorm. That’s way worse than my one-star hotel. Later a mom and her young son came in to have a flat tire repaired. They were far from home and somehow found this shop.

I had nothing but time. I could afford the hotel room and I packed three days of lunches before I left Arizona. And from what I saw of that accident, I was lucky to be alive. Or at least not hospitalized.

There was peace. In however this whole situation turned out.

So of course the part we needed was so obscure it would take two weeks to get. Unlike Lightning, I didn’t have two weeks to hang out in this charming town. But fortunately the radar was crystal-clear all the way to Chicago. Not a rain cloud in the sky. I hit the road. But there’s a lot of time to think during 17 hours of driving through New Mexico, and Texas, and Oklahoma, and Missouri, and Illinois.

You remember in Cars, Lightning learns that no matter how young, handsome, wealthy, fast, or successful you are, condescending snark is always ugly. And that there’s always something to learn, if you’re open. Later, enlightened, McQueen pays to restore the main drag of Radiator Springs to its heyday.

There’s no Lightning McQueen in 2021 in Santa Rosa, or any of the other dozens of dying towns along the route. I couldn’t even bring myself to snap pictures. It felt like ruin porn. Gas stations overrun with weeds and grass, restaurants shuttered, grocery stores empty, crumbling marquees on the downtown theatre.

That thriving family car repair shop on a forlorn stretch of a forgotten road could have been a the basis of a reality show. Could be pop-culture famous. They had the looks and the personality.

But they don’t want any pub. Hell, they don’t even have a Facebook page for their shop. From what I saw on Sunday, they do good work and are proud of it. They keep travelers and truckers on the road. Their care for ther customers was evident. They were, where they were from. Santa Rosa is where they made their life. And made their stand.

I’m a Region Guy. My home. Rust and all. It always rankled me a little that so much of the Rt. 66 love was wrapped up in fairy tales of leaving the stodgy midwest behind for the sun and sand of LA.

Santa Monica Pier, the western terminus of Rt. 66. Photo by Christian Beiwinkel, under Creative Commons License CC BY-SA 4.0

And for Depression-era folks, that was real. There was nothing left in Oklahoma, literally, when a dust storm wipes out your farm. But the folks watching the TV show in the 60s? That was the freedom to drive, and explore, and live. Anywhere but where you’re from.

I hope I am, where I’m from. I hope I teach like it. I think that part is important. I’ve got some cred there. I’m not as young, fast, successful, or rich as Lightning McQueen, but I am open to learning. I’ve got a couple weeks before school starts up. My car won’t even be fixed by then (my dealer’s service guy had to order the part too, and is booked solid for the next two weeks).

I don’t know if “Teach Like A New Mexico Car Repair Guy” would make a good book title, or a Twitter hashtag.

But I’ll be thinking about that guy and his family often this school year. For sure every time it rains.

In my town.