My Classes

Well, this week has certainly been interesting. I went the first three days of my new semester without my mentor teacher. It was a little scary but probably a good challenge for me. I had to set the tone for the semester in those days, and it was rough. Even though I'm teaching two Math 3 classes, the personalities of the two classes are totally different. First period is sophomores, and they're mostly quiet and mostly very quick with math. Sixth period is juniors, and they're extremely talkative. So that's a huge battle, and on top of that, they're all at very different skill levels. Some are simultaneously taking Math 3 and Math 4 to get ahead, and others barely scraped by in Math 2. And it's a larger class, so it's really hard to give everyone the attention they need. Moreover, half the time I'm just trying to get them to stop talking. I unfortunately kicked two students out of class on Thursday to make a statement. I hate that I had to do that, but I was so patient the first three days. I had students coming up to me after class asking if class was going to be that loud all semester, so I knew I had to do something. It's really hard to not be an authoritarian teacher.

I must admit that after the first week, I feel a bit discouraged. Between the kicking students out of class and seeing some students so discouraged with exponent rules, I'm already starting to feel like a really bad teacher. I'm frustrated also that I don't usually know what I'm teaching until the day before. On one hand, I'm grateful that four of the math teachers are teaching the same course, so we all co-create materials. It makes my job easier in that I don't have to make everything from scratch. For one, I don't know the curriculum well enough to know what I would need to create to teach an Algebra 2 course. On the other hand, I hate that I have to wait for the other teachers to send their materials. It gives me less time to change things if I want to change them, and it gives me less time to figure out how I want to teach something. And I don't have the experience that the other teachers have to know what will be hard to teach and where I should stop and spend more time. I'm also worried that I'm already behind. I have to finish teaching how to scale graphs and introduce exponential functions tomorrow, and it's just really a lot. Plus, there are already students that have bombed the first quiz and students who have already surpassed their maximum number of excusable absences for the term. How do I help them all?!?

I've also switched seminars, so I'm taking on a larger role in teaching reading and writing. While I'm excited about it, I'm already so overwhelmed with all the math stuff that I'm just not sure what to do.

Question: If 30% of my students' grades are based on their classwork, how should I check it? Also, if 20% of their grade is homework, how should I be grading that?

Good Moment

So this was an exciting moment that happened several weeks ago that I'd like to share with you.

This past semester, a student asked, “Why do we have to learn how to simplify exponents? Will it ever help me when I go to the grocery store?” My immediate response was, “Is the only purpose of education to help you make it through the grocery store?” Many students miss the purpose of education, and schools don’t often do a very good job at responding to their inquiries. We do not educate generation after generation simply for the purposes of survival, but we do want to promote students to ask their own questions and create their own ideas about the world. So another student responded to the question first. He said that it was important to learn math because you don't want to be embarrassed because you can't do a simple calculation when someone asks you. He said that you want to be a smart, educated person. I thought he gave a great answer, and I also added that you need to keep learning math because you don't want to cut out so many options for careers when you're 15 years old. Moreover, the skills you learn from doing math will help you in any field to go into. So I was glad that conversation went as well as it did.

So class went on, and we transitioned to a different topic. We had just started talking about linear functions, so we were reading mini-stories and turning them into equations of straight lines. In one story, someone needed to bake 100 cookies for a bake sale, but that person could only make a dozen cookies every ten minutes. The equation to describe this story is y=1.2x because you begin with 0 cookies and then you simplify 12 cookies divided by 10 minutes to make 1.2 cookies per minute. It seemed equally as straightforward as any other problem we had done, but that same student called out, “Wait, I don’t understand where the 1.2 is from.” So I said, “Well, to find slope, we divide the change in y by the change in x. So 12 divided by 10 is 1.2. You’re simplifying so that it’s like making 1.2 cookies every minute.” The student responded, “But that’s not what’s happening. You’re not making 1.2 cookies every minute. You’re making 12 cookies every 10 minutes. The cookies aren’t finishing gradually; you make them all at the same time.” So I took a minute to think about what he said, and I realized he was right. He was arguing that this problem was not best represented as a linear function. Cookies weren’t being made gradually; 12 cookies were made every 10 minutes. So I had to agree with him. I said, “You’re right. You’re saying that a linear equation isn’t a good model for this problem. So do you think our graph would look more like this?” I graphed a step function (a series of horizontal lines getting higher), which is a function they won’t learn for another year or two. He agreed with me that this graph was better. I was really proud of him for pointing that out, and I was really proud of myself for listening to him. Math can be very complicated, and when we don’t listen to our student’s queries or when we try to make their thoughts fit into our lesson, we restrict their growth and development. I certainly don’t want that. Furthermore, I loved that I could show him that math is actually useful to visually represent real-world problems and that he had the power to figure it out for himself. I only hope I can figure out how to do that every day in my classes.

New Classes!

So... I start teaching my very own class on Monday! Woohoo! I'm excited and scared. I will have a Math 3 class of 26 juniors. Math 3 is Algebra 2-ish: exponential functions, systems of linear equations, and quadratic functions. Then another teacher is going on maternity leave in May, so I will be taking over another Math 3 class of 22 juniors, and I will also move to her advisory. I'm really excited to start trying out all the things I've been thinking about this past semester, but I'm also nervous that many of them won't work. So I'm trying to go with the flow. I'm also moving a lot in seminar this semester. I'm switching to a different team to help with different reading levels for the juniors, and I'm also switching at the end of the term to help out the sophomores while their teacher is on maternity leave. So that will be an adventure too.

For my first day, I'll start off with them filling out an Info Sheet with their contact info and some fun questions. I'll collect those at the end of the period so I'll have their information. Then we'll spend some time introducing ourselves and just talking about ourselves. It will be a little bit casual, but as long as everyone can stay focused, I think we'll be okay. Then I'll pass out the syllabus, and we'll read that aloud and discuss it pretty thoroughly. I want to talk specifically about what I expect from the class, and I will want to hear what the students expect from me. I want to make sure that I'm super consistent with this group, unlike how I was last time. Then here's where I'm not totally sure yet. I want to do a really fun and exciting math activity that will really make the students think differently about math, but I don't really have any ideas. We have an activity planned that I may use if I don't come up with anything else. How many squares are there on a checkerboard? It's kinda fun. And I wouldn't be sad if we ended up doing that, but I'd really like to find something better. So any suggestions would be helpful. Then their homework assignment is to write a 1-2 page paper answering about 10 questions that I have posed to them so I can get to know them a little better. Like it?

I hate grading!

So I noticed while I was grading the Math 5 projects over winter break how much I hate grading. It's so arbitrary. Another intern asked me how grading math could be arbitrary. If I'm giving partial credit based on a student's work, I have to make judgment calls on how much each mistake is worth. Is this mistake worse than that mistake? What defines a conceptual misunderstanding, and what is just a silly mistake?

Furthermore, I've found that we don't do a very good job at creating tests/quizzes/projects with grading in mind. For example, with this project, we just asked them to do 38 problems out of a textbook and told them we'd collect it for a project grade. Since it was a project grade, I couldn't just check it for completion, I needed to grade it for accuracy. And 38 problems per student was a lot. So I wanted to give them a lot of credit for working so hard, but I also didn't want it to change their grades too drastically this close to the end of the semester. But then I didn't want to make any one problem worth more points than another because we hadn't told the students that certain problems were more important than others, so that didn't seem fair. My point is that I think it's important to set it up in advance how many points each problem is worth, so that both the teacher and the student know what's important.

I also want to address the attendance policy. I don't believe that failing a class based on attendance is fair or helpful for the student. If a student is 10 minutes late everyday yet understands the material and does well on all the tests and quizzes, it's not helpful for the student to retake the class in summer school. A grade should reflect how much the student has learned about a subject, not their attendance, their behavior, or their level of responsibility. I strongly believe grades have lost their meanings, and we need to separate these student skills from their understanding of the content. Sure, presumably in most cases, these student skills will help a student to learn better. However, it is not always the case. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be evaluating their attendance, their behavior, etc. But they cannot be factored into the course grade the same way. Maybe they get multiple grades for one class, I don't know, but I'm tired of seeing students fail classes based on their punctuality. It truly makes the grade lose any sort of meaning.

So the question is... how do I hold my students responsible for attendance and behavior without giving it a huge impact on their grade?

I don't know probability...

Short post. I just realized in the past few weeks in my Math 2 class how little I know about probability. It's maddeningly counterintuitive sometimes, and I really need to take a class on it. Here's to hoping I can get some professor to teach it this summer!

Tardiness and Attendance Issues

So the day we got back from break, one of the headmasters of our school came into my first period class and told everyone that if we improved our tardiness and attendance more than any other class, she would have something special for us! The kids were briefly excited by this. Would it be food? Or a party?!? Then they quickly started coming up with all their excuses again for why they are tardy and absent so often. I sighed.

I decided we needed to have a discussion about why it's so important to show up daily and on-time to class and how we could improve our attendance for the remainder of the term. More than anything else, our school has a very strict policy on attendance. More than three unexcused absences (and three tardies equal an absence), and you automatically fail the course. It's a very strict policy, and I'll get into my opinions about it further when I discuss assessment. So I tried to stress to them that it was not worth failing a class. But they then got pretty upset that the school has this policy. So I said that there wasn't much I could do about it at that point but that I agreed with them. However, they still have this responsibility to get to class and to not be late. So I asked them what strategies they could use to make sure they were here on time everyday. The first girl responded by saying she didn't know what to do because her child's daycare starts at 8am and school here starts at 8am, so what was she supposed to do? I was at a loss. I knew she had a child, but I didn't know that the father wasn't in the picture and that she had no one else really to help her out. (As you can see, I am constantly reminded of how naive and ignorant I am of their situations.) I had no idea how to respond. Another student said that I wouldn't understand because I don't live in "the hood," and sometimes it's not safe to go outside in the mornings. I didn't know what to say. I only could say, "I'm sorry. The school has a really strict attendance policy, and it's your responsibility to figure out how you can get to school on time everyday." I felt that this conversation was not helping. Then they began saying more ridiculous things like, "If class started at 8:10am instead, we'd all be on time." I wanted to laugh out loud. Most of my tardy students are late by 30-45 minutes on a regular basis, and half of the class doesn't even show up most days. It was a strange combination of very legitimate reasons and ridiculous excuses. So we ended class, and the same number of students were tardy the very next day. Clearly, we had a very unsuccessful talk. Suggestions?

Physics and... Apathy?

At the end of December, I began teaching physics to my Math 5 students. I didn't realize before starting that they had taken no physics classes at our school, so I had to start a little further back than I expected. However, it seemed to be a general success. As one student said, it was finally a true real-world application of the calculus they had learned, specifically using derivatives to find velocity and acceleration. He said he didn't really understand most of the rest of the course, but this was something tangible, and he could finally understand why we use math. Yay!

It was exciting to ask the question: what do we know about the ball when it reaches its highest point? They kind of stared at me for a little bit, and I asked them about the velocity of the ball as it was traveling upward. Well, the students said, it's slowing down until it reaches the top, then it starts speeding up again as it falls back down. Exactly right! For a brief moment in time, the velocity of the ball is zero, and it changes directions. This was a crazy revelation for many of my students, and I loved it! We also had a good discussion about air resistance, and how if we lived in a world with no air resistance, every object dropped from the same height (no matter its weight) would hit the ground at the same time. We talked about different gravitational pulls on different planets. It was really exciting! (And I was really glad I took some physics in college because I needed to answer a lot more of their questions than I had been expecting.) I was really proud of so many of my students for really actively listening and asking in-depth questions. They were really engaged and thinking.

However, there were a few students that didn't seem to connect at all. One student walked out of class every day and didn't come back until the end of the period. I had been having a lot of trouble with him all semester. He is not a disruptive student by any means - he is very quiet. However, if you bring any attention to him, positive or negative, he responds in such a condescending manner. I've been trying for quite a while to get to know him and dig beneath his many layers, but it just hasn't happened. And when he started leaving class every day, I grew very concerned that he was missing so much material. How do you bring a student back into the class and re-engaged? How do you get the student to open up to you? Or even just to respect you? I guess I'm just still struggling with that whole student motivation thing.

Also, one day I noticed that same student chewing gum during class, so I asked him to spit it out. He argued with me, as he often does. But he got up to go to the trash can. Then about fifteen minutes later, I realized he was still chewing gum. So I asked him again, and he argued that he was a senior and that it was "mango smoothie" flavor, so he shouldn't have to spit it out. Right. So he got up again, and when I noticed again that he hadn't actually spit out the gum, I gave him the option to go to the office. All the other students at this point were yelling to him, "Don't go. That's stupid. It's not worth it." But he indeed chose to leave.

So after class, I went to the office to make sure he had also gone. He had not, but I luckily ran into him and one of the headmasters at the same moment. So I asked her if he had come to see her, and she said no. So he said that I kicked him out of class for chewing gum, which he thought was unreasonable. I reminded him that I had given him a choice after asking several times to spit out his gum. So the headmaster backed me up and asked him to apologize to me and to make sure it didn't happen again.

After this had all happened, I felt silly. It seemed so ridiculous to go to the headmaster over a student chewing gum. I didn't want to become a teacher so I could nag kids about rules. However, I suppose it comes with the job. I wondered if this was following my ideals and philosophies or if this wasn't against it. I couldn't decide. I don't really care about students chewing gum or wearing hats, but I do believe in consistency. It is a school-wide rule, and I do feel like it undermines other teachers' authority if I don't also stick to the rules. Furthermore, it's part of holding the students to higher standards in the sense that they also must learn to follow rules and be respectful of other people's environments. I couldn't go into some cathedrals or mosques with my shoulders and midriff bare, so the students must also be respectful of what the school and teachers ask. Does that seem reasonable?

Youth Violence

One of the many things I have learned about my students this year is that they come from very different backgrounds than I do, and they generally deal with very different issues than I ever did. One of the hardest things they have to deal with is violence in their neighborhoods. I am still very naive about the issue, and it is truly difficult for me to understand.

Several weeks ago, we had a former student from our MAT program come talk to us about a documentary he and his students had made the previous year on youth violence. He brought four of his students along to share their experiences with us. Besides that we were all interested in hearing about how he used this media as a way to teach and as a form of assessment, I was very moved by some of things students said about living in areas of violence. I simply cannot imagine what it would be like at the age of twelve to see your father or your brother shot and killed, as is the case with one of my students. The four students who came to speak to us were very bright and very motivated by this documentary to end youth violence. Many students, fortunately, understand that the ultimate goal is peace. However, it's also easy to see how students can so easily become a part of it. When you're growing up with it all around, maybe you know no other way, or maybe you just grow numb to it. Somehow you rationalize that it's ok. So the "fight" for peace is a difficult one, but it's one that as an educator I try to support for my students.

Recently, in my advisory, we have grown concerned with a student's living situation. He and his family were attacked by a gang right outside their house after Thanksgiving, and since then, he says that he has been watched on several occasions. So we're looking into getting him and his family new housing. However, one of the other students responded by saying, "That's why you gotta carry a knife with you." I was surprised, and my mentor responded quickly by saying it was a bad idea. Fortunately, the student agreed and said he did not want to carry a knife for fear that it would get turned against him. Then, to my surprise, another student shared that she went to "juvy" for three days in fifth grade when she pulled a knife on another girl for talking trash about her mother. So we collectively agreed (I hope) that carrying a knife was a poor choice because you could end up getting in trouble or the knife could be turned on you. What I don't think we got across very well was the idea that carrying a knife to protect yourself only perpetuates violence in neighborhoods. It's like the backwards argument from gun owners that if everyone carried a gun, there would be fewer shootings. No, there's no way that more weapons means less violence. I guess it depends on your goal. Are you trying to protect yourself, or are you working to end violence? And I would like to be an educator who helps to empower my students by promoting peace. However, I know that I am still in a state where their stories shock me. And frankly, it should be shocking! It's awful how normal this has become for my students, and I only hope I can help them in any way I can.

I know, it's been too long...

I apologize for my hiatus. I promise it wasn't because there's nothing interesting to write about - there's always plenty. In fact, there's never a dull moment at my school, which is why I got a little too busy to keep writing. However, I am back in action, and I am hoping to do a better job of keeping up this semester. I will make a couple blog posts now that will talk about things that I missed in the past months, so ignore the dates. Please feel free to share your ideas with me.