Last quarter – such improvement

I have been worried that my students didn’t “get it.” I set up work, I help students with work,but I have refused to go through the pretense of “making them work.” I can’t make people learn. I can’t make them want to learn. I can’t fight the social decision to not learn so that kids fit in. Sorry. I just want people to have a go. Just try.

So here we are at the last quarter. Kids came in, asked, “Is this the same as the last three quarters?” Yes, the projects are on the web site. There are puzzles to do, there are reports to write ( I included math games as well as the book reports, I am amassing quite an array of math games that kids like, all of which involve gore and violence), and there is a warmup every day (thanks to mathmistakes.org).

And most kids got on with it. The first day back after break, kids who didn’t feel like deep thinking spent their time on some of the easier puzzles. Those who like to write grabbed a book and started a book report. Then there were kids who were ready for some math work, and they clicked on a new project and got busy! I was so impressed. Even the kids who chose not to work did admit that they knew what to do, they chose not to. Let’s face it, there a re a number of them who don’t have the internet at home, and it takes a while to catch up on 9 missing days of Facebook.

On Thursday I sat down with a small group for almost our entire class time to help them, as they were deeply floundering. Everyone else just carried on. It was wonderful.

No, It’s not the entire set of students.  It is more than half overall. I still have one hour where only3 kids work. But I feel that there is no success if there is no failure. Students who choose to fail should have that choice. I am not sure what to do about the odds stacked against them, but they still have a genuine choice. And when students begin to choose to learn, I am happy.

Climbing robots -Super Science Saturday

There are a lot of weekends in the year. Having Science Olympiad and FIRST Robotics on the same day left me feeling as if I had one day of strawberry festival, and I gorged myself. Totally sated.

I actually prefer the intellectual nature of Science Olympiad, but I am satisfied with a comment from another adult running between both venues – Science Olympiad is better to participate in, FIRST robotics is better to watch. I like that I can take one kid to Science Olympiad: for a couple of hundred bucks, she can participate. FIRST costs a small fortune. But the pole-climbing robot is way cool. And I can be grateful that someone else runs a FIRST robotics team where our kids can participate. I could not do his job.

I blame the adults for wanting to train kids for jobs – let’s just learn it first, people!

Rolling down to spring break

Last week felt like a lull in the pace. Sure I had 2 kids do a perfect job on the styrofoam cups. I had one kids begin to work (!) after 24 weeks. I guess it finally got boring. But I feel as if – this is their second math class. They are being passed along in their regular math class, and it’s clear they have no clue what any of the math means. Are we doing them any favors? I think not.

I blame the “every child is perfect” culture. We have Little Buddhas too.

Our cups floweth over

Three types of Styrofoam stackable cups. Each group gets three of each type. Choose one type to find the number of cups to be the same height as teacher, another to reach the same height as a group member, and use the third to match a Perfect Man.
We even did “try it.” You think 18 cups match me? I am pretty short, but stack ‘em up, and show me. Are they my height? No, they are up to my knee. No, don’t come back with a new guess of 30 cups. Go away and measure. Measure one cup, measure two cups, measure three cups. I want a table, a graph, and an equation, and an explanation. How do you put oen guess into a table? Maybe that should make you think about your one guess.
How many groups managed it? One. The hardest part? Me staying out of it. The three measurements were the only hint. Should we use Excel? good idea. Can we do this by hand? good idea. Should we look for a pattern? good idea. I hope they come to their senses by tomorrow.
This is high school? Thanks Fawn

I blame the decoupling of measurement from reality.

Woah! Slacker poster! Perfect Man and Hot Dogs

Has it really been 2 weeks since I posted? Oddly, in my head I posted the results from the great hot Dog experiment and the Perfect Man project (which I stole unbashedly).
First, the Perfect Man. yes, i know it’s a middle school project, so it was well within the range of challenge for my low performing students. I solicited contestants for the “Perfect Man.” I am so lucky to work with some great guys who were willing to be measured, as long as all the measurements were along the outer sides of the body. It was enlightening for some of our English teachers to see the measurement skills of our students – they are getting an inkling of the skills our students need to master at 9th and 11th grade in “math” class.
Then we calculated ratios of the “perfect man” and of the “measured man.” Finally, the students calculated the percent difference, and were able to create posters for “their guy.” We put the posters outside in the hallway, and we’ve had several visitors. Now I have created an essay contest for the “Perfect Man”- persuade me that the person you pick is indeed perfect. I have a give-away TI84 calculator as a prize.
Then last week, we completed the Hot Dog experiment. I bought 100 hot dogs and 50 buns. I found we only had 6 thermometers in the entire school (it was school of Health, Science and Technology – now the school of Health Science, apparently we have no technology). So we had groups measuring the temperature drop over time of a hot dog in air and in a bun. I did this at home, and I had a good difference between air and in the bun, but we did not see this at school.
We did get nice exponential drops in temperature – clearly not linear. And most kids got the excel modeling done in 2 days instead of a week. Clearly some skills are improving. Hurrah!
Too many hot dogs. I blame the ‘flu, as having 25% of the students gone meant there were too many hot dogs, even for teenagers.

M&Ms

I like this newer version of the M&M exponential increase and decay. I started with 5 M&Ms, so that the kids could see that the first value was related tot he 5, otherwise the 2 gets mixed up with the half. Then I had the kids use Excel to make a mathematical model, using the sum of the squares of the difference. We used solver to minimize. They got to see their graph line goign form crazy not fit to ooh looks fabulous.

“I see that Excel does the hard work for you.” Yes, yes it does, my little friend!

And at the other extreme I have someone who is trying for the first time, but does not know how to round numbers.  Actually he may not be at the other extreme, since there are still 8 others who are doing no work. Is it because they cannot or because they will not? Or both? Anyway, Rounding Boy has persisted for four days, and we have actually completed the first two sides of the M&Ms handout in that time. Nobody works with him, because he was so nasty to them last semester, and I have enough problem children that I can get back to him for only about 2 minutes in every 15. He is quite obnoxious when I offer assistance, but I can be obnoxious too. Should I consider it a victory that I have a 15-year-old who now might be able to round numbers? It’s really a waste of time, because he’s not going to be able to pass the class, or the real algebra class. And yet, like a moth to a flame, I can’t help but try. Maybe I can get him to graph a line – maybe, if I try hard enough…

I blame the candy. It went to my head.

Well, I have to shift too

I empathize with my students. They operate at a 5th grade level, they’re being given 9th grade work ( or 11th grade work), obviously dumbed down so they can understand it, and they come in day after day, to be made to feel bad about themselves.

I feel ground down too. I have grandiose ideas to bring in new projects, I have tried to make up applications that will interest kids and… nothing. Meanwhile, we got these new text books which provide an exploration/hands-on application for every lesson ( I don’t have those, I have a “lab” class). And the other teachers are hunting down our old traditional textbooks to use them. No, they didn’t work either. We’re a failing school.

Anyway, after some personal PD, I have given myself a good shake at the nape of the neck, and kicked myself. I have found a website to teach LOGO to kids, I have written step-by-step instructions for making math models on Excel from the M&Ms activity on growth and decay.

I had accidentally started dragging the poor beasts through an “all do this together” lecture-type interaction, so I had to undo myself, and give it back to the kids. I was wavering on not giving instant feedback to the Math Mistakes warmup – and then some kids said they realized on day 4 how to do day 1′s work, so they were glad they had a week to think about it.

But I realized it’s lonesome. Even though every teacher operates in a vacuum, we continue to get the slurry shoveled down about what we should be doing. And being the salmon swimming upstream, because I read all the common core stuff, and Dan Meyer, and the entire panoply of “let’s do it” blogs, is tiring.  I don’t even know if it works, but what we were doing does not work for teaching math skills. And then – somewhere in someone’s blog – I found Mathematical Quality of Instruction § MQI Training Site  Hooray! I feel as if I have something to fight back with. Stop evaluating me on whether students comply, start looking at what math I know and what math they can do.

And I recognize that Mike Pershan is such a nice boy, I only hope my son is half as kind. And Fawn Ngyuen sharing her lovely ideas, her work, her classes with us. I have been ungrateful, and I repent. Will try to do better.

I blame winter. Hate those short sunlight hours.