Day 92: Teach to the Few

Educon was excellent!  I got to meet amazing people and participate in wonderful conversations.  I left there with many valuable resources, both academic and personal.

Justin (Lanier) and Justin (Aion) know that it's good to be a Justin

Sarah Da Teechur was THRILLED to be flanked by me and Art la Flamme

Kristen Swanson and the EdCamp movement have changed my professional life.

Rafranz Davis and David Wees were trying to take a nice picture and I photobombed from the front...

Now I need to put those ideas into place.

With the conference and the drive, I wasn't quite ready today.


After my day on Thursday and my absence on Friday, my Math 8 students had spread the rumor that I had retired.  As I was in my room, hanging up student work, I heard multiple conversations in the hallway claiming that I had snapped and walked out.  They said I was never coming back.  One kid actually said that I was in jail.

When they came to class, I went over the worksheets that I left for them.  They talked over me.  In 8th period, a small group of students moved up and began asking questions and we had an excellent discussion about how to generalize from sequences.

By the time class ended, there was chaos all around this tiny bubble of academic work and discussion.

Tomorrow, I'm going to start using ClassDojo again.  After a discussion with teachers at #EduCon and on Twitter, I decided that I need to work with the students to see what they think is important for a smoothly running classroom.

I don't want to have a leaderboard that would allow individual students to be listed as last, so I'm going to do it as groups.  Individual students will get points or lose points for their behavior, or for whatever we decide on as a class, but the results will be listed as groups.

I want to gamify my classroom, and I spoke with Chris Aviles at length this weekend to help me get started.

This is going to take time to get it where I want, but ClassDojo is a great place to start and I've already entered my students names into the program...



I'm going to unplug for a while, shovel my driveway, hit the gym and enjoy my kids.

Day 90: Checked Out

I gave a test yesterday to all of my students.  My math 8 students failed it.

Every single one.

They could use their notes, the ones they took as well as the ones I provided for them, and they had plenty of time.

And they failed it.

None of the interventions that I've tried seem to be working.

In addition to this, last night, our school board approved a reorganization plan for the district.  Among other things, it means that next year, the 7th and 8th grade will be moving up the high school with 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades.  While this is a step in the direction that I think my district needs to go, there is a real possibility that I will lose my job as a result.

There is an even more real possibility that I will not be teaching geometry any more as more senior faculty members are likely to get it on their schedules.

All of this was more than I was able to handle today.

I printed the work for my math 8 class and set it on a desk.  I sat next to it and worked on a crossword puzzle.

When I didn't give directions, my first period took upon themselves to read the Pledge to Improved Mathematics and do the Estimation 180 exercise of the day.  Then, without my asking them to, they picked up the worksheets that were next to me and began to work.

When they had questions, they asked me.  I patiently answered them or guided them in the proper direction.

I find it fascinating that when I left them alone completely, they did what I wanted, but as soon as I ask them to, the defiance comes out and they refuse.

I am hoping that EduCon this weekend will rejuvenate me, remind me of my purpose and goal and help me to find my center again.


The majority of the geometry class was on a field trip.  The few who remained played Prime Climb.  They enjoyed it.

  

Day 89: On Parenting

I had two meetings with parents today.  Both students are bright and capable, but have a tendency to make bad choices, specifically in terms of behavior.

With all of my classes taking tests today, it left me with lots of time to think about what kind of parent I will be when my kids get into school, which will be next year for my oldest.

I don't want to be a helicopter parent.

"Do you have your lunch?" "Mom, I'm 35..."

I want my kids to develop independence.  I want them to explore and take on responsibility.  I want them to take risks and not constantly be seeking my approval.  Honestly, I don't worry too much about my children being independent.  That brings me to my other concern.

I don't want to be a detached parent.

"We feel it's important for Billy to express himself."

I want my children to know that I DO care what they do and who they are hanging out with.  I never want to be the parent who is learning my kids' teachers names for the first time at a conference halfway through the year.  I don't want to be blind-sided by failing grades.

How do you stay on top of your kids without smothering them?  How do stay involved while letting them have independence?

Then I think about the two sets of parents that I know the best: my own, and my wife's.

My parents were not helicopter parents by any stretch.  They allowed me independence and they trusted me to make good choices.  When I didn't, they reigned me back in a bit until I earned the trust again.  I started walking to school with friends in 4th grade.  It was 1.2 miles each way.  In 5th and 6th grade, I started riding my bike the 1.2 miles to the middle school.  In junior high, I wasn't allowed to walk but that was because the only way to the building was on a busy highway with no sidewalks.

Until senior year of high school when I got a car, I walked every day that the weather permitted.  That trip was 2.7 miles each way.  While they weren't helicopter parents, they almost always knew where I was.  Any time I went out, I needed to let them know where I would be and when I would be back.  If I was going to be late, I needed to call and let them know.  I like to think that I earned their trust.

My wife's parents went in a different direction.  They made family the center of almost everything.  They spent time with uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents.  They took family camping vacations frequently to the middle of nowhere and spent large amounts of quality time together.  My wife once told me that she considers her mother one of her best friends.

This wasn't helicopter parenting as much as it was forging a strong family bond.

Raising my children now, I can clearly see both of these strategies in how my wife and I interact with our children.  I am much more hands-off in terms of activities and direction.  I encourage my kids to play and draw and explore while keeping my eye on them from a little ways off.  I love playing with them, but I also love watching them play together, or by themselves.  I enjoy their independence and I love watching them explore and create.

My wife loves all of these things too, but she prefers to be do doing it alongside them.  When they draw, she lays down on the floor with them and draws.  When we go to the playground, she runs up the ladders and down the slides with them.  She is involved without being overbearing.  She is kind and generous and goofy and fun and I hope that wears off on them.

In discussions with other teachers about the kinds of parents we want to be, we often worry about being "that parent."  The point that is often brought up is that if you're worried about it now, it most likely won't happen later.

I don't think that's entirely true.  I think kids lose direction for all sorts of reasons.  Some of these are parental, but others are outside of anyone's control.

I think that I have been unfair to many parents by judging their parenting based on the behavior of their children.  Kids are complicated.


I don't know how much of it is parenting or other factors, but I noticed a remarkable difference in the way that my students prepared for the tests that they had today.  The math 8 students were allowed to use their notes.  Many thought that meant they didn't have to study, but neglected to remember that they didn't take all that many notes.

The geometry students were allowed to use a notecard.  I loved what they put on their cards and, for the most part, the fact that they didn't use them.

Day 88: I Am Boring

I read to my children.  We have a ton of books in my house and I try to read to them as often as I can.  There are books that I enjoy reading to them and others that I despise.  Generally, the ones I don't like either have lessons of which I don't approve.

We have a book where a rabbit and a bear both have gardens.  The bear works his butt off and the rabbit loafs.  The bear has a great harvest and the rabbit has none.  The bear shares his bounty and they are happy together in the winter.  The message that I take from this is that it's ok to be lazy because someone will bail you out.

In another book (The Rainbow Fish), a beautiful fish makes friends by giving away his shiny scales.  The message I take from this is that you can buy your friends.  Maybe the real message is that beautiful people can only be friends with ugly people if the beautiful people make themselves ugly.  Or something about Communism...

One of the books that I enjoy reading to my kids is Listen Buddy by Helen Lester.

This is the story of a rabbit who doesn't listen and it ends up causing him lots of problems.  What I like about it, other than the fact that I get to read in silly voices, is that Buddy doesn't ignore the people talking to him.  He only half-listens.  Instead of fetching a basket of squash, he fetches a basket of wash.  Instead of getting 15 tomatoes, he gets 50 potatoes.  So close.

I sometimes feel as though I have a classroom full of Buddy's.  Many of my students know the words that I'm using and can repeat them.  What they have trouble doing is applying those words and concepts in appropriate ways.

This morning, a student asked me about how to graph a line.  We had a brief discussion where I reminded her about the slope and intercept of a line.  I asked her to tell me what those terms were and she was able to do so.  When I asked her to identify the slope and intercept in the equation, she was able to do so.

When I asked her to graph the intercept, she took 3 attempts to find where it was.  Even though she had just told me what it was in her own terms and what the value was, she wasn't able to connect those into the application.

In 8th period, I may have gone a bit off the rails.  I'm beginning to think that my lectures are more for my own sanity rather than to modify behavior.  I expound to them about the various tactics that I'm taking and they pretend to be shamed while they patiently wait for me to stop interrupting their conversations.

We've been going through solving systems of equations using visual representations instead of just the equations.  I think that doing it this way gives them a better understanding of how elimination and substitution work and they agree.  To illustrate the point, I did a problem using the elimination method without pictures.  I asked them which they thought made more sense and they unanimously agreed that it was the one with pictures.

As soon as we started a new problem, the conversations started up again.

So I sat down.

I reminded them that they have a chapter test tomorrow and I would be available to answer any questions they had.


More involved lessons take greater amounts of attention.  I don't know how to get them to invest that attention to notice that the lessons are involved and practical.

Maybe the lessons are still too boring.  I have no idea how to make them less so.  At some point, they will need to invest some energy in their own learning.

It can't all be on me.

Day 87: TACOS!!!

First thing this morning, I printed out report cards for all of my students.  I handed them out and I think having it in front of them lit a fire.  I gave them 5 practical word problems and told them my grade book was open.  I called the kids up one at a time and checked in anything that they had completed.

We are covering systems of equations and, since the first question on the sheet dealt with tacos, I got to draw tacos!

They worked!

They worked together, and turned in work.  They asked insightful questions.  Our building math coach joined us for the class and he was able to walk around and help the students with their inquiries while I worked with others.

After class, he and I had a discussion about which things went well and which could have gone better.  I found myself diverting success for the class onto the lack of attendance of two specific students.  I kept saying that it wouldn't have been such a good class if they had been there because they have a tendency to set off other students around them.

8th period was the same way.  There were 2 highly disruptive students who were not in class and, either as a result or as a coincidence, class ran VERY smoothly.

I find it interesting how I have a tendency to shift responsibility  for successes.  When lessons go poorly, it could be because the students weren't engaged and I should have done something more or differently.  It could be due to poor preparation of the lesson on my part or my inability to connect to the students' interests and prior knowledge.

When the lessons go well, however, it's because of something that the students did.  They chose to be engaged.  They chose to be on task.

If I'm going to take their failures on myself, I need to find a way to take some of the success as well.


The geometry kids are gearing up for their midterm and I need to figure out what to do with the three days that I'll be in school next week.  The marking period ends in the middle of the week, we have no school on Monday and I'll be out on Friday to attend EduCon 2015.  I'm incredibly excited to meet up with educators from around the country and learn from them!

I hope there is a taco night...

Now I want tacos...

Day 86: Head In My Hands

I came in this morning in fairly good mood.  I'm not sure what to attribute this to, except that I had a good workout and my kids were extra loving last night.

In any event I started today feeling pretty good.  I've been thinking about assigning less homework and doing more of the practice problems and projects in class.

I REALLY want to do a Venn Diagram of their respective problems.

There is chaos brewing on the district level and it would be easy to let it creep into my class.  I could sit and worry about where/if I'll be teaching next year in terms of classes, grades or buildings.  I could stress over what resources will be taken away or moved around.  But none of that will be productive.

I've made a conscious effort in this blog to not talk about my coworkers, my administration, or my district, unless it directly relates to how I can improve my instruction.

With all of that said, it did manage to creep in a bit.  I also joked around a bit with my students and had tremendous trouble getting them back afterwards.  We had a brief talk about how they complain about boring school is.  I told them that when I try to make it interesting, I feel as though they take that as a cue to goof off, making me more reluctant to do those activities.

So I went back to a bit of direct instruction.  I'm giving them highly structured notes, but being more aware of the questions that I'm asking.  If I have to lecture and go over examples, then I need to supplement the instruction with higher order questions.

I had to remove a student from my 8th period.  He brought no materials and was combative when I asked him to please stop talking.  It escalated because he wanted it to and I allowed it.  I do think, however, that the majority of my students are also getting sick of his antics as, once I removed him, class ran VERY smoothly.

I have yet to figure out a way to de-escalate with some of my students.  I need to keep my temper, but too many things built up today, including an insanely rude student in Geometry, a class that is generally supposed to be low-stress for me.

A stressful faculty meeting about a stressful board meeting sapped my attention from adequately reflecting on my classes.

Suffice to say, I wasn't overly pleased with my lessons, but I think I'm continuing to build relationships with several students.

And possibly destroying others.  I know I can't win over every kid, but I'd like to win them over enough to convince them not to destroy my classroom.

Day 85: ALL THE F'S!!!

This morning when I got to school, I printed out my grade book.  Much to my dismay, I discovered that of the 54 students registered for my Math 8 class, about 80% have D's or F's.

I spent some time hitting my head against the wall telling myself that this is entirely because these students don't do work outside of my class.  As I said earlier this week, I gave an assignment over the weekend and, of the 48 students who were present and received it, 2 had turned it in.

Homework is important to solidify topics and keep students from forgetting the material from one day to the next.  I specifically design my assignments not to take a long time, but to keep them engaged.  This is the same for notes.  Notes shouldn't exist to force students to write, but to help them organize their thoughts into a reference that they can use later when they need it.

A few weeks ago, I started a new note-taking system.  It went back to a more traditional model of instruction where I would essentially lecture and write notes on the board while the kids wrote them down.  It was very structured.

It worked for quite a while, at least in terms of engagement.  I don't think it was meaningful engagement, but I could tell everyone to flip back in their notes to a certain spot and they could and they could answer my questions.

After a few weeks, I backed off on the structure, handing over more responsibility to the students.

As soon as I did, everything dropped off.  Work stopped getting done, papers stopped coming in.

We had talks about responsibility and motivation.  They seemed to understand and, for that day, they did well.  Today, while discussing systems of equations, there appeared to be minimal retention or even recollection that we had covered slope-intercept form less than 5 days ago.

So the conclusion that I have come to is that, at least for now, I need to move back to a VERY structured learning environment.  I don't want to do this.  I know that kids learn better when they explore and discover.

But if Indiana Jones had stayed at home, it doesn't matter WHAT secrets had been out there.  They would have stayed secrets.


On the other side of things, I've been conferencing with the geometry students for their Chapter 4 tests.  It has been a great experience and I love getting to meet with them one-on-one.  We go through the test and I ask them to clarify their wording and explain their reasons.

"How do you know that?" is a VERY typical question.  At the end of each conference, I ask them what they think they've earned.  We have a brief discussion and agree on a score before I thank them and call up the next kid.

Me: "What do you think you earned on this?"
Student: "I don't know. Maybe a low B?"
Me: "Why a low B?"
S: "I knew most of the material, but I made a few mistakes."
Me: "Were your mistakes ones about the concepts, or were they careless errors?"
S: "Mostly careless errors."
Me: "So maybe a little higher than a low B?"
S: "I think so. Probably a high B or a low A."
Me: "I agree."

I like having these discussions with my students and I would like to do it more with the Math 8 kids.  The problem is that I haven't found a way to keep the rest of the class occupied while I speak with one student at a time.

"Do you hear it, Clarice? Do you hear the learning?"