Day 129: Astronomer Draft

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, to the 2016 Astronomer Draft!

As many of you know, especially those of you who are hoping to make it as professional athletes, before a player is drafted to a team for fame, riches and glory, that team researches the player.

For the next 20 minutes, you are to research the Astronomers on this list, or others as you see fit, to determine if you want to draft them to your team.

And by 'draft them to your team', I mean 'research their lives and accomplishments, present those findings to the class in a fun and interesting way and have some sort of culminating activity.'

This list contains a variety of races, nationalities, time-frames and genders so try to find someone who genuinely interests you.  No one likes researching a boring topic.

What do teams do during the draft if the player they choose has already been drafted? They find another player.  I suggest you make a short list of people who interest you so if they are chosen before your turn, you have some alternatives.

I have put all of your names into a cup.  We will now draw draft order.  If your chosen Astronomer is picked, make sure you cross them off your list and move to the next one.



The draft went fairly well.  I wish I had though of that format at the beginning of the day, but alas, I just presented it as "this is what we're doing."

The advantage to teaching the same class 5 times a day is that I can modify my presentation by the end, so 6th period had the draft.  I also told them that they could work with a partner, but if they did, I would expect a higher quality presentation.

My own task for this weekend is to make up a rubric to give them by Monday.

Day 128: FREEDOOOOOOOOM

I haven't been sleeping well.

I've also been making poor decisions in terms of my physical well-being.

We bought bikes for my daughters this weekend and they love them.  They've been riding as much as possible and, when I get home for work, I join them.  Yesterday, we rode up and down our block for over an hour.  After that, I went to the gym and did 6 miles on the elliptical in a little under an hour.

When I got home, I showered and got into bed.  It was 8:45.

Then my wife got into bed with the iPad and starting watching Braveheart.

Instead of going to sleep, I laid in bed with my eyes closed, reciting the lines verbatim because Braveheart.

I made it to the betrayal of Robert the Bruce.

I should have gone to sleep 2 hours before.  I did not.

Today's class assignments sounded an awful lot like "some of you owe me stuff. Work on that while I stare into space."

If I am tweeting at 9 tonight, yell at me.

"WHY ARE YOU STILL AWAKE??"

I did manage to get a few things accomplished.  I made up a list of 32 Astronomers from which my students can choose for their research projects.  I made a conscious effort to choose a mixture or genders, races, specialties and time periods.  My list ranges from about 300 BC to astronomers who are still living.  I'm hoping that everyone will be able to find someone that truly interests them.

The physics students either finished their momentum tests (those who were part of the 43% who were absent on Thursday) or completed a lab on pendulum periods.

Or they took naps and did neither.

I'm going to try to go to bed early tonight.  I also need to start composing a letter to my administration to ask for time off to present at NCTM.  Hopefully, I will not have to use my personal days this time.

Day 127: One-Size-Fits-Some

Our Spring Break was Friday and Monday.  I wasn't ready to be back at work today, either physically or mentally.

The end of the marking period is quickly approaching and, with it, the traditional cries of "What can I do to get my grade up?"

My standard answer is usually "build a time machine, go back to day one and make different choices about assignments."

In reality, I'd be fine with them simply completing the first part.  If you're able to build a time machine, then clearly you have mastered whatever concepts I've been trying to assess and you can have the A.

This, along with my apparent inability to read a calendar properly, means that I am looking for assignments for my students, partially to pass time, and partially to give them the opportunity to boost grades.


As of this writing, the Astronomy class had 3 different assignments dealing with Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion.  All three involve graphing and answering analysis questions.

Many of the students worked, but many did not.  At least for today, I am not feeling responsible for the latter group.  As I have written before, a large portion of my students are seniors who need the science credit to graduate.  For multiple reasons, this only seems to occur to several of them right before the report period closes.

Two students accosted me in the hallway, threw their arms around me and escorted me down the hall, talking jovially the entire time as though I were their police sergeant and they wanted to talk me out of the meter-reader duty that I just assigned to them.


I used to think that school did a terrible job of helping students to understand long-term goals.  I'm not sure this is true.  The structure of school itself is designed around short-, middle-, and long-term goals.

Short-term goals are emphasized in terms of individual assignments, mid-term goals in terms of whole chapters or units, and long-term goals are in the form of marking periods, years and ultimately, graduation.

The problem is not that school doesn't emphasize these, but rather, much like most things in school, it uses a one-size-fits-all approach.

The current structure works well for many students.  I think, however, that when it doesn't work for a student, we look at how reasonable the system is and blame the student.

To be fair, there are many students who hold blame for their own short-comings, but even those students could be helped by examining how we teach about goal-setting.  I believe that if we allowed for a structure where students who work well under pressure, we would have many more successes.

I know that I would have been more successful under such conditions.  I work best with an approaching deadline and a specific list of tasks to complete.  This plays out in my home life fairly clearly.

My wife wants to clean the house, so she says "we should clean the house."
"Sounds good to me," says I.  Then I sit down and check my e-mail over and over.

My wife wants to clean the house, so she says "here are the things I'd like to get done today."
"Sounds good to me," says I.  Then I get to work on that list of things and I don't have to sleep on the couch!


Telling my colleague about my intentions for this post led to an interesting post-school.  His claim, to which he may have swayed me, was not that the system was the problem as much as our application of that system.

He claimed that the "system" was the idea that in order to accomplish something, whether that is complete as a task, learn a skill or develop an ability, one must think and practice with intention.  School then evaluates and provides feedback to students, determining if they have mastered that skill well enough to move on to the next one.

He further claimed that it is the various modifications and applications of this system that cause it to be effective (or not) for the educational development of students.

I fear that I have not does his argument justice and will be happy to edit if he so desires.


I think you would be hard pressed to find a kindergarten student who has been ruined by school.  You are MUCH more likely to find a 12th grader who has been.  Something happens in the intervening years that drives students from being the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, "please let me please you" 6-year-olds into the jaded, angry, "I can't wait to get out of here" 18-year-olds that we send into the world.

These are typical image results for "Kindergarten Classroom" and "High School Classroom" respectively.

How much of the change in attitude is due to hormones and how much is due to the mounting pressure of "getting them ready for the world," whatever that means?

School is not completely to blame for this as students, like all people, are complicated.  Many things happen to people over 12 years, but there seems to be a disproportionate number who blame (hate) school.

How much conformity is reasonable to expect in order to prepare students to survive in society?

What do we really value and how do we know if we are doing a good job at that?

Why do we send kids to school?

Day 126: Heinz Day

The school had a (non-credible) threat for today.  That, along with it being the day before break and senior skip day, means that school attendance was around 57%.

57% percent attendance with 57 days left in school means that today is Heinz Day!  I'm going to buy a squeeze bottle of ketchup and leave a trail all the way home.

For the students who WERE here, I decided it would be a good day to watch Cosmos.  I decided to have them watch a different episode in each period, so I was highly entertained.  I also discovered that if you watch that series, you get almost the entire curriculum that I'm supposed to cover for the year.

My Astronomy course can be replaced by a subscription to Netflix.

"No worries, Aion. I got this!"

This is perhaps the most engaging educational program I've ever seen.  75% of the student who came to class today weren't watching.  One was even watching a DIFFERENT show on Netflix on her phone.

Another of my colleagues turned his classroom into a jazz club.  He wore a pseudo-tux and set up battery operated candles.  He said most of his students were on their phones as well.

"I don't care about the infinite majesty and mystery of the universe! What will happen to Jess at work today??"

Please, pretty please, with sugar on top, can we acknowledge that student engagement is a bigger issue than making our lessons "more engaging"?


It's time for Spring Long Weekend! See you all on Tuesday.

Day 125: I'm Not Lou Costello

From February 8th until March 9th, my Astronomy students collectively missed 570 class periods.  According to our online management system, the students on my roster have collectively missed 4,365 days of school.

This averages to slightly under a marking period per student.  We do not have an attendance policy, so lack of attendance does not automatically guarantee course failure.

I can't go to 140 homes and pick up my students.  I can't call them to make sure they show up to school.

I can't convince them to be in school.

I need to focus on making the most of the time that they are willing and able to spend in my room.


I gave my students class time today to work on assignments that they had not yet completed.  Many of them used this time productively.

While I was walking around checking work and helping with polar graphing and question interpretation, a student pulled me aside.

Him: "Mr. Aion, we need to talk about my grade."
Me: "I'm not sure that we do.  Your grade is your business. Your learning is mine."
Him: "Uh huh... I got to get this grade up."
Me: "I understand. A good step to doing that would be working on the assignment that the rest of the class is doing."
Him: "Man! You always got something smart to say!"
Me: "I'm not being 'smart' with you. You want to know how to bring your grade up, and I gave you a place to start."
Him: "I'm not talking about this one, I mean for the marking period."
Me: "I know what you meant.  What I'm telling you is that you have an assignment to work on right now that you're choosing not to do.  If you are concerned about your grade, then you should be working on that assignment."
Him: "This is just one assignment. It's not going to help my grade as much as I need."
Me: "That may be true, but NOT doing it will certainly hurt your grade."
Him: "Well, I'm not talking about right now.  I need to get my grade up."

Christopher Emdin just published a new book.

In an excerpt that I read, he talks about a conflict between a white teacher and a black student arising because of communications and expectation barriers.  The teacher expected the student to be on time for class and the student expected that being at the door was being on time.  Emdin doesn't make judgements on either of these people and doesn't claim that one is right and one is wrong.

What he does do is bring to light the fact that the conflict had arisen because both parties were working from different definitions.

A few weeks ago, I would have labeled my student of intentionally obtuse.  He still may be, but Emdin's example has me wondering about other things.

Is it possible that my student thinks he's doing what he needs to do?  Or, more broadly, is there a massive disconnect in culture that is leading to my students missing 4,365 classes and not understanding why they are doing poorly?


I think that there must be.  I  have been trying to understand and empathize with my students more.  Last week, a student confided in me that she had not been to her house in 2 weeks.  She has been staying with a family member because the father of her son got into some trouble and there were threats on her life and the life of her toddler son.

Knowing that this is happening certainly makes me more willing to be flexible, but how many kids are going through similar situations and never mention it?  One of my students lost a brother earlier this year and I only found out because his mother sent an email.  He never spoke about it.


How much of student failure is them being teenagers making poor choices and how much is a darkly tragic Abbott and Costello routine?

"Who's got your homework?" "Exactly!"

I am a funny guy, but I'd rather not be in that skit.  It was horrible for everyone but the audience.

Day 124: Not Math Class

Students are incredible at compartmentalizing material.  You would be hard pressed to find a teacher in 7th grade and up who hasn't heard "Why are we learning this? This is math class, not history!"

I don't blame the kids for this at all.  It's a clear function of how we have set up schools.  Elementary certification includes all subjects because they have the same students all day.  I don't know of any place, however, that offers a "Secondary Certificate."  Rather, secondary teachers get certified in subject areas.

I currently hold certificates for Mathematics 7-12 and Physics 7-12.  In the state of Pennsylvania, I am allowed to teach these subjects, and a few others that may fall under those certificates.  Apparently, anyone with a science certification can teach Astronomy.

The courses that could be seriously considered as cross-curricular are frequently offered as electives, optional classes for students who have completed their "core requirements."


There is a much longer post to be written about the structure and organization of classes, but that's for a different time.  My point is that by having separate courses for math, English, history, etc., the students get used to thinking mathematically only when in math class.  Math teachers are acutely (haHAH!) aware of this issue when it comes to assessments that are just SLIGHTLY different than practice problems.

"I know how to do it if the X is on the left, but not the right!"  This is a huge danger of procedural learning.

I bring it up because of the activity that we had in Astronomy.

Students were given orbital data for the planet Mercury and were asked to use it to answer questions about Kepler's Laws.  The first step in this was graphing the data...

...on a polar coordinate plane.

Out of the 60 students who were in class today (about half of my students were absent) there were maybe 4 who had seen polar coordinates before today and only 1 who had worked with them.

I anticipated this and gave them a quick primer at the beginning of class.

And then I explained it again to several groups.  Several times.

I understand that polar graphing is a bit different from cartesian, but not different enough to indicate the levels of confusion that I saw.

I want my students to be able to take the knowledge and skills that they have and apply them to different situations.  This works to a certain degree in Physics where they have a pile of equations and have to determine which ones to use.

In Astronomy, however, it's a struggle to get many of the students to apply concepts from other classes.  As juniors and seniors, they still have difficulty understanding that the topics that are covered in school are all interconnected.

They have difficulty with this because we don't teach it as though they are connected.

This is a failing of the school system and not of the students.

I like to think that in my math classes (read: when I was comfortable with the material) I was doing a better job of integrating cross-curricular work.  I know that I'm not doing it now.

If I keep these classes for next year, I'm going to make a concerted effort to do so.

I suppose I could make that effort with the 56 days I have left in THIS year as well.

Day 123: Zzzzzzzz

"Alright! Let's finish up the notes for the section and then I have some practice for you."

**10-15 minute discussion of Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion**

"Groovy! If you turn the page in your note packet, you'll see the page that I'd like you to work on.  If you have some difficulty with the scale for the graph, let me know.  Go to it!"


I gave this intro in all five classes today.  Anyone who claims that teenagers can operate well at 7 in the morning is living in a world of unicorns and rainbows.

As the day progressed, the students became more engaged with the activity.  I have fallen into the classic teacher trap of thinking that just because students are quiet that they are paying attention.  It became obvious today that a large portion of my morning classes, were not so much engaged as much as asleep.

Maybe I should start my morning classes with jumping jacks.  I have a certain amount of sympathy for them, since I know about half have jobs that keep them out late.  I'm just not sure what else to do.