The Longest Day Ever (#DITLife Post 4)

The Longest Day Ever for a teacher is most likely "Back-to-School Night" or "Open House".  It is the day where parents follow their son's or daughter's schedule to meet the teachers.  It is also a time where teachers probably talk more than they should, modeling one of the worst ways to teach.  I did not talk to the parents about grading and homework policy and classroom minutiae.  To see what I did, skip to the end of my blog post at the End Detour Sign or read on about my school day.

The Morning: My day began at 7:30 with a meeting with a student who had missed class the previous day due to being released early for a golf match.  Then, I quickly made some copies of quizzes that I would be giving later that day and the next day. First period began at 8:00. (Or it would have under normal circumstances.) But today is far from a normal day, because not only is it "Back-to-School" night, it is Picture Day!!  This means math classes are interrupted by 10 minutes so students can get their school picture taken.  When my Probability and Statistics students return, they take a quiz on sampling methods and then they work in groups to discuss short news clips related to observational studies and experimental design.  In years past, we have had a whole class discussion that I led.  This year, I had students discuss the articles in small groups and let them lead the discussions.

I hoped to get the quizzes I just gave graded during my Period B class, but I had some emails to attend to, plus a student dropped in to review for a quiz.  In addition, I made copies for a meeting I was to have later that day with the Headmaster, spoke to our academic dean about a student and grabbed some coffee. Caffeine 1, Grading 0

(Note: As I am writing now, I am realizing English teachers would be cringing and for now, I am declaring consistency in verb tense to be optional.  Remember, it is "The Longest Day Ever".)

During period C, we make some discoveries about the discriminant as it relates to roots of a parabola.  This is based off a desmos activity builder lesson written by Shelley C called "Discriminants of Quadratics and Cubics".  Due to the choppy nature of class today ("It's picture day.  Say Cheese!"), I end up leading too much and not asking the necessary questions for students to discover what they are to discover.  Class ends with all of the students successfully completing a summary chart, but I vow to do better the next time with period D.

Lunchtime and The Afternoon:
Now it is period D.  Today this class is 35 minutes followed by lunch and then another 35 minutes of class.  During the first 35 minutes, there is a quiz.  Some students finish in 15 minutes and others finish in 30 minutes.  When we return from lunch, we work through the desmos discriminant activity.  Vowing to do better than I did in C period, I use the thumbnail and overlay features better.  As students do the first slide, I say things like "I can see Emilie has a negative discriminant.  Does anyone else have a negative discriminant? What quadrants is Emilie's graph in?  Does the graph need to be in those quadrants to have a negative discriminant?" 

By the end of this class, all students have successfully completed the summary chart and they have also successfully submitted answers to the following slides. (Note: I don't have these mathematicians as students, but desmos has a feature of changing student names to "Incognito" names.  It's pretty cool that these are names of mathematicians.)

Now it is period G, a.k.a. the fifth class of the day on a Thursday.  During this time I almost get both sets of quizzes graded.  However, I also meet briefly with Lia (a teacher who teaches Geometry Honors) and Marilyn (a teacher who teaches PreCalculus.)  Lia shares a unique way her students solved on of the homework problems.  Marilyn and I discuss how the desmos activity went and I shared with her how I modified the activity the second time I did it.

Finally, it is my last class of the day, Geometry Honors.  We are starting to develop a culture of trust as students share their answers.  As we review the one question, I use Lia's idea as an alternative solution after two other solutions are shared.  I tell students that even though I have taught this course for over 10 years at Moravian Academy students continue to surprise me with new ways to solve or approach problems.  I want them to surprise me and share their ideas!!!

It is now 2 PM and I have a meeting with our new Headmaster.  When I arrive, he is meeting with a colleague and I wait until 2:15 PM.  We share ideas on several topics and I leave the meeting feeling like my ideas have been heard, understood and valued.  However, I also leave feeling exhausted at the thought of returning to school for the evening.  I finally pull out of the parking lot at 3:15 PM.

The Evening: 

After eating dinner at home, I head back into school at 6:30. I meet with four different groups of parents for 10 minutes each.  I did not talk to the parents about grading and homework policies and classroom minutiae. Parents had received that information on a handout that they signed at the beginning of the school year. Instead I wanted to see parent perspectives on mathematics learning and I wanted to share my views on mathematics learning. I displayed a statement on the Smartboard and the parents would use plickers to share their responses.  I scanned their plicker cards with an app on my phone and then we looked at a summary of the results.

 For example, we looked at the question shown below.  After parents shared their answers, I told them that I did not agree with this statement.  All students are capable of learning math and some find some topics to be easier for them than others.  It was interesting that the parent responses were split almost equally between Agree, Disagree and Neutral. (Note: The Woordle comes from words my students put in a google form on the first day of class.  These words were what they used to describe math for themselves personally.  Challenging is the biggest word, because the students used that word the most.)

As parents left, I encouraged them to take the handout on "Glory in the Struggle".  (Excerpts and synopsis by Audrey Weeks from an article by Suzanne Sutton in “Bulletin” (Feb. 1997) – a periodical for the National Association of Secondary School Principals) Once students start doing courses near the end of their high school career, they can struggle even if they haven't struggled before.  We need to recognize that struggle isn't bad, but a part of learning something that is new and challenging.  There is value in learning something that takes time and this handout is designed to give parents ideas about how to support their child as they learn and sometimes struggle.

Finally, the longest day is over and I go home at 9 PM after finishing the grade entry of the quizzes.

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#DITLife Blog Questions:

1)    Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day. Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming. When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of? What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

On this particular day, I was proud of making the decision to approach the delivery of the desmos lesson differently and it worked better!  One decision that was not ideal was not taking enough time to get a student to communicate her answer to a Geometry problem.  I thought she was on the right track and asked for clarification once.  I still wasn't quite sure what she was saying.  As is often the case, I say something like "You seem to have the right idea."  But then, I don't work to get the student to fully communicate his or her idea.  This kind of interaction takes time and practice.  I can practice more, but the time crunch (40 minute classes) will always be a challenge.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows. Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher. What are you looking forward to? What has been a challenge for you lately?

This year has begun with cautious hope and optimism due to some system-wide changes.  Students and faculty are saying "Thank you" and showing appreciation for each other.  I am especially looking forward to our math competition, Math Madness.  Students love trying to beat their previous best and beat whatever school we are going against. (If you aren't familiar with Math Madness, it is an online competition and students who enjoy challenges like the AMC contests will enjoy Math Madness.)  Right now my biggest challenge is balancing time and getting enough sleep! As I write this, I am so glad it is Friday.

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is. As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students. Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.Building relationships takes time.  Recently I was speaking with our theater director about the upcoming play for the spring, Arcadia.  As he spoke it was clear that the play was very rich and meaningful to him.  I can’t wait to see it to support him and our students. 4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What is a goal you have for the year? One of my goals for this year is to be better at asking questions and teasing out answers from students.  Specifically, I would like to incorporate some of the ideas from a chapter from the NCTM publication "Promoting Purposeful Discourse". The article I have not had time to read just yet is called "Revoicing: The Good, the Bad and the Questions" by Jean Krusi from Ames Middle School in Ames, Iowa.  I'll be posting more on this in future blogs. 5) What else happened this month that you would like to share? I posted the following sign for the #observeme challenge and sent the following email to my colleagues. 

Many of us agree that we enjoy learning from our colleagues when we see them teach.  We also like it when colleagues visit our classes and give us informal feedback.  This type of collaboration doesn't happen nearly enough.  My status quo has been to stay in my room, getting papers graded and lessons planned.  I don't visit many classrooms and I don't have many visitors.   This year I am going to (in the words of what I said today at "Chassembly") say "No, No, No to the Status Quo".  This year I am formally extending an open invitation to all of you to visit my classroom.  I hope some of you will welcome me into yours.

Should you come to visit, attached is the welcome sign you will see hanging on my door.  I teach Probability/Statistics Period A, PreCalculus Periods C and D and Geometry Honors Period F.

Today is day 8 of school and there have been 22 teachers who have responded to the email with open door invitations to their own classrooms.  I have also had two faculty visit me and I have visited one faculty member.  Time will be the biggest challenge to seeing all 22 teachers who have sent me invitations.

First Day of Classes (#DITLife Post 3)

Setting the Tone for the Year

The cacophony of student chatter filled the air as students slowly ebbed into the auditorium.  The school year began with a "Chassembly" or combination Chapel and Assembly.  We began with a traditional welcome by our Upper School Director, Brian Kelly, and our Chaplain, Jennifer Nichols.  Then, many faculty and students shared their birthday wishes for the school. (This year is the celebration of our 275th anniversary!)

I was one of the speakers and my short birthday wish is here:

A few weeks ago, I went to the shore with my daughter Cassie and her friend Hannah.  Cassie had created an eclectic mix on Spotify, which included Bon Jovi, the Beatles, Abba, X Ambassadors, Walk the Moon and Idina Menzel.  On our drive we loudly sang along and at one point we were singing these lyrics from High School Musical. 

No, no, no  Stick to the status quo  If you wanna be cool  Follow one simple rule  Don't mess with the flow, no no  Stick to the status quo

In our 275^th birthday year, I offer the following wish for our school, our community, our students and my colleagues.  No, no, no. Don’t stick to the status quo.  Be true to who you really are.  Thoughtfully, not impulsively, let us stretch out of our comfort zones and reach beyond our status quo.

Period A - Probability and Statistics

Now for my first class of the day!  Probability and Statistics had 10 seniors in it and we began by watching the video Why You Need to Study Statistics which was found at thisisstatistics.org/.  I wanted students to know that the class they are taking will be very valuable to them no matter what they do in college and beyond.

Then, I asked students where data comes from.  They crafted their answers in small groups for about a minute and then through class discussion we talked about terms they generated which included sample, census, experiment, categorical and quantitative. How exciting! We hadn't opened a book and already my students seemed to have a sense of some statistical ideas.

Next, we looked at how data can come from a simulation and how simulated results can be used to evaluate the validity of a claim.  The scenario we used came from The Practice of Statistics (4th edition).  Twenty-five pilots are trained (15 male and 10 female), but there are only 8 jobs to be filled with the new pilots.  When the names of the newly selected pilots are released, there are 5 females and 3 males that have been selected.  Is this likely to happen by chance alone?

Students reasoned it was not likely.  They said we should expect there to be more males than females, because there were more males than females in the original group of 25 pilots.  That sounded reasonable, but when we did the simulation with playing cards, getting 5 females by chance alone happened 20% of the time.  We also looked a Fathom simulation for the scenario. In the Fathom dotplot below, getting 5 females happened 41 out of 500 times or about 8%.

A screencast of this simulation using Fathom can be found on my YouTube channel.  Here is the link to the demo. 

Note: I was planning on discussing my other classes and the first day activities, but ran out of time.  The beginning of the school year can be tiring and stressful.  Teaching is a balancing act and I opted to not fully finish this blog entry. Teaching involves making choices and staying sane.  I am choosing sanity.

First Day Back (#DITLife Post 2)

And so it begins! In-service day 1 of 2 at Moravian Academy. My day began at 7:15 AM with working on a bulletin board in the math hallway that I had begun to take down the previous day. Although today was the first in-service day, there is not enough time during the in-service days to get ready for the first day with students.  Many teachers at my school come in for a day or two prior to the first official in-service day.  As department chair, I have several items to take care of including administering and scoring placement exams, unpacking books and fixing up the bulletin board with math contest information.

The official schedule for the two in-service days can be seen below.  The times dedicated for teachers working in their classrooms were 3:30 until whenever for Day 1 and 3:00 until 6:00 for Day 2.  I ended up leaving school today at 5 PM and I will need to work for another hour or two tonight to prep for next Monday.  Based on past experience, the probability of me working on school items over the weekend is 100%.  I am guessing I will be working for at least 4 hours this weekend on school items.

Each year we begin our in-service days with a faculty and staff chapel that is designed to make us reflect on the coming school year.  The sense of community across all divisions permeates this yearly tradition.  With a few butterflies in my stomach, I rang A-flat and B-flat handbells as a part of a faculty bell choir this year.  I later learned we would be playing the piece again in front of the 720+ students and faculty at our opening chapel next week!

After chapel, faculty and staff were split groups of about 10 to do a hour long photo scavenger hunt.  The activity helped me to see parts of the lower school and middle school campus that were foreign to me.  Groups built a sense of camaraderie as they worked toward a common goal.

Our first official formal meeting began at 11 AM.  Rather than the multiple reports from various groups, we heard from our new Headmaster, Jeff Zemsky.  (Two hours prior, Jeff had sent faculty and staff the various reports in an email document for us to read on our own.) Jeff encouraged faculty to "employ the best methods to reach all students".  At two different points, he had faculty turn to a partner to share ideas related to pursuing an ambitious goal.  Ultimately, faculty and staff were encouraged to take risks in the coming school year, focusing on the process needed to achieve a goal.

After lunch, we split into divisional faculty groups for a two hour faculty meeting that ended at 3:30 PM.  We spent time in groups creating faculty goals.  One of the goals from my group was "Once a month each faculty member should seek to learn something about teaching from someone outside of his or her department."

One of my personal goals is to encourage faculty to visit my classroom and offer feedback.  Having an open door requires some risk-taking and it will be a bit scary.  However, I felt challenged to take on this goal after reading Robert Kaplinsky's blog and his #observeme challenge.  I have completed the template from his blog and I will be posting it on my classroom door tomorrow.  Stay tuned to future blogs to see what happens.