This post originally written on the afternoon of Wednesday November 9th, 2005, but posted on the evening of Thursday November 10th, 2005. I needed to cool off.
It's because those of us who play by the rules, plan ahead and adjust to things as information becomes available, GET SCREWED. This is essentially what I stated emphatically to an administrator today at 2:35PM and then promptly walked out of the Math Dept. office, to my car and drove home. I brought no work home.
"To promote responsibility...." this is one of the five tenets of the school mission. I try and live my life in a way that is an example of living responsibily. That means, I am always prepared for class, I plan ahead and give my students the time they need to learn the material. I believe that were my students polled they would agree that in my class, they know what the expectations are, know that I give them all the warnings they need and that I hide nothing. Tests and quizzes are always returned at the next class period because I honor their efforts of taking the exam on the day its scheduled so they should know their results as soon as possible.
As usual, I need to set the stage by giving some background information. Six weeks ago, or so, there was a Friday evening dance. Some students were drinking and in the aftermath, one student was riding on another student's car and fell off subsequently requiring hospitalization for what turned out to be a minor head injury. This all happened in the school parking lot. As a consequence, all dances for the entire year were cancelled. Included under the perview of all dances, the Prom.
At about the same time, I planned my curriculum and determined that I would give a test on Monday 11/14/05. The benefit for me of giving a test on Monday is that it is the only day in which my three sections of Geometry are in sync. On Mondays, my three sections meet 1st, 4th and 6th periods. The rest of the week they are a day off because two sections don't meet Tuesday and the third skips on Friday. Every other day of the week, the third section is at least two lessons ahead because their last class of the week is Thursday first period which is before the the third meeting of the week for either of the other two sections. By giving a test on Monday, I can minimize the worry of having students talking to each other about it, which even though they sign a pledge that they won't, they do. I am also not willing to write two versions of a test.
As I am a person who plans ahead, I posted my Geometry test on the schools online calender. I was the first test on the calender for 9th graders and therefore I couldn't be bumped as the rule is there can only be two tests per day for students.
A couple of weeks ago, the administration and class deans decided that the students should be given an opportunity to discuss the dance ban and make their own suggestions as what they could do or pledge to do in order to have them reinstated. It was emailed to all faculty that a discussion would be held during the assembly period on Friday 11/11/05 (in advising groups). Needing to capture the "spirit" of that discussion, the students, again in advising groups, would then meet again and sign a document on Monday 11/14/05. This second meeting would cancel 1st period class.
Woops. My 1st period section would have their test time eliminated. So, being the responsible teacher I am, I rearranged things on the calender and moved the test for all sections back to Friday 11/11/05, allowing my 3rd section that doesn't meet on Friday to take it last period on Friday if they didn't want to take it Thursday morning 1st period. It would mean that I would not benefit from my schedule of not having Friday classes after lunch and stay until the end of school. No problem, I should stay to the end of school anyway.
This rearrangement of my teaching comes in addition to the fact that 1/3 of my Statistics class was not in class on Tuesday 11/8/05 because of a Bay Area Ecology Field trip to Point Reyes as well as not having 1/3 to 1/2 of my students on Wednesday afternoon 11/9/05 due to the fact that all students taking French were gone watching a French film at the French foreign consolate. I also might be missing students Friday 2nd period because the Jazz students need to set up for a preview of their performance held at a prominent Jazz club in a few weeks time. Lastly, some of my Thursday first period students will be in class after travelling two hours, both ways, to play, or watch, a playoff soccer game at 7PM Wednesday evening.
So earlier this week, in another email to all faculty, it was announced that the 1st period class on Monday would be reinstated. With this news, I told my students that their test was on Monday 11/14/05 as first planned. To fill this extra day I created another lesson plan. Today, I found out that in fact on Monday 11/15/05 we would run what is affectionately known as a "squeeze schedule." All classes would be shortened by 5 minutes in order for an extended advisory period to be included so the student could sign the document pledging whatever they needed to pledge in order to have their dances reinstated.
This threw me for a loop and I was pissed, but I managed to keep a lid on things for the most part. I did go in and make my point abundantly clear to the administration that I felt that I was trying to hit a moving target in trying to pin down what the exact schedule was. In addition, I pointed out the unintended consequences of decisions being made and then being changed. For example, I have 8th graders who come up from the Middle School for one of my Honors Geometry classes. When a squeeze schedule is run for the Upper School, my 8th graders either miss class or show up half way through.
Then at lunch today, I was informed by another colleague that one of my Geometry students informed her that my test had changed and therefore I was the third test for most 9th graders. Since I hadn't changed my test back to Monday on the online test calender, I was third in line and therefore out in the cold. At this point, I lost it. I erupted. It was the end of the line to the point that my dear friend Shahana told me to cool it because I was making a scene. Well if making a scene lets people know how I feel that I'll take the consequences and reprimands. If I had ignored the second change in schedule I would still be first in line to give my test on Monday 11/14/05. Now, I'm having to rearrange my teaching schedule for the third time.
What is at the core of my anger? It's that I feel that we are rewarding those who don't play by the rules. Just because a couple students used poor judgement and broke the rules, we are rewarding them with the opportunity to try and get their dances back. In reality, is a school responsible for providing its students a social life? If students want dances, their parents can organize them and hold them off school grounds.
At the end of the day, an administrator came to see if I was alright and asked if there was anything he could do. He said that he'd be willing to take the heat, essentially saying that I could administer the test on Monday. But that would be bending the rules again, and those who would be affected would be the students. The students shouldn't have to suffer because of the decisions of adults. So I said that it wasn't necessary for him to change the rules. I wanted to take the high road and play by the rules.
The next day.........
So, I did a bit of creative juggling. I had the two sections that skip class on Tuesday to come on Tuesday to take the test and then have their free on Wednesday instead. I will introduce material for the next chapter on Monday instead of giving the test. I do have to report that my class that was supposed to start at 10:35AM this morning after school meeting didn't start until 10:42AM. More fuel for my fire.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Where my people are.....
Yesterday was election day (more specifically, special election day) here in California. On the ballot were initiatives ranging from parental notification of abortion to the creation of programs to help get medical drugs to those who are uninsured or unable to afford them. There were four initiatives that our Governor (we all know who he is) was pushing hard. These were things that he said he could deliver on during his election during the recall of former Governor Gray Davis back in 2003.
Prop. 74 - Teacher Tenure to increase from 2 years to 5 years probation
Prop. 75 - Requiring unions to get permission to spend dues for political purposes
Prop. 76 - State spending caps and changes to educational funding formulas
Prop. 77 - Redistricting of political boundaries moved to committee of retired judges
In looking at how I voted on these to the maps (Prop. 74 , Prop. 75, Prop. 76, Prop. 77) of the results, by county, as found on the California Secretary of State's website, I found that I am not exactly in line with the Bay Area, which resoundingly voted NO on each of these four. I should be living in...........Bakersfield (Kern County) or Fresno (Fresno County). It's becoming more and more the case that I am becoming a Republican in my old age.
Prop. 74 - Teacher Tenure to increase from 2 years to 5 years probation
Prop. 75 - Requiring unions to get permission to spend dues for political purposes
Prop. 76 - State spending caps and changes to educational funding formulas
Prop. 77 - Redistricting of political boundaries moved to committee of retired judges
In looking at how I voted on these to the maps (Prop. 74 , Prop. 75, Prop. 76, Prop. 77) of the results, by county, as found on the California Secretary of State's website, I found that I am not exactly in line with the Bay Area, which resoundingly voted NO on each of these four. I should be living in...........Bakersfield (Kern County) or Fresno (Fresno County). It's becoming more and more the case that I am becoming a Republican in my old age.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
"The Plan"
One of the great things about the teaching profession is that you are presented with new challenges every year, whether you want them or not. This year, I have been asked to teach the 9th Grade Algebra Seminar. For most 9th graders, their Geometry class meets four out of the five days each week. The Seminar, graded pass/fail, meets the fifth day of the week for those students who have been identified as having had a weak performance in 8th Grade Algebra I. As you might have predicted, these students are NOT happy about being there.
I went into the course having little idea what exactly these students needed or wanted. Well, what they want is to have me cancel class every Tuesday, but as the saying goes, "you can't always get what you want." What I have identified over the course of this first quarter of the year is that these students, when they can concentrate on Math itself, are not as bad as they or other teachers make them out to be. Their issues are structural. These are the students who always are asking for a pencil, need batteries for their calculators and/or take notes on scraps of paper which end up in the detritus of the hazardous waste sites called their backpacks. They are just as intelligent, ok, within the margin of error, as their more successful classmates who aren't in the seminar.
So, I've implemented "the Plan." I must give credit to my colleague Chris D. for creating this idea as he was the one who taught this seminar last year. Students are required to have a pencil, notebook, calculator, any required handouts and be facing the front not talking to their classmates at the time class begins. The threat is that if they do not meet this "regularly", I will call their mothers.
I have seen a marked increase in their ability to have their items ready for class. It has been so effective that in any of my 9th grade classes, the mere threat of being put on "the Plan" has struck fear into their hearts. If I hear someone ask someone else for a calculator, I'll threaten the offender with "the Plan" if they actually use their peers calculator. More often than not they will forgo use of the calculator. But you bet it's there the next day!
Do YOU need to go on "the Plan?"
I went into the course having little idea what exactly these students needed or wanted. Well, what they want is to have me cancel class every Tuesday, but as the saying goes, "you can't always get what you want." What I have identified over the course of this first quarter of the year is that these students, when they can concentrate on Math itself, are not as bad as they or other teachers make them out to be. Their issues are structural. These are the students who always are asking for a pencil, need batteries for their calculators and/or take notes on scraps of paper which end up in the detritus of the hazardous waste sites called their backpacks. They are just as intelligent, ok, within the margin of error, as their more successful classmates who aren't in the seminar.
So, I've implemented "the Plan." I must give credit to my colleague Chris D. for creating this idea as he was the one who taught this seminar last year. Students are required to have a pencil, notebook, calculator, any required handouts and be facing the front not talking to their classmates at the time class begins. The threat is that if they do not meet this "regularly", I will call their mothers.
I have seen a marked increase in their ability to have their items ready for class. It has been so effective that in any of my 9th grade classes, the mere threat of being put on "the Plan" has struck fear into their hearts. If I hear someone ask someone else for a calculator, I'll threaten the offender with "the Plan" if they actually use their peers calculator. More often than not they will forgo use of the calculator. But you bet it's there the next day!
Do YOU need to go on "the Plan?"
Sunday, November 06, 2005
.195% Probability
Last evening, we were invited to attend our friends Hans & Teresa’s “bag” party. I had participated in this a couple years ago in a smaller incarnation and have to admit that it was fun. My other half, being the Meyers Briggs STJ wanted to know what to expect and how the evening would play out. Being the STJ myself, I knew it was hard for him to hear, “you just have to trust me.” He’s a good sport, and even though he wasn’t 100% healthy, he and I got on BART and headed over to the 510, which in Scott’s mind is a foreign country.
The instructions from the hosts were to bring a bag in which five items were placed. Two of the items were to be “good” items, two were to be “bad items” and one was to be neutral. In my bag were, from what I deemed to be good to bad, a $25 gift certificate to a French Bakery, an Alfani polo style shirt, a mug with a beautiful painting on it (of course I knew nothing of the artist), a palm sized soft soccer ball and a jar of homemade leftover pickling juice. The two good gifts were gifts from students that I was “regifting” and the mug was my take from the last "bag" party that I had held on to for precisely this night.
What is this “bag” party? Well it’s based on this toy that most of our generation knows from childhood called a Cootie. It has a body, head, two antennae, two eyes, one tongue and six legs. Think Mr. Potatohead in bug form. Each of the six items is assigned a number, in this case 1=body, 2=head, 3=antennae, 4=eyes, 5=tongue and 6=legs. Now, you’re thinking how can this be given a context within a game. We sat down in groups of four, and in the layout of the apartment, table 1 was in the kitchen, tables 2 and 3 were in the dining room and 4 through 7 were in the living room.
In your table of four, the player directly across from you is your partner for that round. The object is to build (in our case draw) as many COOTIES as you could in a given timeframe. The kicker is that the COOTIES could only be created in a certain order. To do anything, the body had to be built, or a 1 rolled. At that point, you could start building legs (6) or the head (2). Only when the head was created could the antennae, eyes and tongue be created. Inevitably, most every game came down to the rolling of 6’s to create those legs, which finished off a COOTIE. Once a team finished it’s first COOTIE, it embarked on building a second or third within the given round.
At the end of the round, the pair that had the most COOTIES, or parts of, was the winner. The winning person in each pair then got to choose an item from within the bag of the player on their left. To replace that item, the winner got to give any item from within their bag to that player from whose bag they just received. The winning pair then moved up to the next table closer to table 1. You see table 1 had special powers. Every round ended when a pair at table 1 finished ONE COOTIE. The four people at table 1 could start playing anytime because only when they finished, did the round finish for the other 8 groups. As I learned later, the four people in the kitchen (location of table 1) took their time getting started by going to the bathroom, grabbing another drink, socializing or whatever. The world was their oyster. One indignity, however, was that the losing pair of table 1, was in the subsequent round, assigned (banished as Scott would later call it) to play at table 7.
At the start of a new round, you found yourself either staying at the same table with the your partner of the previous round or moving up with your winning partner of the previous round. The rule was that you could not play with the same partner for two consecutive rounds. This, by the way, sounds like it could be a great icebreaker kind of game.
There were 10 rounds played in the course of the evening. Scott and I both started at table 3. Scott promptly won and moved up to table 1, where he stayed for four consecutive rounds. Alas, he lost in round 9 and ended up at the of the 10th round, his COOTIE ego bruised, at table 7. I lost 9 consecutive rounds of COOTIE. It happened over and over where a pair who had won at table 4 would come up, the pair would take their seats at table 3 and I would tell the person across from that they had unfortunately picked the wrong partner. Inevitably our pair would lose, even in the face of sure victory. My partner would then play the next round with a new partner and they would win and move up. Did I mention that I lost 9 consecutive times? Only in the 10th round did I finally win. But since no 11th round was played, I never, ever, moved from my seat.
Mathematically, since we are going to assume the rolling of die is a random phenomenon, the probability of my losing (or winning) a round is 50%, or .5. My probability of losing 9 times in 9 tries can be calculated as (.5)^9 (.5 multiplied by itself 9 times) which come out to 1/512 = .00195 = .195%. People, that’s essentially two-tenths of one-percent. In the face of continued defeat, I’m finding silver lining in the fact that something so rare could have happened to me.
However, one must wonder at what I ended with in my bag given that I gave away the “good” items in my bag early on. After the fifth round, the winners were pretty disappointed when they looked through my bag. I left with a colorful toy sunflower (which was the best of the five), a can of cat food (salt in the wounds since not only do I not have a cat but that it was expired), condoms, the pickling juice and an old CD case in which there was a half-used bottle of "Oder-eaters". I consider myself luck as after the last round I was able to unload an old used laptop battery. The battery would have been the ultimate insult as it is technically hazardous waste and would have required a special trip to dispose of it in an environmental safe manner.
The night was a classic example of something so simple being so fun.
The instructions from the hosts were to bring a bag in which five items were placed. Two of the items were to be “good” items, two were to be “bad items” and one was to be neutral. In my bag were, from what I deemed to be good to bad, a $25 gift certificate to a French Bakery, an Alfani polo style shirt, a mug with a beautiful painting on it (of course I knew nothing of the artist), a palm sized soft soccer ball and a jar of homemade leftover pickling juice. The two good gifts were gifts from students that I was “regifting” and the mug was my take from the last "bag" party that I had held on to for precisely this night.
What is this “bag” party? Well it’s based on this toy that most of our generation knows from childhood called a Cootie. It has a body, head, two antennae, two eyes, one tongue and six legs. Think Mr. Potatohead in bug form. Each of the six items is assigned a number, in this case 1=body, 2=head, 3=antennae, 4=eyes, 5=tongue and 6=legs. Now, you’re thinking how can this be given a context within a game. We sat down in groups of four, and in the layout of the apartment, table 1 was in the kitchen, tables 2 and 3 were in the dining room and 4 through 7 were in the living room.
In your table of four, the player directly across from you is your partner for that round. The object is to build (in our case draw) as many COOTIES as you could in a given timeframe. The kicker is that the COOTIES could only be created in a certain order. To do anything, the body had to be built, or a 1 rolled. At that point, you could start building legs (6) or the head (2). Only when the head was created could the antennae, eyes and tongue be created. Inevitably, most every game came down to the rolling of 6’s to create those legs, which finished off a COOTIE. Once a team finished it’s first COOTIE, it embarked on building a second or third within the given round.
At the end of the round, the pair that had the most COOTIES, or parts of, was the winner. The winning person in each pair then got to choose an item from within the bag of the player on their left. To replace that item, the winner got to give any item from within their bag to that player from whose bag they just received. The winning pair then moved up to the next table closer to table 1. You see table 1 had special powers. Every round ended when a pair at table 1 finished ONE COOTIE. The four people at table 1 could start playing anytime because only when they finished, did the round finish for the other 8 groups. As I learned later, the four people in the kitchen (location of table 1) took their time getting started by going to the bathroom, grabbing another drink, socializing or whatever. The world was their oyster. One indignity, however, was that the losing pair of table 1, was in the subsequent round, assigned (banished as Scott would later call it) to play at table 7.
At the start of a new round, you found yourself either staying at the same table with the your partner of the previous round or moving up with your winning partner of the previous round. The rule was that you could not play with the same partner for two consecutive rounds. This, by the way, sounds like it could be a great icebreaker kind of game.
There were 10 rounds played in the course of the evening. Scott and I both started at table 3. Scott promptly won and moved up to table 1, where he stayed for four consecutive rounds. Alas, he lost in round 9 and ended up at the of the 10th round, his COOTIE ego bruised, at table 7. I lost 9 consecutive rounds of COOTIE. It happened over and over where a pair who had won at table 4 would come up, the pair would take their seats at table 3 and I would tell the person across from that they had unfortunately picked the wrong partner. Inevitably our pair would lose, even in the face of sure victory. My partner would then play the next round with a new partner and they would win and move up. Did I mention that I lost 9 consecutive times? Only in the 10th round did I finally win. But since no 11th round was played, I never, ever, moved from my seat.
Mathematically, since we are going to assume the rolling of die is a random phenomenon, the probability of my losing (or winning) a round is 50%, or .5. My probability of losing 9 times in 9 tries can be calculated as (.5)^9 (.5 multiplied by itself 9 times) which come out to 1/512 = .00195 = .195%. People, that’s essentially two-tenths of one-percent. In the face of continued defeat, I’m finding silver lining in the fact that something so rare could have happened to me.
However, one must wonder at what I ended with in my bag given that I gave away the “good” items in my bag early on. After the fifth round, the winners were pretty disappointed when they looked through my bag. I left with a colorful toy sunflower (which was the best of the five), a can of cat food (salt in the wounds since not only do I not have a cat but that it was expired), condoms, the pickling juice and an old CD case in which there was a half-used bottle of "Oder-eaters". I consider myself luck as after the last round I was able to unload an old used laptop battery. The battery would have been the ultimate insult as it is technically hazardous waste and would have required a special trip to dispose of it in an environmental safe manner.
The night was a classic example of something so simple being so fun.
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