Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Unsolicited Advice to Betsy DeVos

Dear Ms. DeVos,

I haven’t seen you in the news lately, which makes me think that you are probably settling into your new role as the Secretary of Education and gathering intelligence from various sources to find out what this field is all about.  I have advice for you.  It’s really great advice.  Trust me.  You’re going to love it.  And it’s free.

You may be wondering what makes me qualified to give you advice.  And I know that you might be hesitant to ask given all the memes the haters made about your own qualifications.  But I don’t mind.  I am going to limit my advice to just the Mathematics Education section of your job,  because I am a math teacher.  I have a degree in mathematics, a Master’s in Education, and the state of Illinois has granted me a certificate to teach grades 6 - 12 not only Mathematics, but also ELL, Bilingual Education, and Russian as a foreign language.  I realize that none of these things are necessarily sufficient qualifications for me to advise you.  But I am also American, white, and upper middle class --  in other words, entitled enough to believe that my opinion matters.

You have said that you do not support the Common Core standards.  I think a lot of your supporters probably agree.  But the actual Common Core standards themselves are not the problem.  They say things like


Can you really argue with that?  But if the standards themselves aren’t the problem, then what went wrong?   Two things:  marketing and implementation.  

As a parent, the only thing scarier than the second grade “old math” you forgot is the “new math”  that you don’t understand.  There was not enough done to educate teachers on the new standards and practices.  There was not enough money or time for adequate professional development.  There was even less done to educate and “sell” it to the parents.  Do we expect the parents to just trust the school?  This is America we’re talking about. This was definitely a marketing failure.  

Implementation is trickier still.  As you probably know, Ms. DeVos, before a student gets to my 9th grade Geometry class, she must complete eight grades where she is presumably taught some math.  The Common Core standards were rolled out at every grade level at the same time.  In fact, the high school where I teach had to align the curriculum to the standards before the elementary schools in my neighborhood did.  The standards tell me that a student will come into my class already knowing certain material.  This material is introduced in kindergarten and built upon between 1st and 8th grade.  

This is your chance to shine, Ms. DeVos. Take the Common Core standards and rebrand them.  Definitely get rid of “common” in the title.  That sounds like Communism, doesn’t it?  Call it something that all Americans can agree on.  I don’t know what that is anymore.  Something neutral.  Maybe “Math with Kittens Standards.”  Everybody loves kittens.  Actually, maybe don’t even use “math” – it’s a trigger word for most Americans.  I know because whenever someone asks me what I do and I tell them, they make the funniest awkward face and proceed to tell me how traumatized they are by math.  Snowflakes, amiright?  Anyway, after you’ve renamed it, introduce it to the kindergarten teachers and parents.  For about 5 years.  Maybe more.  In the meantime, everyone else can get all the professional development they need and get on board.  Then you roll it out one grade at a time.  

Yes, I know that means that I might retire before I get the students who are proficient in the standards.  But I’m willing to wait because Education is a complex system.  Like other complex systems, it does not respond well to sweeping reforms and frequent changes, and it takes a long time to see any results.  

While you learn what the Common Core standards were envisioned to do, my colleagues and I will continue trying to teach our students to develop number sense, think critically, and problem solve, just as we have before these standards were created.  Just as we will, after you destroy them or -- hopefully -- rebrand them.  But what you do will undoubtedly impact my work and my students.  So please, Ms. DeVos, take your time, listen to the educators who have dedicated their lives to this profession, and choose wisely.  If you ignore everything else I wrote, at least know that we will have to live with the results of your work for many years after you are done serving the public in this capacity.  

Friday, January 30, 2015

Equity, Justice, and Education

It's 3am and I can't sleep.  Tonight I attended the first session of a grad class I signed up to take at school called "Equity, Justice, and Education."  As is typical with such classes, you start by telling your story.  As is also typical, you run out of time before everyone's story is heard and I will likely tell mine next week.  In the meantime, though, it's swirling in my head, keeping me awake, and asking to be released.  So, maybe it's a sign that I should revive the blog, almost a year since I abandoned it.

I teach in a very diverse school.  We have students from all over the world; many of them are first generation immigrants.  And every year they ask me what my nationality is.  That question always made me cringe and wish that they just wouldn't put teachers' first names on the students' schedules!  I mean, really, if they're going to call me Mrs. Shafran all year, why do they need to know that my first name is Olga?!  It's such a give away!  But, I try to answer the question.  Depending on how much time I have to engage in this clear attempt to side track the study of Mathematics, I tell them either, "I'm Russian," or "It's complicated," or, my personal favorite, "I'll tell you later, if you behave really well!"  Because the truth is, it IS complicated.  I was born in a country that no longer exists (USSR) in a republic of Belorussia (loosely translated as White Russia, more on that later) now known as Belarus (because in a teenage-like rebellion attempt and a sweep of nationalism at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people decided they no longer wished to feel like Russia's inferior sibling, at least in name.)  Clearly I can't say that I'm Soviet anymore.  And although generations of my family were born in or around those parts, the true Belarusians would never let us forget that we are NOT Belarusian.  Belarus has its own language, and I even used to speak it at some point because we studied it in school, but it's very similar to Russian, perhaps with some Polish mixed in, and everyone around me in the capital spoke Russian exclusively.  So Russian is my native language.  And that's why sometimes, often times, I just say I'm Russian.  This is ironic to me because no true Russian would ever let me get away with saying that, and also because neither I nor my family ever actually lived in Russia.

The reason why my family never fully fit in back there is that we are Jewish.  Judaism is a religion, but the Soviet Union was an atheist state.  So Jew became a nationality instead.  Sort of like the Roma people or the Armenian people, we were "others" living in diaspora and treated as such by the state's infamously oppressive regime.

The first time I traveled internationally with my US passport and had to fill out the immigration form upon return, I automatically wrote "Jewish" under "nationality."  Then I paused to look it over and realized that's probably not what they were asking.  So I changed it to "US."  I've had to fill out this form many times since then, and I don't think I ever managed to write "American" in the blank because I don't feel entirely American even though I've lived two thirds of my life here, have US citizenship, and don't have an accent.

When we first came here, my family marveled at how everyone could hyphenate their identity to become an American.  Korean-American, African-American, German-American, Mexican-American, etc.  We also longed for a hyphenated, brief, way to describe ourselves.  I'm still searching.

But the real question that was asked tonight was about race.  When did I first encounter race and realize my race?

I realized I was different when I was 6.  My best friend from pre-school and kindergarten told me at the end of the summer before first grade that she can't be my friend anymore.  Her mom said that I'm Jewish, and now that we're all grown up and starting school, she really shouldn't hang out with Jews anymore.  I assured her, of course, that I was not.  She pointed out that, according to her mom, Shneyderman is such a Jewish last name!  I thought, surely there must be a mistake, which is what I told my mom that evening.  Turned out, there wasn't.  I cried.  Overnight I learned to hate a part of myself that I knew absolutely nothing about.  I think prior to that incident, I had never even heard the word.  I could not wrap my mind around this notion that there was something inherently wrong with me and my family, something so bad that people can't even be friends with us, and yet this illusive something managed to hide itself so well, that I wasn't even aware of it.

This story and the feelings that went with it is so familiar to so many Soviet Jews.  It is one of the many reasons why 1.6 million of them left the former USSR between 1989 and 2006.  One would think that this experience would create in my people the ability to empathize with others who face discrimination.  One would be wrong at least one third of the time in my personal estimate.

White Russia is called White because it is.  Very Aryan.  Mostly blonde and blue-eyed.  We lived in the capital city, Minsk, home to a large university with a study abroad program.  Some brave souls from sister socialist countries of Africa ventured  out to study there.  I don't know how many lived in Minsk at any given time, but it was probably no more than a handful.  When people saw a black person on the street, they would avert their eyes and try to sneak a peak.  Kids stared openly, followed them around, and called them "shokoladka" (chocolate bar).  None of this was done with any malice.  They were just SO exotic.  I remember the first time I saw a black man.  I also stared trying to understand how it is possible for skin to be a different color.

Until I came to the US, I don't recall ever seeing anyone of any other race.  All white and that one black person.

I love my people.  I want to make excuses for their racism.  And I will, actually, make some.  But really, I can't understand their refusal to think deeper, empathize more, learn more.  So instead I distance myself from these conversations, and often from the larger community as a result.  Something I should probably work on in this class.

We came here poor.  In a socialist state everyone was equal, although, of course, some were more equal than others.  But when it came to emigrating, we were limited in what we could take, and everyone came here with very little.  Those who were younger went to school or to work.  But there is a whole generation of grandparents who received welfare for a few years and then social security retirement.  They qualified for low income housing.  In Chicago, this meant they were usually the only white folks living in buildings traditionally occupied by black folks.  And they were in for a shock.  Urine in the hallways and vandalism of apartment buildings were commonplace in Russia.  But somehow in the US a lot of our grandparents saw it as a black only issue.  These Jews were, for the most part, the intellectual types, highly educated engineers, musicians, doctors.  If not for their age and the language barrier, they would have gladly gone to work.  They looked around at their neighbors who were young and able-looking, and yet did not go to school, and did not work, and they couldn't understand it.  They also couldn't communicate with each other.  So they became fearful, distrustful, and judgmental.

In our socialist state, education was free and standardized.  Same textbooks, same curriculum, all across the vast land.  The idea that education can vary as much as it does here, and the impact that has on peoples' lives, is not one that makes full sense to an average "Russian-American."  I dare venture a guess that their own education on the racial history of this country did not go far past Uncle Tom's Cabin.  And so, a lot of my people are stuck in a racist mindset.

How racist?

A few months ago I was sitting in my dentist's office waiting for the anesthetic to kick in, unable to speak clearly, and very uninterested in speaking at all.  The dentist had stepped out.  His assistant was watching TV and waiting with me.  I don't know if she was Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, or something else entirely, but she spoke perfect Russian.  The news was on.  It was just before Christmas.  One of the Chicago Bulls adopted a family to buy presents for.  What a hero.  Totally newsworthy.  "I get giving presents to the kids, but it just seems that it's always the kids of parents who just don't want to work that get these presents!" says the dental assistant.  I sigh.  "Surely you realize other factors in their lives are involved in the situation beyond their lack of desire to work," I say and turn my head the other way.  "Of course!  Of course!....Slavery....."  I sigh.  And I make a choice not to say anything else at all.  And I still wonder a month later whether I made the right choice.  Because she doesn't stop.  "They do make excellent drug dealers, though, don't they?"  I'm looking away.  I think everything about my body language communicates my desire for her to stop talking.  "Oh, I know, I know, they're not all the same," she continues.  "For example, I live in Glenview.  And a black family lives in a home on our block!  Totally normal!  They even jog!  They have two girls.  They're always well-dressed and clean.  The husband goes to work every morning with a briefcase!"  She thinks she's being very open-minded now, I realize, still wondering if I should say anything with my mouth half numb.  "Oh, and get this!  They recently got a dog!  What a riot!  My husband and I were cracking up.  Their dog is entirely white!  They're all soooo black, and the dog is sooo white!"  The dentist returns, she stops talking, I get my cavity filled and get out.

While someone in a position to read my blog might be picking their jaw up off the floor at this point, I want to get to the most difficult part of the story for me.  I believe that a typical Russian-speaking person, whether still living in Russia or living in the US, but not quite assimilated or "Americanized," would hear that and think nothing of it.  They would say that the real problem is political correctness.  They would say that all white Americans feel this way.  They've just been taught not to say it out loud to strangers whose mouths are half numb.

I know this is a deep-seeded issue. I know I still have a long way to go.  I don't know if I will ever get to a place where I feel truly comfortable with my Jewish liberal guilt, white privilege, and conversations regarding race.




























Sunday, May 4, 2014

Children's Book assignment

On my first day of taking over after my student teacher, I handed each group of four students 4 different color triangles and asked them to figure out which ones were similar.  But before they could get started, I asked them to discuss what they would need to do, what tools they'd like to have, and what information they would need.

Crickets.

So scrap that, (2 days' lesson plans for the price of 1!) we spent the whole period talking about what it means for polygons to be similar, what it takes for polygons to be similar, and what shortcuts there are for triangles.

Thinking back, maybe at least part of their hangup was that I asked them to go from the abstract (just solve this problem) to a concrete (here are physical triangles).

Anyway....I needed some way to assess whether they at least remembered (hopefully understood) what it takes for polygons to be similar.  And I did not want just another worksheet.  So with my fingers crossed, I asked them to write a children's book that included answers to the questions


  1. What does it mean for polygons to be similar?  How can you tell if two polygons are similar?
  2. What does it take to figure out if triangles are similar?
First I showed them this video for inspiration.  Then they had about 10 minutes in class that day (Friday) and 10 minutes on Monday.  

Grade-wise this was worth as much as a journal assignment that they occasionally have, which is not very much at all.

I got back about 4 books, out of two classes, that were about Geometry in general, but had absolutely nothing to do with similar polygons.  So that was fun to see that after explaining the assignment 10 times and having the questions posted on my website.  Sigh.....But the rest of them were really cute!  And any misconceptions they still had were quite clear and I could immediately address them.

My five-year-old loved hearing me read the books, especially the ones that involved princes and princesses.  

Here are some pictures.













Tuesday, April 22, 2014

T-shirt Design Contest - aka Polar Graphing Project

aka, Have I mentioned how much I love www.desmos.com?

I teach a Trigonometry/Precalculus class.  It is a regular level 4th year high school math class.  It comes after Algebra 2, and I like to think that it prepares at least some students for Calculus.  However, most of my students aren't going to ever take Calculus.  Very few of them are going to major in anything that would require advanced math.  At the same time, these are all wonderful kids, most of whom are choosing to take this class as their elective senior year, even though they don't need it.  I periodically remind them that it's an elective and that they chose to be here.  Because they're seniors.  For those of you who have ever taught seniors, or remember being a senior, it's the end of April.  Enough said?

So we worked hard all year.  At least some of the time I felt like they worked hard, too, so I'm using that "we" somewhat loosely.  And we got to a unit on Polar Coordinates.

What does someone who isn't going into math really need to know about Polar Coordinates?  Well, I think they should know it's a different system of graphing equations.  They should understand the idea of having two systems for the same purpose (Metric/English, degrees/radians).  Maybe they should know how to plot some graphs and analyze equations.  Definitely convert some ordered pairs from polar to rectangular and vice versa.  Maybe convert a few equations, too.

But I think the most important goal of this unit for me, was to get them to finally start seeing the beauty in Mathematics.  They are so used to doing stuff all the time, how often do we let them stand back and just admire how beautiful Math really is?  And once they had a chance to stand back, it was time to do stuff again, only the stuff they were doing was creating beautiful designs out of polar equations using www.desmos.com.  

I don't want to say anything bad about the TI graphing calculators.  Lord knows, I've had some good times with mine, starting back in 1996.  Back in 1996, it was the coolest techi-est toy I owned.  (My family emigrated to the US in '92, and video games were not part of the family budget.) But it's 2014.  And that screen is just about as pixelated as it was back then.  The new line has color, and it looks better, to be sure, but it's still not nearly as beautiful as desmos.  

So the project was simple.  Come up with your own beautiful design.  I gave almost no other directions.  Here's the assignment sheet.
I compiled the designs in each class and used a Google Form to have them vote on their favorite option (no names attached to the designs.)  
Here's the winning design from the first class: 


And the second class: 

And here's the design that desmos chose to post on their site, to the utter delight of the entire class.



Here are a couple TI designs, just for comparison.


So I guess I'm not sure if this project assesses any understanding of any learning targets, but it definitely helped my students see math in a different, more appreciative, way.  Now I need to find a place that might be able to print these onto t-shirts for very little $!



Friday, April 18, 2014

My Grading Woes

I have a dilemma.
I'm stuck somewhere between my theoretical beliefs and their practical implications.

First of all, the premise.  I have always tried to make my students' grades be a reflection of what they actually know, and not much else.  I believe that's what we now lovingly call "Standard Based Grading."  However, I operate under the same 90/80/70/60 grading scale that has existed since before SBG was a thing.
Conveniently, just as I was gearing up to write this post, my boss sent us an article on SBG.  How timely!
Here's a link
TLDR summary: schools are trying to ditch letter grades and instead provide descriptions of what students are actually learning and check of mastery of learning targets as said mastery is achieved.

My school isn't there, yet.  I'm sure it's just around the corner.  Maybe even next year.  I haven't been paying very close attention, to be honest.  So far there has already been a big push for Assessment for Learning.

So, since this matched what I already believed, over the last few years, I've gone from occasionally allowing some students to prove that their test results don't represent their actual level of understanding, to actually encouraging everyone to retake everything.  Some call this "holding them accountable" or "not letting them off the hook just because they failed a test."  In theory, that sounds so great!  And this is where my problems began.

At first, this was a pretty radical idea for students.  They'd never been able to re-take tests before.  So they treated it as a privilege.  And when that was the case, it was very manageable.  I would meet with a student, go over his/her mistakes, send them off to do corrections and practice, and meet with them again to listen to their explanations of the concept, ask questions, make up some problems for them to solve, and if I was satisfied, I just added however many points they lost back to their test grade.

Honestly, at first, I felt like I was a rebel!  It seemed like a radical idea to me, too.  But soon enough, it became the norm at the school.  Everyone was doing it!  And when it became the norm, my students' attitude toward tests changed completely.

Dan Meyer in his talk at NCTM, talked about minimizing the cost of failure.  Well, this happened.  My students would come in on the day of the test and say things like, "I'm not ready for this test, can I take it next week?"  "I still don't get this stuff, so I'm just going to fail this test, is that ok?  I'll do the re-take later!"  "What do you mean I have to take it today?  I'm just going to turn it in blank because I have to re-take it anyway!"

Yeah....that was an adjustment.  Let's just say I'm still working on it.

And these re-takes?  They were completely out of control.  Toward the end of 1st semester, I was spending literally every free minute I had, including after school, with one or five students, going over material from as far back as Unit 1.  I'll admit, there were so many AHA! moments, that I really did feel like maybe, finally, they're learning this stuff.  And maybe that's better than what used to happen, which is nothing.  They would just fail and then do nothing.  Therefore, just maybe, this may be worth my time?  But I also felt like I was being used.

So I figured that because I'm used to sophomores, and these were seniors, I needed to change some policies.

Second semester I instituted a new rule.  The deadline for retaking a test is 2 weeks from the day after the test, aka the day they see their test results.  This was a good rule, it really helped my sanity, but it wasn't enough.  Fourth quarter I added another new rule.  Before, in order to do the re-take, a student had to show me test corrections and a completed review packet.  Now, in order to even qualify for the re-take, I want to see that review packet completed by the day of the test.  Is it because I believe that doing the practice problems will help them prepare for the test?  Yeah, it just might!

And now a challenge.

One of my darlings, who is generally very responsible, came into the test completely unprepared.  She was absent, she never bothered to figure out what she missed.  She was counting on the re-take, or on being able to take the test some other time.  I made her take the test.  The results were predictable.
Two weeks later, it's the last day for the re-take.  "Can I have more time for the re-take?  I was absent one day last week!"  Um...no?  And also, are you serious?

We talked.  And during this conversation, here's what occurred to me.

It's not just about mastering the material.  It's about mastering the material in some sort of a timely manner.  Because, sure, if I have unlimited time and resources, I can learn anything.  But that really isn't how school works.  You need to learn this material this year, this semester, and you need to be able to balance that responsibility with all the other things that are going on in your life.

My resolve was shaken once again when I got this e-mail from the student last week.

Hi Mrs. Shafran,
   I hope you had a good celebration with your family. While looking in the grade book I still haven't been able to accept the fact that I could be getting a 95 in trig, but I have to stick with a 75, because I wasn't able to get one more day to retake it the Polar test. I really think the amount of work I've put into this class and my ability to understand the unit isn't shown by a 75. What can I do to better my grade before the test on Monday?

I took a long time to mull this over.  I talked to my awesome colleagues, I read some stuff, and mostly I just thought about it.  Here's my response.


Hi,

Your e-mail challenged me to really think about my philosophy of grading, and I am very grateful to you for pushing me to do that!
This was a tough call! On the one hand, I agree, your "ability to understand the unit" isn't shown by a 75.  However, the conclusion I reached after a lot of thinking, reading, and talking to other teachers, is that there is more to the grade than your ability to understand.  This grade isn't a representation of your ability to understand, it's a representation of how much understanding you achieved by the specified time.  
You had two opportunities to demonstrate your understanding of this unit, the test, and for two weeks after that, the re-take.  Once that deadline has passed, it's over. 
Just like you can't go back and re-take a test that you took first semester, or last year.
I know you have a lot on your plate and it's tough to balance all of it.  That's why the re-take opportunity is there in the first place.  However, it is not indefinite.  
Please focus your effort on the current unit as well as the last unit.  Remember that your grade currently is only 3/5th of what it will be before the final exam.

Thank you for challenging me!
Mrs. Shafran  

This is obviously still a work in progress.  I would LOVE to hear how others handle the reality of SBG and AfL.  If you happen to read this, please share!









Sunday, April 13, 2014

#NCTMNOLA

There are two things I hope to get out of a conference like NCTM.  The first is an idea that I can use next week in class.  OK, maybe not next week, but basically something very specific and useful.  The second is an overall feeling of inspiration to continue improving, creating, thinking, teaching.
I did not achieve goal #1, but I did come home pretty inspired.

For starters, I've been inspired to write this blog.  I do not love writing, but I do think it would be helpful to organize my thoughts and maybe, if I'm lucky, hear the thoughts of my colleagues from other schools.

I attended a total of 6 sessions.  Well, if I'm fully honest, it was more like 4 and 2 halves.  Yes, I walked out twice.  It wasn't you, session presenter, it was me.  I'm sorry!  I wish it didn't have to end this way.

Did I mention that I don't love writing?  Maybe it's because I don't know how to organize my thoughts.  This time I'm going award-style.

Coolest Session award goes to.....
Eli Luberoff and Desmos for

Enhancing Mathematics in the Classroom with Online Tools and Lessons

I really don't know how to talk about this session without gushing like a school girl with a crush. The Desmos team has developed an amazing product.  It has incredible potential to challenge our students and make them learn in ways they actually find enjoyable, which would make my job soooo much easier!  Imagine teaching without having to sell the kids on the subject.  Imagine kids wanting to graph distance vs. time over and over and over until it's perfect and it makes sense.  And I don't need to convince the district to buy this.  It's free!  It's available to everyone with internet!  My kindergartener at home can be (ahem, will be) graphing the trajectory of a little parachuting man being shot out of a cannon!  
I admit, I already loved desmos before this session.  I already used it for a class project and my students loved it almost as much as I did.  It is entirely possible that Eli could've just stood there and not even said anything and I would've still thought the session was the coolest ever.  But he didn't.  He was charming and at ease and had the attention of everyone in the room.  Everyone was engaged, even though not everyone could participate.

Which brings me to......

Organizational Fail award

This one goes to whoever decided that a national conference on 21st century teaching and learning does not need WiFi.  What were you thinking, NCTM?  Seriously.  Quick shout out to T-mobile for unlimited hot-spotting from my phone.  Where would my iPad and I be without you?  Certainly not in the student.desmos.com (code nctm) cupboard of fame.  Maybe consider WiFi for future conferences, that's all I'm saying.

Now back to something positive. 

Most Entertaining Session award goes to

Video Games and Making Math More like Things Student Like

Dan Meyer!  Did anyone else think he won NCTM this year?  The auditorium was full for his session on making math class more like playing video games.  I'm not going to re-cap it.  I'll just highlight the parts that made me think.
  • Isn't it interesting that Dan's mother-in-law wanted to read the instructions first and his father-in-law just went in and started playing Angry Birds?  Dan's take-away message was that the struggle helped his father-in-law have context for when he did go to the instructions.  He was more successful because of his approach.  I thought this was interesting because there's research that shows that boys and girls act this way when faced with a new task, too.  Boys just go for it, even if they don't know what they're doing.  Girls are more reluctant and want some rules or guidance.  I feel like I should have a source, but I can't remember where I read this.
  • In games you can always go back and repeat a level.  Why not do this in class?  Well, I tried this.  I'm still trying this.  It makes sense to me!  I want to teach this way.  But it is very hard.  It is very difficult to find the time to do this well.  Because my classroom is not a Montessori classroom.  I can't have each one of my students learning at their own pace.  We have a test tomorrow, but you have a basketball game tonight?  No worries!  Just fail it and study when it's convenient for you!  Let me know if you have any questions!  When you're ready (is 2 weeks enough?) I'll just give up some of my free time, I have so much of it anyway, and we can sit down and you can demonstrate your understanding of the learning targets you previously didn't master and recover your lost points.  Until then we can both pretend like you're learning the new material in class, even though you kinda need that stuff you didn't quite understand in order to understand this stuff..............I think this approach really helps some students.  These are the students who are generally responsible and want to learn and do well, but occasionally life happens.  So I get annoyed when a student nonchalantly tells me they'll just fail the test and do the retake later because they didn't study.  Even though they're within their rights in my class to do so.  I'd love to hear what others' experience with AfL has been and if this resonates with anyone.  It's certainly a work in progress for me.
  • Closed beginning - Open Middle - Closed end.  I like this!  I want to try it with my unit on Conics coming up.  My dear seniors' last unit of high school math!  At least in my mind.  In some of their minds the first unit was their last unit.  They've tuned out a while ago.  Here's what I'm thinking......Hey guys!  What would you do if you wanted to know something you didn't know?  Where would you look?  Google?  Great!  And say you wanted to know how certain parts of an equation affect a graph, what could you use?  Desmos?  Thank god for Desmos!  I want to give them a list of what they need to know and give them time to figure it out.  Then I want the groups to present what they found.  In other words, I want them to do what Dan's father-in-law did.  Jump in, play around, understand the context, formulate some questions, and then read the instructions.  For the closed end I want to fill in the gaps, do some patty paper folding and some practice problems.  Will run this plan by my co-teachers tomorrow.  
Most Important Session award


Teacher Influence on Girls’ Math Identity

The session was a little slow to get going, but once it did, it rocked.  Unfortunately, I thought I could be in two places at once and only stayed for the first half, but I quickly regretted this decision and came back.  The presenters, Lynda R. Wies and two ladies who appear to be her students, talked about how much a teacher can influence a girl's self-esteem in math.  I was there with a co-worker and the two of us brought it up during lunch with the rest of the teachers from our school and had an interesting conversation.  Did you know that when working in mixed gender groups boys are more likely to handle the equipment and girls record data?  The list of strategies is pretty much what you'd expect.  Reach out to girls, bring them in, encourage them.  Do not praise ability, praise effort, in other words Growth Mindset for the win!
Because this is sort of related to the theme of girl power, I met a lovely teacher from NY while having breakfast at the Ruby Slipper (OMG, so tasty!) who teaches at an all-girls school.  Apparently girls are not shy about doing math and doing it well when there are no boys around.  She recommends I check out TYWLS.org.  

Least Time Spent in a Session award 

Why did I step out of the girls session even though I was enjoying it?  I wanted to hear about teaching the ambiguous case of the Law of Sines.  Why did I come back to the girls session 10 minutes later?  Because apparently I already know how to teach the ambiguous case.  Did I misunderstand that the big secret method is to use your arm as a swinging gate to demonstrate?  I hope I missed something.  Otherwise I also recommend 2-3 other methods.

Most Personally Affirming Session award
Speaking of already knowing how to teach stuff.....

Tactile Trigonometry: A Hands-On and Technology-Focused Approach

The session was full of information.  If I was a new teacher, I'm sure I would've learned a ton.  But I already knew most of it.  A lot of what I knew, I knew from googling.  Yes, I literally google "How to teach the unit circle" and do quite a bit of research before planning my lesson for a topic I've never taught before.  I'm sorry I didn't stay until the end.  When i saw screen shots of the uber pixely graphs done on a graphing calculator, raised my hand and asked if they'd heard of Desmos, and heard that they can't use it because the school forces the parents to spend $140 on Inspire calculators, I realized that I needed to go walk off some anger.  I can only imagine how angry the presenters and teachers who actually have to work in that reality must be.  

First Session I attended at NCTMNOLA award
I know that's a lame title.  

The Conic Sections: From Paper Folding to Sketches to Equations

Thank you for reminding me how the patty paper folding to develop conic sections works!  I only remembered the parabola before the session.  I've taught this once before, but it's been a while.  

Last Session I attended at NCTMNOLA award
I almost made it to the end of my first blog post!  Many thanks to Anna of http://borschtwithanna.blogspot.com/ fame for the inspiration to join Twitter and start this blog.  And thanks to Kate Nowak of http://function-of-time.blogspot.com/ fame for the 

One of Us: Every Teacher a Blogging Teacher

session, which solidified my resolve to write at least one blog post.  I would raise a glass to you both, only I'm not in New Orleans anymore.  :)