Day 12: I'm the Sugarless Gum of Math Teachers

I'm the sugarless gum of math teachers. Four out of five classes have high scholarship. This is a new experience for me. I've had good marking periods before, but never this good. Did I suddenly become a highly-effective facilitator of learning? Or did I just happen to take over a bunch of classes at a school where more kids seemed determined to go to college (or at least get that last math credit)?

Smart money (and empirical data) would bank on the latter.

Granted, I was a little surprised when I calculated the grades. I know that there were some poor showings here and there throughout the marking period (roughly six weeks and some vacation times squeezed in), but most of the people having difficulties only had it in one spot or the other. It wasn't continuous. And the homework and assignments were being handed in (even if there wasn't enough "originality" to that pile on the corner of the desk). It seemed worse that it was mostly because of the noise level in the classroom. Now, I've had APs who like noisy classrooms. If they aren't noisy, then discussions aren't going on. No discussions means learning isn't taking place. However, the inverse of that is most certainly Not logically equivalent. By this I mean that Discussions DO NOT mean learning IS taking place.

Sometimes it's just noise. However, that is on me. That's a classroom management issue, and I have to adjust my approach any way I can. The main way to do this is to establish rules on Day One. However, my Day One and theirs were NOT the same day. I started in the end of October, and I was their third teacher. I was in a new school and I tried to ease my way into my "temporary" role (I wasn't supposed to still be there at this point). That was a mistake, but it's one I'm dealing with. They get a participation grade, and for some it's lower than others, but that's only a small part of the grade. The testing is the largest part, and they are, for the most part, doing better. For this, I'm thankful. And they aren't just squeezing by, they're getting high numbers.

A little true time: the classes with the highest grades are "Financial Algebra", and anything involving logarithms have been dropped. It's math that they can use (although I'm not looking forward to tomorrow's lesson on Life Insurance, which will be even less exciting than Pensions has been), but it's still a lot of compound interest formulas and other computations. And it's planning and thinking about the future. Good stuff. The best part: I don't have to be crazed about the amount of material in each assignment or on the tests.

My Common Core Algebra class is an entirely different situation. I have to push and push and push, and still I'm behind. However, I'm making sure that they know the material I cover. I just keep reminding them that knowing 90% of 70% of the material is 63%, which isn't a good result. So while I'm happy to review to answer everyone's questions, we still have to move along. Today, they were asking me when we were going to start reviewing for the exam, which is less than a month away. I told them the truth: when I finish covering the material.

Sadly, this brings me to the one class that's totally disengaged. I've called parents. I've written anecdotals. I've failed students. "Whatever" is the response. "You're just going to fail me anyway, so why bother?", which is only slightly more annoying than, "When am I ever going to use this?"

They might be lower performing students, but they can do the work when challenged to do so (or mildly coerced by a parent). I've been told that if you raise the bar, the students will rise up to meet that challenge. Not all of them. Some will look at that bar and walk away. Some will want to do a limbo contest no matter how much you lower that bar. There are carrots to dangle in front of them: no summer school, seniors get to go home earlier, hey wasn't there a college you were interested in?

Still working on it for next year. Highly effective? Pipe dream. I hate to say that I'm wondering what next year will bring.

In the meantime, I'm still thrilled by four out of five, and how high they were.

And I'm starting to understand that fifth dentist a little more.

Day 11: I'm Still Here... I'm Still Blogging ...

It's been a brutal couple of days, getting everything out of the way, cleaning off the desk, and getting grades ready for submission. I usually have my own calculations, done through a spreadsheet, which can look at the best scores that students have handed in. Instead, this time around, I'm relying more on the automated online process. Partly because parents and students at this school check them out more frequently. Partly because they will challenge me if I differ by even a point from the way the computer grades it. Yes, some of them, a select few, are absolutely nuts while simultaneously being in own their own, or their little precious's, failings. I massaged the numbers online, putting in zeroes where they were needed, and slightly higher numbers when I didn't want to crush or cripple a decent grade.

But it's not an automated system. They grade shown is not the one that gets put into the system unless I put in there. In general, I put in a figure that matched or exceeded what the computer showed. The trick is to make the computer show what I want it to show (or less than I want it to show). Then I come off looking pretty good. Score one for Number Sense.

Back tomorrow. Hopefully, with the new marking period under way, there will be time now. Time enough at last.

Day 9: A Quick Note About the End of the Marking Period

I have a comic for today, but I still wanted to have a blog update, if only to comment for the 30-day challenge.

Crunch time arrives again as the marking period ended Friday and grades are due. I have a pile of stuff that needs to be graded (I've plowed through the homework and a lot of the classwork) and I spent a good part of the weekend grading tests. I hate tests on Friday and I hate last day of the marking period tests. For one thing, one about the absent students and the make-up tests? When can I grade those? Probably never. Okay, not never. But this stuff takes time. And I didn't have a choice in the matter: if I wanted to have a test, the Math department had to have their tests on Friday this time around. So that's what I did. I don't want to be the teacher who slices through with a red pen and says, WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! -- despite what my students might think. As it is, I hate multiple-choice tests with their all-or-nothing component.

On the other hand, if I spend two minutes per test, that's well over 200 minutes, close to four hours, just going over the exams. And that's not even recording them online.

But the fact is that it takes more than two minutes if I look at their work to find their mistake. It's too minutes in itself just to write the comments down to guide them to get it right the next time. Except that they don't read the comments because they don't believe that there is a next time. After all, we just did that already. It's not like there's another test on the stuff where we'll use it again. Or a final exam.

So a lot of time was spent, but it had to be done.

Oddly, what shouldn't have to be done (but does) is grading the homework and all the little assignments that will count for perhaps one-fifteenth of ten percent. At the valuation, does it make much difference grading it as Satisfactory or Good? Does that extra 10% of 1/15 of 10% really matter much? As long as it isn't a zero, it won't have a big effect on their grade. And the zero doesn't have much of a negative either.

But the system is online and there's no faking it. So back to grading.

And I'll save the blogging -- and the new comics -- for another day.