Starting Over

Well, my first nine weeks were - okay, I guess. I spent the first 6 beating myself over the head and the last 3 shrugging it off - maybe a little too much. I've learned a lot over these 9 weeks, and I have decided to view this next quarter as a way for me to start over. Even if its too late to train some of the kids to behave, I can start over. For myself.

Its fall break now, and I was planning to spend it in the following way:

Friday-Sunday: enjoy myself in Tucson
Monday-Friday: work at school without a school day looming over my head

Instead, an hour after the kids left I started feeling a tickle in my throat, and my week started like this:

Friday-Saturday: trail after friends in Tucson, hacking and coughing, with a roll of toilet paper for tissue
Sunday-Monday: Sleep 18 hours a day at home. Also drink South Asian remedy which is so disgusting that I usually choose to be sick instead

Its Tuesday now, and I'm back in my classroom listening to the radio and making a To Do list on the board. So far, it looks like this:

Open Source and Creative Commons License

My fiancee is very invested into and passionate about the open source movement, and he's sucked me into it. I'm now using open source software, etc.

One thing I just did was license this blog, Sines of Learning, and its companion webpage the Sines of Learning Document Page under a related license:

the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Creative Commons is a non-profit that provides the necessary legal language to license your creative works (writings, art, etc). They help you pick the right license based on what you want. In my case, the only thing I wanted was that neither my work nor anything built on it be used for commercial purposes. After all, if I give it away free, everyone else should too! So I used the following language (generated by the Choose a License feature) on both:

"Sines of Learning is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Based on a work at
sinesoflearning.blogspot.com

Some rights reserved. No attribution necessary."

I added the "No attribution necessary." because the license specifies that attribution must be given according to the originator's instructions. I'm not worried about getting credit for it. I just want to know that if I ever create something that is some use to some one, somewhere, they can use it for free.

Please consider copyrighting your own blog and materials under a Creative Common license too!

My Teaching Philosophy: DTA

A couple of weeks ago when I told someone (at a campus ministry I still attend) that I was going to start teaching, she asked me what my teaching philosophy was. My answer: "Um...uh...what do you mean, exactly?"

Since then, I've come across the word "automaticity" (which, yes, I had not heard before *hangs head*) in an education article, and I liked it because it helped me to verbalize my answer to the math wars.

People vehemently against constructivism point out examples of students taught with a discovery-based curriculum that still can't do things like basic multiplication facts (7x4) as fast as those taught with direct instruction. But what is the point in memorizing 7x4=28 in these days of calculators?

Don't get me wrong - I am NOT saying that basic arithmetic facts don't need to be learned. I constantly get frustrated with high school and college students that can't do basic arithmetic, because it hampers the teaching of higher-order thinking skills when we have to break stride to cover fractions or negatives.

No, I think that being fluent in arithmetic is very important. But I also believe that in a calculator-filled world, there is no fundamental difference between someone who doesn't know 7x4, and someone who has memorized 7x4=28 because they copied it repeatedly on 500 worksheets.

Memorization has been made obsolete, but automaticity is more important than ever. Wikipedia's article on automaticity describes it as the point where a skill is learned so well that the lower level thinking is no longer needed - it has become automatic like driving or riding a bike. I no longer spell out C-A-T when I see cat, and I no longer add 7+7+7+7 to get 7x4, but I do understand how to start over from the beginning to explain my thinking to myself or others if I need to. And that is what gives me deep fluency in both English and math.

If my algebra kids know 7x4=28 but don't know why, it doesn't help us when we get to factoring, or finding common denominators, or finding areas and volumes, or any of that. Memorized facts can only be used in a few narrow ways.

But the DI people are right about one thing. A student that can explain 7x4 as 7+7+7+7, and 4+4+4+4+4+4+4, and the number of squares in a rectangle 7 units long and 4 units across....but still has to punch it into the calculator, is almost as (if not equally) hampered as the one who memorized the phrase "Sayvun thymes foe-rr ees tventi aight."

Discovery by itself isn't enough. Memorization by itself isn't...well, anything, unless you're Amish. But a teaching philosophy that promotes going from discovery to automaticity can prepare students for the world.

There's my teaching philosophy: DTA. Discovery To Automaticity. Let's see how long it lasts!

My First Goal for This Year

Not to burn out.

I really do have more goals than that, but it’s really become a primary goal of mine. During my student teaching I burned out at the end - after only one semester with the support of a really great mentor teacher! My whole focus was on the students and I stopped my social life, stopped sleeping, and eventually stopped smiling.

I can't do that again. And not just for me - for the students too. I really think I can become a great teacher, not because of my abilities but because I'm passionate about teaching and willing to learn from research and others. I want this to be my career for at least a couple of decades, and I can't do that if I'm not enjoying myself.

So. My first goal is to not burn out: to leave the second school is over every Friday, to continue to see my friends and enjoy my hobbies, to continue going to my house of worship on Sunday even though I'll want to sleep in, to sleep regularly, to eat and not skip meals, to keep going to the gym, and to enlist other people's help BEFORE I get desperate. Sounds easy...

Among other things I've decided to hire a grader for this first year to correct homework and classwork. I'm still trying to put together my homework policy, but I'm almost certain I'm going to check for completeness, so it’s not a difficult job. It’s just that 170x5 papers every week makes me tired and stressed out just looking at it. I still need to find someone to do it, but if they can give points for effort on homework, bellwork, closure activities, and class exercises, I think it will make a huge difference in my energy level. And my SO (significant other) won't have to help me grade because I look at my box of work and burst into tears!

I've also gotten a lot of support already from my administration with just one granted request: one prep. To me lesson plans are where I want to spend my time. I usually alternate between a document camera for examples and a PowerPoint presentation, with a written lesson plan and frequently typed graphical organizers for the kids, and these all take a LOT of time to prepare. Most teachers like to teach two sections at a time so they don't get bored, but when I got my assignment I asked if it could be changed and they did it! I have 5 sections of Algebra 1 all day. I can see how it will be boring, but I also remember during an internship that by the time I taught the same lesson 4 times, I had learned what worked and what didn't. Hopefully this will not only give me twice as much time to focus on quality lesson plans, but also help me learn faster.

Finally, I'm spending a lot of time this summer preparing. I've got my mother, a wonderful physics professor at a nearby college, and my SO, who is also passionate about education, supporting me. I'm currently trying to come up with my classroom management plans, and organizing all the "stuff" I have from ed classes and my student teaching (I taught two sections of Algebra 1 so I've got a head start on that). My SO told me during my student teaching to write down all my thoughts and observations, but I was too tired, and as a result 6 months later I've forgotten a lot of what I learned the hard way. I'm hoping to use this blog to keep track of my ideas and their success rates.

I'm also interested in blogging to connect to the other education and math ed bloggers I've been reading. Some of them are wonderfully inspirational and I'm looking forward to linking and talking to them.

So. That's my number one goal - don't burn out and drop out of teaching. It'll probably be the hardest goal to accomplish this year, but I really feel like I can avoid or lessen the biggest stumbling blocks I encountered in student teaching, by starting to plan NOW. I'll start organizing what I'm doing this summer in my next post.