1) I will not be on time. I am chronically late to everything, including student teaching (and I got into a lot of trouble for it).
2) I’ll develop anxiety and become totally frozen and unable to work. My senior year of college I became “frozen” and unable to stand the thought of touching my Advanced Lab II lab manuals to write two lab reports. ALL the data was taken and the reports would be only 10-15 pages including graphs, but I took an Incomplete and put it off for so long that I started thinking about this class as “the one thing that is standing between me and my physics degree” which only churned up more anxiety. It took many hours with a counselor to realize that my old coping mechanism (Wait Till the Last Minute and then Use the Adrenaline of Panic to Finish Everything in an All-Nighter) was no longer useful – it had broken down. I slowly learned how to deal with responsibility without an adrenaline high, but it took a long time and an incredibly patient Advanced Lab professor. I still sometimes try to resort to that broken method when I am stressed and forget it doesn't work anymore.
3) I will not be on time. I will wake up after school has begun and my kids will be standing out in the hallway and I will be called into the principal’s office and fired. Fired fired fired.
4) My kids will hate me. I wasn’t able to relate well to high school kids the first time around, when I was a high school kid, so how presumptuous is it of me to assume I can this time around when we are in different generations? I don’t dress carefully, I don’t do my hair carefully, I don’t like sports, I don’t listen to the right music, and I’m a book-reading math-doing M*A*S*H-watching oldies-listening nerd. I know from my education classes and reading, the good ones and the almost-useless ones, that “building relationships is key to getting students involved.” It certainly can be done without that, but its easier when they feel a connection to you. Which means it sucks to be me.
5) I will not be on time. Fired fired fired. Fired.
6) I will fall behind on my grading – just like in student teaching. I will get “frozen” and get in trouble with parents and administrators and let down my students and be a bad role model for responsibility.
7) I will fall behind on taking attendance – just like in student teaching. And get in trouble with parents and administrators.
8) The kids will instinctively know that I’ve never done this before and I have no idea what I’m doing. They’ll have no respect for my authority and will show me their lack of respect and confidence by lying down on the floor and refusing to get up (I’ve heard a couple of horror stories about that. The first was on Blog of a Math Teacher, soon before he got fired. The other was from my mother, whose colleague at her community college came back after lasting only one week as a junior high school teacher.)
9) I will be a horrible teacher. By not preparing, I will resort to boring repetitive worksheets and drill-and-kill with no attempt to incorporate conceptual learning or critical thinking skills, and my kids will be worse off for my supposedly idealistic decision to become an inner-city school teacher.
10) I will get late and be fired.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
More things to know
Other ideas about things for a first-day survey that I got from a book called [will fill in]
What do you prefer to be called (nickname, etc.)?
Your home phone number:
Your parent(s)/guardian(s) first and last names and work numbers:
Does your family have Internet access at home?
Does your family have a DVD player?
What grade do you expect to get in this class?
What do you expect to learn in this class?
What do you think makes a good teacher?
What do you think makes a good student?
Do you have any medical problems or anything else I should be aware of?
How do you see yourself using math in the future and in your life?
Are you more comfortable speaking & writing another language besides English?
What do you prefer to be called (nickname, etc.)?
Your home phone number:
Your parent(s)/guardian(s) first and last names and work numbers:
Does your family have Internet access at home?
Does your family have a DVD player?
What grade do you expect to get in this class?
What do you expect to learn in this class?
What do you think makes a good teacher?
What do you think makes a good student?
Do you have any medical problems or anything else I should be aware of?
How do you see yourself using math in the future and in your life?
Are you more comfortable speaking & writing another language besides English?
New Teacher Induction
This week all teachers that were new to the district participated in 3 days of New Teacher Induction; the first day was on my birthday, which I'm hoping is a good omen!
Overall I enjoyed it. There were definitely some boring speeches, but I learning a lot about my campus and the district and am [marginally] more relaxed now about starting school.
The first day was at my campus, where we were loaded up with new teacher documents and enough school and district paraphernalia (pom-poms, mugs, buttons, etc.) to last us until retirement. By far the best part was a neighborhood tour - they loaded us in vans and showed us the areas where our students lived! It was wonderful, not because I learned so much, but because it told me that the school really wanted to help us get to know our students and their circumstances. We ended the drive with a stop at a local Hispanic market (our students are 90% Hispanic) and were given time to wander around and look at it.
The next two days were at the district, and the first day's morning was taken up by fairly boring talking heads talking about the district, the union, benefits, special ed, etc. - important stuff, but brain frying. But for the rest of our time we were with our content specialists. My district's content specialist had actually taught part of my math methods class in my teacher certification program, so I already knew she was great. There are education teachers that teach by explaining one edulingo term after another, and there are ed teachers that teach...y'know, material, how to apply education research, useful tips, silly stuff like that. ;-) I enjoyed my time there and especially enjoyed the little things they did to help us feel more at home, like providing tables for all new teachers from one campus to sit together.
I also joined the local teacher's union, which is part of the Arizona Education Association (AEA) and the National Education Association (NEA). I was of two minds about it because of my neutral attitude towards NEA and the cost, but I really believe in unions (gathering together to change a situation by the power of combined economic interest - how pinko commie!) and the local union came highly recommended. So don't mess with me - yer talkin' to a union member!
Overall I enjoyed it. There were definitely some boring speeches, but I learning a lot about my campus and the district and am [marginally] more relaxed now about starting school.
The first day was at my campus, where we were loaded up with new teacher documents and enough school and district paraphernalia (pom-poms, mugs, buttons, etc.) to last us until retirement. By far the best part was a neighborhood tour - they loaded us in vans and showed us the areas where our students lived! It was wonderful, not because I learned so much, but because it told me that the school really wanted to help us get to know our students and their circumstances. We ended the drive with a stop at a local Hispanic market (our students are 90% Hispanic) and were given time to wander around and look at it.
The next two days were at the district, and the first day's morning was taken up by fairly boring talking heads talking about the district, the union, benefits, special ed, etc. - important stuff, but brain frying. But for the rest of our time we were with our content specialists. My district's content specialist had actually taught part of my math methods class in my teacher certification program, so I already knew she was great. There are education teachers that teach by explaining one edulingo term after another, and there are ed teachers that teach...y'know, material, how to apply education research, useful tips, silly stuff like that. ;-) I enjoyed my time there and especially enjoyed the little things they did to help us feel more at home, like providing tables for all new teachers from one campus to sit together.
I also joined the local teacher's union, which is part of the Arizona Education Association (AEA) and the National Education Association (NEA). I was of two minds about it because of my neutral attitude towards NEA and the cost, but I really believe in unions (gathering together to change a situation by the power of combined economic interest - how pinko commie!) and the local union came highly recommended. So don't mess with me - yer talkin' to a union member!
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!
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!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Good Math & Education Blogs - Ongoing
I'm going to use this post to keep track of the many blogs I've read and enjoyed. It'll be continuously updated and I'll link to it in a later post whenever I do.
I'm dividing the blogs I read into 3 categories: dead blogs (blogs no longer active) that are worth reading, live blogs, and great blogs. I'll be adding the third category to the sidebar on this page but keeping the first two categories here.
If I put a blog on here I'll add if I have not read through the entire archives. I find going through the archives really valuable for learning about the writer and his/her style. And who says the only useful things are posted the same day I found the blog?
Dead Blogs
Blog of a Math Teacher: Great insight into struggles of new math teachers. Be warned, his career in secondary school ends unhappily and can be depressing. Fortunately, he moved to community college and seemed, as of May 2006, to be happy there.
Live Blogs
Coffee & Graph Paper: This blog is unfortunately slow, because the author writes about conceptual problems her students have, as well as concrete things she does in her classroom that can insipire you.
Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere: Another slow but good blog, from a new teacher in a private school. One of the best things about it is that his sister is his major reader and commenter.
Math Notes: A new teacher who writes a lot about her personal experiences in the classroom. A nice read.
I'm dividing the blogs I read into 3 categories: dead blogs (blogs no longer active) that are worth reading, live blogs, and great blogs. I'll be adding the third category to the sidebar on this page but keeping the first two categories here.
If I put a blog on here I'll add if I have not read through the entire archives. I find going through the archives really valuable for learning about the writer and his/her style. And who says the only useful things are posted the same day I found the blog?
Dead Blogs
Blog of a Math Teacher: Great insight into struggles of new math teachers. Be warned, his career in secondary school ends unhappily and can be depressing. Fortunately, he moved to community college and seemed, as of May 2006, to be happy there.
Live Blogs
Coffee & Graph Paper: This blog is unfortunately slow, because the author writes about conceptual problems her students have, as well as concrete things she does in her classroom that can insipire you.
Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere: Another slow but good blog, from a new teacher in a private school. One of the best things about it is that his sister is his major reader and commenter.
Math Notes: A new teacher who writes a lot about her personal experiences in the classroom. A nice read.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
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!
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!
Who I Am (First Day Survey)
Even though I haven't posted in several days, I've still been working on several ideas for my Algebra 1 classroom (except for the past two days, when I've been enjoying myself in Sedona). I'll try to catch this blog up to my work in the next few days. The following idea is stolen 95% from Dan Meyers at dy/dan.
He made up a first-day survey that was made up of all kinds of geometric shapes and it looked like so much fun compared to my previous list-surveys, I had to use it. But, I wanted to change the questions and his download was only in PDF form.
So, being the I-wanna-do-it-myself kind (which I have to watch out for, I know) I made my own. Its similar but not exactly the same as Dan's, and I centered it around the themes of past, present, and future:
The only questions about math are "What did your previous math teachers do that you liked/disliked?"
Right now, my plan is to use this as my bellwork on the first day, with my answers up on the document camera (doc cam) as an example. Then going over some basic rules and procedues, having everyone share from the survey, and ending with a mini-quiz that doesn't factor into their grades but helps me find out where they are in math.
I'm also considering taking the surveys and printing a second half on the back for day 2, with more math-centered questions. Then when I get them back a second time I'll have lots of info for each child on one sheet. On the other hand, if I scan them, it won't matter where the second page is. Still thinking on this one.
You can download Word and PDF copies of the Who I Am survey at the Sines of Learning Document Page. If you want to change the shapes or questions, open the Word file. The shapes are made using Word Insert>Picture>Autoshapes, and the questions are put in using Insert>Text Boxes. I made some of the text boxes go "sideways" by going to Format>Text Direction.
Have fun! And let me know what you think!
He made up a first-day survey that was made up of all kinds of geometric shapes and it looked like so much fun compared to my previous list-surveys, I had to use it. But, I wanted to change the questions and his download was only in PDF form.
So, being the I-wanna-do-it-myself kind (which I have to watch out for, I know) I made my own. Its similar but not exactly the same as Dan's, and I centered it around the themes of past, present, and future:
The only questions about math are "What did your previous math teachers do that you liked/disliked?"
Right now, my plan is to use this as my bellwork on the first day, with my answers up on the document camera (doc cam) as an example. Then going over some basic rules and procedues, having everyone share from the survey, and ending with a mini-quiz that doesn't factor into their grades but helps me find out where they are in math.
I'm also considering taking the surveys and printing a second half on the back for day 2, with more math-centered questions. Then when I get them back a second time I'll have lots of info for each child on one sheet. On the other hand, if I scan them, it won't matter where the second page is. Still thinking on this one.
You can download Word and PDF copies of the Who I Am survey at the Sines of Learning Document Page. If you want to change the shapes or questions, open the Word file. The shapes are made using Word Insert>Picture>Autoshapes, and the questions are put in using Insert>Text Boxes. I made some of the text boxes go "sideways" by going to Format>Text Direction.
Have fun! And let me know what you think!
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