Old Math

I have a new class, a small group of 8th graders. These students are having no trouble at all with their regular math class, so twice a week I take them off for something completely different. It is a double challenge, they have to keep up with the regular class with only 3 days a week attendance and I try to keep them interested in the material I have.

We are working on the mathematics of computers; binary numbers and operations, sets and logical operations, Boolean algebra, state and Turing machines. What I like about this material is that there is very little prerequisite. To learn calculus you need a fair amount of supporting material, algebra geometry and trigonometry. Most of the mathematics needed to understand a computer can be learned from scratch.

We are also doing reports on colleges; each student is doing some research on a school and reporting back with findings. It was a bit of a tough sell at first but they are warming to the idea. Your dreams can't come true if you don't have any dreams….

Recently I went with a teacher and a couple of parapros to visit Nancy, one of our special ed students (not her real name of course).

Nancy, an eight grader, had her hip replaced and will be in cast that covers both legs for at least six weeks. She was at home with her mother, who speaks English haltingly and her two younger sisters, one of whom is old enough to be an honor student in sixth grade. They are lovely people.

I don't know what Nancy's underlying problem is, something genetic I suspect. She is paralyzed from the neck down, cannot speak and has severe skeletal problems including scoliosis. It is very hard to tell of course but she is probably profoundly mentally handicapped.

Nancy can do several things. She can turn her head, look at you with big brown eyes and give you a smile that lights the room up. She can also laugh like an angel, a sound like chimes in a gentle breeze.

She is quite the favorite around school. The man who drives her bus, a mountain of a man, gets tears in his eyes when he talks about her. Students who have trouble focusing on almost any activity will sit and read to her. When we take her to a regular class the teacher and students will fuss over her.

A smile and a laugh will take you a long way.

I have been asked, why is the state spending resources bringing this child to school? And make no mistake the resources are significant, Nancy needs someone with her at all times, severe needs students require twice the expenditure than for other students. Shouldn't we concentrate more on the regular students and let kids that obviously cannot learn stay home?

How do you draw the line? I answer. At what point do you say, "This child cannot benefit from school, this child can". Who makes the decision? I think there is wisdom in universal education.

There is another aspect. When we take Nancy or any of the severe needs students into a regular classroom the students in that class get a lesson in acceptance and tolerance. They might just think "Things are not so bad for me, at least I can walk".

I know I do.

In this state if the students in a school have a long consistent history of failure in standardized tests the school is taken from the control of the local school district and converted to a charter school. This has happened only a few times since the legislation was passed.

The implicit assumption is that the students in that school are not keeping up with students in similar schools because the school administration is not up to the job or because the administration is so hamstrung by procedures, rules and contracts that it doesn't have the tools to improve the situation. The solution is to remove the school from district mismanagement; union contract rules remove the administration and start over.

Over at http://www.joannejacobs.com/ there is a link to a sad/funny story about a teacher who flips out when a stapler goes missing and in the process teaches a lesson to her class. The comments to the blog are revealing; a litany of complaints about mindless bureaucratic nonsense inflicted by school and district administrators.

There are other horror stories, school districts with a non-teacher for every two teachers, twenty thousand non-teachers in the New York system. Scary but not surprising stories; this is inevitably what happens when a protected state monopoly is allowed to flourish.

There are not many good solutions. Forget about gradual reform; has that ever worked in this kind of situation? You can rip the whole structure up and start over (to grow again) but that sends a huge dislocation through the vital K-12 system. Or you can put up a competitive alternative - which is the thinking behind the forced charter school conversion.

This gets back to my previous blog. Teachers do not care for the administration nightmare "downtown". Many don't like the knuckleheads running their own school (in fairness: there are some great principals out there; soon to be promoted out of the job).

Yet teachers for the most part will not accept any solutions that involve change and risk on their own part. They are looking for the magic dust solution. I say "No pain, no gain". If teachers want improvements they need to become agents of change and not reactionaries against anything that might affect them personally.

Competition is not a cure-all but it is a viable solution for some problems and that is better than endless complaints over mac & cheese in the faculty lounge.

Recently a tacky ABC news program offered competition as a mechanism to improve K-12 education. Simplistic; there is much more to education than what happens in school (what about education during the first 5 years of life? what about a culture that supports learning?) and competition is not a cure-all (what about rural areas? what about the kids that are left behind in a dreadful public school system?).

Competition is a good thing however and we should have more of it in K-12 education. In this state there is a rapidly growing charter school movement but vouchers were killed by the courts. There is also an open enrollment system, parents can send their child to any public school in the state that has a seat available.

I can understand that public school teachers don't like the idea of vouchers - compared to private sector jobs a public school teacher has lifetime tenure, good health benefits and a very nice retirement package. There are also philosophical objections. I can see how teacher unions don't like charter schools, most of which are non-union and offer better working conditions in exchange for lower pay.

But what puzzles me is the animosity of public school teachers to the idea of open enrollment. Teachers will complain one moment about how over-crowded the school is and in the same breath complain about the loss of students to other schools. It seems like the whole idea of competition in any form is repugnant.

I was driving home with the materials for dinner (soup; fresh oriental noodles, strips of fried pork, green onions and carrots and I hope we have some chicken stock in the freezer) today. In front of me was the inevitable SUV but this fellow was kind enough to provide me with something to read. Several stickers proclaiming the superiority of the Kansas City Chiefs football team (a tough sell, this is Broncos country), one for Ernie Ball guitar strings (which in fact I do buy on occasion), an American flag sticker (which I pledge to every school morning alongside 18 very special special education students). In other words the usual stuff you might find on the back of any SUV.

What was different about this rolling curriculum vitae was the following message, displayed in 1 inch high yellow letters on the rear window: "In memory of Scott".

I must confess that I don't know who Scott is, or more likely was. Nor do I know why anyone would put this message right above their tailpipe to be read by total strangers who likely wish that Scott's memorial wasn't directly in front of them anyway.

But I will respect the wishes of this unknown person and I will remember this unknown loved one; at least for a little while. And I ask those few readers of this blog to also remember Scott, whoever he is, at least until I can think of something else (preferably education related) to write about.

I have been trying to get an e-mail address on the school district system. I miss school announcements on a regular basis and think it inappropriate that I communicate to the staff about a student using my personal e-mail address. No big deal, right?

Try pulling teeth. The district e-mail Lord doesn't know what box to check on his form for "volunteer" and has gone quite catatonic on the subject. It has been two months since the school has sent in the request and no sign of an address.

Today I sent a slightly sarcastic memo to the district superintendent asking if we could make an exception to the maxim that rules are more important than people. I don't expect results but I feel better.

In general schools don't deal with volunteers very well.
Administrators don't quite like the fact that they are not on the payroll, hence can't be controlled.

Teachers are a little nonplussed as well. "You want to help me?, nobody has ever offered help before, what's the catch?"

Unions suspect that somehow this is taking membership dues away from their coffers.

If you do find a niche and start making a contribution you will become a treasured asset to the school. It is very rewarding. Just don't ask for an e-mail address from the district office.

We did the rubber band pantograph in my 6th grade class. Take two rubber bands tied together. Hold fixed one end of the combined band. Put a pencil through the loop at the other end and draw with that pencil such that the knot in the middle traces over a shape. If done properly you draw enlarged version of the shape. Kind of a neat idea but there are a few snags:

- One very bright boy in the class is a total klutz - very poor hand-eye coordination. This activity was a real trial for him

- In general handing out rubber bands to 6th graders is asking for trouble. Trust me on this one.

- The resulting figures are pretty awful; it is hard to draw much of a conclusion about size and area.

We will try it again next week, this time using a ruler. Measure from a fixed point, double (or triple) the distance and make a new point along the same line. This should give us figures accurate enough to reach valid conclusions about scale.

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A few blogs back I mentioned a Dad whose solution to a son that wasn't interested in working outside of class was to yank son from my advanced class. I guess the boy told his father he REALLY wanted to stay in the class, so Dad asked for another meeting. Things had a completely different tone this time and the boy is back in my challenge group.

My classes by the way are officially "study groups", since you can't have an uncertified (oh the horror) person teaching a class. I am not even in the union (oh the shame).

We seem to be short a few students at school. Part of the shortfall is illness, kids getting sick AFTER the winter break. More significant is a large number of students taking extended vacations in Mexico. Staff is envious.

I am not so sure; I had a talk with one young man about his vacation. Some of his brothers were born in the US, hence are US citizens, some were born in Mexico and are not. The whole family has had some experience with the criminal justice system here. Every year they take a three day drive, in two cars, to their hometown in Mexico.

His description of Juarez? "The whole place smells like a dead dog".

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I continue to snarl at the "Connected Math" text book. Not only is it purely constructive, it is also a poor job of the constructive approach. Why don't school districts write their own text books and publish via photocopy? Why do they spend good money on this junk?

Two movies watched recently here, both with educational connections:

“Radio” with Ed Harris and Cuba Gooding doing an amazing job portraying a developmentally disabled young man. A story of redemption, both for the title character but also some redemption for everyone that tries to help him. If you want to understand why people choose to work with the severely disabled then see this movie.

“Mad Hot Ballroom”, a documentary about a program in the NY school districts that teaches 5th graders ballroom dancing; leading to a competition. This is the kind of thing that would drive a “traditionalist” a little mad hot, why are schools teaching kids how to dance? The answer is that there are a lot of important social lessons here; cooperation, respect, politeness. The kids are a great study but I found the teachers equally interesting.

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I am looking for another word to describe the teaching method that is the opposite of constructive. I don’t like using “traditional” for this since it implies that traditionally teachers never used constructive methods; good teachers have always used constructive methods. My reaction (and I am not alone by any means) is curriculums in math that are almost completely constructive. Suggestions gratefully accepted.

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School starts tomorrow, are you ready?