As of now, this is the last day of subbing in this class. But the lesson plans left by the regular teacher include Monday as well, as if he's considering taking Monday off as well. It could be interesting for me to sub on Monday too, since today we continue but don't complete McFarland USA in Spanish I.
In Spanish II, the students continue working on the review packets for next week's test. They're due on Monday, so the test won't be until at least Tuesday -- once again hinting at the idea that the regular teacher won't be back until then.
But for us in Geometry, today is the Chapter 6 Test. Believe it or not, this is my only test this year that's scheduled for a Friday. It just works out that way that the only day count that's a multiple of ten that falls on a Friday is today, Day 70. There will also be a test scheduled for the Thursday right before a four-day (Friday-to-Monday) weekend. On the other hand, there's also going to be two upcoming tests scheduled for Mondays.
This is what I wrote last year about today's test:
Let's look at these final four questions in more detail. Questions 17 and 18 are graphing questions, except that one is transforming triangles, not snowmen. One of them is a glide reflection, while the other is a translation. I just hope that students won't be thrown off by seeing rules for each of these transformations, such as T(x, y) = (x + 5, -y).
Question 19 is about the cardinality of a set, N(S), which is mentioned briefly in Lesson 6-1 of the U of Chicago text, but I only discussed it briefly this year. Here's what I wrote about N(S) last year:
I decided that the only real reason that the U of Chicago introduces the N(S) notation for cardinality (number of elements in a set, previous question) is to prepare the students for function notation, so I might as well use it here. There's only one other place where I see n(A) used for number of elements in set A -- the Singapore Secondary Two standards!
I also wrote: (A Thanksgiving reference! These are the seven dates in November which could be turkey day!) Again, I originally wrote this test at Thanksgiving. Okay, this year we can pretend that the seven elements of S correspond to Christmas Day and the three days before and after Christmas.
The final question shows one more transformation -- which happens to be a dilation. Neither last year nor this year did I formally cover dilations. This is supposed to be a think-outside-the-box question where students should try to reason out what's going on. But think about it for a moment -- the graph makes it appear that (3, 3) is the image of (1, 1). So all students have to do is plug in x = y = 1 into each of the four choices and see that only choice (d) gives (3, 3) as the answer. (Of course, this year, the students have seen dilations because of Tom Turkey and Thanksgiving again.)
Students might consider the last four questions to be unfair. But even if they get all four wrong, it's still possible to get 80% -- the lowest possible B. So strong students who completed the review worksheet yesterday should still earn at least a C on this test.
Here are the answers to today's test -- the same answers I posted last year to the invisible test:
1. a translation 2 inches to the left
2. a translation 2 inches to the right
3. a rotation with center O and magnitude 180 degrees
4. a translation 8 centimeters to the right
5. true
6. angles D and G
7. triangle DEF, triangle GHI
8. Reflexive Property of Congruence
9. definition of congruence
10. Isometries preserve distance.
11. translation
12. translation
13. glide reflection
14. glide reflection
15.-16. The trick is to reflect the hole H twice, over the walls in reverse order, and then aim the golf ball G towards the image point H". In #15, notice that y and w are parallel, so reflecting in both of them is equivalent to a translation twice the length of the course. In #16, notice that x and y are perpendicular, so reflecting in both of them is equivalent to a 180-degree rotation.
17. glide reflection (changing the sign of y is the reflection part, adding to x is the translation part)
18. translation
19. 7
20. d (for dilation, of course!)
Now today's a test day, and it's been a while since I posted a topic about traditionalists, so let's make this our traditionalist post.
Question 19 is about the cardinality of a set, N(S), which is mentioned briefly in Lesson 6-1 of the U of Chicago text, but I only discussed it briefly this year. Here's what I wrote about N(S) last year:
I decided that the only real reason that the U of Chicago introduces the N(S) notation for cardinality (number of elements in a set, previous question) is to prepare the students for function notation, so I might as well use it here. There's only one other place where I see n(A) used for number of elements in set A -- the Singapore Secondary Two standards!
I also wrote: (A Thanksgiving reference! These are the seven dates in November which could be turkey day!) Again, I originally wrote this test at Thanksgiving. Okay, this year we can pretend that the seven elements of S correspond to Christmas Day and the three days before and after Christmas.
The final question shows one more transformation -- which happens to be a dilation. Neither last year nor this year did I formally cover dilations. This is supposed to be a think-outside-the-box question where students should try to reason out what's going on. But think about it for a moment -- the graph makes it appear that (3, 3) is the image of (1, 1). So all students have to do is plug in x = y = 1 into each of the four choices and see that only choice (d) gives (3, 3) as the answer. (Of course, this year, the students have seen dilations because of Tom Turkey and Thanksgiving again.)
Students might consider the last four questions to be unfair. But even if they get all four wrong, it's still possible to get 80% -- the lowest possible B. So strong students who completed the review worksheet yesterday should still earn at least a C on this test.
Here are the answers to today's test -- the same answers I posted last year to the invisible test:
1. a translation 2 inches to the left
2. a translation 2 inches to the right
3. a rotation with center O and magnitude 180 degrees
4. a translation 8 centimeters to the right
5. true
6. angles D and G
7. triangle DEF, triangle GHI
8. Reflexive Property of Congruence
9. definition of congruence
10. Isometries preserve distance.
11. translation
12. translation
13. glide reflection
14. glide reflection
15.-16. The trick is to reflect the hole H twice, over the walls in reverse order, and then aim the golf ball G towards the image point H". In #15, notice that y and w are parallel, so reflecting in both of them is equivalent to a translation twice the length of the course. In #16, notice that x and y are perpendicular, so reflecting in both of them is equivalent to a 180-degree rotation.
17. glide reflection (changing the sign of y is the reflection part, adding to x is the translation part)
18. translation
19. 7
20. d (for dilation, of course!)
Now today's a test day, and it's been a while since I posted a topic about traditionalists, so let's make this our traditionalist post.
None of our main traditionalists have posted recently. But several days of watching McFarland have me thinking about something related to the debate.
Today, we watched the middle third of the film -- starting right after the weekend invitational (McFarland finishes in fourth place) and ending right after the state qualifier (again McFarland finishes in fourth place), a good 40+ minutes of movie. (Of course, there's a big difference between these two races -- there are only four teams at the invitational, while the top four at the qualifier advance to the State Meet.)
The school-to-prison pipeline makes an appearance in this section of the movie. In fact, McFarland high school is right next door to a prison -- during the home dual meet on the McFarland course, the athletes run next to the prison. One teacher remarks that most students at the school are most likely headed for either the fields or the prison.
Many traditionalists disagree with the concept of the school-to-prison pipeline. For example, here's a link to Momof4 (a frequent commenter at the Joanne Jacobs who often leans traditionalist). She suggests that it's not a "pipeline" but student attendance that's the problem:
https://www.joannejacobs.com/2018/07/less-discipline-more-disorder/
Momof4:
In the linked Heriot article, I found the answer to a question I had posed on another website; whether students suspended/deserving suspension also are often truant – and they are. I suspected that was the case, from seeing the DC attendance data of last year. That undermines the whole “school to jail pipeline” meme; in which I have never believed, because common sense suggests that the same kids who do not obey school rules also fail to obey the law outside of school. That does happen regardless of the reason for their absence; just as it happens outside of school hours. Juvenile crime stats make this pretty clear.
Also during this section of the movie, there's a scene where Coach White is having all of his runners study for the SAT. Recall that many of these runners are "pickers" -- that is, they spend much of their spare time picking crops in the fields. Coach White informs them that they can go to college and make more money to support their families. They might even considering majoring in agriculture, since their knowledge of the fields might put them at an advantage.
But the father of one athlete (#1 runner Thomas Valles) disagrees with this idea. Now we need to backtrack a little to yesterday's section of the movie for you to understand the relationship between Thomas and his dad.
When Coach White first arrives at McFarland High School, he finds out that Thomas has been beating up other students. They've been making fun of his sister because she is pregnant. White makes a deal with Thomas -- he'll avoid a suspension for fighting if he joins the cross country team.
Senor Valles is an itinerant picker. He often travels to other states to find work. But he returns to California when he hears that his daughter is pregnant. (By the way, this is the first time I've made the connection between the first McFarland scene and this one -- both Thomas and his father act they way they do because they're both reacting to the young expectant mother in their family. That's what I notice when I watch the same movie four times in one week.)
Senor Valles is so upset that he slams his hand into the wall. Thomas is afraid that his father might injure his hand and be unable to work in the field, so he tries to intervene -- and ultimately he gets hit in the face himself.
So after Coach White tells Thomas and the other runners about the SAT, the young athlete brags to his father that he might go to college someday. His father warns him in Spanish that he'll ruin his eyes if he stares at books for too long -- and that there's no need for a college degree in the fields, where the youngster is expected to work for the rest of his life.
Let's examine this scene from a traditionalist perspective. We know that the traditionalists like to push classes such as eighth grade Algebra I and senior-year AP Calculus. Not every student needs to take higher math class because not every student is going to college at all, much less major in STEM. Yet the traditionalists like the idea of "keeping doors open" by taking higher-level courses. They'd rather a student take too many rigorous courses than too few. I wonder whether they can imagine a parent who would actively discourage the child from taking the SAT or higher-level classes.
As I wrote earlier, all members of that first championship team ultimately go to college, so the vision of Coach White ends up defeating that of Senor Valles.
Recall that all seven of these runners are Hispanic. And that reminds me of another issue that is in the news recently -- the accusation that Harvard admissions have an anti-Asian bias.
This falls under the umbrella of affirmative action. Note: I do not -- repeat, DO NOT -- speculate on the academic qualifications of the seven runners. I will not hurt them or their families by commenting on something that I don't know.
I do point out that Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action, was passed in 1996 -- nearly a decade after the film takes place.
Because I fear that writing more on this issue in this post might look like a speculation on the runners' specific academic records, I'll instead only post another link to an even longer debate thread between Alison Collins and Floyd Thursby. Again, what they write speaks for itself:
https://sfpsmom.com/so-whats-wrong-with-merit-based-enrollment/
Warning: There are many racial insults thrown around in the comments. The important thing I get here is that strong students are prepared to make a sacrifice in order to do well in school. And I believe that XC runners (regardless of race, as McFarland proved) are more prepared to make sacrifices in order to achieve success, whether it's on the XC course or in the classroom.
I will say something about the academic records of the runners in the classes I sub today. I tell the students that XC runners tend to be strong academically as well and ask the runners whether they are doing well in their classes. Three of the four runners say indeed they are.
But the fourth -- the girl in the fifth period class -- tells me that she currently has only a C-minus average this semester. Yet I see her carrying around a reading book for pleasure. Unfortunately, many students don't read for pleasure these days, and so when I see a reader, I figure that she's probably a hard-working student. I have no doubt that she'll be able to raise her grades by the end of the semester and I tell her so, because she's a distance runner who's used to working hard. She reminds me of my own XC teammate who went from being academically ineligible to run one year to becoming a team captain the following year.
And as for the non-runners, I tell them to think like a XC runner -- start out strong and cross the finish line hard. The next finish line for these students is winter break -- and they should work hard in their classes until they cross that finish line. Checking out early because there's only one day left, or one week left, until winter break is like easing up before crossing the finish line.
This is exactly what happened to a Chinese marathoner over the weekend (the day after the California State XC Meet, though due to time zones the races were mere hours apart). Someone throws a Chinese flag at her before she wins the race -- and as a result, she finishes second to an Ethiopian:
https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a25251849/chinese-runner-loses-marathon-flag-incident/
I really wish I can sub for this class one more day, so that I can watch the last part of the McFarland movie with these students and inspire them once more. I want to cross the finish line of the movie with them and watch the McFarland runners cross the finish line at the State Meet. But once again, I don't know whether I'll be called upon to sub on Monday.
Well, let's make sure that our students at least cross the Chapter 6 finish line. Here is the test:
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