Introduction: Blaugust???
It is now August. And so it's time to ask the same question I ask every year at this time -- is there going to be a Blaugust challenge for the MTBoS this year?
The answer, apparently, is no. The usual leader of the Blaugust challenge, Shelli, has made no reference to Blaugust at all this year. Instead, she's running a "Made 4 Math Monday" challenge that she started on the first Monday in July. Here's her explanation of what this is:
In case you are new to #Made4Math, it is a weekly blog challenge to share a project or creation for your classroom. I love reading your posts, so please join in the fun using the hashtag #Made4Math on Twitter, IG, or blogging about your project.
Well, I suppose that I might enjoy reading about this challenge as much as Blaugust. But it's unlikely that I'll participate in the Made 4 Math challenge -- in fact, only once during the whole summer did I post on a Monday, and it was the week before Shelli started her challenge.
Then again, I'm not an actual Blaugust participant either. Each year, I like reading and responding to some of Shelli's Blaugust prompts, but I usually don't sign the official list. And so I'll do the same again this year -- respond to some Blaugust prompts from her old list.
But first, let's finish our summer reading of Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries, Eugenia Cheng's children's book. I turned the book back in to the library today, and so we'll complete it on the blog too.
Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries 9: The Fractal Orchard
Let's begin Cheng's ninth adventure:
"On the other side of the gates is an orchard. All the trees are curiously regular, with each branch splitting in two again and again..."
There is another note for Molly on this page:
"The trees grow double the number of branches at each level. Once the tree has 32 branches, it will reach over the wall. How many levels up will that be?"
In case you haven't figured it our from the title of this page, this is a fractal tree, which we've discussed several times before on the blog. The author explains:
"These trees grow quickly! As you look up, the number of branches is multiplied by two at each level. When you repeatedly multiply by the same number like this, it's called an exponential, and the numbers grow very fast even when you're starting with a small number, like two."
And after giving us the sequence 1, 2, 4, 8, Cheng continues:
"Using this pattern, can you work out how many levels you need to get to 32 branches at the top, without counting the branches one by one?"
Of course, the answer is five, since 2^5 = 32. This means that we're counting the level where there's a single branch as 0, since 2^0 = 1 -- and this makes sense, as a single "branch" is just the trunk.
We've discussed fractals here on the blog before. Benoit Mandelbrot, of course, is the father of fractals, and we read his book for side-along reading six years ago. And Brian Harvey also showed us how to program the tree fractal in the Logo computer language.
And there's also a challenge for the reader:
"Can you find a watering can in the scene to make the biggest fractal tree grow?"
It took me some time, but I finally spotted it. The watering can is hidden in the bushes on the other side of the page from the biggest tree.
Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries 10: Time-Traveling Trip
Let's begin Cheng's tenth adventure:
"Molly climbs the wall and gasps. There in the sky in front of her, she can see every place she's been on her adventure. Swirling tunnels lead to each place, and there's her home in the distance. If only she could find a way to get back..."
There is another note for Molly on this page:
"Don't you recognize the handwriting? It was YOU who left the notes all along! Let's get us home! First, how about helping your past self? Leave a note in every place you've visited."
Hold on a minute -- if Molly herself left all the notes from earlier in the book, then who wrote the last note, the one she just read? Uh, my brain hurts -- let's get to the author's explanation:
"We live in a physical world with three dimensions, but we can think of time as a fourth dimension. This makes 4D spacetime. Time behaves a bit differently from a physical dimension. We can't control where we are in it, and we can't change direction to go backward in time...
.Except, of course, Molly just did it. Cheng now mentions a famous name:
"In 1905, Albert Einstein realized it was helpful to think of time and space as linked together into spacetime. This allowed him to predict and explain many things about the universe. Wormholes are possible according to his theory, but we haven't found any yet -- except in our imaginations..."
We just read about wormholes not too long ago -- Ian Stewart mentioned them in his Calculating the Cosmos book that we read the first half of this summer. But he didn't say much about time travel. An author who wrote extensively about time travel and the fourth dimension was Rudy Rucker, whose book we read on the blog five years ago (just before I started at the old charter school).
Normally there would be a challenge for the reader. But instead, there's a second note for Molly -- or should I say, from Molly, since she wrote the letters? Never mind -- time travel drives me crazy:
"PS: Remember, you can always inverse an inverse -- at least in your head. So if you want to get back home, try to THINK yourself inside out again!"
In other words, it's the equivalent of "Just tap your ruby slippers and say..."
Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries: There's No Place Like Home Again
Let's look at Cheng's conclusion:
"Molly wakes up on top of her bed. Everything looks normal -- her bedroom is just as it was. Nothing seems to be inside out now. But Molly's head is full of patterns, shapes, and impossible objects."
And believe it or not, there is another note for Molly on this page:
"Welcome home! Did you enjoy your adventure? Just remember, implausible things can be possible in math, just like in your imagination!"
Until she sees the note, Molly believes it was all a dream, but now she asks herself:
"Does that mean her implausible adventure could actually have happened? And can you see anything that's still inside out?"
I think I spotted an object that's still inside out -- a box of blocks. Cheng ends the books as follows:
"Now that you've finished your adventure, maybe you're feeling more curious about the things you learned on the way. Browse these pages to find out more about math."
The topics on the final pages are abstraction, numbers, inverses, shapes, dimensions, number lines, infinity, fractions, number circles (like a clock), number grids (chessboard coordinates), patterns in numbers, Latin squares, patterns in shapes (tessellations), patterns in nature, symmetry, fractals, paradoxes, and time travel.
But I'll leave those topics for the young readers. Eugenia Cheng's fifth book was an enjoyable read, and I'm glad I took the time to discuss it here on the blog.
Blaugust: Something New I Plan to Try This Year
Let's get to today's Blaugust topic. Since today's date is the fourth, we'll just take the fourth topic from Shelli's old list from 2019.
Here's the list:
https://statteacher.blogspot.com/2019/07/introducing-mtbosblaugust-2019.html
And here's the fourth item from that list:
- Something new I plan to try this year…
OK, I think I know something new I want to try this year as a substitute teacher. It has to do with classroom management. In particular, I want to try a better way to get the students aware of the regular teacher's assignment and working from the start of the class.
Most experienced classroom managers already know what it takes to get the kids working right from the start of class -- it's to make them aware what is expected of them. Deep down, I know this too -- and yet I have trouble consistently voicing my expectations from the very start.
More often than not, here's what happens -- a few students enter the classroom early and ask, "What are we going to do today?" I don't want to keep repeating the instructions over and over, and so I ask them to wait until the other students arrive before answering that question. But by the time the tardy bell rings and the rest of the class has arrived, the students come to the conclusion that they can be as loud as they want, and that they don't have to do any assignments that day.
During the most recently completed pandemic year, this often manifests itself during hybrid classes when the tardy bell rings and yet I still haven't gotten the Zoom working. I don't tell the in-person students the assignment because I'm still fiddling around trying to figure out the teacher's links. And so the first period class (or second, depending on the hybrid schedule) ends up being the loudest class of the day -- the rest of the day, I already have Zoom working and so I can focus on giving the assignment, and the in-person students are much quieter.
But despite this clear evidence that starting the class with an assignment works, old habits die hard. On Day 179 (the penultimate day of the school year), students entered my classroom and started asking, "What are we going to do today?" And even though I'd subbed in the class before and thus already knew the Zoom links, I foolishly told them to wait until the rest of the students arrived.
The chaos was predictable. Students kept on talking throughout the video that they were supposed to be watching and answering questions on (a ten-point assignment). Moreover, it was the day that yearbooks were distributed -- huge distraction even in the best of times. I kept on arguing with one girl who insisted on signing yearbooks instead of answering the video questions.
And so this is what I plan to try this year -- I want to be consistent in giving the assignment to the early birds in the classroom. If it means repeating myself, then I must repeat myself, period. Sometimes I even avoided telling the early arrivals my name, preferring to wait until the others arrived -- but from now on, I'm repeating my name, since I want to get in the habit of answering the early birds' questions from the start. Indeed, my thinking should be, the class doesn't begin with the tardy bell -- the class begins as soon as there are students in the classroom.
Made 4 Math on Shelli's Blog
Even though I'm not participating in Shelli's Made 4 Math challenge (especially since today's not Monday), I do wish to link to the Made 4 Math entry that she wrote on the last Monday in July:
https://statteacher.blogspot.com/2021/07/made4math-clipboard-stands-and-labels.html
Project #2 - Label ALL THE THINGS
Like every classroom, mine has a lot of Sterlite drawer storage :) However, with a new room, things are in new places and needs new labels!
My bigger drawers weren't labeled at all and my smaller drawers were a very dated black and white pattern, so it was time for something new :)
Thanks to some free digital paper and my trusty Aldi laminator, I now have new labels for my classroom when I go up later today. Sadly, I don't have an "after picture" yet because they were waxing the floors!
Five years ago, I arrived at my old charter school and found out to my surprise that I would have to teach science that year. Thee were many drawers and cabinets with lots of science materials stored in several bags. I took inventory of what was in each bag, wrote it down on a sheet of paper, and then place each list inside each bag, near the top, so all I have to do is see the list and I'd know the contents.
But when it was time to do science projects, I didn't feel like opening each bag and checking the list to find the one item I need to make the project work. So instead, I keep on doing science projects less and less often, and so science ended up going by the wayside. Indeed, instead of science, the students that year learned a different lesson -- when something is difficult (like finding materials for projects and then setting them up for the students), it's OK to make excuses and avoid doing it.
Instead of finding excuses to avoid science, I should have been finding ways to make it work out. And indeed, Shelli shows us here exactly what I should have done that year. Instead of labeling the bags, I should have been labeling the drawers, cabinets, and cupboards. Then when it's time for a project, all I'd have to do is check the labels on the drawers quickly and I'd know the contents. I could easily figure out where the materials I needed were, and which materials I needed to purchase.
Shelli just posted this nine days ago -- there's no way I could have seen her post this five years ago. But then again, this is something that I should have figured out on my own. Even if all I did was tape the lists to the cabinet doors, at least it would have been something -- and perhaps we (the students, the special aide, and myself) might have figured out something better later on. Instead, what I did was raise the white flag right away and rarely did science. I had cheated my kids out of a year of science.
Link to a Former Blaugust Participant: Danielle Reycer
Normally, I'd link to other Blaugust participants now, but since there is no official Blaugust challenge this year, there are no other participants. But Shelli does link her blog to some of her friends' blogs -- and some of these are former Blaugust participant, including Danielle Reycer.
Even though Reycer used to participate in Blaugust, I've never linked to her blog before. For some reason, every time she posted, I'd always choose someone else's blog to feature on my own blog, and so I'd always missed Reycer.
But I definitely want to feature Reycer's blog now. In fact, she just created a new blog, so the following link is to her new blog, not the one she used for Blaugust. Let's read her blog and find out why she made the blog change:
http://www.daniellereycer.com/2021/07/from-classroom-to-data-science.html
There were simply too many variables to know. But I know each one of these things incrementally helped me to assess my values and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I will always have an incredible amount of respect for teachers. I knew that I no longer had the capacity to work in public schools (and I had let my certification lapse after being in the private school world for 8 years). I wanted to do something where I could make a social impact, and I wanted it to be a career that I would love.
The moment I started exploring Data Science, I knew it was my next move.
In other words, Reycer is leaving teaching and heading towards a new career in computers. And this resonates with me, because I'm considering doing the exact same thing.
Notice that even though Reycer doesn't give her age here on her blog, she also has a Twitter account, and we can deduce her age from some of her tweets. In one, she calls herself a "geriatic Millennial" -- that is, an "Xennial" on the Generation X/Millennial cusp -- that would make her around my own age, perhaps slightly younger. In another, she states that her age is, in fact, a perfect square. Someone who is now 7^2 years old would be considered fully in Gen X, while someone who is 5^2 years old would be a full Millennial (perhaps approaching Gen Z). Thus from these tweets, we can determine her age.
Despite being younger than I am, Reycer has had over a decade of teaching experience. She tells us that she started teaching in public school right after graduating from college, and then moved on to private school as well.
My career path has been much different -- and I described this in many of my recent posts. Sadly, I've had only one year of full-time teaching experience, at the old charter school -- and it didn't go well. And I already mentioned in this post why that year wasn't successful -- I was hired to teach both math and science, but I struggled to teach science properly.
Reycer asks herself, "Would this decision [to stay or change careers] be on my mind if I hadn't struggled through a year of teaching during a pandemic?" Likewise, the pandemic has led me to reevaluate my career path as well. Due to the pandemic, I landed a long-term subbing job at an Orange County middle school, and I thought that this would be something strong to put on my resume. And yet it's August 4th, and I still haven't landed a full-time teaching job. Instead, I've been stuck subbing
The conclusion is unescapable -- it looks as if nothing I can do can strengthen my resume. It is much too late -- and if I can't land a teaching job, then I need to look elsewhere for a full-time gig. I'm at the age where not having a full-time job is unacceptable.
I've been posting a lot about Java recently -- my thinking was that Java would be my ticket to a job in the tech industry. But Reycer's language of choice isn't Java:
The logic of Python fits so well with how my math brain operates. And though I’m not a statistics expert (yet), I did get the opportunity to teach AP Statistics at my last school. I felt as prepared as humanly possible. I spoke with a friend who had left teaching and done the Data Science Immersive program at General Assembly. She assured me it would be a good fit.
I'll continue to get through my Java lessons since I've already started it -- but I've been struggling through the past few chapters. Perhaps I, like Reycer, should look into Python instead. But for now, let's get back to Java.
Lemay Chapter 18 Part 2
In each of these posts, I'm continuing to return to some of the Lemay chapters that we passed over rather quickly earlier. I now want to look at Chapter 18.
In this chapter, Lemay introduced threads. The problem I had earlier was that threads don't seem on my computer the way they work in Lemay's book.
I tried the last listing in Chapter 18 again -- the one that sets up four threads, with each one printing out a message "one potato," "two potato," "three potato," "four." And once again, the computer starts out by printing one potato/two potato/three potato/four once, and then repeating lots of three potato/four potato before resuming one potato/two potato. Moreover, one and two potatoes are both very slow -- even though I took out the infinite loop, these threads were still running over ten minutes later.
There is an explanation for all of this -- my computer is simply old, and hence slow. A brand-new pristine computer might run all the threads when they're supposed to, just as Lemay shows us. And apparently, there's something about making the thread delay greater than 1 (recall that one and two potatoes had delays of 1.1, 1.3, while three and four potatoes had delays of 0.5, 0.7) that makes the threads super-slow on my computer.
So in the case of threads, perhaps what I need to make them work is a new computer. There's not much more for me to say about threads in today's post.
Updating What Ifs: COVID-91 and COVID-14
I'll still be updating my COVID What If stories from time to time, especially when new information comes from my old schools regarding how they are handling the pandemic.
The school that I attended from Grades 7-9 has just released a radically different bell schedule for the upcoming school year. Notice that just because something happens in 2021, it doesn't necessary mean that it should affect any of the other n+2 years, unless we can show that the change is directly attributable to the pandemic. But I do have reason to believe that the schedule change was influenced by the recent distance and hybrid learning schedules. Thus I do attribute the change to the pandemic, and so it propagates back to the two What Ifs where I attend this school -- COVID-93 and COVID-91.
The new schedule is a block schedule, with all classes on Mondays, odd periods on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and even periods on Wednesdays and Fridays. But there are two things unusual about this block schedule. First, each block ends with 20 minutes of embedded support time, not unlike my old LA County district where I subbed for five years (and described many times on the blog).
The other change is that there is still tutorial at the end of the day. This is the first time I've seen a schedule with both embedded support and tutorial. Due to these changes, there are no longer separate middle and high school lunches at this 7-12 school -- instead, all students have the same lunch. Notice that tutorial could have been used to separate the lunches -- when middle school students are at lunch, high school students could be at tutorial and vice versa. Instead, everyone has tutorial at the end of the day -- perhaps because it was at the end of the day during the distance and hybrid schedules.
Notice that in fall 1995 (the n+2 year for COVID-93), I only attended my 7-12 school for two months before moving to a pure high school in another district in November, and so this block schedule would affect me for this short time. My new high school would also have a similar block schedule with six blocks and a daily tutorial at the end of the day. So I'm going to make an educated guess here -- Cross Country (and other teams) would practice during tutorial, and we make up for it by having a special sports tutorial for athletes during one of the block periods.
Instead, it's the COVID-91 What If? that's mainly affected by this block schedule, not COVID-93. I would attend my entire seventh grade year under the new block schedule -- and possibly eighth grade as well, if we assume that this block schedule is a permanent change.
Here is what my seventh grade schedule, first semester, would look like with odd/even blocks:
Here I'm making the guess that students don't have to stay in class for embedded support unless they're earning a D or F (like my LA County subbing district), but all students must choose a class to attend for tutorial (unlike during distance learning, but like the high school I attended starting in Grade 9). Recall that I received a progress report in my art class, and so I would have needed to stay for embedded. This might have motivated me to get my grades up faster, so perhaps my final art grade would have been higher than the C+ that I got on the original (COVID-19) timeline.
What's tricky is tutorial. I've never had to choose a tutorial class (since at the only school that I attended with a tutorial, I ran Cross Country during tutorial). Other than art, there was no class where I was struggling and needed to attend a tutorial. It's possible that I might have chosen a different class each day (Art on Tuesdays, Success on Wednesdays, Algebra I on Thursdays, Core on Fridays). Or, perhaps being a young immature middle school student, I might have chosen classes where my friends were, or to avoid certain students I didn't get along with.
In fact, if we assume that this block schedule extends into eighth grade, then here's my schedule:
And in fact, I wonder whether the suspension I received on the original timeline for hitting my P.E teacher still happens on the COVID-91 timeline. I already know that it doesn't occur on the COVID-93 timeline, since schools are closed on November 30th, 1995 it would have happened.
As November 30th that year was a Wednesday, it's easy to say that I don't hit the P.E. teacher that day, since I don't even have P.E. that day. But I might have been dared to hit her on December 1st. What matters is whether I would have spent lots of time with the kids who dared me -- on this timeline, I might avoid those bad kids by not attending tutorial with them (say by always staying in my English or Geometry classes for tutorial). Also, I might have attended science tutorial in seventh grade (second semester), thus earning a higher grade in science, getting into the advanced class, and avoiding those bad kids altogether.
There's one more COVID What If? that I wish to look at here -- COVID-14. Earlier, I wrote that there might not be much difference between COVID-14 and the original timeline during Fall n+2 -- 2016, when I worked at the old charter school. The delaying of the LA County Fair field trip from September to May might have made a difference that year.
Well, there's one more thing that might occur at the old charter school under COVID-14 -- the way I taught science class. I already wrote about not having the science supplies in this post. Another problem I had on the original timeline was the science text -- at first I didn't have any printed textbooks. At the time, I used this as another excuse not to teach science -- but in reality, I was supposed to use the online Illinois State text for science. It never occurred to me to use the online text that year -- but it would have occurred to me under COVID-14, after having just spent a whole year in distance learning. Thus under COVID-14, I probably have a much better science class.
Conclusion
As of the time stamp of this post, I am currently watching the two multiple events of Track and Field -- the Men's Decathlon and Women's Heptathlon. Meanwhile, in the 400 hurdles, and American man (Rai Benjamin) and woman (Dalilah Muhammad) each ran the event faster than ever before -- and each had to settle for a silver medal. In each race, another runner ran even faster to shatter the world record -- Norwegian Karsten Warholm for the men, and another American, Sydney McLaughlin, for the women.
Another world record broken in Tokyo was in the Women's Triple Jump (Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas). I will continue to watch the Games for more records.
No comments:
Post a Comment