The students have an online assignment on the Bill of Rights. The main classroom management issue occurs in fifth when one guy suddenly decided to fix the screws in two desks -- with a real drill. (No, I don't know where he gets the drill from.) Just like the fifth period US History class last week, this causes a major distraction with less work completed than the other classes.
And also like last week's history teacher, today's regular teacher is also a coach -- baseball. So an assistant coach takes over, and my day essentially ends at fifth period. Since it's not raining, the team could have practiced outside -- but then again, it's not baseball season.
Today is a minimum day since it's the last day before the week off for Thanksgiving. This leads to confusion with the Chromebooks, since I'm not sure whether to charge the laptops or risk them being overcharged over the long holiday break. One student sneaks out of class early while I'm looking at the Chromebook cart -- my back turned away from the door. Of course, the student who leaves early was also tardy to class.
Notice that today is Day 61 in my new district. Thus Thanksgiving break can be considered to divide the trimesters at the elementary and middle schools. This doesn't always happen -- last year, when Turkey Day was earlier, the break did not divide the trimesters.
Oh, and there's one more thing I wish to say about today's Government class. Even though the main lesson is on the Bill of Rights, there is a worksheet on the teacher's desk on imp****ment. Hmm -- as much as I want to avoid politics on the blog, it's OK for me to spell out the word "impeachment" today as a) it's relevant to the Government class that I subbed for, as the worksheet is right there, and b) this is a "traditionalists" post -- and such posts tend to be political anyway.
I recall that when I was a young student taking senior Government, it was in fact the year that Bill Clinton was impeached. In fact, one day during Government class, one student tried to contact our congressman to learn his opinion of impeachment. I don't think our phone call ever got through. So it's possible -- and frankly, quite common -- for Government teachers to discuss the impeachment in class in a politically neutral manner.
Then again, if a teacher wanted to discuss the impeachment, it's important to be a teacher whom the students like and trust. On the day that President Trump was inaugurated, I tried to make comments about both him and his opponent Hillary Clinton. I was criticized both times by eighth graders. I suspect that I'd have been criticized no matter whose side I took -- because I was the one they didn't like, not Trump or Clinton. This underscores the need for an Advisory class (as I've mentioned on the blog all this week), to strengthen the teacher-student relationship. Only then will the students value the teacher's opinion on something like politics.
This is a traditionalists' post because it's test day -- with the change to the Thanksgiving date, Day 70 in my old district just happens to land on the day before the break. In my old district, today is not a minimum day, and so there is indeed time to give a test today.
Once again, our main traditionalists have been quiet, so we go to Joanne Jacobs. Here is the most active recent thread:
https://www.joannejacobs.com/2019/11/sad-english-grads-happy-stem-majors/
Forty-two percent of college graduates who majored in English or a foreign language wish they’d chosen something more practical, according to ZipRecruiter’s survey of more than 5,000 graduates looking for a job.
Let's look at the comments. The first comment in the thread is from "Pouncer." Most of this is about a typo that Jacobs herself made, but then Pouncer turns it into a comment on English majors:
Pouncer:
There isn’t, but should be, a job market for the diplomats who could mediate between authors and editors regarding traditions, customs, and usage of hyphens and commas.
The next major commenter is "Cranberry," who begins with a quote from the NY Times:
Cranberry:
"The advantage for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) majors fades steadily after their first jobs, and by age 40 the earnings of people who majored in fields like social science or history have caught up."
Maybe recent college graduates don’t know everything?To this, Mark Roulo responds:
Mark Roulo:
And the median? The average US household income (all ages) is about $60,000/year. If the average male history major makes 2x that at age 40 this is quite good. Unless the average is one high powered NY lawyer and 15 Starbucks barristas.
One of our main traditionalist commenters is Bill:
Bill:
I don’t know how much longer the link Cranberry posted will continue to be true, as many employers now need employees who can read, write, critically think, problem solve, and get up to speed right away on most things (and in general, it’s going to take approximately 3 to 4 months for a new hire to be somewhat productive).
And Ann in Ohio concludes the thread:
Ann in Ohio:
It’s also a mistake lumping engineers and scientists together.
And indeed, notice that computer scientists and mathematicians are also lumped together. It's much easier to recognize the demand for CS majors than for math majors -- and I say this as a math major myself from UCLA.
But as usual, our focus is on Bill's comment. He states that employers need workers who can read write, think critically, and solve problems. From his previous comments, he believes that most workers these days lack those skills -- and it's because the public schools aren't teaching them. And his solution is to teach those skills traditionally.
In fact, we connect Bill's comment that recent graduates lack writing skills to Pouncer's comments about writing and proofreading. Again, the implication is clear -- more proofreaders are needed now because the schools aren't teaching grammar and punctuation.
I am a math teacher, so I'm not as qualified to discuss how ELA is taught these days. It's interesting that in a thread that mentions STEM majors, only one STEM skill (Bill's "problem solve") actually appears in the thread.
But here's a Jacobs post where STEM skills are discussed -- specifically science skills:
https://www.joannejacobs.com/2019/11/hands-are-on-but-what-are-kids-learning/
“Hands-on learning” is wildly popular with parents and teachers, writes Doug Lemov. It’s often fun for students. But are the kids actually learning?
For obvious reasons, traditionalists oppose "hands-on" math (or Project-Based Learning), but making science "hands-on" at first doesn't seem as bad. And indeed, we know that in the A-G requirements for UC admission, students must take two years of laboratory science. Yet for some reason, some traditionalists criticize hands-on science as much as PBL math. This post and comments just might shed some light on this subject.
First of all, we know that the UC's require lab science in high school. Notice that nowhere in either the Jacobs post nor the ensuing comments does the word "grade" (as in grade level) appear. It's only by clicking Lemov's article do we see that he's discussing sixth grade. So the implication is that, while hands-on science is required in high school, it has no place in a middle school classroom.
Of course, sixth was one of the grades I taught at the old charter school. And so I can't help but compare this to the science that I "taught" (or was supposed to teach) at that school.
Let's begin with Deirdre Mundy:
Deirdre Mundy:
The STEM gadgets are the worst here. Adults win them in grants but never take the time to learn to use them themselves, much less TEACH robotics and programming. As a result, they subscribe to the theory that these kids are digital natives and will figure it out by trial and error if you just give them all the expensive toys and set them loose.
This is interesting to compare to my old school. The Illinois State text contains STEM projects for both math and science, and I ended up giving the students the projects for math (and probably should have done more science projects as well, but some of the sixth grade "math" projects contained a science component). But of course I didn't teach any programming, because that was the job of the coding teacher. So at my old school, Illinois State STEM was separate from coding lessons.
Let's move on to SuperSub:
SuperSub:
I’m a science teacher who, every year, has students angrily asking why we don’t do hands on science more. I respond by instructing them to write a paragraph every day to describe a tree seen through the window, that all science begins with observation… most won’t even do it the first day.
I blame Bill Nye. All they want to do is the stage show crap like Diet Coke and Mentos or elephant toothpaste.
Again, SuperSub doesn't mention what grade level he/she teaches. But it's likely that SuperSub teaches middle school science, so that we're discussing the same grade(s) as Lemov and I are.
I think back to teaching eighth grade at the old charter school. There was a big argument regarding what sort of science I should be teaching -- and that argument began, interestingly enough, on the last day of school before Thanksgiving. Later on, in January, one girl did ask me to give a hands-on project similar to what she had the previous year at a different school (edible cell models). But when I did finally give a similar project from the Illinois State text (edible molecules), she hated it.
I suspect that part of the problem is that some of these students didn't like me. They also didn't trust my ability to teach science (for completely understandable reasons). Thus I suspect that they would have criticized any science lesson that I tried to teach them.
If I'd tried at that point to give SuperSub's "tree paragraph" lesson, not only would they (just like SuperSub's students) have left it blank, they would have criticized me for not knowing how to teach science (which is why I'd try to assign them that "tree paragraph" excuse of a lesson). Of course, this once again goes back to the teacher-student relationship and the need for Advisory class.
If I'd given the "tree paragraph" at the start of the year (before the lack of trust settled in), it's likely that the students still would have left it blank -- and for a very good reason. Some of my special ed students had very low writing skills. (This ties in to Bill and Pouncer -- if not even college students have acceptable writing skills, how much less able are middle school students.) For a proficient writer, "write a paragraph" is a Warm-Up that takes only 5-10 minutes, but for many other students, "write a paragraph" without errors can take the entire period. Imagine if a struggling writer must write a paragraph in science class -- and then head straight for English and write some more!
Returning to SuperSub's class, he/she tells us that the students left the writing assignment blank the first day. But what happened on subsequent days? It could be that SuperSub simply gave up the idea of writing and assigned the hands-on lessons -- the only lessons that they don't leave blank. Then SuperSub would be making my point -- students leave traditionalist lessons blank, so we should assign them projects that they don't leave blank.
But SuperSub uses the word "blame" -- I blame Bill Nye. This implies that SuperSub agrees not with me, but with the traditionalists. Hands-on projects in middle school are bad, and he/she blames the Science Guy for making the students reject traditionalist science lessons.
Of course, that still doesn't answer the question, what happened next? I assume what happened is that SuperSub continued to assign the writing assignment, but had to give increasing severe punishments to those who refused to write them.
Still, I'm not sure what would have happened if I had given my sixth grade a writing-intensive lesson for science. I still remember the sixth grade girl who was very well-behaved, but was not very good at writing. I once gave the entire class standards for being too loud -- and she struggled so much with the writing that she began to cry. Now imagine placing that girl in SuperSub's class where she must write that paragraph about the tree everyday.
One more poster in this thread is Rob:
Rob:
These paper rockets don’t teach any principles of actual rockets of the kind that NASA and SpaceX launch. The paper rocket produces no thrust, so there is no F=MA going on. They travel so slowly and briefly that there isn’t much drag or stability to talk about. Mostly, they teach the principle that blowing harder makes rockets go higher! Why not build some Estes rockets that really demonstrate science?
Notice that F = ma physical science doesn't appear in the NGSS until eighth grade (as I recently found out by subbing for science classes). So it's unreasonable to expect Lemov's sixth grade daughter to learn this. Of course, the ready response would be that the rocket project should likewise be delayed to eighth grade.
There are two more important posts with lengthy comment threads at the Jacobs website:
https://www.joannejacobs.com/2019/11/a-teachers-rant-its-the-parents-stupid/
Grades are rising, while test scores are falling, writes Darren Miller, a math teacher, on Right on the Left Coast. Don’t blame teachers for lowering standards, he writes. They’re giving parents what they demand.
Once again, the "right" in "Right on the Left Coast" means right-wing. (Of course, I've already mentioned politics in this thread.)
(By the way, in the classroom where I subbed today, I see a comic that, in some ways, agrees with what Miller is saying here. The first panel takes place in the 1960's, and the parents are complaining to their child because he received a low grade. The second panel takes place in the 2010's, and the parents and child are complaining to the teacher because the child received a low grade!)
Let's look at some of the comments in this thread:
Malcolm Kirkpatrick:
It’s a conflict of interest for teachers to grade their own students. Grading was the part of the job that I liked least.
This is a tricky one. I once subbed in a Math Support class (well before I started blogging) where a parent criticized me for not teaching enough math, because her daughter had received a low grade in her actual math class. Since I wasn't the regular math teacher, the conflict of interest disappeared -- I was criticized for not teaching well as opposed to grading too harshly. This sounds like something that Miller would want to see more of.
Bruce William Smith:
SuperSub, the most honest graders are the international examiners like those from the OECD who will be coming out with the latest PISA results next month; and if any of you are worried now about the disparity between totally unreliable grades and unbiased results from overseas, wait until you see those, which should constitute another nail in the coffin of the Common Core that was supposed to solve these problems.
Knowing Bruce William Smith, he'll tell us that the OECD/PISA tests contain some Calculus at the junior-year level. So of course American students will score poorly on them.
Ann in LA:
Here in Los Angeles we have “credit recovery”. Fail a class? No problem, you can fake-retake it again and it will be accepted. In as little as a week, you can earn your diploma!!! It seems to be the only way LAUSD can up graduation rates: by fake education.
This is a tricky issue, but traditionalists often complaining about raising "graduation rates." They would prefer stronger graduation requirements and lower graduation rates.
The next two comments go together:
JND:
It’s wonderful to be on the receiving end of all of this in the college classroom.
Everhopeful:
I agree with JND. Every year I’ve made my college courses easier and easier, and too many students still fail. Sometimes I ask them to read aloud in class, and realize that they don’t even know how to read. I really wonder what they were doing the last 12 years.
And there's the third reference to a lack of reading/writing skills today.
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 (and it's the Friday before a long break).
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!
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.
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!)
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!
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.
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!)
Enjoy your Thanksgiving break! As usual, expect two special posts during the holiday week.
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