Yule Blog Prompt #9: Start/Stop/Continue in 2021
This one's easy. In 2021, I will start following the new hybrid schedule that my district just announced last week, and I'll stop following the old schedule. I mentioned on the blog that our district had come up with a new schedule, but never revealed what is was. I was waiting for the proper Yule Blog prompt to reveal it -- and that today's prompt about what's starting in 2021.
But let's first review the old schedule -- the one that I will stop following. Mondays, as you already know, are distance learning days when I see all student in all periods online. Tuesdays through Fridays are the hybrid days. The students have been divided into two cohorts, which are for the most part based on last name -- Cohort A is the latter part of the alphabet (M-Z), while Cohort B is the first part (A-L).
Then here are the classes that meet each day:
Monday: all periods, all students online
Tuesday: Periods 1-3-5, Cohort A
Wednesday: Periods 1-3-5, Cohort B
Thursday: Periods 2-4-5, Cohort A
Friday: Periods 2-4-5, Cohort B
Thus the first four periods of the day are blocks, meeting 100 minutes on their proper block days. Fifth period meets for 50 minutes each day. There is no sixth period -- officially, sixth period for all students is P.E., which is independent study. There's even a P.E. course on Canvas.
I personally teach Math 8 for first and fourth periods and Math 7 for Periods 2-3. Fifth period, the class that meets each day, is Math Skills. Periods 2 and 4 have special ed students, and so there was an aide in my room on Thursdays and Fridays.
But all of that will change in 2021. Notice that as a teacher, I'd see each student just twice a week -- first on Monday when all students are online, and then on their respective block day Tuesday-Friday. While the block schedule works well in certain classes -- such as science, where 100-minute blocks are perfect for doing labs -- most math teachers dislike it. Math is best taught in smaller chunks everyday, rather than in long blocks on certain days only.
And so that's the first major change in the 2021 schedule -- the elimination of the block schedule. All five periods will meet everyday. The reason for the block schedule was to prevent too many students from mingling with each other during the pandemic -- with the elimination of blocks, we will need to clean the desks in our classrooms more often.
The other change, which I alluded to earlier on the blog, changes the order of the classes. It's all for the sake of a certain part-time teacher who was on our campus during even periods and another campus for odd periods -- this was convenient during the odd/even block schedule, but not now.
The new order of the classes is thus 2-4-1-3-5 -- even periods first, then odd periods. But these classes will be renumbered so that they run in order -- so our old second period class is our new first period class, our old fourth period is our new second, and so on. For me, this means that I now have Math 7 first and fourth periods and Math 8 during Periods 2-3. The two special ed classes are now at the start of the day, though I'm not sure about the aide's new schedule (or whether she's even been notified that there will be a schedule change).
There are more changes that are occurring, but the following changes won't take affect until just after the MLK Jr. weekend, on January 19th. Looking back at the hybrid schedule, we see that Cohort A attends class Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, but what are they doing Wednesday and Friday. And likewise, what are Cohort B students doing on Tuesday and Thursday?
Officially, the students have "asynchronous learning" on the days that they don't attend class in person or via Google Meet (which count as "synchronous learning"). Asynchronous days count towards the 240-minute and 180-day requirements for school here in California. But in practice, many students aren't actually working on these days at all. Thus many Cohort B students, after their last online class ends on Monday, don't even think about school for one moment until their first class on Wednesday, and likewise many Cohort A students don't think about school after their last class ends on Thursday until their first online class on Monday. And this contributes to the sharp increase in D's and F's that we've seen in the first -- and probably the second -- quarter.
And so on January 19th, there will no longer be asynchronous days. Instead, students must now attend class online on the days they don't meet in person. Thus Cohort A, which attends class in person on Tuesdays and Thursdays, must attend Google Meet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and likewise Cohort B is now online on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. All days are synchronous.
Thus all students attend all classes everyday. Teachers can teach Part 1 of a lesson on Monday, Part 2 on Tuesday, and so on until Part 5 on Friday, with the knowledge that all students are getting all parts of the lesson synchronously. On the old schedule, we'd teach Part 1 on Monday, and then Part 2 must be repeated everyday from Tuesday to Friday.
The other change coming January 19th involves the use of cameras for Google Meet. Previously, we couldn't compel students to turn on the cameras, and so at least 90% of all students in my classes regularly keep their cameras off. And you can figure out what happened -- certain students would log into the meet and then leave the room and ignore the entire lesson. But starting on that date, cameras will now be required. I assume that there will be some privacy issues with parents, but concerned parents will be able to contact the school before the 19th and ask questions.
But recall that my long-term subbing ends the first week in January, so I won't be at the school by the time the five-day and camera rules kick in. I'll inform my students of these changes so that they know what to expect when the regular teacher comes in.
And that takes us to the last part of today's Yule Blog Challenge -- what I'll continue doing once this long-term assignment ends. Well, here's my answer -- I'll continue working towards my ultimate career goal of becoming a regular teacher.
I'll continue applying to long-term positions. I won't be surprised if another long-term position comes up by the end of this school year -- perhaps even by the end of January. I don't wish to have a resume filled with many different districts that I must explain to prospective employers, and so my hope is that my next long-term assignment will be in one of my current day-to-day districts -- either this same district in Orange County, the other OC district I worked at until September, or my LA Country district.
My prediction is that my next long-term will be in one of the OC districts, since the LA County schools are still online only. (Teachers can do all their work from home, so there's less demand for subs.) My hope is that it will be in the other OC district (since I'm more familiar with that one), and that it will be at a high school. Even though I've worked so much at middle schools lately, I still want to become a high school Geometry teacher (which is why I created a high school Geometry blog).
And ultimately, I'll continue working towards a full-time teaching position for the fall of 2021.
Removing Hybrid from the Eleven Calendar
The Eleven Calendar that I invented in 2016 is simple. There are eleven months each with 33 days. The first month is March, and it starts the same day as March in the usual Gregorian Calendar. The other months are named April to January -- this restores the original Latin names of the months September to December as the seventh through tenth months. Each new month starts in the corresponding Gregorian month, and as there are only eleven months, there is no February.
This gives us 33 * 11 = 363 days. Then there are two extra days at the end of the year, corresponding to February 27th and 28th. If a Leap Day is needed, it corresponds directly to February 29th. Thus converting between the Eleven and Gregorian Calendars is as easy as possible. While I've played around with other versions of the calendar -- for example, choosing a month other than February to be the skipped month, experimenting with different Leap Day rules -- this is the simplest version.
And the 33 days of a month are divided into three weeks of eleven days each. But what's tricky is figuring out what the school week and year would look like on the new calendar.
Back in July, I stated that my goal is to eliminate the concept of weekends and holidays. The problem is that some businesses, such as airlines and amusement parks, raise prices on weekends and holidays -- the lowest ticket prices are all on school days. If different people had different days off -- if weekends and holidays were eliminated -- then that price gouging opportunity would vanish.
Since different groups would attend school on different days, this plan can only be described as a "hybrid" plan -- just like the hybrid schedules we've seen during the pandemic Here's what my plan looked like -- students attend school on six out of eleven days of the week. Since six straight days of school are tough, we insert a mid-week day off after the third day. Then this leaves four days for the weekend -- the pattern is 3 on, 1 off, 3 on, 4 off. To reach 180 days of school, there must be 30 of these six-day weeks. Since there are 33 weeks in the year, this leaves three weeks of vacation. We can split these up so that there's one week off in each of three different seasons.
Given any two students, they are guaranteed to have at least one common off day. To prove this, notice that during my four-day weekend, you can't work all four days since you don't work more than three days in a row. So you must be off on one of my off days. And notice that eleven days is the shortest possible week length of this type that allows for 180 school days plus vacation weeks. For example, if we had 2 on, 1 off, 2 on, 3 off, then there would be school on four out of eight days -- that is, exactly half the week. To reach 180 school days there must be 180 off days, leaving only 365 - 360 = 5 days for a vacation. I assume that you want move than five days of vacation. So we move up to 3 on, 1 off, 3 on, 4 off, for a total of 11 days.
I also posted a version of this hybrid schedule that doesn't require an 11-day week -- it works on the Gregorian Calendar with a full summer break. On that schedule, we declared Saturday to be a school day, and then there are two cohorts attending school three days each per week. If we assume that there are 35 weeks of school (not counting vacations there are 38 weeks of school, but then we subtract some days for three-day holiday weekends), then students attend school for 105 days.
But when I posted that schedule, I didn't take asynchronous days into consideration, nor did I realize that the numbers 180 (days) and 240 (minutes) are set in stone. Thus the 180-day school year is the same as the pre-pandemic school year -- we can't just arbitrarily add Saturdays. Students do end up going to school three days per week, but one day is online only -- that's how we can make two cohorts attending three days per week fit into five days.
Still, what matters is that in July, I thought that students had only about 105 days of school -- that "asynchronous days" were truly off days. So I can't blame my students for doing no work on their asynchronous days, since in July, I blogged that those were just off days.
In July, I thought that hybrid was the best schedule to teach students during a pandemic, but after experiencing hybrid, I'm not so sure. We've seen that with so many off days, students aren't learning as much, and so they're struggling in class. But now that we're eliminating asynchronous days and making students log in to Google meet, we'll have in-person and online students at the same time. Actually, this was always the case -- some students have opted out of hybrid and so they attend class online. But now we'll always have an entire cohort online -- combining this with the students who have opted out, it means that we'll always have a majority of students online. It will be tricky to help the in-person students and make sure that the online majority are also on task.
Now I'm not quite sure what the best solution is -- to teach class effectively to in-person and online students at the same time. This is why hybrid is such a challenge for us teachers. But here's the one thing I do know -- I don't wish to invent my own calendar and then call hybrid the default teaching schedule for that invented calendar.
And so in this post, I wish to define a school schedule for the Eleven Calendar that doesn't depend on any sort of hybrid plan. It will look more like a traditional calendar with weekends and holidays.
Let's start by setting apart some religious sabbaths, at least for the Abrahamic religions. Three of the eleven days will be named Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In past posts, I've placed these three days as the first three days of the week -- the remaining days are Fourday up to Elevenday.
The school week then begins on Fourday. We can keep the 3 on, 1 off, 3 on, 4 off pattern, so that there is school from Fourday to Sixday, the midweek day off is Sevenday, there is school from Eightday to Tenday, and then Elevenday starts the weekend. All three religious sabbaths are part of the weekend, so we no longer have the problem where Muslims must attend school on Fridays in Christian nations.
When is Christmas on this calendar? There are two ways to convert dates from an old calendar to the new calendar. One way is to look at the Gregorian date December 25th and see what date this is on the Eleven Calendar. The new month December starts on Gregorian December 23rd, and so Christmas would become December 3rd on the Eleven Calendar using this method. Let's call this the seasonal method, since Christmas remains on the same date relative to the seasons in both methods -- in this case, Christmas remains four days after the winter solstice.
The other method is to insist that Christmas must be remain on December 25th in the new calendar. If we choose this later date, then this corresponds to Gregorian January 16th. Let's call this the numerical method, since it assumes that keeping the numerical date of the holiday is the most important.
Which method is better? Well, it's impossible to use the numerical method to convert Valentine's Day -- it can't remain on February 14th, because there is no February in the Eleven Calendar. So we'd have no choice but to convert it using the seasonal method. On the other hand, New Year's Day must remain on the first day of the first month since that marks a new year, so we use the numerical method. Also, days like Pi Day must be converted numerically, since the digits 3/14 are what make it Pi Day. Notice that New Year's Day and Pi Day become March 1st and May 14th respectively, since March is now the first month of the year.
Notice that both possible Christmas dates -- December 3rd and 25th -- are 22 days (that is, exactly two weeks) apart, so both are on the same day of the week. This is the third day of the week, Sunday -- which is one reason why I placed the three sabbaths at the start of the week, so that Christmas can land on the Christian Sabbath. Unfortunately, this means that the 14th of every month is also on a Sunday -- including Pi Day, when students aren't at school to celebrate it.
For the rest of this post, we will place Christmas on December 3rd. In fact, we will use the seasonal method for all holidays except those that need the numerical method (New Year's Day, Pi Day).
One idea I have is to fix Easter to a specific Sunday -- and I like the idea of selecting April 25th, as this is exactly 11 weeks (or one-third of the year) after Christmas on December 3rd. (Converted to the Gregorian Calendar, this is April 27th.) Then one-third of the year Easter after can be another anchor holiday -- in the past, I mentioned the obscure August Christian holiday of the Assumption. This ends up being August 14th (August 26th Gregorian). Then the three weeklong school breaks can occur near Christmas, Easter, and Assumption (and yes, prices will be jacked up those weeks).
All other holidays -- especially federal holidays -- can be moved to Sundays as well. There doesn't need to be an extra day off for federal holidays since every weekend is already a four-day weekend.
Here's a list of the Eleven Calendar Sundays, their Gregorian equivalents, and the suggested holidays that can be placed on those days:
There are other ways to complete this calendar as well. An alternative to placing the three sabbaths at the start of the week is to keep the Muslim Sabbath on Sixday (Adam's creation day), the Jewish Sabbath on Sevenday (God's day of rest), and the Christian Sabbath on Eightday (the day after the Jewish Sabbath). Then the school week becomes Nineday-Elevenday and Twoday-Fourday. But then Christmas is no longer on the Christian Sabbath unless we make another change.
Here's another interesting idea. I was looking at federal holidays and noticed that many of them follow a pattern:
Labor Day: First Monday of September
Columbus Day: Second Monday of October
Veteran's Day: Second week of November
MLK Day: Third Monday of January
Presidents' Day: Third Monday of February
Memorial Day: Last Monday of May
Notice that starting in July, the holidays get gradually later in the month. The two summer holidays are early in the month, the two fall holidays are the second week of the month, the two winter holidays are the third week of the month, and the lone spring holiday is at the end of the month.
This suggests that if we were to convert this to an 11-month calendar, the holidays could all be placed near the same day of the month. Indeed, we see in the list above that all of these holidays are placed on the 25th of the month.
And so this leads to another way to make an 11-month calendar. For example, we might start with our new July starting on Gregorian July 1st. Since Independence Day is already the Fourth of July, all our holidays will be on the fourth of the month. The eleven months of the year are now named July through May, with June as the skipped month. The two or three extra days are now between May and July.
Notice that there are Holidays on the fourth of August, March, and April, but no federal holidays. In fact, these are suggested dates for new US federal holidays (and these can be adopted without using the Eleven Calendar at all). The August date already falls near the Canadian "Civic Day" (and is also a holiday in Scotland).
Meanwhile, the March and April dates fall near Easter -- in fact, the March date is approximately the earliest possible Easter date while the April is near the latest possible date. It's also possible to avoid Easter and use two new federal holidays for March and April -- in fact, there are already holidays in the LAUSD (largest California district) near those dates. The March date is approximately Cesar Chavez Day (the labor leader was born on March 31st). The April date is approximately Armenian Genocide Day, the newest LAUSD holiday. The genocide occurred on April 24th -- the holiday will be observed in the district starting in 2022.
Notice that this version of the Eleven Calendar focuses on US federal holidays. It's not my favorite version of the calendar, since it's biased towards one country and the holidays that it observes.
The 2020 Sports Calendar
One thing that has always fascinated me is the concept of a sports equinox -- a day when all four major sports are playing games that count (that is, no preseason) at the same time. Sports equinoxes usually occur in October, when football is in full swing, baseball is in its playoffs, and basketball and hockey have their opening nights.
In 2019, the sports equinox occurred on October 27th. Here's a link describing the event:
It was a typical football Sunday, baseball had Game 5 of the World Series, and basketball and hockey had some early-season action. Notice that despite its name, the sports equinox typically occurs about a month after the fall equinox.
There is no corresponding spring sports equinox because the NFL doesn't play in the spring. Still, there can be a near-equinox in the spring if we let another sport replace football. For example, we might let horse racing be the fourth sport and choose the first Saturday in May -- the Kentucky Derby. In 2019, the race was on May 4th. That day, there was also baseball (including Angels vs. Astros in Mexico), NBA playoffs (Warriors vs. Rockets), and NHL playoffs (Sharks vs. Avalanche).
There are also days when none of the four major sports are played. The day before and day after baseball's All-Star game are frequently mentioned -- in 2019, this was July 8th and 10th. Another day that often has no games is Christmas Eve. The NBA always plays Christmas Day but skips the Eve, while hockey skips both days. The only sport that's sometimes played on the 24th is football, especially when it falls on a Sunday or Saturday -- if Christmas Eve is on a Saturday, then most games are played that day instead of Christmas. But in 2019, Christmas Eve was a Tuesday, so it was sports-free. (The main reason for this is that no NFL game can be played from sunset on the 24th to sunset on the 25th -- so weekend day games can be played on the 24th, as can weeknight games on the 25th. Also, notice that this is pro sports -- in college football, the Hawaii Bowl was played on Christmas Eve in 2019.)
Since a day on which all four sports are played is called a "sports equinox," I suppose that a day on which no sports are played ought to be called a "sports solstice." Notice that the three sports solstices in 2019 (July 8th, July 10th, December 24th) occur just after astronomical solstices.
Now let's compare this to the 2020 sports calendar, where everything is different. Most obviously, everyday was a sports solstice from Pi Day Adam (March 12th) to Pi Approximation Day (July 22nd), including both the spring equinox and summer solstice.
Meanwhile, there were three sports equinoxes this year once sports resumed. Unlike previous equinoxes, all of these occurred in September -- football had its opening day, baseball was winding down its regular season, and the NBA and NHL had playoffs in their respective bubbles. In particular, there were sports equinoxes on September 10th, 13th, and 17th. The actual fall equinox on the 22nd was not a sports equinox, mainly because it fell on a Tuesday. While NFL games were rescheduled to Tuesdays due to the coronavirus, September 22nd wasn't one of them.
There were also some sports solstices between the last day of the World Series and Christmas, since the NFL was the only pro sport and it doesn't play everyday. Here's a list of solstices during NFL season:
October: 28th, 30th, 31st
November: all Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays
December: 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 11th, 12th, 15th 16th, 18th, 24th
The actual winter solstice on December 21st was a Monday, when the Bengals beat the Steelers on Monday Night Football. Meanwhile, Christmas Eve was another sports solstice -- there are no Thursday night games on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve (and there was no Hawaii Bowl either). The Vikings beat the Saints on Christmas Day -- a rare Friday evening game. There were also a Tuesday game and a Wednesday game in early December.
When all sports were cancelled in March, I thought of the idea of a Calendar Reform based on what the 2020 sports calendar looked like. After all, if we had a calendar with fewer than 12 months, then how would athletes know when their sports are in season? So we take the actual year 2020 -- a year with fewer than 12 months, as far as sports was concerned -- and use it to create a sports schedule for a Calendar Reform with fewer than 12 months.
When I first came up with this idea, I was thinking that most sports would be back by late May, making it a two-month layoff. Then with sports being played in early March and late May, April would be the only sports-free month. The resulting Calendar Reform would of course be the Eleven Calendar, except with April as the skipped month. May would become the month of baseball's opening day and the start of the NBA and NHL playoffs, both in real-life 2020 and on the Eleven Calendar. So in other words, I was hoping to use 2020 as an excuse to schedule sports on my Eleven Calendar.
But of course, that's not what really happened in 2020 -- I, like most other observes, underestimated the impact of the pandemic. Major sports didn't resume until July, and so there were three sports-free months -- April, May, and June. And so a Calendar Reform based on the actual 2020 sports calendar would contain nine months, not eleven. It might be interesting to see what such a nine-month Calendar Reform might look like, but I'll save it for my next post.
By the way, this doesn't mean that every time there's a pandemic, we should just cut those months out of the calendar. (After all, there will be pandemics long after COVID-19 is over -- if we just cut months, then eventually there would be no months left on the calendar.) Still, some people (including author Eugenia Cheng) commented that during the pandemic, it sometimes feels as if the month of March never ended (so April felt like March 32nd-61st, May was March 62nd-92nd, and so on).
And so this nine-month Calendar Reform will do the same thing -- until sports resumed in late July, it felt to me as if it was still March. Of course, this Calendar Reform won't have a March that spans the entire season of spring -- instead, the remaining nine months will be of equal length.
Links to Other Challenge Participants
Today's link is Ms. Z. She doesn't label her blog post as "Yule Blog Challenge" yet she mentions Shelli, the challenge leader, as the Queen of Inspiration. Thus I'm counting her post as a Yule Blog post:
http://zicker63.blogspot.com/2020/12/miss-amy-and-new-school.html
Ms. Z's post is also about adjusting to a new schedule, but that's because she's at a new school. I linked to her blog years ago when she taught middle school -- now she's a high school teacher:
While I have lots of favorite materials, I am mostly limiting myself to my comfort routines: opener that lends itself to "how does this make sense and now-I-am-less-anxious to learn something new," our everything notebooks, (oh Miss Amy, the trees, the trees), and the "Welcome Mat." I have three preps, Gr 9 Math Foundations (grade 8 standards), Integrated Math 1 (10th graders that had Foundations last year) and Integrated Math 2 (10th grade). I am trying to look through everything with a new lens. (Though relying on last years resource pages for Math 1 and 2).
She mentions "Cayman Island" as the location of her new school -- I assume she means the Cayman Islands off the coast of Mexico. I'm curious how her "everything notebooks" work during the pandemic.
Conclusion
I'll be continuing the Yule Blog challenge during this second week of winter break. And I'll continue my Calendar Reform posts with a look at a pandemic-inspired calendar with no April, May, or June.
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