This is my 24th post this month -- the most times I've ever posted in a month. I usually post only on school days, and a month can have at most 23 weekdays (31 days - 4 Saturdays - 4 Sundays). It's the Big March, and spring break is completely in April this year. So I posted all 23 weekdays this month -- plus a special post on Pi Day Sunday, to make 24 posts.
My previous monthly record was 22 posts, achieved in both October 2018 and 2019. October is often a month with just one student-free day (around either Columbus Day or the end of the first quarter.) The most times I've ever posted in March was 20, in both 2015 and 2016. The calendar in those years was based on my LA County district, where spring break is always in March, rather than tied to Easter.
Today I subbed in a sophomore World History class. It's in my first OC district. Since it's a high school class that's not math, I won't do "A Day in the Life" today.
Indeed, it's another one of those classes where the regular teacher is available on Zoom, so all I have to do is watch the in-person students. I've seen (and covered) several of these classes in my new OC district, but this is the first time I've done so here in my first OC district. That's all the more reason not to do "A Day in the Life" today.
The regular teacher ends his Zoom link with about 15-20 minutes left in each class, which gives me time to continue handing out Easter pencils and candy to all in-person students. And since this group hasn't heard it yet, I do sing "The Big March" as well today.
Today is Nineday on the Eleven Calendar:
Resolution #9: We pay attention to math as long as possible.
Naturally, I don't have much to say to the students about this resolution today. It's not a math class, and I don't do any teaching.
Today is the Chapter 13 Test. This is what I wrote two years ago about today's test:
Here's an answer key for the test:
1. a. 90 degrees. I could have made this one more difficult by choosing a heptagon, or even a triskaidecagon, but I just stuck with the easy square.
b. Here is the Logo program:
TO SQUARE
REPEAT 4 [FORWARD 13 RIGHT 90]
END
Notice that the side length is 13. I'll still find a way to sneak 13, if possible, into each problem.
2. a. If a person is not a Rhode Islander, then that person doesn't live in the U.S.
b. If a person doesn't live in the U.S., then that person isn't a Rhode Islander.
c. The inverse is false, while the contrapositive is true.
Notice that Rhode Island is the thirteenth state.
3. y = 10.
4. There is a line MN. (M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.)
5. Every name in this list is melodious.
6. The equation has no solution. (This question references 13, as 13x appears in the expansion.)
7. a. 13, 11, 9 (descending odds).
b. 13, 17, 19 (increasing primes -- of course, Euclid proved that this sequence is infinite).
8. a = 2, b = 1, c = 3.
9. kite.
10. I discussed this problem earlier this week. It is the same as the problem from the Glencoe text, except that I only drew half of the figure -- the part where a contradiction appears.
Assume that the figure is possible. Then ABC is isosceles, therefore angles A and C are each 40 degrees (as the third angle of the triangle is 100). Then ABO is isosceles (as it has two 40 degree angles), so AO = BO = 3. Then by the Triangle Inequality, 3 + 3 > 8, a contradiction.
11. Through any two points, there is exactly one line. (This is part of the Point-Line-Plane Postulate.)
12. a. KML measures 13 degrees.
b. K measures less than 167 degrees.
c. L measures less than 167 degrees. (This is the TEAI, Exterior Angle Inequality.)
13. a. Law of Ruling Out Possibilities.
b. You forgot to rule out another possibility -- that nothing bad will happen to you today. Hopefully, this will be true for you.
Since it's test day, this is a traditionalists post. None of the major traditionalists have posted this week, except for Darren Miller.
Actually, Miller hasn't really posted this week either. His school is one of those that takes Holy Week, the week before Easter, off for spring break -- and he announced that he won't post this week either.
Instead, let's go back to his posts from last week -- the first week of hybrid at his school. It may seem odd that schools would reopen for hybrid just before spring break. Here's the thing -- our governor gave schools a huge financial incentive to reopen by April 1st. The problem is that April 1st has to be so close to Easter this year -- so the deadline to reopen is right when schools want to give teachers and students a week off for the holiday. This means that schools had to open for just a few days before break just so they can say that students have seen the inside of a classroom no later than April 1st -- and this must occur at both Holy Week and Bright Week (the week after Easter) schools.
Recall that the hybrid model at Miller's school is different from the ones where I sub. He teaches live students in the morning and online students in the afternoon. Thus Cohort A goes to school Monday morning in-person (odd periods), Tuesday morning in-person (even periods), Thursday afternoon online (odd periods), and Friday afternoon online (even periods), with Cohort B opposite. Those who opt out of hybrid attend online all four afternoons. I'm not sure about Wednesday -- the only Wednesday his school had before spring break was reserved for the SAT.
Here are some excerpts from his March 23rd post -- I'll skip directly to the important lines:
https://rightontheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2021/03/stranger-than-you-can-even-imagine.html
Not one of them had watched the video for today's class.
They were just staring at me.
The student just stared at me.
They have forgotten how to be students.
I'm not the only one seeing this.
That's what they do. They stare. Children of the Corn, or something.
In most traditionalists' posts, I point out how many students, when given traditionalist p-sets, respond simply by leaving it blank. Well, this is the equivalent of leaving stuff blank when there's no paper -- a blank stare. Also, some traditionalists have complained about the "flipped classroom" even before the pandemic -- they assign a video for students to watch before class, but then hardly anyone watches it. In fact, one of his commenters says exactly this:
(Note: At this point, Ellen's post becomes political. Recall that "Right" on the Left Coast means right wing, and so Miller and his readers like Ellen blame the opposing political party.)
Of course, the main idea of Miller's post is that his students would have been engaged with him had it not been for the pandemic. And it's not just the hybrid schedule that's the problem -- he's saying that they would have been engaged with him had the schools opened on March 16th, 2020 -- that is, if the 2019-20 school year had contained 180 days, 7 hours per day in person.
Going back to my long-term assignment, yes, there were a few students who weren't engaged, but it's nothing like what Miller describes here. Then again, my students returned in early October -- so their in-person layoff was only about half as long as Miller's (with much of that time being the usual spring and summer breaks anyway).
By the way, Miller states that he would have accepted a short closure of a few weeks (to "flatten the curve") -- we know his school takes Holy Week off, so he could have returned on Easter Monday, which was April 13th, 2020. Anything after that is unacceptable to him.
Of course, this says nothing about the students who would have opted out of in-person learning. I've been keeping track of the Miller wager -- for each student, I wager $1 that he or she would opt out of hybrid, while Miller's wager is that the student will opt in. (For today's classes, I would have broken even in second period and made a profit of $1 in fourth period. Sixth period is conference.)
But Miller would say that this wager doesn't matter. To him, the reason that any student would opt out is that they think that hybrid is a crappy system. To him, the perfect is the enemy of the good -- he's stated several times that he'd rather have full distance learning than have in-person for anything less than five days per week. And he believes that many students and parents agree. The same students who are opting out of his classes now would have attended school in-person on March 16th or April 13th, 2020.
In fact, Miller has also made a big issue in his posts about wearing masks. It appears that he'd rather teach fully online than in-person with a mask, even if it's five days per week. (And he implies that the students are the same -- if schools opened five days per week with a mask requirement, some students would opt out, but they'd suddenly opt in if the masks weren't needed.)
Miller is a zero-percenter -- he believes that for a person of his age or his students' age, the probability that anyone would die of the coronavirus (or the "'rona." as he likes to call it) is 0% to the nearest percent, even if everyone touched each other without masks. In short, they're just as likely to be struck by lightning as die of the virus -- and just as a rational person lives life as if the likelihood of being struck by lightning is 0, so should a young, healthy person live life with regards to the virus.
I've written about my LA County district that, like Miller's, has been stuck in the purple tier and is just getting ready to reopen. Recall that this district has four levels of reopening:
- Full distance learning
- Office hours (one in-person day per week)
- Classic hybrid (two in-person days per week)
- Near normal learning (four in-person days per week)
The district has been in Level 1, and will reopen at Level 2 this upcoming Tuesday. Meanwhile, my Orange County districts are currently in the equivalent of Level 3.
Notice that these levels don't correspond to academic quarters, nor do they correspond to color-coded tiers (that is, Level 1 = purple, Level 2 = red, and so on). Indeed, today Orange County was promoted to the orange tier, and LA County may follow suit as early as Easter Monday. But the district still plans on reopening at Level 2.
Meanwhile, the social distancing requirement has been dropped from six to three feet. Because of this, my first OC district plans on moving to the equivalent of Level 4 on April 19th -- and the new OC district may follow suit, but it's still under discussion.
Check that -- it will follow suit. I received an email just minutes ago (about a half-hour before the time stamp of this blogpost) stating that it will move to Level 4 on April 26th. There will be an asynchronous day of transition (and in fact, many districts will have an asynchronous day, including LA County schools transitioning out of Level 1).
So we might have four in-person days for most students soon. In fact, Miller writes that the same may happen at his school in a comment:
Now that the feds and the state have reduced so-called social distancing to 3' instead of 6' in schools, there's talk--or is it just rumor?--of combining our Mon/Tues in-person students with our Thurs/Fri in-person students so that they can be at school 4 days a week instead of two, but still for only 3 hrs a day, and I'll still have to reteach my classes to the at-home kids in the afternoon.
Yes, that's the thing -- students will still opt out of hybrid. I wonder what Miller would rather do with those students than have to reteach them later -- but he never tells us. After all, he implies that if we reopened five days per week with no masks, all of those students would suddenly attend in-person
Let's look at the rest of the posts in the comment thread. There's even a Steve in this thread, but it doesn't appear to be SteveH:
There's an anonymous comment about schools reopening:
Some parents think that going back to in person high school for only 6-8 weeks before the end of the school year is too disruptive (it is) or are concerned about Covid infections (will it ever be safe?) If you expect your child to go back to in-person school in August, then shouldn't you start getting them readjusted to school now? If they don't physically go back to school now, it will have been 17 months since they last stepped into a classroom.
Miller has expressed agreement with this sentiment. This is the one time when the perfect isn't the enemy of the good after all -- a hybrid schedule now makes it more likely that there will be a five-day reopening this fall.
Then Ellen throws the race card, so I'll cut off her comment here. (Yes, race frequently comes up in these traditionalists' posts.)
My focus here is on the statement "You can be anything you want to be." In some posts, it's the traditionalist who agrees with this statement and the student who disagrees. The student says something like "I can't do math" and responds by leaving the p-set blank, or "I can't do art" and responds by leaving the canvas blank. There are limits to what a student can do, but those limits are determined by factors beyond the student's control -- either one is a "math (or art" person" or isn't. The traditionalist tries to convince the student that he or she can do math or art, so don't leave the paper blank.
But in this post, it's the student who agrees with "You can do anything" and the traditionalist, Ellen, who disagrees. There are limits to what a student can do, but those limits are determined by what sacrifices he or she is willing to make. The student wants to be able to get a good grade in class without ever doing anything she doesn't want to do -- and ultimately, to be successful in life doing only things she wants to do.
At this point, this post (and most other posts in thread) retrace common traditionalist territory. Ellen's mention of parents comes up often -- in some past year (say 1955), if a student refused to make sacrifices in class, that student would be grounded for a month, but nowadays parents prefer to accommodate their child's unwillingness to make sacrifices. To them, a student who makes no sacrifices should still get a good letter grade.
There is no simple solution to this debate. Instead, let's worry about the letter grades that our students will receive on the Chapter 13 Test.
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