Back to School Night (Days 12-14)

Since today is August 25th, let's look at the 25th topic on Shelli's list:

25. What’s a practice you keep doing year after year? Either something that works great or something that maybe needs examining. Why do you keep doing it?

Before I answer this question, let me explain why today is doubly special. It is Back to School Night -- and it's also the day of a special all-day training day for math teachers, on the CPM text.

I admit it's a bit odd that the district would choose Back to School Night to hold its training. Then again, if I were to choose any day in August to take off for a PD day, I'd likely choose today. First, it's a Thursday -- the day I have no conference period on the block schedule. Then in addition to having no break, I have to stay late for parent night. That's all the more reason to have a PD day instead.

Let's do "A Day in the Life" for this doubly special day. Along the way, I'll answer Shelli's question too:

8:00 -- The training session begins. We start out with introductions, team-building, and goals. Three participants, including me, are from the high school, with the other three from middle schools.

8:30 -- The presenter discusses understanding balanced instruction, with an example on solving a system of equations to determine how many xylophones and yodelers there are (a clearly contrived example since those words start with x and y).

10:00 -- We take a quick break.

10:15 -- We read an article on proficiency teaching with study teams.

11:30 -- We leave for lunch. Four of us -- the high school trio plus a former high school teacher who's now teaching Math I to honors eighth graders -- go off to eat together.

12:30 -- As we return from lunch, I receive an unsettling email. Apparently, the sub (in reality, another teacher, since most subs in our district cover elementary schools) for second period had to suspend one guy in my class, for playing with a paper gun. Due to Uvalde and other tragedies, it's a serious offense.

The training session now moves on to CPM resources and tips. CPM is a text which is commonly used in integrated math classes. (My last two posts already have CPM lesson numbers in their titles.)

1:15 -- This is lesson planning time. The high school trio come up with a possible functions lesson for next week, including an activity based on Math Baseball (an old 1980's computer game -- one of my favorites, along with Oregon Trail).

2:45 -- The presenter wraps up the lesson and discusses next steps.

3:00 -- The training session ends. We return to school and prepare our rooms for the parent visit. In fact, this is the first in-person Back to School Night since before the pandemic.

5:00 -- Back to School Night begins, and a first period student and his parent arrive. But parents aren't supposed to arrive at classrooms until 6:00 -- the first hour is for other activities in the quad. Still, I host the family and discuss my class with the early birds.

I end their visit with a rendition of the "Let's Get Mathematical" parody. Notice that even though I posted it to the blog yesterday, I don't perform it until today. (This is to avoid controversy with parents. If I sang it in class, students might tell their parents that I was singing the original version with its suggestive lyrics -- so instead, I perform it today directly to parents.)

6:45 -- Seven students and their families arrive from fourth period. This is the largest contingent from any class. (As expected, families are much more likely to attend parent night at elementary schools than high schools.) I heartily sing "Let's Get Mathematical" for the group.

7:30 -- The last sixth period students leave after the "Let's Get Mathematical" finale. Back to School night ends, thus finally ending my super-long day.

Meanwhile, I must think about how the day goes for the subs covering the classes. One teacher took first period, another took second, and one teacher took both Periods 5-6.

There's a lot of shuffling going on in first period Math III. It took a while to figure out which teacher was going to take the class -- and because of this, the Warm-Up and Exit Pass don't occur, and the notebook page that I want to pass out to this class never gets passed out.

And this is on top of changes that I made earlier this week to the Math III pacing guide. After the quiz on Monday, I combined quiz corrections with a tricky lesson on solving systems by substitution in the fifth period class on Tuesday. The students struggled, so for the corresponding first period block yesterday, I did an easier lesson on function definitions along with the quiz corrections instead. This leads into today, where the Math III review lesson on function notation just happens to line up with the Math I new lesson on function notation. So to make it easier for a sub, I intend for the sub to pass out the notebook sheet on function notation to all classes.

Oh, and that notebook sheet contains DIXI-ROYD -- a Sarah Carter-ism that I keep going back to year after year. Earlier during lunch, I mention DIXI-ROYD to my fellow Math I teachers. One of them pointed out that the mnemonic "DIXI" might be considered controversial (for example, consider why The Chicks dropped that word from their name). Then again, there are also Dixie brand cups.

Anyway, all of my classes do get the notebook sheet, except first period (according to the early bird guy at Back to School Night). So now first period is behind fifth -- and I must cover both the missing notebook page and the substitution lesson that they didn't get earlier this week in order to catch up.

The early bird guy also makes a suggestion -- now that we have Google Classroom, I should take matters out of the sub's hands. The Warm-Up, main lesson, and Exit Pass should all be posted directly to Google Classroom, with no notebook or other written pages. Then it won't matter whether my classes are taken by a true sub, or by teachers who take the classes back to their own rooms. The students will have everything they need for that day's lesson.

Links to other Blaugust participants: Stephen Dull also writes about something he uses in his classroom year after year -- a 100 x 100 activity that's apparently ten years old, though I've never heard of it. (By contrast, DIXI-ROYD is only six years old. Its predecessor DIX-ROY might be closer to a decade ago.)

https://tweakingfornoreason.wordpress.com/2022/08/25/something-old-something-borrowed/

Well, that concludes today's post. It's possible that there might be a second CPM training meeting at some point -- though I doubt it, I wonder whether it would land on Parent Conferences night in October.