That's right -- a new blogging challenge is upon us. I was wondering whether Shelli would start the Yule Blog Challenge this year, and today she makes the big announcement:
http://statteacher.blogspot.com/2022/12/brushing-off-blog-for-yule-blog.html
And so I'm participating in this challenge -- well, sort of. I won't advertise my blogposts on Twitter or any other site -- after all, I successfully completed a dozen posts last year, so I have nothing left to prove there.
This post also counts as my monthly "A Day in the Life" post for December, as it's the seventeenth. It's not a school day, so all I need to post is reflection -- and that's what I'm doing for "Yule Blog." As usual, Shelli tells us that we don't need to follow her prompts exactly, but I like to do it anyway -- I consider it part of the challenge. And since today is the first day of winter break, let's start with the first prompt on the list.
Yule Blog Prompt #1: A Success Story from 2022
In 2021, my success story was my being hired in my new district, to teach Calculus and Statistics at a small magnet high school. But that school ended up being shut down -- and it appeared that due to my lack of seniority and tenure, I'd have no position in the district this year. Well, I finally got the message that a position at the main high school had opened up -- and so my being retained is my success story for the year 2022.
It took four long months for me to be retained -- from just before March 15th, when the state requires pink slips to be handed out, all the way to early July when I was notified about the new position. As it turned out, another teacher was being promoted to a TOSA position, and so I essentially replaced him.
In the meantime, during the four months of uncertainty, I started applying to other positions. Indeed, I was very close to being hired at a charter middle school to teach Math 8. And by "very close," I mean that I had filled out all the paperwork, and I was even considered to be an employee of the charter school for one day -- the day I notified them that I was being retained at my previous position.
Instead, I ended up teaching three sections of Integrated Math I and two sections of Math III here at my new high school. It's a big change -- from my tiny classes of mostly seniors at the magnet school to my full-sized classes of freshmen and juniors at the flagship high school. Now that we've reached the midpoint of the year, I'd like to say that I've fully adjusted to the new situation -- but truthfully, I still have a little ways to go.
OK, so my hiring was my greatest success, but what was my most successful lesson of the school year thus far? Well, if we go by results (that is, by the question most students got right on the final exam), then my most successful lesson on Math I was solving equations in Chapter 1. In particular, the kids' best question by far was on solving using the distributive property. And the second best was, believe it or not, on fraction busters equations in Chapter 3 (just barely edging out determining whether a relation is a function).
In my August 30th post, I wrote about a solving equations lesson, Math Baseball. At the time (since I wrote about as part of Shelli's other challenge, Blaugust), I wasn't sure how successful it was. Many students were unwilling to tell me the steps of solving equations -- choosing instead either to solve by inspection or just give up altogether. But distributive property and especially fraction busters are harder to solve by inspection, so they must have figured something out since Math Baseball.
It's also notable that the fraction busters lesson fell on the day of the principal's evaluation. So I might have been more motivated to teach effectively that day -- and the kids, seeing the principal in the room, might have been motivated to work harder as well. Since I didn't want the principal to watch the students cutting and gluing into their interactive notebooks, I had them take notes in their notebooks (and this might have worked, since some students would instead glue in the worksheets and then do no work on them). Still, the principal only observed one class, so this wouldn't fully explain the other two classes' success with this lesson.
In Math III, the most successful question was the simpler question on finding logs in Chapter 5. Most of these are straightforward, and an online calculator can help with larger values such as log_2(256). The next two successful questions are on solving systems by substitution and elimination -- substitution was in Chapter 1 (the same day I played Math Baseball in Math I) and elimination in Chapter 2.
I must also point out that the problems on logs and solving are very easy to give as Warm-Ups and Exit Passes, so I often repeated such problems leading up to finals. And indeed, it's easier to get these problems right on DeltaMath when only a single number needs to be entered, as opposed to some sort of equation or graph.
Super Saturday???
I've labeled this as the Super Saturday post. Super Saturday is typically the Saturday before Christmas, which means that this year, Super Saturday should be December 24th. But some people consider today to be Super Saturday instead.
The problem is that Super Saturday is supposed to be one of the biggest shopping days of the year, but Christmas Eve is never one of the biggest shopping days because stores close earlier. Thus many people consider today to be Super Saturday -- stores might be open all the way until midnight tonight, but close at 6:00 on Christmas Eve. There might be more shoppers per hour Christmas Eve, but more total shoppers today due to the extra six hours of shopping.
Indeed, in years like 2022, the biggest shopping day in December might be neither today nor Christmas Eve, but Friday the 23rd -- it's more last-minute than today, but stores are still open late. This is exactly what the following website predicts:
https://www.sensormatic.com/resources/pr/2022/2022-global-top-busiest-days
It's easy to figure out what the top ten shopping days might be. Start with Black Friday and the day after Christmas, then add in all Saturdays in between (except Christmas Eve and Christmas Day). Notice that Sundays usually don't make the list, except the Sunday before Christmas. Then fill in any remaining spots by counting backwards from December 23rd.
Sometimes, in addition to December 26th, the Saturday after Christmas makes the list. But that doesn't happen in 2022, because that's New Year's Eve.
This is the first time I've seen a list of the biggest shopping days in other countries. I find it interesting that the biggest shopping day in Brazil, Canada, and South Africa is Black Friday, despite neither country observing American Thanksgiving.
The biggest day in Australia and New Zealand is Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. Some European countries don't have their biggest shopping days until January -- most notably France, with its "winter sales" (or "January sales") starting on the 14th.
Meanwhile, notice that several Asian countries have their biggest shopping days on Christmas Eve, or even Christmas Day itself. These are countries where many citizens celebrate Christmas, but stores don't close for the holiday. Why October 22nd makes the Asian lists is unknown to me. Also, it's strange that no day near Chinese New Year makes the China list (even though the lunar new year is early this year, overlapping the French January sales).
At any rate, I myself consider Super Saturday to be the first Saturday of winter break, at whatever district I'm working at the time. Thus today is Super Saturday (even though there are many schools that are still open next week).
Rapoport Question of the Day
I'm not sure when I should even follow the Rapoport calendar these days. Today's a Geometry question, so I should post it here on this Geometry blog. But I also want to focus on what I'm teaching, and there's only a little Geometry in my Integrated Math classes.
Anyway, on her Daily Epsilon of Math, Rebecca Rapoport writes:
Find x.
As usual, all the given information is contained in an unlabeled diagram, so let me post it. In Triangle ABC with D on AC, we have AB = 78, AC = 26, BD = 51, Angles BAD = CAD, CD = x.
This is a case of the Angle Bisector Theorem, which doesn't appear in most Geometry texts (including the U of Chicago text), but does appear often on the Rapoport calendar. The theorem tells us that the angle bisectors divides the opposite side into segments proportional to the adjacent sides. So we write:
x/26 = 51/78
78x = 1326
x = 17
So the desired length is 17 -- and of course, today's date is the seventeenth. Once again, the Angle Bisector Theorem is unlikely to be shown in most Geometry courses -- and even less so in Integrated Math courses like the ones currently I teach.
Conclusion
Twelve -- that's a lot of blog entries! But like last year, my LA County district (which isn't LAUSD, but just like the huge district) will take three weeks off for the holidays. Last year, I made twelve posts in three weeks.
So this year I have no excuse -- I'm going for it. Expect a dozen posts from me during winter break.
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