2022 Gratitude Weekly

 A quick intro here. I saw an idea where you write something you are greatful for each week and put it in a jar. At the end of the year, you get to look back on all the things you may have forgotten. Okay, so I'm a couple of days late, but making an entry on the weekend makes sense.

Jan. 2 - grateful that I was able to get my booster shot for Covid, with no side effects.

Jan. 9 - grateful that our first week back at school was only 3 days. Made the online learning struggle more manageable. We were also able to book a week in Cuba (Memories Veradero Diamond Club) for Feb. 27 with Sunwing. Our friends' whole family is coming too. Chances are it will be cancelled, but it gives us something to look forward to for now.

August Apprehension

So I found myself reading through some blogs that were sent to me through my email and I realized I haven't put anything down in my blog for a long time.
So here I am, beginning of August thinking about my next school year.
 I got a couple of things that I've been looking forward to or at least thinking about. Next year/this coming year we'll be trying what we call project Barcelona with grouped classes and team-teaching..
I'm kind of wondering how well I'm going to be able to have multiple students with a couple of teachers in the room doing different kind of activities. I'm thinking that this will lend itself well to the flipped classroom.
I know this will take up a lot of my extra time, and I kind of resent that it does, however, it is all about the students isn't it? But of course I still have to spend time with my family.

To tired to censor thoughts

It seems I only get the motivation and energy to post something when my enerhmgy and motivation are at their lowest. My resistance is down and who knows what will bleed onto the page.

Tonight was our Christmas concert, an event which up until a couple of years I attended out of duty, allegiance to the teachers who promote the ever slow growth of musicians, and have patience and will power beyond comprehension. But the at one particular concert as I sat in the audience painting over the long delays between musical groups performing, I decided that I would go beyond the following morning weak praise, and instead, stepped up to the plate and volunteered my criticism as an opportunity to help out to produce closer to what I felt to be an acceptable standard.

So three years later, the concert has the same amount of music but is trimmed down to 90 minutes instead of 2 and a half hours exercising the parents' patience. Definitely not precise clockwork, but raising the standards and the student pride, and definitely way more interesting (though) exhausting for me as initiation into the enjoyment of the season.

The moral of the story... Don't do something for the sake if doing it. Put your heart and energy into it, and take what you deserve from it. This weekend, I WILL crawl around in the backyard snow when my son is out there, not because I should, but because I can.

Jump Start

Living in Montreal, the winters can be particularly cold. Especially January and early February, frosty mornings when the snow has that squeaky kind of crunch when you walk on it, and car doors and windows are frozen shut, and oh so dark... sometimes it's God's will whether or not your car's engine will start.

Probably half of male car owners possess a set of jumper cables in their trunk. You use them to connect the batteries of a car that is running to give a boost to another car's battery whose engine won't start, weakly turning over or sometimes reduced to that little click of the starting motor refusing to live up to its name. After revving the engine of the healthy car to raise the voltage, the transfusion of electricity usually brings the ailing car to life, ready to face the frozen day. Handshakes or hugs, reminders to keep the engine revving high to recharge the battery...

So, you may ask, what does this have to do with anything, except for retreating to Florida in winter?

When I was observing a neophyte teacher yesterday, I got a taste of the value of that jump start in teaching. I was an old dog watching the new tricks of this naive, energetic teacher. He was introducing the topic of surface area, by having the students "think, pair, share, jigsaw, brainstorm and report back". So ambitious... a good thing I didn't tell him he'd be wasting his time and energy thinking this could lead to any meaningful preparation for testing on the topic.

They had their flimsy nets of prisms, cones, pyramids and cylinders, and were discussing in groups about similarities and differences in their same categories of solids, and then in mixed groups, then they had to return to their original groups and invent their own definition of their category of solids. Definition, description, classification, characteristics... they don't know the difference, coming just short of zodiacal sign or sexual orientation of  their shapes. Chaotic generalizations and inefficient methods for imparting knowledge.

But at the end of that class, they were walking out of the room excitedly talking about how "their" solids were better, a couple of "what ifs", and curiosity about where spheres or dodecahedra would fit in.

No, it wasn't teaching, evaluating, or reviewing... but it definitely was learning. It took up a full one-hour class. Is the payoff going to be faster learning? I hope? Will it result in deeper learning?  Definitely. But how do we make that show up in our evaluations? And (old dog thinking) haw are we going to cover the whole curriculum?

I need to take the energy from that jump-start, and transfuse it into my teaching - I mean their learning.

Yes it's a cliche, but fits in with the car analogy... I need to embrace the journey, and not just the destination.

...It's been a long cold wearing winter.  Oh April where is thy sting?

Time has come today

Not really sure what is meant by my title (It's the title of a song that you either love or hate - from the 60's), but it seemed apt as I have just found some TIME right now to do a bit of blog reading that I had put off, discarded or lightly scanned.

Where do all these Bloggers and Tweeters find the time and energy to maintain their public monologues? And for teachers doing flipping, cramming an extra hour or so into their days... How do they do it? But I do understand that the returns for this extra time certainly justifies it.

Okay so I'm not saying anything new here.

I finish my summer school teaching tomorrow, and then I will be able to dive right into the school scheduling. Will I get it done in my self-imposed three week time limit? Otherwise, does anyone know a good divorce lawyer? The number of times I've fallen asleep at my computer working late at night, or mornings when I wake up seemingly minutes after my head hits the pillow (thank heavens for morning showers)... I fear something's gotta give.

But I am determined to flip the classroom this upcoming year, and I know I can't just dabble in it halfway. Starting with the Kirch model of parent letter, training the kids how to watch a video, WSQing, and then figuring out how to make best use of the class time - it'll be a challenge. And as Crystal Kirch pointed out, being the pioneer in your school likely gets you dubbed as "the expert" who is expected to have all the answers. And how can you say no when you see your eager colleagues ready to take the plunge.

I quickly read something someone said about how "assigning reading homework to students so that we can discuss it in class the next day" has always been a flipped classroom idea. But now putting some structure around it, with ways to evaluate, AND FOLLOWING THROUGH should be able to make it work for ALL the class, and not just the geeky chosen few.

Making students responsible for their own learning...

Why do I get the same feeling as when I'm looking up on that scary ride at the amusement park. "Just get on it and stop thinking about it. You'll figure out the details in TIME".

This entry is off the topic of flipping, but something I want to sort out for myself by writing. It's about Fractions.

I plan to teach an intro to grade 7 course for kids entering high school, and they come in with minimal to no skills in working with fractions. My goal is to come up with activities/examples/applications to make 'em accept that fractions MUST be included and understood in grade 7 math.

Starting with something they understand or should understand... Test results. Given a quiz: 11/20, test: 33/42 or homework: 8/10, how do we compare the results? Well you don't need fractions, you just have to change to percentage... WHICH IS SILL A FRACTION, JUST THAT IT's out of 100. Lots of fraction work there, and estimation skills. But what if you wanted to do it without fractions?

That's a stat... Then maybe a couple of historical questions, and tools for matching things up for comparing skills. Addition and Subtraction would fall out of there, but maybe I should do multiplication first. What fraction of the day is left for Mr. Powell to sleep if he burns the candles at both ends?

And then again, this may be perfect for a flipped lesson.

Today's students are not special

I think every teacher needs to see this and smile knowingly, parents need to see it and agree begrudgingly (while they worry about their kids taking care of them in their old age), and students need to see this and realize the rut they've been set in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lfxYhtf8o4