Teacher of the Year: Stevie Wonder

When I was about 12 years old, my parents took my brother and I to see Stevie Wonder in concert.  It was my first real concert experience and most of it is now a blur.  But 25 years later, the one thing that sticks out in my mind turns out to be something that had nothing to do with Stevie Wonder’s music.  It had to do with a lady in the front row who couldn’t carry a tune if it were strapped to her back. 

About half way through the concert, Stevie (or is it Mr. Wonder?) interacts with the crowd and decides to hold a singing contest.  He gets three volunteers from the crowd and they each get a turn singing Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones.  The winner gets to sing the song of his choice with Stevie Wonder himself.  Talk about the opportunity of a lifetime. 

Two of the three could sing very well, but I don’t really remember much about their performances.  However, the third contestant was very sharp.  So much so, that even my untrained ear could tell that this lady couldn’t sing.  Here is the impressive part:  in the middle of her singing, Stevie Wonder stops the band and has them adjust the key of the music to fit her voice.  He recognized the exact key in which she was singing and made the adjustment to fit her.  It did’t work–she still stunk, but that isn’t the point. 

As teachers, we need to do the exact same thing every day.  No matter how well we construct a lesson, we need to be ready to adjust to the kid who continues to sing off key.  You can’t plan for that.  The band didn’t practice the song in every possible key just in case they had someone who couldn’t sing with them.  They knew their song, they understood the progression and understood what to do if they started somewhere different than where they had planned. 

I believe that an effective teacher is going to be the one who can recognize where a student is in relation to where the objective is, meet him where he is and adjust the plan accordingly.  It’s not so much about having a great engaging plan all the time.  We can plan a symphonic lesson plan in which all the small parts fit together into a wonderful investigation or lecture.  But it’s what we do when the kid playing the oboe doesn’t hear what everyone else hears and plays the wrong notes that really matters.

Dear Sam,

Just read your post about being a fraud and you hit the nail on the head.  But you may not have hit the nail you were aiming at.  You a fraud?  Come on!  I have never met you but I can hear your voice with every sentence you write.  You can’t fake that.

You know what I’d expect if I came to see you teach?  I’d expect to see a guy who cares about his students both in and out of class.  I’d expect to see a teacher who does his best to reach his students where they are, lift them to where they need to be and encourage them to become what they could be.  I’m pretty sure Socrates didn’t have lesson plans and we’re still talking about him.  All he did was ask questions. I’m pretty sure you do that too. 

Don’t worry about putting your best stuff out there for all of us to see.  We all clean up the house when we have company over.  Every time you post,  you are inviting us to your classroom.  Thanks for that. 

So before you beat yourself up about not being where you want to be, remember this: None of us are!  That’s the nail you hit.  We all keep striving in this game and none of us has completely figured it out; we merely get glimpses of what could be.  And anyone who tells you otherwise is the real fraud.  It took me 14 years of teaching to get to where I am and I still make rookie mistakes, have lessons that flop, get irritated with kids who won’t engage and still don’t exactly know what to do with kids who are bored.  

So thanks for the honesty, but sometimes we get tangled up in the accidents and forget the essence.  At your essence, you’re a teacher; plain and simple. 

Best to you this year. 

David

p.s. Now if I find out that you’re not really a teacher and all you did was stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, then I’m gonna be pissed.

The Evolution of the Mathcast

Two years ago my principal approached me about getting a SmartBoard for each of the math teachers in my department.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  Heck, before I came here, my daily tech decision was: Vis-a-Vis or Expo?  So when he starts talking about this board that lets you interact with the computer whose screen is projected back on the board, I think my head almost exploded.  Didn’t have a clue how I’d use it.  Against my better judgement, he ordered them anyway.  They came in a couple of weeks before school started, I helped him install one on my wall and off I went.  No training, no direction.  Just me and my computer. 

I particularly appreciated the ease by which I could do the drawings and graphs which were such a drag with an overhead.  I hated to give up my vintage set of chalk board drawing tools, but it had to happen.  A guy’s gotta grow up some time.  As I was toying around with some of the features, I noticed that there was what looked like a record button.  We played around with the thing and figured out how to record the annotations but had a tough time getting the sound to record.  I played with the settings and in walks a wireless lapel mic.  Got it up and running and away I went. 

At first the recordings were a train wreck (I’m still not completely pleased with the quality of some of the examples).  The default file was .avi and I would post the lessons through the school website.  The problem was a student would click the link, go make a sandwich, do the dishes and come back just in time for the recording to play.  One of our district IT guys suggested I compress the .avi in MovieMaker to allow it to open faster.  Keep in mind, I really had no idea what I was doing.  I was basically swinging at pitches in the dirt hoping to connect.  Anyway, I had my first examples online ready to view by Christmas. 

Man, we thought we were cutting edge.  Then last year, I stumbled upon Tim Fahlberg’s wiki. Turns out this guy has been doing mathcasts since I was in high school.  He practically invented this stuff.  I contacted Tim and he turned me on to Camtasia Studio.  It’s a bit pricey, but it allows one to render the videos in many different formats.  It’s also very easy to use.  Eventually this led to a channel on blip.tv as well as a podcast through iTunes.

The learning curve has been pretty steep but has started to level off a bit.  I am now passed the point of wondering how much can be done with this technology, but now I am wondering how to best use the ability to create dynamic notes for my students.  The nice thing about the channel on blip.tv as well as being on iTunes is that kids can subscribe and download the examples so they can take them wherever they go.  It’s amazing to think that I have kids watching these things on their iPhone’s and PSP’s.  But they are.  So the question is how do we best use this tool?  Chris Lehmann suggests inversions.  What say you?

What to do…

I have a bit of a dilemma.  Three years ago I was brought to a GATE magnet school to teach a bunch of advanced kids. 

The thought was, “Rather than ship the really smart kids to high school to take the geometry class, we’ll just bring the high school teacher to them.” 

I didn’t mind this idea.  In fact, it quickly began to grow on me.  I was teaching precalc, algebra 2 and algebra 1 at the high school and figured the change might do me some good.  The tough part was that I had no idea what to expect.  I was going from 55 minute periods to 94 minute daily blocks. 

What the heck am I going to do with a group of middle schoolers for 94 minutes? 

So after many discussions with my principal, we decided that since the 94 minute block was intended to allow for grade level instruction as well as time for intervention,  I’d just use my extra time for enrichment.  But what do you do to enrich them?  Do you accelerate the students so that they can be ready for algebra 2 as freshmen?  Do you spend the extra time doing all the cool stuff that no one else has time to do because they are worried about pacing guides and benchmarks?  We’ve decided to go ahead and accelerate them.  I’m still a bit unsettled about it, though.    Is it really that important for an 8th grader to complete geometry so she can take algebra 2 in 9th grade?  The kid is on pace to take calculus as a junior.  Is that better?  At this point, I don’t know.  In the era of “the TEST”, it seems that as long as I have the data to back up what I am doing, it doesn’t matter what we choose.  My kids have the test scores, but I am not convinced that what I am doing is the right thing. 

I am definitely in unchartered waters.  As a high school teacher, I was simply one of many.  My last year there, we had a pacing guide and all common assessments.  It was pretty lock step and I was miserable–loved the staff and the students–but hated the system.  Now I have a bunch of autonomy because I can keep the powers that be off my back with some good scores, but I am not sure what direction to go.

Last year, the decision was a bit easier because I got to hand pick the students who would move into the geometry class. I taught both advanced 7th grade classes so I knew they were ready.   This year–not so much.  I have two classes made up of kids from two different teachers.  Some are ready to be accelerated and others look like they are going to need to spend some serious time with the algebra.  My question for you all is this:  how do you plan for these classes?  Half of my students have already been through algebra, a quarter of them have been exposed to it and the rest look like they may not know what a variable is.  I’ve never been here before, so I don’t know what to expect.  If you’ve ever considered commenting on a post here, now’s the time.  Hit me up.

Whatever It Takes

Our campus has been having some great conversations centered on developing tiered lessons that allow for differentiation depending not only on ability level but on learning modality.  How can we reach a student at their appropriate cognitive level while respecting whether they are an auditory, visual or kinesthetic learner?  Now, I am no cognitive scientist nor am I an expert at developing curriculum.  But I do know that meeting kids where they are is a good idea.  How we implement that is a different story.  Haven’t figured that one out.

Last year I had a student who would have bounced off the walls if I didn’t keep him engaged.  Getting this kid to do homework was nearly impossible because it interfered with his gaming time. 

“Look over your notes tonight,” I’d say.

“Yeah, right,” he’d think.  “What do I want to do that for? I gotta date with Xbox Live!”

But then I started a channel on blip.tv where I would upload any mathcasts I created so students would have access to them from home.  Dang it if this kid didn’t subscribe to the RSS feed.  It hit me when one day after a test, he told me:

“Hey Mr. Cox, that test was easy.  I watched the examples on my PSP last night.” 

Do these digital natives process information differently?  Is this a new modality?

Is This What I Do or Is It Who I Am?

I really have to hand it to you people. Man, some of you guys kept the great conversations going from the time school let out ’till the opening bell of this school year. I know some of you actually still start in September, but great conversaions nonetheless.

I just couldn’t do it. I meant to, but I couldn’t. Sure, I had a bunch of ideas of what I wanted to work on during the summer but they all got trumped by four little boys who kept wanting to wrestle. How can you pass up on getting dog piled by these guys?

So needless to say, I didn’t get much school stuff done. I kind of felt bad about it; especially when I thought of all the teachers out there who put in 60+ hours per week and hammer out curriculum over the summer. I see the Tweets and blog posts–you people are amazing. The question has come to mind: Is This What I Do or Is It Who I Am? Is teaching my job, or is it my essence? I struggle with that all the time. I struggle because I realize that everytime I say yes to an extra hour of planning, that is one less hour I have to spend with my wife and boys. I want to be one of those teachers who can put in an extra four hours per day planning great lessons, but I simply can’t. Does that mean someone is gonna pull my teacher card? Hope not. This is a great job. And the one thing I know for sure is that the better dad I am, the better teacher I become.

Hom-asse-ferentiation

All the new schools come with cafegymatoriums so I figure I’ll go with a 3-in-1 post.

Homework

 For 12 years I had assigned it but it always bugged me that we would spend 15+ minutes the next day going over something that many of the students didn’t complete.  And if they did bring it in, how did I know if it was actually their work?  Now that I have children of my own in school, I am even more bothered by the amount of busywork that imposes itself on family time.   

My question isn’t regarding the validity of homework.  My question revolves around the idea of how to make homework matter.  How do we make it meaningful to our students?  Can we tie it to assessment and/or differentiate it so that kids can work on what they need at any given point in time? And further, can homework become part of a meaningful dialogue between teacher and student rather than a box to be checked on the daily “to do” list? 

Assessment

Quiz, Quiz, Test.  Quiz, Quiz, Test. Quiz, Quiz, Test. 

Isn’t that how the pattern goes?  Followed that one too.  But again, over the past few years, my view of assessment has changed.  When do we assess?  How often?  How many times should a student have to show us he can do something?   How many different ways should he have to show it? Multiple choice or free response?  Where does writing come into play? 

For the past three years, we have been dealing with pacing guides and benchmarks due to the fact that my district is in program improvement.  I am in favor of it.  Pacing guides and benchmarks  have allowed us to begin with the end in mind, check for understanding along the way and then find ways to intervene with students who are struggling to grasp the concepts/skills.  However, I have noticed that teachers have a tendency to become very procedure oriented and lose sight of all the great thinking that can be provoked in a math classroom.  I don’t blame this on pacing and benchmarks any more than I blame bad lessons on the tools being used in the classroom.  It has become obvious that the textbook pacing isn’t the way we want to go, so we have started to teach one standard at a time.  But I think that many of our standards need to be deconstructed even more in order to ensure that when we assess, we get a grip on where a student is really struggling.  For example, in California, Algebra Standard 15.0 deals with mixture, rate and work problems.  It isn’t enough to say that a kid is struggling with 15.0, we need to be a bit more specific in order to fix the problem.  I know that Dan has done a nice job of explaining the need to break the curriculum down into skills and he has a great assessment plan.  The part we have struggled with is what to do in between the initial assessment and the re-assessment(s).  Which leads us to…

Differentiation

Is it enough to throw some review problems up on the board for warmups and call it “intervention?”  Do we give students different assignments based on their need — and when we give  these assignments, how do we grade them?  How much weight do they carry in relation to the final grade? Can I actually have 30 kids working on 30 different things?  If so, does that mean that I have to come up with 30 different assignments for each skill I want to remediate?  My head hurts just thinking about it. 

Until recently. 

Why can’t we tie them all together? Why can’t homework/classwork be prescribed based on the results of an initial assessment becomming a prerequesite for the re-assessment; a key to unlock the assessment box.  A student can be placed into one of two paths: the road to proficiency or the road to advanced status. Once a student reaches proficiency in a certain standard/skill, he earns a B.  He then has the choice to move towards advanced status in that skill (for an A) or work towards proficiency in another skill. If he never moves onto the advanced path, the score for that skill remains a B.  I am not sure if we should go with a 1-5 grading system or attach a percentage to the rubric score. (ie. 5 = 90%, 4 = 85%, 3 = 75%, 2 = 65%, 1 = 50%)

  Over the past month, I have had some release days and have come up with a template.  The challenging part has been to decide which “tasks” a student must complete before being allowed to re-assess.  These tasks are very minimal in that they merely show what I would like a student be able to show before he is allowed to re-assess.  Could a student take these tasks and “create” their own problems based on the template, or would the teacher need to be more hands on in helping direct the student?  Are there skills I am missing?  Are there ways to demonstrate the skill that I am leaving out?  How can this be adapted for student interest and/or modality?  And most importantly: does this idea stand a chance? I would really appreciate any feedback that I can get on this.

Note: Our math classes are in 94 minute daily blocks, so time for intervention/enrichment is built in.  We will go with a sort of 60-30 model next year where we do regular instruction for the first 60 minutes and leave the last 30 minutes for students to work on their choice of previous skills. 

The proficiency tasks for each skill will be followed by the student doing an exemplar.  My working definition of “exemplar” is a problem that exemplifies the given skill worked by the student with written and/or verbal explanation of the process used.  I have found these to be very good authentic assessments.  The student has the option to do this via paper and pencil or mathcast.

Huh?

 

Wonder what those puzzles look like…

For All the Marbles…

Final exam. One question.

How Tall Is It?

“Show me two different ways  you could figure the height of the building.”

“That’s easy, Mr. Cox. Measure a brick and count the number of rows.”

“Alright, make it three, smart guy.”

 

Are Two Ways Better Than One?

Graphing parabolas is much easier when we can zero in on “key points.”  The CPM Algebra 2 curriculum was great about dealing with “parent graphs” and then showing students the process for translating and stretching these parents.  It is easy to get away from this as we have other skills that we need to teach.  But this year, I have really focused on having my students get really comfortable with y = x² and then recognizing that all parabolas are really just different perspectives of this parent graph.  Zoom out and the parabola get skinnier; zoom in and it gets fatter.  If you know the vertex and stretch factor, then you are ready to do some graphing;  this works for vertex or standard form.

One of the more interesting developments during this unit has been my students recognizing that the rate of change in a parabola has a rate of change.  They are wrestling with the concepts behind derivatives and I want to keep them in that fight as long as possible.  I usually have my students graph five points and I have always had them relate those five points back to the vertex.  However, with the way they are handling rate of change, I need to rethink my process. 

Simply use the stretch factor to adjust the relationships: This year I have given them choice on this, but it has caused a few kids confusion as they end up with a hybrid process.  Next year? Not so sure.