Should math be taught in schools?

Okay, it's a joke question and these is a spoof, but damn funny ...

Go Vermont !

But it's okay, right? Starburst Candy Wrapper Prom Dress.

Cats.

What those first three years do for you.

Spencer has this list of things that all good teachers should be able to do without. He heads it with "How to Get Rid of Bad Teachers" but I think that needs to be qualified.

Some time ago, in his TED talk, Bill Gates opined that teachers don't improve after the first three years. He was saying, in effect, that test scores were the only thing that mattered and that brand-spanking new teachers improved their students' scores for three years only.

Okay, so Bill was wrong. (Is that sentence redundant?) What I think happens is that teachers grow into their jobs for the first three years. They start out by knowing very little and by making a ton of mistakes, teaching badly and inefficiently, and using methodologies that were just learned in education school - methodologies that don't work with actual students or anyone who isn't an education school guinea pig. Whew!

It takes about three years for them to figure out some truth. Some snippets are picked up from trade magazines, some from the kids or parents, but most are from the more experienced faculty once the newbie has gotten over his misconceptions about the "Old Guy" and the OG's total rejection of Shiny New Pedagogical Thought. "Old Guy doesn't use learning styles!?! WTF!?!"

That's when he learns what education really is and what it entails.

Excepting with respect to the newbies, I'd like to comment on Spencer's list:

Take away the Teacher's Guides and if they claim that they are unable to teach, they are right. They can't. As long as you're at it, take away the standards and the curriculum maps. Any decent teacher should be able to know what is vital in his or her content area.

Teacher's Guides/answer books are a convenience, not a crutch. Real handy for the repetitive and annoying work of producing paperwork that your building requires. There is probably a set of lesson plans tailored to the standards - photocopy them for your anal-retentive principal to get him off your back. Then go teach the class. Copy the curriculum map and hand it in. Then consult it once a month to stay roughly where you want to be. Taking away the standards entirely seems good in theory but not so much in practice. There needs to be some kind of plan, some kind of guidelines so the teachers don't go off in random directions.  Some of the best programs in the country have been fairly tightly controlled - Escalante's, for example.

Take away the computers. Tell them that there's no electricity. Even if it's a computer class, there's still a lesson to be learned. If they can't teach without the gadgets, then they aren't teachers. They're technicians and they have no business in a classroom.

To make a point, yes. Everyone should be able to "wing it." A blackboard is a whiteboard is a smartboard. But to say that ALL classes could do this for more than a couple of days is denying the use of available tools. Saying "you COULD walk to school, it's only 4 miles" is different from making it a common occurrence. There are topics that make no sense without tech and topics that have been phased out because tech took over.  Like it or not, some things are gone.

Take away the School Discipline Program and have the administrators leave for a day. If they can't lead a class without the intervention of an administrator, they probably need to leave.

Maybe. Maybe not. It seems that all teachers have the need for capable administration at various times although I've never seen one who required help every day.In that rare case, this is a valid point.

Take away the grades and get rid of the homework. Toss out the token reward system and the points and the gold stars. If they claim that they can't motivate a class without these things then they're missing a big part of what it means to motivate.

Homework and grades aren't for motivation. They're for practice and measurement, respectively. The token reward system is often effective, especially for the younger grades. Just because I don't use gold stars doesn't mean it's bad practice.

Take away the classroom for a day and have the teacher lead a group of ten kids. Meet outside. I don't care where. A lake, a river, a mountain, a busy intersection of the city. If the teacher can't see how the subject connects to life and struggles to get a point across without a Word Wall or a chalkboard or a set of worksheets, then the teacher is missing the point of education.

Whatever. I was never big on "class outside" and I fail to see where this ability is all that important.  Many things don't translate outside real well.  To say that the teacher is missing the point of education if they can't move into some random mountain meadow and teach algebra ...

YMMV

That'll improve the school

Think they'll pass muster?

Forget about replacing the teachers ... replace the students. Bring in the superstars, the superheroes and the supernerds.Then our scores are sure to go up.  New Trier High School, Fairfax High School -- we're looking at you. Let's trade yours for ours!

Never mind.

Funny idea, though.

On a scale of 1 to 10, these are funny.

So, there's this magic dust called "Math Teacher Magic Scale Factor" ... it makes things really big. Sometimes too big.

Puzzle: Find the error before the Programmer does!

Shouldn't be too hard ...

I can't help it - Swearing is sometimes really funny.

But little children and pregnant women should not watch this Korean Swearing Lesson. Everyone else may ROFLYAO.

AFD Hoaxes

Two of my favorite BBC hoaxes:

Humor for History Teachers

Reality Bites, And So Do Customers
Historical Site | Delaware, OH, USA
(I work at a historical site of the civil war, dressing and acting as if we were still in that time period)

Tourist: “Is that fire real?”
Me: “Yes.”
Tourist: “Is the water you’re drinking real?”
Me: “Yes.”
Tourist: “Are your clothes real?”
Me: “Yes.”
Tourist: “Are you real?”
Me: “Yes.”
Tourist: “This place isn’t very interesting.”

Stupid Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg
Museum | Connecticut, USA
(I work as an artifacts specialist at an exhibit featuring artifacts from the Titanic wreck. We also have a large “iceberg” to show people how cold the water was the night the ship sank.)

Customer: “So is this the actual iceberg that sank the Titanic?”
Me: “No, it’s just a frosted piece of plastic to show how cold the water was.”
Customer: “So where in this place is the actual iceberg that sunk the Titanic?”

Table, tablecloth and dinner service minus tablecloth

Plus a little horsepower.

The Ratio Programmer needs to review his basic facts

Maybe this is the same guy that programmed the progress bar? From XKCD:

Can't resist the Humor

From Not Always Right, a customer service horror stories website:
Those Who Definitely Can’t
(Bookstore | Santa Cruz, CA, USA)
Customer: “Hi, can you tell me about your Educator Appreciation Weekend?
Me: “Sure! Teachers normally get 20% off on things they buy for their classroom.”
Customer: “Okay, so how do I prove that I’m a teacher?”
Me: “Do you have a pay stub from your school?”
more:

Customer: “No.”
Me: “Do you have a school ID?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Do you have a card from a teacher’s union?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Do you have a medical insurance card that shows that you’re on an educator plan?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Maybe a vision or dental insurance card?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Do you have a business card?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Do you have any letters from the school or district to you?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Is there a number I could call to verify your employment with a school?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Do you have anything, anything at all, with both your name on it, and the name of some kind of school or educational organization?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Well, I’m stumped. I can’t think of any other way that you could show that you’re a teacher.”
Customer: “Wow, you really don’t make this easy for us, do you?”

Now you know why it's called Generation Y

Thanks to
Buckhorn Road for reminding me that I had these buried in the academic folder. and to Darren for the link to Buckhorn. Note: that second is sourced Flint (MI) Police Department and comes courtesy of the Detroit Free Press. For some reason, the kids don't think it's appropriate. I merely say, "At some point, the powers that be will decide that your 'funny' and 'no big deal' are not and are, respectively. You're nearly adults and people will expect you to behave as such." Not sure it sticks, but it's fun to say.

Google logo - cheeky humor.

I wonder what exactly makes up the "oo" part of the Google name?

Moon over Vancouver.

A million points of extra credit

Here’s a classic idea from 360:

Suppose you teach a course and you want to have 3 exams each worth 20% of your grade, homework worth 10%, and a final worth 30%. One way to do this is to set the midterms at 100 points each, the final at 150 points, and homework scaled to 50 points for a total of 500 points in the class.

So far so good, right? The problem with this is that if you offer extra credit you have to be careful not to give too much — you wouldn’t award 10 points for being the first to speak in class, right? (OK, you might, but that would be pretty generous.) So if you want to be able to offer smaller amounts but not have them sound small, you need to have a larger total number of points.

How large? How about 1 trillion points! That ties in nicely to the scale of the national debt, which you can tie together with mathematical literacy and/or an interdisciplinary math/political science activity. Tests are now worth 200 billion points. The final is 300 billion. And now, if a student gives a good answer in class you can off the cuff award them one million points of extra credit! The student feels good — who doesn’t like to receive a cool million points in extra credit? — and you don’t even have to bother remembering to enter it in your gradebook. On the other hand, if there are little errors on an exam that you want to point out but don’t necessarily want to penalize (forgetting to write parenthesis, for example, so that 2·(3x+5) is written as 2 · 3x+5 ) you could take off 50 million points. That’s enough to get anyone’s attention.

I think in some of our classes this would be intimidating, so it’s probably not the best scheme in general. But in other classes, especially the upper level ones, I think our majors would see this as amusing and, perhaps, a help in internalizing the scale of some of these numbers.

Like I said, tempting.

If only gradequick allowed for it.

Make the Super Bowl a National Holiday

Something we can all support is an acknowledgment of the current reality?

When you think about the Super Bowl--it's hard not to, this week--you have to wonder whether maybe it's time that we formally recognized it for what it is: a national holiday. Switch the game to Monday (Americans have become conditioned to watching football on Monday night) and make it a three-day weekend. Congress could pass the usual proclamations, the Postal Service could design a commemorative stamp, and the president could issue a pronouncement about what this day means to the American spirit.

I'm getting chills just thinking about it ... but maybe that's just the weather.

Polls, Damned Polls and Statistics.

From NYCeducator, who got it from Miss Cellania, who got it from PHDComics.com.

which brings to mind this gem from The Register

Since I'm in that sort of mood, I note that Pols (politicians) and Polls (the surveys) always seem to be liars of convenience. Go figure.

Simple Pleasures

From Rateyourstudents comes the Smestyer-End Simple Pleasures

• The realization by a colleague that the two students I had such an awful time with last semester are indeed A#1 assholes
• An email from an earnest C student saying that despite his low grade, he really enjoyed the class, feels that he learned a lot, and is recommending the class to everyone.
• A holiday dessert in the departmental office that actually tastes good
• Knowing that the colleague who finished grading all three classes by the last day of class and thus got to start his vacation one week early is now miserably stuck in a snow storm
• Thank-you notes from 2 of the 17 students for whom I wrote letters of recommendation
• Empty boxes by the department’s trash can that are the perfect size for mailing holiday gifts
• No paper cuts

Feel free to add your own ....

And now for the Glorious Baa-studs

I am speechless.