Stupid Math

The question on the eighth grade test asked something like this.  Sarah's class is building a  model town.  If a car that measures 15 feet is represented with a 3 inch model, how large would the model of  building that is 35 feet tall, be?"

Pearl added 3 to 35 and wrote 38 (not inches or feet since I guess it was some combination of the both).
I said nothing

Hey!  It was the state exam- I didn't want to lose my hard earned  pension.  

Last week during final test week preparation, Pearl put her pencil down, sighed, and said,  "I hate this, I can't do it! I hate stupid math!"

Hardworking, pretty and the most good-natured of the eighth grade inclusion group, my first thought  was Pearl doesn't deserve this.  She comes into school everyday with a book bag full of supplies, an open mind and a desire to do well.

And what does she get.

Stupid math questions.

Not the one above.  The one above is good math question.  I want to build a model town in the classroom. I want students to figure out the scale of the model cars and the model buildings.  I want them to figure out where the buildings should go and how the town could be designed for less cars and more energy efficiency.  I want them to make decisions on where to build schools and theaters and sport stadiums.

Pearl would ponder all those things.  It would be hard for her. The world doesn't scale up or down easily in her mind.   To her reflecting an image means labeling it with backward letters.  If the shape reverses the letters should too!

She's a good girl.  And she wants to do the right thing.  She would work very hard at a good model town. She would work very hard at making good decisions for the model town.  And she might grow up to make good decisions about a real town.

But we don't really make model towns.  We factor polynomials and reflect irregular quadrilaterals around a coordinate grid, and  solve for x in a multi-term inequality.

Because all those things are rigorous tasks.

We don't build scale model towns in the back of our classrooms.  We build piles of test prep workbooks.

Pearl hates stupid math.
I hate stupid math tests.

When I went to school every classroom had a picture of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.  Along with the pictures there were the stories- the classroom apocrypha that everyone knew.  Washington chopped down his father's cherry tree and confessed, Lincoln walked to school five miles a day in the snow (a story my father recycled every time there was a transit strike and we thought that a good excuse to skip a day).

As I  proceeded through school in the stormy sixties and seventies, the apocrypha expanded to include stories of the Civil Rights movement.  No matter your political bent, if you went to a New York City school in those decades you knew Rosa Park sat down at the front of the bus and that there were sit ins at the Woolworth lunch counters.

In ninth grade English class we are beginning a unit of Lord of the Flies.the general education teacher was trying to get a discussion going about society. Somehow the "discussion" and I use the term only in the general sense, I have seen adolescents willing admit to crimes more eagerly than people chose to volunteer opinions, cycled around and around to the idea that society is good because it provides law and order.

So I ask, "What about the Jim Crow south?"  Were the laws good there because they produced order?
And I give the example of the black young men sitting down a the Woolworth lunch counter.

Carlton responded that if the white people would come into a Black owned establishment he would punch them in the nose.  And I tell him not to raise his hand until he is mature enough to give a reasonable opinion.  Then Carlton looks so chastised , that I am angry at myself  for squashing the one person who actually picked his head off the desk and responded.

The discussion limped along until the bell rang.  Nekema suggested that all the White people owned slaves, and I suggested someone come in with the actual years and statistics. (I had sat in a workshop where the representatives of the higher than the school level administration, encouraged us to make sure every discussion was text-based).

This all happened early in the week. I would love to tell you the follow up, but we didn't have another English class together this week.

I told the story to the teacher of the African American Studies class.
"I'm not surprised," she answered. "Ask them what features are on the new IPad, they'll know all about that.."

Yeah- cause Apple does a good job of getting that info out there.

The truth is if I  asked them what the best strategies for choosing the correct answer on a multiple choice test, or how to approach an "open response" question as to maximize  the opportunity  for the most possible points, they could talk about that with ease.

Test prep- it's our new apocrypha.

Bring back the pictures of Lincoln and Washington.  Bring back the stories -then tell me what we need to do close the achievement gap.

What me worry?

Are you laughing?
I rarely stay up anywhere nearly late enough to watch Leno, but thanks to time-delayed-tv and YouTube I can always count on Jaywalking for a few laughs.

I need some laughs.
The Regents results -those- you can't get a high school diploma -tests if you don't pass-are in.

Between that and the stress of a "testing-reorganized" schedule brought to you by the "What me worry?" administration,* there was a lot of crying in my room this week.

I need to bring a new tissue box on Monday.

Ralf passed the English Regents. Last week, I risked my pension by locking him into an empty classroom to finish the practice essay, by himself. When I released him from solitary, he handed me a complete essay- and sheepishly asked me if I could lock him away for the real test.

I could not, but the stringent adherence to testing conditions which includes covering all the bulletin boards with monochromatic paper (because that's an important use of our supply money) was enough. Ralf concentrated and passed.

Isaiah did not. He got four out of the twenty five multiple choice questions correct. Miri did not. She wrote a perfect answer for the short essay about creativity but she substituted the word rely for regard in the interpret the quote essay- managing to squander all those points. Louis and his brother did not. Neither did Dorothee, who told me afterwards she couldn't figure out what envy or anxious meant. (Dorothee came from Haiti 4 years ago.)

And the week didn't get much better.
Louis couldn't answer from which direction does the sun appear to rise. Miri added 3 to $700 when asked what was the cost of the dress after a 3% discount- $703.. Juliss wrote that the similarity between Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther was that they were both African-Americans.

Now does that Jaywalking clip seem so funny?
But if you look carefully- no one looks like a bum in the video. Is it true you can lead a happy productive life without being smarter than a fifth grader?

What drives me to drink, (and you can check out the recycling bin in the driveway if you doubt the veracity of that statement) is that we hold my "poor brain celled deprived" students to a standard that, well just say Jay doesn't hold the tourists in Rockefeller Center to.

And then there's the complication that we insist on being a college preparatory school- since anyone can go to college if we are just good enough teachers. Maybe I could convince Louis that the sun appears to rise in the east if I had him for science rather than the chemistry teacher, maybe Miri doesn't need geometry.

I don't know.
I think the part in the constitution about all men being created equal was written by someone who never tried to teach quadratic equations to learning disabled students.

The Algebra Regents had a tortoise and a hare questions. The tortoise ran a 100 meter race at constant speed of 20 meters per minute. The hare ran 40 meters per minute for 50 meters, took a 3 minute break before completing the final 50 meters at the 40 meter per minute rate. Who won?**

What percentage of Jaywalker contestants could answer that?

In our Race to the Top we leave no tortoises or hare behind.

But my poor kids-
That's another story.

I'm off to buy more tissues.

* I used the "What me worry?" reference on the very smart and very young algebra teacher. She had no idea who Alfred E Newman or Mad Magazine were. "http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Neuman"

** The tortoise won. At 20m/pm it took him 5 minutes to complete the race. The hare covered the first 50 meters in 1.25 minutes rested for 3 minutes then covered the last 50 meters in 1.25 minutes. for a total of 5.50 minutes.

Sunrise, Sunset

Here's the thing about this time of year. When I leave home in the morning -it's dark out. And when I return it's dark. Daylight happens while I'm stuck inside.

Yesterday was the last day of the first semester. My back hurt. It was cold. I took the closer bus and when I changed for the second one, Elio was sitting at the very back. Elio is from the community of students who immigrated here from English speaking countries in the Caribbean and Central America. The ones who show all the features of an ESL student, weak educational background, lack of vocabulary that matches school success and then general appearance of being adrift in a school system which deems them ineligible for any special services since they are Native English speakers. Yet Elio is dedicated to success.

We wrote memoirs in the beginning of the semester and Elio after several redirections wrote about the time he was a hero because he caught a mouse and removed it from his baby sister's room. And the story ended with his father coming home and saying he was proud of him.

Like me, Elio shlepps across the borough on two buses, to get to school on time. And what's his reward?

I wobbled to the back of the bus, sat down next to him and went over the math test before the sun rose.

Elio didn't complain, he was happy for the help. He got the highest score on the math test. He makes his father proud.


Today the January Regents week began. The "raise the bar" set of exams that stands between our high school seniors and a high school diploma. The school custodian, was the only one left on the floor as I locked up the Regents at 6:30. He pointed out that when he graduated high school passing the Regents was optional. I have no idea if he could pass algebra or write a persuasive essay. I know he earns his paycheck. I know we really need him.

But since the custodian graduated, NCLB has "raised the bar", we expect everyone to be college material and I stood in the classroom and watched the sun set as my struggling seniors sat and wrote and wrote and wrote.

Ralf, Isiah, Miri, Louis and his brother filled the essay books with everything they knew or thought they knew about Of Mice and Men, Macbeth and The Bluest Eye. Six hours they stayed in that room. Did they pass?
Maybe
Maybe not.


But they make me proud.

Metaphoric students and moving balls

New school year- again. Here comes the Common Core Curriculum, new teacher evaluations and another year of trying to survive the anti-teacher education climate.

But our principal was a physical education teacher. So we began our professional development series with a team relay race that required us to move various-sized balls in tubes, across the gym.

On Tuesday, the new organization sheet had me as the high school special education teacher. On Thursday when classes began, I was told to teach sixth grade Social Studies, oh and maybe Technology ( but not in the tech room).

The old me would have had a fit. The new me---
Well it was kind of was like a treasure hunt game. First I had to figure out what periods I was supposed to teach those classes, remember my assignment was high school special ed, then I needed to figure out what room to teach them in and lastly (the most tricky part) I was supposed to find the students. (Just for the record, the students were, not even one time, in or on the way to the room where the secretary told me the class would meet)

But I am a good treasurer hunter, and a fair "winger" of unplanned lessons.
I read the Social Studies class the book Squids Will be Squids, by John Sciewska.

Then I asked: How can stories tell us about their author's culture?

And many kids gave good answers, but one said, good stories relate important information about culture through the use of metaphors and similes.
(Maybe I should wish that the principal doesn't actually figure out that I should be the high school special education teacher!)

So that is what the "moving the different balls through the tube relay race" was all about, it was a simile or maybe a metaphor, on how working as a team we can "move" children. (If you are a not a NYC teacher, you may not know that in any year the sole purpose of a teacher is to "move" a student from the category of proficiency s/he placed in the previous year to the next higher level)

BTW- I figured out early in the race to maneuver my body so my back was to the other contestants, place my finger securely on the open ends of the tube and pass it on before anyone noticed.
Hey - after thirty tears of teaching I was not about to crawl around the gym floor chasing metaphoric students or runaway balls.

And, Michele Rhee, Atlanta and Philadelphia administrators- I am not drawing any conclusions about the relationship between standardized tests and "moving" students progress and cheating!

But remember- that at least one very bright sixth grader thinks that an author's story relates information about culture through the use of similes and metaphors.