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Negative Numbers

Sun, 22 Sep 2024, 10:47 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. A High School Math Teacher’s Lament

Something’s not happening in middle school math.

For six+ years, students have been showing up in my Algebra 2 classes with little ability to think about (much less calculate with) fractions or negative numbers. You’ll hear this from any high school math teacher you talk to. And it seems to be true of kids in both advanced and regular classes.

Let’s talk about negatives…

My guess (based on no data) is that much like cursive or long division or how to hold a pencil or even keyboarding, teaching fractions and negative numbers has been abandoned in middle school. With so much to curriculum to cover, with so many standardized tests to administer, and with calculators so ubiquitously present, I’m tempted to think that the negative numbers have been dropped by the wayside.

I know. I know. I’m whining. Thing’s just aren’t like they were in the good old days. They don’t have to do what we had to do. I’m fully aware of how this sounds. And full disclosure, the comment on an old report card of mine, David isn’t learning his math facts, might be important to add into this mix (although truth be told that was elementary school).

Yet it’s getting in the way of teaching Algebra 2.

2. A YouTube Video

This morning I watched a video on YouTube. The teacher was at a whiteboard teaching how to solve linear systems of equations by elimination. The core skill has little to do per se with the arithmetic of negative numbers. Yet if you don’t understand the arithmetic, you’re doomed. 

I watch the video in disbelief as the teacher introduces elimination and the kids enthusiastically shout out the answers to the underlying arithmetic. They don’t hesitate. Their responses are instant — and correct. When asked to add -5 and 7, they shout “two!”, not “twelve”. (I have kids who will look at me as if I am from Mars when I say -5 + 7 = 2.)

Ok, who are these kids? Where is this school? That is obviously relevant. But then I look down and see that the video was filmed eleven years ago.

Is that really it? In the last decade, have middle schools simply abandoned teaching negative numbers? From my vantage point, it sure seems so. And as a result, if I am to teach the core skills, I am left with no alternative but to tell them “Go get a calculator.” 

And thereby I become part of the problem.

Girlish Figures

Sat, 21 Sep 2024, 03:50 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. Shorts

It was afternoon after work. We were changing into comfy clothes. I had just put on a beige pair of shorts and was buckling the belt. I reached for a T-shirt and looked across the room. There were my beige shorts lying on my pillow. And my belt.

Wait, what?

“Why are my beige shorts doing over there?” I muttered aloud as I ran my hands along the beige shorts I had just put on.

Trudy overheard me, looked up, and burst into laughter. I had just put on her shorts and buckled her belt around my waist.

“Ahh,” I said, striking a pose. “Do you like my girlish figure?”

2. Ice Cream

The Fair And Industrious Trudy is in Montreal — ergo Friday night dinner at a sub shop she doesn’t particularly like. I sat outdoors in the cool evening 92 degree breeze and ate a Hook and Ladder with Sea Salt chips. And then (the evening breeze was at fault), I walked down to Whole Foods for some ice cream. 

It felt like a late-night college dorm run to the rip-off tienda in the basement. I stood at the freezer doors gazing in long-forgotten wonderment. Initially tempted by Caramel and Salt Lick, I settled on Butterscotch Pecan Blondie. My grandfather would have approved.

This was remarkable, because I have not been able to taste anything for almost nine years, including sweets. Since the radiation therapy, ice cream has been nothing but a cool feeling on the inside of my mouth. But oh did that Butterscotch Pecan Blondie taste mighty fine. 

So much for that girlish figure.

Being Earnest

Tue, 17 Sep 2024, 07:30 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

She came walking across the room as everyone else was walking out the door. There was a smile on her face, which is not really saying much, since she is always smiling.

“Mi Mila. What’s up?” I asked.

“Mr. Hasan,” she said. “I just want to say thank you for teaching us so … earnestly.”

I smiled and tried to think what it is that I do “earnestly”. Maybe it was… But of course that misses the point. She had just given me a stunningly wonderful compliment.

“Thank you, Mila,” I said. “What a sweet thing to say. You’ve made my day.”

Trajectories and Orbits

Tue, 17 Sep 2024, 11:27 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

Years ago, when I taught at a different school, there were two students who often ate lunch with me. They were usually happy, and almost always giggled. I called them the “Giggly Girls”.

They graduated years ago and should be most of their way thru college by now. They did stop by my classroom once last year, but otherwise they’ve gone the way that most students do … launched their own trajectories into the future with us cheering from the ground, proud of their ascent.

Today a student came into the classroom before school started.

“Mr. Hasan,” she said. “I think you know my sister.”

“I know your sister?”

“You taught at Cedar Creek, right?”

“Yes…”

She told me her sister’s name. It took several seconds for the neurons to fire — longer than it should, but not as long as it usually does.

“You know,” she said, smiling, “one of the Giggly Girls.”

So here I am standing around the launch pad as these trajectories rise into the future. Some have long since transformed into orbits with the students circling the earth, doing whatever it is they’ve decided to do. And today, one passes over, and the sister points up to the sky, and lo there is Bella waving as she passes overhead.

 

Dream with Cinnamon Rolls and Map

Sun, 15 Sep 2024, 04:21 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

Scribbled on pieces of paper years ago. Stashed under a pile only to be rediscovered recently. A transcript of a dream evidently recalled just after I woke up…

1.

I woke up camping beside a cliff. I could see and hear a creek in the distance. And there was a cave. My grandmother is there, already awake (as usual) when I get up. Atypically, she has a camera and is taking pictures. We wake up Ben. He goes off somewhere with friends.

How did the car get here? I have a vague memory of driving thru brush the night before, but that is all I can remember. It must have been late, and I must have been tired for me not to remember anything else.

2.

Not far down the road, after driving thru many rocky passes and over some mountains, we find a place to eat breakfast.

It is busy. There are many people seated inside, including John who taught me composting many years ago. I tell him about our camp site with the cave and the creek. He knows the place but is not impressed. Evidently is was private property, and he doesn’t approve.

3.

There are holes to be dug and posts to set. And of course, on my third swing, I miss the mark, and the sledgehammer handle breaks. [Don’t ask why a sledgehammer was the right tool for driving posts.] John has some kind of miracle glue, and fixes the handle. It seems as if the head will slide off the end of the handle, and everyone chooses to stand way back as I resume swinging.

I take mighty swings with my mended sledge, but I end up pounding a post thru the side of my large galvanized tub and break the handle again.

4.

I buy cinnamon rolls for Ben and another guy we’re traveling with. They’re five for a dollar, but I only buy four. I end up paying a dollar, anyway. The two of them stop talking and eat. I drive off [leaving them behind?] looking for a road back into the mountains.

All the side roads are private drives with locked gates. Mountains rise up on either side of the road, but the gated roads are all on the left. I continue up the main road and come to a gate with a cowboy standing next to a horse. He’s looking at a pile of brush. I stop, get out, and walk up to the gate and ask him if I may watch, to which he replies “Yes.” So as he begins to work, I lean against the gate and eat my cinnamon roll, which has transformed into a cupcake.

A group of kids walks up from somewhere — further up the main road maybe, or from the other side of the road, or from the man’s driveway on the other side of the gate.

5.

[On the next page, there is a map. It shows the gated drives that wind up into the mountains. It shows the main road running thru a valley from the café with the cinnamon rolls. And it shows the site of the sledgehammer pounding, which evidently was at a rest stop. Far to the northwest, it shows the camping spot beside the creek.]

6.

The group of kids who showed up are on some sort of tour. They’re led by a tall woman who is talking with animated gestures. I watch and listen. They disappear into a building, which I hadn’t noticed before [but which seems to be indicated on the map]. The cowboy tells me that the woman hasn’t been feeling well, but she is so good with kids.

Some other folks show up. We begin talking, and they invite me over to a deck under a shaded trellis. They tell me the story of this place. How it’s a private club.

7.

These people are evidently retirees, and they complain how the club benefits decrease when you retire, yet you still must pay the same membership fee.

We talk some more, and then I excuse myself to go back to the gate where the cowboy had been standing with his horse. But I take a wrong turn and instead of returning to the site of the cowboy and horse, I find myself in the mountains. I can see more buildings along the road. I realize that I must have taken a wrong turn. So I turn around to retrace my steps.

 

 

The Future

Sun, 8 Sep 2024, 05:35 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. Waymo

When Paul came out of the restaurant, Trudy and I got up from the bench where we had been sitting in the sun. We all started to walk across the parking lot.

I had been watching a man with a bag getting into a car with no driver. There was a large spinning device on top of the vehicle, and odd protrusions sticking out from the two front corners. It drove off after the man got in, but I knew the street to be a cul-de-sac and that it would return.

“You just missed it,” I said to Paul. “There was a guy who just got a bunch of togo food and jumped into a Waymo. They’ll be coming back around any moment.” And sure enough, just then the future-car came around the corner with no one at the wheel and a man sitting in the back seat. 

“Oh wow,” Paul said.

He was genuinely excited.

2. Cybertruck

On the way home, as we cruised southbound in the right lane, a Cybertruck drove quickly by, passing us and the traffic in the other lanes, as Cybertrucks are want to do. It was flat-black with no markings. If the navigation radar had been turned on, it would have registered nothing in that lane with that stealthy truck, but as it was, I had no navigation radar to turn on in the first place.

“Oh wow,” Paul said. “My first Cybertruck!”

He was genuinely excited.

“First a Waymo. Now a Cybertruck. What a trip!!”

The future reveals itself incrementally.

Starliner Touchdown

Fri, 6 Sep 2024, 10:07 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

NASA infrared photography of Starliner landing

In the dead of night through the eyes of infrared cameras after an autonomous deorbit burn, two drogue parachutes and then three mains slowed an uncrewed Starliner to a successful touchdown.

Baby Steps

Thu, 5 Sep 2024, 08:34 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

The idea of baby steps has an intuitive obviousness about it. For years, I have loved using the term, illustrating it with examples. Preaching it to others. But practicing it was a different matter. You’re looking at a card-carrying procrastinator.

Yet to survive as a teacher, you must work efficiently. Otherwise… well otherwise you burn out and get a different job.

So today, when I have 5 minutes, I sort the jumbled mass of homework papers in the purple turn-in box. Group the papers by assignment. Bind them with paperclips color coded to class. No grading. No looking at names. No red pencils. Just get them organized. And then back to teaching the class.

I know this is something you already know. And I distinctly remember my mother giving me baby steps advice long ago. But I didn’t want to hear it, and I didn’t take it. This late in life, becoming a teacher forced it on me. 

My Procrastinators International membership card lies abandoned on the floor. I am a better person for it.

Don’t Waste Your Time

Sat, 24 Aug 2024, 10:07 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

Friday afternoon after the last school bell. The halls are empty. The classroom doors are all shut and locked, except Room 255. I’m putting up some decorations on the door.  

“Don’t waste your time!” someone calls out from  the end of the hall, and then she laughs. “Face it. You might as well just go home. I’m going to win.”

She laughs again. I do, too.

The thing about the door decorating contests in my experience is that minimalism gets you nowhere. Yet that’s how I do documents and presentations. It’s how I adorn my classroom walls. And how I decorate doors. But these are seasoned teachers, y’all. Next to them, I am an amateur. They do decorations in a way that… well, is unmistakably teacher-like. Fringe. Flowers. Smiles. Happy notes written on stars. Nothing wrong with that. They’re usually stunning. But my jam is less is more, which judges often interpret as lame.

So my door is plain. Two colors: a black and gold (for the “Go for gold” theme). A plain background with a wavy border. (Elmer’s with glitter is so perfect for this!) A Cartesian plane with an exponential function climbing to infinity (of course, because I teach Algebra 2). Two words: “Let’s go!” following the climbing curve.

Nothing else.

out of focus picture of my classroom door decorations

Wait. There’s also an admittedly lame streak of glue that dripped despite my best efforts to let everything dry first. Dang!

She’s was right. It won’t win, which of course is just fine. 

Silent Sunday

Sun, 18 Aug 2024, 11:22 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

a balloon-y prop on the stage of AISD new teacher welcome day that says HOME

#silentsunday #aisd-new-teacher

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