Nothing Comes From Nothing

Are you humming the song Maria and the Captain sing to each other in the gazebo?  Okay, we can be friends.  Read on.

I'm actually in a situation I haven't been in since starting this blog.  I don't know what to write.  I have a few topic ideas saved in a draft folder, but none of them are striking my fancy this week, and I don't have any ideas specific to this week.  As someone who is rarely at a loss for words or opinions, I have to ask myself how this can be.  It's lack of mental stimulation.

I've been on break for over a week now.  The first five days, I was sick.  It was just a cold, but I felt lousy enough to do nothing but sit in a recliner and watch TV all day.  Then, it was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, eating and watching movies (By the way, if you want to take a person who isn't into sci-fi to a sort of sci-fi movie this season, Passengers was quite good.   It was kind of Castaway meets Gravity plus a relationship story.)   Anyway, back to the issue.  I have not had a lot of mental stimulation that would inspire depth of thought.

Apparently, that realization was just enough to fire a few brain cells because I just had this thought.  If we don't provide our students with mental stimulation, they might not experience much depth of thought either.  We need to intentionally fill our lesson plans with interaction, whether that is asking students questions during a lecture or assigning complex projects.  If we want them to think beyond "the right answer," it is up to us to create an environment that goes beyond that as well.

See you in the new year.

What You Deserve

Have you ever spent a significant amount of time watching daytime television?  I obviously don't during school time, but during summer and Christmas break, I "get" to see court shows, talk shows, and 90's comedy re-runs.

What I find interesting is less about the shows than the commercials.  Whether you are watching Judge Alex or Dr. Phil or Grace Under Fire, the ads are the same.  I assume they are aimed at people who are home during the day, and it seems that (in the advertisers' minds at least) these people must believe they are owed something.  Commercials for law firms encourage you to be the victim of something in order to "get the settlement you deserve."  Ads for vision centers tell you to see them in order to "get the contacts you deserve."  I even saw one for Just Tires that said to "get the tires you deserve."  It doesn't explain exactly what I have done to earn the good tires; I guess I'm supposed to know that already.

During one sick day, I would estimate I heard that I inexplicably deserved something three dozen times.  Then, we wonder why our culture suffers from an entitlement problem.

Outsourcing Your Thinking

Whoever came up with the idea that there is no such thing as a stupid question never taught middle school.

Before you decide I am a horrible person for squelching a child's curiosity, those aren't the kinds of questions I'm talking about.  Asking how many times Texas would fit on the moon is not a stupid question (57 times if you are interested) because it is an attempt to relate something you do know to something you do not.  These questions, while sometimes odd, are not stupid.

I'm talking about questions like:
- Can we use a pen on this?
- When I get to number 50, do I go on to number 51?
- Does this problem take place on earth?
- Does it matter what order these are in?
- The calendar says this is due tomorrow.  Is it?
- Can I have a book on my desk to read when the test is finished?
- When you say, "will dissolve," do you mean after you stir it?
- Does my name need to be on this?
- And of course thousands of questions that you just answered when you were giving the instructions.

The reason that these are stupid questions is that the student could have answered it without asking if they had taken about three seconds to think.
- They have taken dozens of scantron tests in their lives.  They know the scantron requires pencil.  Three seconds of thinking avoids this question.
- Where else would I go after number 50?  I really wanted to ask what numbering system was used
  on his home planet.  Three seconds of thinking avoids this question.
- If this problem didn't take place on earth, wouldn't I have told you?  I don't expect them to just
   figure out it was Jupiter.  They had to think for way longer than three seconds to come up with the
   question when three seconds of logic would have kept them from asking it.
- If the order mattered, I would have told them in class, during a review, and in the instructions.
   Three seconds of thinking could have avoided this question.
- I get a lot of e-mail questions about when things are due.  We have an online academic calendar for
   every class, so that should be the answer to due date questions.  Three seconds of thinking would
   tell you that the question has already been answered.
- The book question would be perfectly polite and good if this had not been written on the board:  
  "On your desk, have out pencils and calculator as well as any reading material or studying material
   you plan to use after the test."  Three seconds of looking at the board will answer this question.
- Kids read into test questions so much, I have come up with the line, "Stop writing your own
  questions."  This is just one example.  I get so many, "what did you mean by . . ." questions that I
  have them read the question to me and say, "I mean that."
- If your name isn't on it, how will I know who to give your grade to?  Three seconds of thinking
  would avoid this question as well.

You may get the impression from this that I am super sarcastic, but let me assure you that if you had to field these questions from 120 students a day, you would lean toward sarcastic as well.  Students want to outsource their thinking.  Sometimes, they outsource it to me.  Sometimes, they outsource it to their parents or their e-mail.  My job is more than teaching them facts.  It also involves teaching them to think.  So, if I give what seems like a curt answer, it is only because I want them to experience a little negative consequence for not thinking for themselves while they are in middle school.  The consequences they will experience for it in college or a career will be far worse than my facial expressions or silly replies.  I don't want a world in which adults have never been required to pause for three seconds to think for themselves.

Exam Review

Exams aren't easy, and that is by design.  That little bit of extra stress is neurologically valuable to writing long term memory.  Everyone who has ever crammed for a test (so, you know, everyone) knows that you do not hang on to memories that are learned quickly or only visited once.  Exams are meant for students to revisit, integrate, and deepen the learning that happened over the semester.

What is the best way to review for exams?  Here are a few helpful hints.
1.  Think like your teacher.
     If you are taking an exam in middle or high school, you have known your teacher for several
     months.  If you have have been doing your job as a student, this means you know what they care
     about.  You know how they give hints.  You know their test writing style.  You know if they tend
     to pull questions from the book or not.  You know if there some concept they find incredibly
     important.  My students, for example, should know that I care very much about the First Law of
     Thermodynamics and that the short answer questions will be based on things that are simply too
     complex to be asked about as a multiple choice question.  They know that if I have repeated
     something several times, written it in capital or bold letters, or have said, "This would make an
     excellent test question" that it is something I find important.

2.  Use your old tests as a guide.
     A good teacher is NOT copying and pasting their exam questions from your old tests, but they are
     still your most valuable source of study, especially if your teacher does not provide a study guide.
     For one thing, the teacher thought something was important during the chapter, they will still find
     it important now.  More importantly, if they didn't think it was important enough to ask about it  
     on a test, it is unlikely they will suddenly find it so important that it must be on the exam.  Also, it
     gives you some idea of how the teacher might ask about an objective.  It may not be the exact
     same question, but it will likely be somewhat similar.  If you do have a study guide, take each
     objective on it and look for questions on your old tests that align with that objective.  Then, see if
     you can write a similar question.

3.  ASK QUESTIONS!
     Over the past ten years or so, many students have stopped asking questions.  The number one
     piece of advice I give in parent-teacher conferences is that the student needs to ask questions
     when they are confused by something.  The parent usually tells me that the child is embarrassed
     to ask questions in class.  I tell my classes that kids their age used to go off to war, so they should
     get over being afraid to ask questions in front of their friends.  It boils down to the choice
     between being embarrassed to ask questions and being embarrassed by your grade.  Even if a
     student comes to help class or e-mails the question to me later, nothing replaces the value of
     asking the question AT THE TIME they learning the material for the first time.

4.  Practice healthy habits.
     I hate to make anyone's parents right about something, but there that your parents insist on your
     bedtime.  There is a reason that your grandma used to say that breakfast was the most important
     meal of the day.  There is a reason not to eat a doughnut for lunch.  There is a reason why
     cramming for a test doesn't work.  These reasons are neurological, so they aren't personal to you.
     Eating breakfast provides energy to everyone's brain and gets their metabolism started for the day.      Getting a good night's sleep restores chemical balance to your brain.  There's a lot of waste
     neurotransmitters left in your brain when you go to bed at night after a day of constant stimulation.      Sleep allows those to be disposed of and dealt with without creating more.  This allows your brain      to process more quickly and more accurately.  That's why an all nighter really isn't going to help
     you the way you think it is going to.  Your brain cannot retain what is crammed into it all at once
     because it isn't a trash bag to be filled.  It is an organic machine with needs and processing speed.
     Giving your brain what it needs is the way to ensure that it gives you what you need.  You ask a
     lot of your brain, so you need to take care of it.

5.  Prioritize.
     It may be more fun to study for your favorite class, but let's face it.  The one you need to study for
     is probably your least favorite class.  Even within a course, you can't treat all information equally.      Figure out what topics are likely to be focused on and focus your study there.  Recognize that
     there are classes in which your grade can take a small hit so that you can really try to do well on
     the exam of the class for which you have a lower grade right now.  Scheduling time will help you
     to set those priorities rather than trying to cram.  Have I mentioned yet how bad an idea cramming
     is?

There are other pieces of advice that I could give you, but you need to go study.

Cost Benefit Analysis

In my last post, I discussed why we should stop encouraging students to try to have it all.  It's one thing to say that, but it is very different when comes down to making choices about what they do.

Students need help, from those of us who have a lot of experience (see how I avoided calling us old) in learning to make decisions about what to have, try, or do.  There is no one size fits all experience because every kid is different.  God's plan for each is unique, and He has gifted them uniquely in order to accomplish that plan.  We cannot make decisions for them, but we can give them training in how to make those decisions.

When guiding kids to make decisions, you have to ask what are the benefits but also what are the costs.  Then, decision making becomes an even-handed analysis of the two rather than an idealistic or pessimistic look at only one side.

- If a student plays on a sports team, there are benefits - teamwork, camaraderie, a sense of achievement, and such are wonderful things.  There are also costs - practices and travel take time, potential injuries can cause problems.  

- If a student is in a play, there are benefits - camaraderie, a sense of accomplishment, creative brain training, and the like can be awesome.  There are also costs.  Rehearsals take time, and lines must be memorized at the same time other commitments are being fulfilled.

- If a student leads a mission trip, there are benefits - teamwork, spiritual development, perspective on the world are all important goals.  There are also costs - travel requires money, lost school time means make-up work.

- If a student chooses to take 5 AP Classes, there are benefits - increased learning in a variety of areas, saving tuition money if you pass the AP test, and increasing college options are great things.  There are also costs - every AP class requires more time outside of class working that the time actually spent in class, leading to a lot of late nights.


Time, like money, is a limited quantity, so the choice to spend it on one thing means I cannot spend it on another.  If I choose to spend money on a Corvette, I will not have money to buy food.  If I choose to play on a sports team, I will not have time to hang out with friends.  I know students who have attempted to combine all of the above examples in the same year.  There are only twenty-four hours in a day, so the cost that came from this combination was sleep deprivation.  When I suggested dropping something, the student replied only with the benefits.  She loved the experience of being in the play and wouldn't want to give it up; she got a lot out of leading the mission trip and was glad she did it.  I suggested that perhaps three AP classes would have been enough, and she looked at me like I was telling her to drop out of school.  Looking at only the benefits and making choices without regard to cost wore this poor child out and drained the love of learning out of her.  This is the great irony of trying to "have it all."  It makes you hate it all.

When deciding whether to add something new to your schedule, sit down and really think about it.  Make a list of both the costs and the benefits of everything you want to have in your schedule for that school year.  Decide which activities have benefits that are worth the costs and say yes to those.  It's okay to say no to the other things.

Trying to Do it All

I have heard it time and again.  "How can teachers expect my child to do homework when he has (fill in the blank with un-criticizable extracurricular activity)?" Whether the child is on a traveling soccer team or the lead in a play in addition the part time job they just have to have because Johnny needs money to buy his own video games, the complaint is always about the school work.  When I point out that these are choices, I am the heartless teacher who can't possibly understand what it is like because I don't have children of my own.

While I don't know the pain of a crying child at the dinner table, I do have experience with over a thousand children.  I have seen the trends of almost two decades of educational philosophy and have watched as the culture of parenting has shifted.  Parents once believed that school was a student's job and that they shouldn't have jobs during the school year; now many parents believe their child should work as many hours as they can get in order to have their own money.  Parents once kept their student from going to a game if their grades weren't at an acceptable level; now many parents believe the teacher should be pressured to change the grade so that their child can play a game.  We have moved from extra curricular activities as secondary to school work to school work being secondary at best (it might fall a few more spots if the student is especially social).  This might be okay if the parents in question weren't also pressing their kids to take a high load of AP classes and spend time on SAT/ACT prep classes so that they can get into a top college.  Then, we are shocked when kids have anxiety.

In short, our culture has decided to push our kids to have it all.

This. Is. Not. Okay.
It's just not.
Stop it.

Standards AND Compassion

For some reason, I was thinking about college today.  I was thinking about an argument I had with a woman in my Educational Psychology class.  The professor had been talking about different types of learners  and the stuff that kids had on their minds while trying to learn.  She had been talking about modifications.  She had been talking about including multicultural stuff in lessons.  I was losing my mind until I just couldn't take it anymore without raising my hand.  "When are we supposed to teach them science and math and stuff?" I asked.  "How is physics different if a student is from another country?"

Now, before you unfriend me, listen.  I was 19.  I had always been a driven student.  I had chosen education because I loved physics and wanted to help other people love physics.  In my mind, all of this focus on the "other stuff" seemed to have nothing to do with the reasons I had majored in this.   It seemed like coddling students and lowering standards.  Another student in the class, a mom of about 50, started talking to me about her child and the problems she had learning.  At that point, I couldn't hear mitigating factors because my own mind was already locked in on the point I was making.  We were supposed to teach them a certain number of things, and all this stuff was going to interfere with it.  We left class that day with me thinking she cared nothing about learning and her thinking I cared nothing about children.

We were both wrong, but we were both locked into one argument at that point.  I was an idealist, and she was a mother, and neither of use was able to see ANYTHING from the other person's point of view.  We both went home (me to the dorm and her to her child) to people who affirmed only our own point of view.  My friends completely agreed with my assessment that I could teach you standards without caring how you feel about them, and her kids completely agreed that she should drop teaching material whenever a student felt a feeling.  We both seemed to think that a teacher can care about standards OR compassion, but not both.  We were both wrong.

I have now been teaching for eighteen years, and I am a bit more realistic than I used to be.  I am also more committed to high standards than I ever was in school.  Here are some reasons why.

First, I took a class in the Education of Exceptional Individuals, taught by a teacher with only one arm.  She gave me a perspective on physical disabilities that I had never had, but she also opened my eyes to the frustration and tension that a student with learning differences could feel.  She never encouraged us to lower our expectations, only to change our methods.  I would properly credit this professor if I could remember her name.  While I can't remember her name, I definitely remember what she taught me.

Second, I student taught.  All the arguments I had in classes were based in theory.  The luxury of theory is that it is always idealistic.  I learned that when I took applied thermodynamics.  Everything I had learned in the introductory class worked perfectly.  Then, I had to start dealing with real machines that had moving parts, subject to friction and entropy.  That changed things.  ORU places their education majors in two places of 7 weeks each with the hope that they will be exposed to two different environment.  I was in two very similar schools in the Tulsa area, both mostly white, mostly middle to high socioeconomic families, and both well known for being good schools.  My advisor was concerned that I wouldn't have varied exposure.  As it turned out, her concerns were not reality.  I could not have had two more different experiences.   I started in the class of Patrick Bell, a man who believed strongly in standards but had no compassion.  He played tricks on me, like hiding tests or making sure I was in the wrong place during a fire drill, in the name of teaching me about the real world.  He wouldn't allow students to touch his desk or use a different color pen than he wanted.  They learned physics and chemistry, but they also learned to be a little less human in the pursuit of knowledge.  My second placement was with Lisa Achterkirk, a very pregnant woman who taught basic skills physical science to students with IEP's.  She did not hold many academic standards as important, but she cared very deeply about her students and knew a lot about them.  Assessing what the kids had learned was the last thing on her priority list, but she made sure they enjoyed whatever science they learned.  This is really when I learned the dangers inherent in both extremes and discovered that my course would be plotted somewhere in the middle.

I have now taught for 18 years, and I have been with students during a lot of events.  I was in class during Columbine.  I was teaching on 9/11.  I have taught during a shooting threat.  I was in class the day after a student in our school died and the day they found out their favorite teacher had cancer.  I taught kids the day after their best friend was expelled.  I was teaching when we went to war in Iraq and during four presidential elections.  My students and I experienced the nearly fatal accident of a teacher at a pep rally together.  All of these things affect their learning.

Most importantly, I have now taught over a thousand kids.  They aren't theoretical like they were when I was 19.  They are flesh, mind, emotion, hormone, and spirit.  I have watched a student have a seizure in my class and had a student I couldn't wake up because of their medication.  I've taught freshman girls who had babies and boys who spent the weekend in jail.  I have been cussed at by students as many times as I have been hugged by them.  I have taught when my own heart was broken and when theirs were.

The reason my classmate and I were both wrong was the word OR.  We thought we could be either committed to standards OR filled with compassion.  We can live in the world of AND.  We can hold to standards AND have compassion.  The word compassion means "to suffer with."  When a student fails to live up to the standards of a test or project and they are upset about it, I can feel upset with them.  That doesn't mean that I turn around and give them an A they didn't earn.  It means that I tell them how upset I would be if I were them while I pat their back.  When a student is super-stressed because they have too many things on their plate, I can let them turn one assignment in tomorrow without lowering standards.  Keep your standards high AND feel the things your students are feeling.

Why Are You Reading? You Know.

According to Blogger's statistics, I topped fifteen thousand pageviews today.  The statistics show me what posts people have read and what countries readers are from.  I can even find out if you are Mac or Windows people.

What I can't find out from google is why you are reading.  When I started this blog three years ago, I did so for my own reflection.  It was like keeping a journal that anyone was allowed to read.  I wasn't really sure who would read my thoughts or why anyone would want to.  As I have scrolled through the 145 previous posts, I have seen a variety of topics - everything from what teachers do to prepare for the first day of school to thoughts on student community service, from blood donation to the role of curiosity in learning.  Why do you care what I think about these things?  Only you know.

Perhaps you are a new teacher seeking out the perspective of an experienced teacher.  If so, I hope I've been able to provide insight to help you with your year.  Perhaps you are a student who wonders why teachers make the decisions they do.  If so, I hope you see that we don't make decisions lightly, that we have intent behind our assignments, and that we have your best interests at heart.  Perhaps you are a parent who wonders what your child's teachers are thinking.  If so, I hope you have found that we are serious professionals that you can trust with your child's learning.

I will keep writing, and I hope you will be able to gain something from the time you spend reading.

What We Can Learn From This Election

It's been a long, long campaign season.  I'm pretty sure the first commercials I saw for the primaries were two years ago.  The primary was bloody on both sides.  Most of us are just glad it is over.  Now that North Carolina is a swing state, it's gotten even more difficult because we are far more inundated with campaign ads than we used to be.  Now that it is finally almost over, perhaps we can find some redeeming value in asking ourselves what we can learn from it.  I'm posting this before election day so that it won't be based on the outcome.

What have we learned?  Well,

Some people are easily manipulated.  I got to a point where I didn't want to answer my phone in the past few days because every time it rang, it was a robo-call from Invanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. (remember when we called him Donnie?), some surrogate of Richard Burr, or a myriad of others trying to get my vote.  I voted early, so these were extra annoying.  I kept wondering why these calls exist in the first place.  Who, exactly, is changing their vote because they get a recorded call?  Is there someone who was out there thinking, "Well, I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton, but now that I've gotten this call from one of the Trump kids, telling me their dad's a good guy, I've changed my mind"?  Do these people actually show up at the polls and vote?  If your vote can be changed by a robo-call, stay home.  The grown-ups are trying to choose a government.

Some people are incredibly stubborn.  As much I believe a person shouldn't be easily swayed, what we have also seen in this election is that some people CANNOT be swayed.  Once they decided on their candidate, that person was a deity.  You have that Facebook friend; you scroll past their posts because you already know what they say.  They defended everything their candidate did, no matter how awful.  I have these friends on both sides of the aisle, so it became really interesting to scroll through my Facebook and Twitter feeds after every news story.  Some of my friends think Hillary is the devil, so they actually defended the sexual assault admissions of Donald Trump.  Some hate him so much that they are fine with her breaking the law.  Apparently, once you have picked a side, logic, reason, intellectual honesty, and your own moral standards no longer matter.  I'd like to point out that this is no less childish than those who are easily changed.

The process only works when people participate.  I keep hearing the question, "How did we get these two candidates?"  The answer is that voter turnout in the primaries was low.  Only 60 million people voted in the primaries.  Those 60 million were divided, not only between the two parties, but between all of the candidates (there were 16 republican and 3 democratic candidates when we started).  Over half of the primary votes were for neither of these two candidates.  Only 9% of Americans chose these two people.  That's how we got here.  When only fanatics participate, we get some fanatical outcomes; and that's what we are seeing here.  If you don't care until you get to the general election, you can't complain with the choices you have in the general election.  If more people had voted in the primaries, we might be looking at a better outcome.

Our process, flawed as it is, still works.  Our founding fathers were not demigods, but they were intelligent and wise men.  The process they designed has ensured a peaceful transfer of power for two and a half centuries.  We have changed political parties multiple times, and guess what?  We have not had shed blood to make that happen.  In fact, we throw giant parties.  I remember being a young voter in 2000, waiting for weeks while they counted hanging chads in Florida and thinking, "How great is it that we are all just waiting for this to play out?  In many other countries, there would be rioting in the streets."  We worry and fret and wring our hands over popular vs. electoral college votes, but our constitution addresses all of that, even the possibility of an electoral college tie (congress decides).  Our system has problems, and those need to be addressed; but when people participate, it works.

Be The Decider

On October 31st, I wrote the following on my white board.
"The rules in my class are the same on October 31 as they are the rest of the year.  Please save your candy for snack time or lunch."

Yes, I am the Halloween Grinch.  Not only do I not want to teach teenagers that are too buzzed on candy to have a complete thought, I want them to know that the calendar does not decide the rules of my classroom.  I do.  (By the way, the same applies to Valentine's Day, which is another day that they believe they can openly violating the eating rules of my classroom.)

A few hours after writing this, I checked my facebook and found this post from a friend of mine who teaches in Oklahoma.  Obviously, we have very different approaches to this holiday.  Another teacher friend of mine gives an assignment to kids to bring in candy (He got 35 pounds this year!) or write an essay.

And, here's the thing.  I don't think any of us wrong.  What's important to me isn't what the teacher decides but that the teacher is the one making the decision.  My advice to new teachers (and veterans who may have forgotten this fact) is to remember that THIS IS YOUR CLASSROOM!  If you want to be casual and fun, then you should cultivate that atmosphere in your classroom.  When you do that, it is still your classroom management that determines what happens.  Do not just give up because the kids are out of control and then try to make yourself believe that you like it.  If you are more strict, that should be your option because this is YOUR classroom, but don't be mad at the teacher next door for making you look like the bad guy.  Embrace that you are the stricter presence in the lives of students, realizing that they will continue to have a range of teachers and bosses throughout their lives.

Whatever decision YOU make, be the decider.

It Takes Too Much Work to Be Out

For the last couple of weeks, I've been fighting a cold.  Nothing major, just a little sore throat and coughing.  On the second morning, a friend of mine asked me why I had come to school.   I answered that I would have to feel a lot worse to do all the work it takes to be out.

There may be other jobs like this, but if there are, I don't know them.  In other jobs that I have had in offices, if I were sick, I would have called in sick.  The day of my return, I would have had a lot of catching up to do, but the work just sat there while I was gone.  When my parents and I go on a vacation together, my dad checks in with ongoing projects at the office, but he doesn't have to prepare before he leaves so that someone else can do that work while he is gone.

Teaching is weird in this way.  I would actually have to do more work to prepare to be out than I would to just keep working.
Step one: Obtain a substitute.  We have a computer system that will call subs, but I would have to get into the program and think really hard to complete the instructions.  If I am sick, this thought process is actually kind of a pain.
Step two:  Figure out what the kids can do instead of what you were going to do with them.  With the exception of test days or video days, if they are going to do the same thing with a sub that they were going to do with me, then I didn't need to go to college for a science education degree.  (And, if they are going to take a test or watch a video, I can come in sick and do that.)  Therefore, I need something that isn't just busy work and does allow them to get some of what they would have gotten from me, but can be done without me.  Have I mentioned that I am sick in this scenario?  That's a lot of thinking for a sick person.
Step three:  Write up what you have decided in step 2 in a form that can be understood by someone who has no idea where anything is in your classroom.  Everything you unconsciously do and locate is completely unknown to the sub.  The sub plans have to have far more detail then your lesson plans ever would.  If there is something special or tricky about a particular student or class, you need to let the sub know that too, so that knowledge you just have as a regular part of your day has to be raised into your consciousness and put on paper tactfully for someone else to read.  Keep in mind, I'm sick while this is happening.
Step four:  Get this information to the school.  Some things can be e-mailed.  You can ask a friend to print out your plan and get it to the sub.  Some things cannot.  If the students are doing an activity that requires a resource, you may have to go in and physically set it up so that it is all in one place and clearly labeled.  That means putting on clothes because you can't really show up in pajamas even if it is just to set up an activity.  The last thing I want to do when I am sick is put on clothes.  It's right up there with driving a car, which I guess I would have to do too.

I haven't even mentioned that when I return to school, I would have to read through the sub's feedback, follow up with discipline if needed, record attendance from when I was out, and grade what the kids did.  If all I have is a minor cold that could use a day of rest, I'll wait for the weekend and rest then.  It is way too much work to be out.

My Weirdness - Part 5 - DIY

This is the last of the posts on my weirdness and was kind of the one that prompted the series.  Here's the story.

I teach chemistry, and we were discussing why hydrogen sulfide smells like death.  I love teaching them about floor drains and how pouring water into the trap blocks the gases so that they won't smell that awful smell (talk about some real world science).  Then, I told them about the time I was replacing the toilet at my house and thought I was going to die before I got it bolted down and filled with water because my head was down there next to the open pipe.  Each of my classes responded with, "Wait, you were doing this yourself?"  "Yes," I responded, "replacing a toilet isn't hard, so why would I pay someone to do what I can do myself?"  I've had this conversation with a dozen classes, so their surprise isn't new to me.  I always follow up with, "I don't pay anyone to do something I can do myself."

What happened next, however, was new.  One of my students really thought I shouldn't have done that, so I explained that if there is something I cannot do (complicated electrical work, masonry) or is too dangerous for me to take on (gas delivery to the water heater), I will hire someone.  I simply won't hire someone to do something that I CAN do myself.  He said, "So, you don't have people clean?"  This is when I understood that this boy and I live on two different planets.  I said to him, "You know that's not normal, right?  Most people don't have that."  He got embarrassed and asked to use the restroom.  It wasn't my intent to embarrass him, but I have never had anyone assume that I should have cleaning people.

I grew up in a house where my dad could fix almost anything and believed in making us help.  I have watched him repair washing machines and dryers, furnaces and garbage disposals.  I was shoved into cabinets to pull wires from one end of the kitchen to another.  I was taught how to mud sheetrock properly and how to install a ceiling fan.  I carried landscaping timbers and 2x4's from the truck to the back of the house more times than I can count.  The few times we did hire professionals, it was for really obvious reasons.  We hired roofers because you don't just get hurt if you fall off the house and because doing it wrong results in very expensive repairs.  We hired people to put on siding because we weren't going to buy the equipment required for doing that right.

A few summers ago, I had a leaky bathtub faucet.  I called my dad, and he suggested a few things.  I went to youtube and found out that Home Depot has a channel there.  I was able to repair the leak and replace my fixtures for about twenty dollars.  If I had to bring in a professional for that small job, the price would have been four to five times that much.  The first time I needed to replace a water heater, my parents and I pulled out the old one, put in the new one and reconnected it.  I can't do everything, but I can use basic tools and learn from instructions.  I'm too scared to repair things on my car, but I'm not afraid of most things in my house.  I do have a healthy respect for electricity, so I would never tackle that alone.  When I had to replace the capacitor in my air conditioning, I called my mom over to stand near me.  She asked me what I thought she would be able to do, and I told her I would like 911 to be called as soon as possible if I did electrocute myself into unconsciousness.

You are more capable than you think, and instructions are now just a few clicks away.  Hire people when you actually need to, but you will be very happy with yourself and save a lot of money by learning to do some things yourself.

My Weirdness - Part 4 - Happily Single

In my late twenties and early thirties, this scenario played out countless times.

Friend or parent of student:  "Beth, how old are you?"
Me:  "Thirty.  Why, who do you do want to set me up with?"
Friend or parent of student:  "How did you know?  He's a great guy; you'll love him.  If only he didn't have (insert deal-breaking flaw here)."

People mean well.  I know they do.

I'm sure they do.

I think they do.

Maybe they don't.

Maybe they are just living under the illusion that a person must be married to be happy.  Forget about whether two people are in the same place in life or share the same values or want to date someone or would even be compatible.   "We know single people of different genders," they say, "and we cannot stand for that."  This ranged from public school students wanting to set me up with their currently imprisoned older brother to a teacher friend who wanted me to date her alcoholic neighbor.  "He's great," she said.  "I just wish he were a Christian."  Really?  You thought the person's lack of faith was an afterthought, hardly worth mentioning until the end of this conversation?  Shut up, please.

Okay, this rant is over.  Here's the deal. Back then, I actually was looking.  I really did think God's plan for my life was to be a wife and mother.  As often happens, however, God led in another direction (at one time in my life I thought God's plan was for me to be an astronaut, but I was wrong about that as well).  I was about 31 when I finally felt that God was impressing upon me that I was to remain single.  This was more freeing than you might think, and the peace that came from it let me believe that it really was God and not me just giving up.  I have been happily single ever since.

I'm not going to say I am never lonely, although I will tell you that it is seldom when I am alone.  I'm not going to tell you I don't have normal human desires.  I certainly do, and just like any other person attempting to live a Godly life, I must lay those desires before the Lord.  I'm not going to say that there is never a time when I think it might be nice to come home to someone at the end of the day.  Certainly, when I am particularly tired or sad or angry or even happy, it would be lovely to have someone to share that with.  (And, yeah, Valentine's Day is just a day when you want to go to bed on the 13th and wake up on the 15th because you can't even go to the grocery store without an assault of cultural stupidity.) None of that, however, is the hard part of being single.

The hard part of being single is that no one* thinks you can be happy being single.  No one believes that the only thing I regularly have a hard time doing for myself is fastening a bracelet.  No one believes that virginity isn't really that difficult.  No one believes a person can live alone without being crippled by fear.

People, God equips you for the plan he has for your life.  I have been in training to be single since the day I was born.  When I was growing up, my dad's job took him out of town frequently.  That meant that we were home without an adult male most of the time.  My mom never acted like she thought that was dangerous.  I was never taught to equate being alone with being in danger.  My dad also always involved the entire family in repair projects, so I never learned that I needed someone else to solve problems.  I was a dork in middle and high school (and some would say ever since then as well), so I never dated.  I never learned to depend on a relationship for emotional fulfillment.    I watched girls date guys they hated because they thought it was better than not dating.  I never learned to believe that I was incomplete without a man.

This post is supposed to be about teaching, so here's how it applies.  One of the great things about being an adult dork is that students like it.  They tend to think I am cool for precisely the reason that I am authentically a dork.  Because of that, I have the opportunity to influence students on a daily basis.   Some of that influence is intentional and overt, but some of it comes from just living my life in front of them.  When they see that I am not sitting in a corner pining away for a man to "complete me" (stupidest line in romantic movie history, by the way), I have influence.  I hope that I teach girls that they don't need to date trash just to be dating.  I hope that I teach boys that they are not the saviors of their girlfriends.  I hope that I teach kids that marriage means too much to treat it lightly.  I hope, most of all, that I teach students that following God's plan (rather than following cultural expectations) is the only way to live.

*When I say no one, I really mean very few people, but it doesn't sound as good in the sentence.

I Just Can't Do This to My Vote

My blog is usually about education.  Be warned:  This one is not.  This post is political and inflammatory (and long).  Keep reading if you wish, but you have been warned.

On the morning of my 18th birthday, I was sitting at the library door when it opened.  I wanted the first thing I did that day to be registering to vote.  I had been following elections with great interest since I was twelve, and I couldn't wait to have this privilege of free people.  I registered as a Republican because that was the party that best represented my values and my understanding of American history.  I have voted in almost every election, large and small, ever since.  The few I have sat out were local elections in which I did not feel I had done enough research to make a responsible choice.   My vote was too important to me to just go in and guess or put it next to anyone with an R by their name.

Eight years ago, I took my precious, shiny vote and dulled it just a bit.  I didn't want John McCain to be the Republican nominee, and I didn't particularly want him to be President.  He was too liberal for my taste.  However, I did respect his resumé as a long term United States Senator and his ability to work with others.  I had great respect for his war service and the endurance displayed during his years as a POW.  While he would not have been my first choice, I felt good enough about him and bad enough about then Senator Obama to cast my vote.  I left the booth that day feeling a bit sad that I had voted against someone rather than for someone, but my conscience was clear.

Four years ago, my treasured vote took another hit.  Again, I would not have chosen Mitt Romney as the nominee for my party.  A Republican that gets elected in Massachusetts cannot be that conservative.  I also didn't want to vote for a Mormon.  However, after four years of President Obama, I felt that it was important to try to stop his reelection.  I did not feel very good about myself as I left the voting booth that day.  My vote was not just a little dulled; it was rather dented.

In the four years since, I have felt my vote more personally than ever before.  I have come to strongly feel my vote as an approval of policies and of people.  I have also come to believe that I will be judged by God, not only for what I do, but for what I approve of.  It is for that reason that I cannot walk into a voting both with my vote and put it down for either of the two major party candidates this November.  While I am impressed with her resumé, I have never approved of Mrs. Clinton's policies.  She believes the right to an abortion is God given, while I believe it is murder.  There isn't really a middle ground to be found there.  She believes that a large and involved government is the solution to social issues while I believe government should be as limited as it can possibly be.  I cannot approve of most of what she has approved of over the past couple of decades.

If you are thinking that since I am not a Clinton supporter that I must be a Trump supporter, you are thinking incorrectly.  I have never been more horrified by a Republican candidate (or possibly that of any party) than I am by Donald Trump.  I am embarrassed that my party has nominated him.  I can't elaborate on all of my reasons as there are dozens; and I can't imagine that you would want to read all of them, but I'll elaborate on a few.

He says that the Bible is his "favorite book," but he then turns around and reveals his complete lack of knowledge of its contents.  When asked if he has ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump replied, "I'm not sure I have ever asked God's forgiveness. I don't bring God into that picture."  It may be time to open your favorite book and read about the need every person has for God's forgiveness.  Reporters have tried to give him a chance to clarify his statements on forgiveness, and he just doubled down on his ignorance, saying, "I will be asking for forgiveness, but hopefully I won’t have to be asking for much forgiveness."  He believes he has lived a life that doesn't require forgiveness, which according to his favorite book means "the truth is not in him."  Beyond his gaffes involving misquotes and mispronunciations of scripture, he has minimized the sacrament of the Lord's supper, saying, "When I go to church and when I drink my little wine and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of forgiveness. I do that as often as I can because I feel cleansed. I say let's go on and let's make it right."  People in the audience laughed at this image.  The fact that he thinks this is a funny statement underscores his lack of understanding of the Christian faith.


Donald Trump has left two wives for younger women.  He was married to Ivana for fifteen years when he had an affair with twenty three year old Marla Maples.  He divorced Ivana and quickly married Marla, who he remained married to for only six years.  In the time between his marriage to Marla and his marriage to Melania, he played around a lot.  He even called his risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease his "personal Vietnam."  While conducting an interview in support of then President Bill Clinton, Trump was asked whether he would run for public office, he said, “Can you imagine how controversial I’d be? You think about him with the women. How about me with the women?”  This is a man that clearly places no value on his marriage vows.  What makes us think he will care any more about his oath of office?


Note:  The above paragraphs were written several weeks ago, before the release of the footage him discussing his sexual assaults on women.  Let's be clear; that's what we are talking about.  This isn't "boys will be boys locker room talk."  At the age of 59 with two daughters, he laughingly admitted to walking in on unclothed women at the Miss Universe pageant just because he could and to grabbing, groping, and kissing women whether they wanted him to or not.  Saying that he can get away with this because he's a star tells you what he thinks of himself and the women he objectifies.  The number of my Facebook friends who are posting that this is okay because of Bill Clinton is horrifying.  "What I did wasn't wrong because he did it too" isn't reasoning I would accept from my 8th graders, and I'm betting you wouldn't accept it from your kids, either.  Offended isn't the right word for how I feel because I'm not angry; I'm sickened.  I feel gross when I think about how he must look at women, as a collection of genitalia that exists for his enjoyment.  

There are people who immediately jump to say we have to vote for Donald Trump because of the Supreme Court.  Believe me when I tell you I would understand that argument with just about any other Republican candidate.  I do not believe, however, that Donald Trump could name one of the people on his list of potential nominees.  I don't think he knows their names, much less their beliefs or qualifications.  I believe that someone on his staff gave him the list and told him that he could get the pro-lifers with it.  It kills me to think that could actually work.  Do you really believe someone who has changed parties five times since 1987 has strong pro-life beliefs?  Do you really believe there will be even one less abortion under his administration than anyone else's?  


As I finish this post, I am watching the second presidential debate.  I also watched the first one and the first 20 minutes of the vice presidential debate (I fell asleep in my chair because it was a school day).  None of these have improved my view of Donald Trump.  The debates have done little more than show how childish he is, confronting the moderator like middle schooler.  They haven't improved my opinion of Hillary Clinton enough to get past our social and economic policy differences.  If anything, they are just disappointing spectacles.

If you have actually gotten this far, you may actually care what I am going to do.  The assumption that I must vote for one of them seems built into the conversation, but I just can't.  My vote means too much to me.  My students have told me to write in Spongebob, and I have told them they aren't getting it.  If my vote means too much to me to lay it down for either of these candidates, I'm not going in and making a joke with it either.  Interviews with Gary Johnson have convinced me that he is not an option.  Neither is Jill Stein.  So, I started searching.  I have read more candidates' web pages in the last few months than in the entire rest of my life.  I have indeed found someone I can approve of.  I know he won't win because there aren't enough people who know his name.  I don't even know if he will be on the ballot in NC.  I believe, however, after reading every page of his website, that he is the only candidate my conscience will allow me to vote for; so I will write him in if he isn't on the ballot.  His name is Mike Smith.  If you are a social and economic conservative and just don't know what to do, I encourage you to check out his site.  

I know there are some who will say this is a vote for Hillary.  I reject the premise that not voting for one is a vote for the other.  That's like saying if I eat a hamburger, it means I ate pizza because it wasn't a salad.  It just doesn't make sense.  

My Weirdness - Part 3 - No Interest in Girly-ness

In my house, there are two bottles of nail polish.  One of them is clear.  I'm not against fun colors of nail polish; I just don't care to spend the time.  The only hair appliance in my bathroom is a blow dryer.  I use it for about two minutes.  The last time I wore make up, it  was a different century.  I own one pink thing, and I wear it about one time per year (to Hoops for Hope).

I just don't care about the girly things that other girls seem to find so important.  I never have.  When I was a kid, my parents made me wait until I was 13 to wear makeup.  My mom took me to a Mary Kay rep, we invested in some good make up.  A couple of months later, I decided it felt slimy, and I didn't like it.  I decided to embrace my nerd and became "anti-cool."  If there was a cool store (at the time, that was The Limited), I wouldn't shop there.  Now, it is more a matter of time.  I can get out of bed and be out of the house in 20 minutes.  I just don't like investing time in things that don't last.  I'd rather be at school 30 minutes earlier than to spend 30 minutes straightening my hair.

I do not believe that everyone needs to live this way, but I like that my kids see that being a girl doesn't HAVE to mean being girly.  Then, they can decide for themselves whether or not they care about doing those things or if they have just been doing them because they think they have to.

My Weirdness - Part 2 - No Cell Phone

Imagine there was a person in your life who insisted you take them with you everywhere you go.  "You won't be safe.  You won't be happy.  You'll be wishing you had me because you will always wonder what funny thing I would have been saying to you if you did.  Your friends won't think you're cool if you don't take me with you."  If that was a person in your life, you would find them controlling and manipulative and would not want them around.  I imagine, "You're not the boss of me" would be said at some point in your relationship.  That person would be a bully.

You let a piece of glass and metal, however, do this to you every day of your life.  It's called your smart phone.  This piece of technology that was designed as a convenience doesn't make your life easier.  It bullies you.
- Every day, it says, "You must take me with you, or you won't be safe."  When students find out that I don't own a cell phone, it is the first thing they bring up.  They say, "What if you have an emergency?"  I remind them that emergencies existed before the invention of the cell phone.  They launch into a stream of what if's questions in an effort to impress upon me how much danger I am in.  I'm not going to say that phones haven't helped people out of dangerous situations, but I have also never walked into traffic while chasing a Pokeball, and I've never had the issue of texting while driving; so I think it's a wash.
- Every day, it says, "You must take me with you, or you won't be happy.  You'll be wishing you had me because you will aways wonder what you are missing out on without me."  I do sometimes watch my students joyfully show each other a funny video, but more often than not, I watch them ignore each other because they are each so engrossed in their phone that they aren't present where they physically are.  When they don't have them, they have so much fear or what they are missing that they are riddled with anxiety.  These are signs of addiction, and we would recommend they seek treatment for that if it were anything but a phone.
- Every day, it says, "Your friends won't think you're cool if you don't take me with you."  This isn't just true of students but adults as well.  It's another way of showing your status to the world, and it is just as obnoxious to show off with the phone you have as it is to show off with the car you drive or the watch you wear.  They are all tools to achieve an end.  Having them in rose gold doesn't actually make them better tools.


As technology advances, we must make choices about our lives.  Accepting everything that comes our way for no other reason than because it is new makes us mindless drones.  Have a philosophy of life, and see if new technologies fit into your philosophy.  Note:  I'm not saying you should see if it fits in with my philosophy but that it should fit with yours if you are going to adopt it.  I have decided that there is too much noise in my world.  By that, I don't just mean sound.  As a teacher, I am bombarded with a constant stream of input from students, parents, other teachers, friends, grade analysis, research, and the internet.  Without a cell phone, I don't carry the noise with me twenty-four hours a day.  I decided some time ago that there needs to be some time in my life between thought and action; there needs to be some time between asking a question and the ability to get an answer.  If I don't have that in my life, my patience will plummet.  I use my computer to look for a lot of information; but because I have to wait until I get back to my computer, it allows for that little bit of lag time I personally need.  Smartphones do not give us time to think and process and reflect wisely before we fire off a tweet or look up an answer.  Therefore, they do not fit within the philosophy I have for myself.  My philosophy of any tool is that it should be used properly and for the convenience of the user.  If the phone rings at my house, I do not answer it if the timing is inconvenient because the ring is a signal, not a command.  People ask me all the time how I live without a cell phone, and my answer is always the same, "A lot more peacefully than you live with yours."

If any technology is determining your philosophy instead of the other way around, it is controlling you.  Take a step back and reflect on whether that is what you want in your life.

My Weirdness - Part 1

I am weird.  I have always been weird.  I like being weird.  I believe that one of the reasons God has put me in this job is to show my students that what is normal is not always what is right.  They often do not know the difference between want and need, and seeing teachers they like not have certain things is helpful for their development.  They need to see that what they believe to be critical might not even be necessary.  I've decided to make my next few posts about those things that are so weird about me that it makes my 8th graders stop and wonder how I am still alive.

These will include:
- I do not own a cell phone.
- I do not spend time on hair, makeup, or nails.
- I am a virgin.
- I do not pay people to do things I can do myself.

Those are the ones I have thought of so far.  GRACE teachers reading this.  If you know something else about me that my students think is weird, feel free to comment.  I'm happy to add to this list and write about these things.

Growing Pains (not the TV show from the 80's)

We all know the cliche "No pain, no gain" and have no problem using it as motivation when we work out.  When kids are growing, their bones hurt, and we say they are having growing pains.  We seem to understand that when it comes to physical change, pain will be involved.  We understand that while it is not fun, it is necessary for improvement.

The acquisition of new skills often means failing until we succeed.  We know that to improve our condition, we may have to destroy the old condition.  We practice a dance move over and over until we get it right, suffering leg pain, foot pain, and blisters in the process.  We take a kind of pride in our soreness after a hard workout.  We practice free throws, putts, and other athletic skills over and over.  We hire personal trainers to yell at us, making the pain we experience from a workout even worse.  We intentionally don't look at the ingredients on bottles of skin enhancers because we would rather have the results than be grossed out by the contents when we could just look better.  When it comes to improving the body, we get it.  There must be pain for there to be growth.

As I teacher, I will tell you that most people don't seem to get it when it comes to improving the mind.  When I push a student past their current state, they are rather upset by it.  Many (but not all) of their parents are as well.  I teach eighth grade, which is a difficult transition year because it is the year a  start as a middle schooler and ends as a high school student.  Teachers must take students higher up on the Bloom's taxonomy ladder more often.  The study methods students use for the first years of school are not enough any more.  They must start making connections between different aspects of the material they are learning, and they must connect it to things they have already learned.  They must apply and analyze information in a way they haven't had to before.  Students who have always been high performers on tests suddenly find themselves making lower grades than they used to.

I know this sounds like it is all bad news, but it isn't.  Lifting weights doesn't make your muscles stronger.  If they did, each rep would be easier than the last.  We all know that doesn't happen.  Muscles grow stronger BECAUSE the muscle fibers are broken down by lifting weights that are heavier than the muscle can currently lift.  They then repair themselves with more connections.  Personal trainers take people beyond what they believe to be their physical limits.  If they don't, the trainee will not see results.  The same is true of the brain.  When a student first learns something, they may be confused and feel off balance because the material is more difficult than what their mind can process in its current state.  The educational term for this is "mental disequilibrium."  As the new skill is practiced, the brain is brought back into balance with the new skill.  That is learning.  This means if a student is never confused, he isn't learning.  If I don't stretch them beyond what they believe their limit to be, they will not see results.  You would fire your trainer if every workout was easy, and you should drop any teacher that makes every class period easy.

Accreditation Celebration

For the past two years, we have been preparing for the renewal of our school's accreditation.  For the past two days, we have been visited by the accreditation review team.  This is a great, scary, tiring, exhiliarating, interesting, and unsettling process.  Anyone who gets inspected on their job understands how weird it is to have someone you don't know come in and watch you do your job.

Here's a ridiculously brief summary of how it works.  We start by dividing into committees involving teachers across multiple levels of the school, parents, a student representative, and often an administrator.  Each committee is assigned some aspect of the school to examine.  My committee examined the teaching and learning aspects of the school.  Others involved resource allocation, leadership, etc.  We rated ourselves on various criteria related to that aspect of the school.  We examined everything from whether we think we do it well to whether we think we do it from a distinctly Christian perspective. We gathered evidence to support our opinons (in my case, student work), and we write a report.  Those reports are then compiled into one large report and sent to the external review team.

The team read our report and examined our evidence for about a month before they showed up on our campus.  They wrote questions of things they might like more detail on or would like to see verified.  They toured our campuses, met our leadership, and began their discussions with each other.  Then, they spent most of a day and a half observing our classrooms.  Between them, these six people sat in on 50 lessons.  That's an impressive cross section of our school.  They rated on us the learning environment we provide for our students.

Yesterday afternoon, they delivered their findings (our report card if you want it in school terms) to the administration in detail and then the summary to our entire faculty and staff.  As he began his presentation, I was interested in one thing, the slide with the ratings.  All the other information is helpful and useful, but I wanted to see the brass tacks numbers.  For seven different fields, we were given a rating between one and four during every observation.  Those ratings were then averaged together, and our LOWEST average rating was 3.54!  I believe in what we are doing, but that was an incredible validation of what we knew.  Yes, there were things to improve on, but those were things we had already identified ourselves as needs and are in progress.

I spoke to one of our administrators, who said that our technology program was praised in particular.  He told them that they see a lot of computers and many one-to-one programs, but they didn't see people using it as well as we did.  I would like to point out that this is due to the tireless effforts of several people.  Sean and Diane, you may not be with us any more, but you got us started on the right foot, noticed our plateau / regression year, and took action to move us forward.  Laura, Tomeka, Daniel, and Carol, you have continued to coach us and encourage us to use the technology, not just in new ways but in more meaningful ways.  Dana and Anthony, you tirelessly put out fires and prevent them.  None of this would happen without your continued efforts to make it all work.  Thank you to all of you because we know you work hard to make our work easier.

The other statement made yesterday that stuck with me was that they felt our Biblical worldview integration was natural and unforced.  They even said students had commented on that.  It stuck with me because I came from public school and really had to learn to do it.  For years, I felt that I was perhaps forcing it, and I appreciate that people have taken the time to really help us INTEGRATE, not add, biblical teaching into our curriculum.

We will see the details of this report in days to come and begin work on the areas of suggested improvement; but for right now, we all get to take a deep breath and thank God for the incredible community in which he has placed us.

The Heisenberg Principle of Education

One of my biggest pet peeves is when scientific principles are co-opted for other purposes.  "Social Darwinism," for example, bears little resemblance to Darwin's observations.  Einstein's theory of relativity is not meant for you to have whatever opinion you want and then say, "It's all relative."  However, I am about to use Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as a means of explaining a teaching phenomenon.

First, the science.  Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa.  In other words, if I know the location of an electron with certainty, I cannot know it's velocity.  If I know its precise velocity, I cannot know its location.  The reason this is true is that in order to measure a precise location, one must use some kind of measuring device that will affect the velocity of the particle.  The same is true for measuring the velocity.  In the time it takes to measure velocity, the location of the particle will have changed.  Electrons even have the weird habit of behaving differently when we measure them than they do when we aren't.  The act of measuring (or even observing) a thing changes it.  

What, you may ask, does this have to do with education?  I'm glad you asked.  Teachers spend most of our year just doing our thing in our classes with our students.  Every once in a while, however, we are observed.  It could be a prospective student; it could be our administrator.  This week, GRACE is being visited by a team for the purposes of accreditation.  We will have people in and out of our classrooms for a couple of days.  

I have told my kids that I have no intent of showing off or faking anything for anyone, and I don't.  The lesson plan I have set for tomorrow is the same as it would have been whether the team was coming to visit or not.  I printed it out in a bit more detail because I tend to leave out the parts that only I need.  No matter how much I intend to be myself, however, I know that there will be some differences.  I have been observed enough times to know that I will probably talk a little faster than usual and second guess everything I say.  Students, if your other teachers are doing that too, please don't hold it against us.  It isn't our intent to lie; it's just that the act of observing something changes it.  If you believe I have actually put on a false show, tell me.  Be respectful and private about it, but please tell me.  I want to know if I am giving you that impression.

Is This Test Hard?

Teachers live for questions.  We love them.  They are the number one sign of student engagement.  Our love for questions has even led to the patently ridiculous aphorism, "There are no stupid questions."  That's not true.  There are A LOT of stupid questions.  This post is about one of them.

"Is this test hard?"

I haven't kept a record of every question I have ever been asked; but if I had to guess, this is probably the question I have been asked more times than any other.  If not, it is certainly in the top three (along with, "May I go to the bathroom?" and "Can we get extra credit points for . . .?")  Here's the answer to that question.

I don't know.

I really don't know.  I have a science degree, and I have taught this material for 17 years, and I wrote the questions.  The test isn't hard FOR ME.  I have no way of knowing if it will be hard for you.  The follow up question is the usually, "Has it been hard for past students?"  The answer to that isn't any more satisfying; the answer is "For some of them."  Some of them paid attention while others did not.  Some have taken good notes while others have note.  Some have studied well while others have not.  Some have come to me for extra help while others have not.  Some are good at analysis while others have not yet built that skill.  This means that the test was hard for some people, but it was not for others.

Every test is hard for some people, but it is rarely because the test questions are written to be difficult.  In fact, I am often surprised at which questions are frequently missed.  The question I thought was easy and told students would be on the test is often the one answered incorrectly by the most students.      Apparently, telling students a question will definitely be on the test is a sure we to prevent them from studying that question.  I can't pretend to understand that, but students have been leaving, "List the two parts of the kinetic theory of matter" blank for a lot of years in spite of all my efforts.  Some students read only the first part of questions and jump straight to a memorized answer, which means questions with nuances will be wrong.  For math problems in science, I require a certain format; but it sometimes takes two or three tests before students believe that I will take points off if they don't follow it.  Sometimes I get very short answers to questions that require complex reasoning.  For example, when I ask students to describe why people float better in the dead sea than in a pool, I sometimes get answers like, "Cuz of the salt."  When I asked students to describe in detail the process of breathing using Boyle's Law, some of them answer, "First you inhale; then you exhale."  These answers are clearly worth five points each.  The most frequent incorrect answer to an all of the above question is "a," reflecting that these students didn't read the other choices.  All of these result in points lost, but none of them reflect that the test is hard.

Teachers write questions using something called Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking levels (see the above diagram).  Everyone knows how to prepare for the remembering level by using flashcards or repetition, and by middle school, most of my students have become pretty good at preparing for the understanding level if the teacher has told them it will be a question on the test.  Application and Analysis level questions require a different kind of preparation, and it can't be found in the book.  When I ask these types of questions, no matter how simple, that test is considered "a hard test."  If you are wondering about the top two levels, they require more processing time than a timed test would usually allow.  Evaluation tends to be done in debates or essays, and creation is usually achieved with projects.

Lack of preparation makes tests hard.  Students, next time you study for a test, try to identify what level of thinking is required.  If something requires an explanation, recognize that flashcards alone won't get you there.  If several pieces of material can connect, be prepared for analytical questions that relate those.  Proper preparation will make you walk into a test prepared and walk out believing it wasn't a hard test.

Boldly Go

It was fifty years ago today that Kirk, Spoke, Uhura, Scotty, and Bones took off on their five-year mission.  Although the show itself lasted only three years, its impact has been felt for fifty.  As a lifelong geek, I'm proud to tell my students I am a fan of Star Trek (even when they insist Star Wars is better as though I am only allowed to like one of them).

Awards shows don't reward science fiction, so the Star Trek franchise has never gotten the critical acclaim it has rightfully earned.  Awards are not, however, the sole measure of successful television.  Star Trek has inspired our culture in more ways than most people realize.  This short list is just what I have thought of.

Science Education - I know more than one person who went into a scientific career because they loved Spock or into engineering because they were inspired by what Scotty was able to do with a warp engine.  They were under no illusion that these things actually exist, but they were inspired by the scientific possibilities.  There is, by the way, a fantastic book out there all about the scientific concepts used in the show.  It is called The Physics of Star Trek.  If you go to GRACE, it is in our library.  There are certainly some things that the show stretched because it is fiction, but there are also a lot of ways in which they were visionaries ahead of their time.


Technology - Speaking of being ahead of their time, take a look at some of the technologies envisioned by the creators of any of the Star Trek movies or shows.  Just in the collection of pictures below, you should recognize the precursors to Palm Pilots, Bluetooth, Google Glass, Skype, Cell Phones, and iPads.  I'm not saying that these wouldn't have been invented without Star Trek, but every invention starts with an idea, a dream of something in the future.  That's what the writers of Star Trek gave inventors.

A Vision of Racial Harmony - When Whoopie Goldberg was cast in Star Trek: The Next Generation, there were quite a few people scratching their heads about why a movie star of her status (which was quite big at the time - Remember Ghost?) would want to be cast in episodic television.  Even Gene Roddenberry didn't think she was serious when she requested a role.  She was asked about it in an interview for the DVD box set, and she said two things that stuck with me.  "First," she said, when you get to be a movie star, you get take the parts you want."  True, but why did she want it?  She said that when she was growing up, she didn't see African American portrayed in roles of authority.  However, in 1966, she watched Lieutenant Uhura command respect and hold her own as a bridge officer.  I've seen interviews with Ronald McNair and Mae Jemison, black astronauts in the 80's and 90's, in which they said the same thing.  They believed that careers in space could be within their reach because of Star Trek.

A Vision of Gender Equality - Lieutenant Uhura also inspired women of other races.  She was on that bridge with men and was a trusted advisor to Captain Kirk.  By the time of The Next Generation, the doctors were women.  There were female captains, and in the episode "The First Duty," the head of Starfleet Academy is a woman.  Captain Janeway commands the respect of her people on Star Trek: Voyager, when they actually benefitted from having a more motherly leader in their captain.

Gene Roddenberry's view of the future may not match our reality, but it does give us something to think about and some things to aspire to.  Thanks for the last fifty years, Gene.

 

I Teach Science, and You Should Be Jealous

If you are an English, History, Math, or Foreign Language teacher, I'm sorry to tell you this.  Your job is not as fun as mine.  Sure, you get to distribute numbers and solve system with substitution (my favorite property and system solving method).  You might get talk about wars and stuff.  You get to parse every word of Ode on a Grecian Urn (which is my favorite poem ever).  Those things are fun, but they aren't as fun as my job.  I'll prove it.

Here's what I get to do that you do NOT:
- Build boats out of Aluminum foil (after teaching them that it is not Tin foil) and sink them with pennies.
- Crush cans with air pressure by dunking them in ice.
- Have students push your car around the building.
- Rip plastic bottles to shreds by blowing them up.
- Buy dry ice at 6:30 in the morning so you can watch kids play with it the same day.
- Wear goggles.
- Donate your cat's body to the teacher across the hall for dissection.
- Eat chalk.
- Pop a water balloon in your own face.
- Use a nerf gun with a protractor.
- Play catch to analyze the trajectory.
- Spin kids in a chair.
- Push kids down the hall in a chair.
- Push kids in the parking lot in a chair.
- Hollow out pennies.
- Split salt molecules.
- Use 9 Volt batteries to make sparks.
- Lick 9 Volt batteries.
- Play with slinkys.
- Play the nose flute.

Are you jealous of me yet?  No?  Here are some more.
- Tape students to walls
- Drop eggs off the building
- Make kids hair stand on end with electricity
- Ignite hydrogen
- Jump off of chairs
- Sling a bucket of water in a circle over your head
- Spin in circles in the parking lot
- Make parachutes for army men
- Set stuff on fire
- Drive fast while honking
- Shine laser pointers at mirrors
- Teach kids why the sky is blue
- Show laser eye surgery
- Wrap students in bubble wrap

There's more, but I'm pretty sure I've made my point.  So there.

More Than Devices

In last week's post, I ended with a shout out to Laura Warmke for helping me work through some new ideas to replace an old project.  This week, I thought I would share about Laura and her role in our school because it might be unique.  At the very least, it is rare; and it should not be.  Laura has made us better teachers, and I'm not sure I can give a higher compliment than that.

Let me start with a bit of history.  When I started at GRACE fourteen years ago, teachers were calculating grades with a calculator and a pencil.  I created a spreadsheet, and I think my colleagues viewed it as sorcery.  During the years that followed, our school slowly grew in technology by allowing students to bring their own devices and encouraging teachers to learn new things.  As new teachers were hired, they brought new skills and ideas.  The whole time, we were encouraged by our IT Director, Diane Scro.  She supported, taught, trained, and cheered us on in our efforts to come forward.  She even convinced our head of school to start implementing Smart Boards in our classrooms.  Big SHOUT OUT to Diane for pulling us forward.  Diane was joined seven years ago by Sean Blesh, and that team was the force behind our one to one program.  Together, they held teachers hands as we learned Mac and began to implement technology based lessons into our plans.  They both understood that they were dealing with teachers across the spectrum of skills and fear when it came to technology and were able to move everyone forward.  Big SHOUT OUT to both Sean and Diane for the way they led us during this time.  They couldn't have been better resources.

Five years ago, our librarian moved to Tennessee.  That's when we hired Laura.  If you are over thirty, you probably think of librarians as older women who tell you to be quiet, lest you disturb the books.  That is wrong.  They are now media specialists.  That's not just a PC term like "administrative assistant."  Media specialists will still lead you to the book you need, but they will also help you find information from credible internet sources, connect you to visual media, make sure you are staying within fair use guidelines, put it in a perspective of research, teach your class to do more than google, and possibly connect you with an expert.  It's not just about books anymore.  Laura is all these things, but she is also someone who cares deeply about teachers and helping them make the best lesson possible.

Two years ago, Laura's husband finished his PhD and got a job in the Midwest.  For some reason, Laura wanted to live with her husband, so she had to move to Indiana or Illinois or whatever too.  I was not okay with this; but as He often does, God made it work even better than we knew.  We now have a wonderful new media specialist, Daniel O'Brien (Big SHOUT OUT to Daniel for implementing Maker Spaces and our 3-D printer), but we also didn't lose Laura.  She became a telecommuting technology coach.

Let me say that in different words.  We have a faculty member who lives over a thousand miles away!  She provides all the support and love she always did, but she does it using Google Hangout (while staying home with her babies).  Every quarter, I have at least one meeting with her just for the purpose of talking through new ways to integrate technology and create more depth in our lessons, especially challenge based learning projects.  She is also available by e-mail, and we share some google docs for things that require more extended collaboration.  She physically comes in for teacher week at the beginning and end of the year and for the North Carolina Technology in Education Conference; but most of the time, we just see her head.  This happened because GRACE understands the need for teacher training in technology.  No matter what devices a school has, without teacher training they might as well be a chisel and stone.  All schools should have someone like Laura (NOT Laura, she is ours), someone who is looking out for the deeper application of technology rather than just the use of it.  It's the way to make your one to one program more than devices.

Trading in Tradition

One of the funniest things I have learned from teaching at a school long term (14th year at GRACE) is that kids are intolerant of new ideas.  Sound crazy?  Aren't millennials early adopters of technology?  Aren't they seeking novelty?  Aren't they progressive?  The answer to all those questions is, "Yes, unless it is about education."

When students come to visit, they remember everything I did with them.  They ask if I have talked about twinkies yet.  Sadly, the twinkiesproject website no longer exists, or I would have used it forever.  They ask if we have done the egg drop project yet.  They even ask about certain jokes I tell.  They remember everything and will not hear of my changing any of those things.  They are traditions, set in stone.  No one is allowed to say they graduated from GRACE without hearing the story of Max (my first cat) getting stuck in a tree.

This year, there is a big change happening in my classroom, and I am already hearing negative feedback from older siblings of my students.  As of this year, I am dropping "The Atom Project."  For seventeen years, I have assigned each student an element, had them build a Bohr model of the atom of that element, and do research on the history and uses of said element.  This year, I am dropping this project in favor of one in which my students will research various topics related to the nucleus of an atom (radiation cancer treatment, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, fusion, irradiation of foods).  Former students have told me I can't make this change.  I don't know what kind of power they think they have, but they keep telling me that their brother should have to make an atom model.  They can't believe I would not have this project.

Don't get me wrong, this was a good project.  I would not have assigned it for seventeen years if it hadn't been.  However, there are reasons to change a project, even a good project.  I modified it over the years.  The model never really changed, but the presentation of research went from a written essay to a podcast to a newsletter to a website.  These were modifications in presentation, not content. They were reactions to technological changes, not scientific ones.

You may be asking yourself (as my former students ask me), "Why change it?"  There are two reasons.  One is personal - the other pedagogical.

Personal Reason:  I'm tired.  I'm tired of grading this project.  I'm tired of counting beads, cotton balls, puff balls, styrofoam balls, thumb tacks, pennies, and the gazillion other materials used to represent protons, neutrons, and electrons.  In a quick calculation, I estimate that I assigned this model to 945 students.  They have built models from carbon (36 particles) to plutonium (327 particles), I believe that I have counted over 185,000 subatomic particles in my career.  Then there is the paper.  I haven't learned anything new about an element in a long time.  When I am a senile old lady, pushing a shopping cart down the street, people are going to be confused why I keep muttering, "Aluminum is the most abundant element in the earth's crust."  It is because I have read at least 30 papers that started with that sentence.  I'm tired.

Pedagogical Reason:  Personal reasons aside, there are real reasons to change projects.  The old way is at a fairly low thinking level.  It is very concrete and doesn't incorporate 21st Century Learning.  Students do come away with an understanding of the atom and certainly some of the applications of elements they might not have known before, but I don't think they come away with much understanding of why that is relevant to their lives.  It consumes from the internet (which has value), but it does not contribute to the internet.  The new project will still require them to understand the nucleus of the atom because they will have to learn in it in order to explain the technology.   However, they will also have to apply this understanding to busting myths about nuclear activity.  They will get to see the relevance of how knowledge of the atom led to improved cancer treatment, or how their food could be preserved if we allowed it to be irradiated with gamma rays.  These are things that apply to the lives they live in the 21st century.   They will get to decide as a class how they want to present the research (make a website, put videos on a youtube channel, hold a summit).  In this way, they will be contributors, not just consumers.

If you are a former student of mine, you should know that some of the things I did with you are different from the class before you (unless I taught you in 1998).  You want teachers to have new ideas.  You want us to improve.  Teachers who have the same year over and over for their entire career are not teachers you want to have.

PS - Big Shout Out to our technology coach, Laura Warmke, for her encouragement and willingness to brainstorm ideas with me.