Juda STEM Day - 2015-16 Robot Mazes

Wanted to share our STEM video, really proud of what we are doing at Juda!

Moving away from graded projects can be scary, but it worth it!

Mission - Gotta Believe It Is - Possible (and it is)....

Heard an interesting stat at the WTI conference last month - children of families that make more than $108,000 per year, graduate college  by 24 years old (6 years post HS) at a rate of approximately 75%.  When the income range changes to between $34,000 to $108,000, the graduation rate drops to about 25% - and just because that was not terrifying enough - when income is less than $34,000 the percent that graduate college by 24 years old is less than 10%.

There is the challenge.  And that feels daunting when you look at those percentages -- those college graduation rates are what our current system produces.  And that stat is why we simply cannot teach like we always have - our results have not been great.  Doing the same thing and expecting different results...... well we know what that is, insanity.  How we introduce students topics, how we expect them to process and understand must be changed.  We must recognize that the current system is not helping all students, and it was not designed to do so.  The system was designed to sort.

We must not sort, time that is needed and grades must be done differently.  Giving a student an F or B does not make him/her ready for their post HS life.  Grades cannot be the final measure of a student in a class room.  Their success after our walls should be, and that is why differentiation is key.

So when a school is over half free and reduced lunch your challenge is there.  I strive to make sure that my students can successfully complete their first semester of secondary math beyond HS - whether that is a technical college, a 4 year-college Algebra course or a Calculus depending on the courses the student have taken with me at my school.  And that is not easy; I continually push myself and my students to make sure they are all ready, even my D students.  For all of them are moving to careers (some thru college, some not) - and I accept that it is my job to make sure they can do math for their next step.

If students are not pushed, are not given upper level work there will be no belief they can handle secondary education.  And I think belief is what is really missing below $108,000 income level.  We must stop sorting and start setting up students for post-HS success.

Finding great activities - an unending priority

Always finding the best way to teach math is an unending battle.  Finding ways for the students to truly discover high level math concepts is a difficult endeavor.

This past summer I was lucky enough to be part of a grant with UW-Platteville on STEM (along with 4 kick-butt co-workers).   We have done a number of things as a team to help make our school a better problem solving place.  One thing from the summer course was to do a STEM assignment in one of our classes - tape it, keep student data and reflect upon it.  I figured why not post it here too.

My project was to use ziggurats to help drive summation understanding.  It is a project I took directly from the summer grant.   And I am thankful that I was able to have the materials given to me versus me having to create the materials.  Making projects during the school year itself is a tough mission; that is why getting projects during the summer is so important.

So the project had plane views of different ziggurats (pyramids) which I combined with set of blocks where I wanted the students to calculate the number of blocks in 7 layers of zigguarat, but more importantly to create a summation that would represent the total too.

There were three designs, it was a challenge for the students.  Each group quickly calculated the number of blocks in the ziggurat, but to turn that into a summation proved more challenging.  Especially when the summation had to have an odd number in the sequence!  (It went 1 squared, 3 squared, 5 squared, and so on).

I have taught Pre-Calculus for a decade and this was the first time where I truly saw the "a-ha" moment with all my students working on summations.  And unsurprisingly it is the first time I have taught summations any way besides lecture and practice.  So why hadn't I done it?  Plain and simple - just time.

Finding and creating projects is time consuming, and I just had not had it before this grant - that is why professional development like this and time in our district is so important.  It is important for us to remember and ask for the time, without making and taking time we end up in a routine.  And that routine will rarely lead to improved teaching.  And small successes are the stepping stones to larger things.

Our school's larger thing now is our commitment to have all our students get a hand-on STEM experience - we do that by using homeroom time working outside of a class and a grade.  We were able to do this through a grant and community support and the results are looking great (STEM progress video).  It all starts with small steps - like the STEM class at UW-Platteville.

And while time is important, activities come from being fearless also.  I remind myself that sometimes I just need to make the time to try something new.  I need to say if it does not work it is okay, try, revise.  I just need to make finding great learning opportunities a priority.

Just too impatient for real gains

Big news in Wisconsin this fall, we have a (another) new power test this school year - the Wisconsin Forward Exam.   Replacing the long used WKCE and the 1 year used Smarter Balanced.  For years the WKCE was given and basically ignored by many educators, what do you do with a test given in the fall with results returned in the spring.  It never tested problem solving, collaborating, revising, either.  Then....

We worked for multiple years to shift to the CCSS and a new test.  A test which was suppose to be easier to use data from and provide a better picture of whether our students were learning the necessary problem solving skills.  Big change, new way - new things to do.  And then, boom, we moved away from the Smarter Balanced assessment after only one year (yeah the roll out was bad).  Maybe it is the right move, I am not sure, but it really shows how easily education drifts with the winds.

Now the Forward test is coming, and it has to hurry for spring; rushing  from the normal 12-18 months, it is being made in about 9 months.

Removed are the performance tasks from the Smarter Balanced, which did have some issues last year.  But the move makes sense because we all do so much scan tron work in the real world....
Now I had not been a fan of the Smarter Balanced assessment performance tasks.  But again - we don't revise, we don't correct - we remove, thus a new wind and another new direction.

So a rushed test, with a different format.  Good, bad I don't know.  Are we really going to have useful data?  Again, not sure.  But it simply shows we have no long term goals for real improvement.  We have no backbone for our vision and path.

Worst of all, we have armed a small, very small, but vocal minority of people whose rally cry is don't change.  Why work at the new things?  So initiatives simply disappear - we don't revise in education we replace.

This all is part of the perfect storm of education, it takes years in industry to run long range plans, you set it and hold it.  Little bumps are expected and dealt with - education does not have that resiliency.  And now for the first year our national scores dipped in over 2 decades - it is not isolated.

I truly believe that dip is because of the lack of professionalism shown the teaching profession coupled with a vision that changes with the wind.  We are simply not doing the right things long enough, we are just too impatient for real gains.



(FYI - I started this blog weeks ago - when the news was fresh - I was just raging too much to make a readable post until now)

Context is not enough. The power of sentence fragments, the need to be oh-so careful....

Was reminded again how powerful the teacher can be for evil (by mistake).  Often I talk about the need in my calculus class for students to study and make sure they treat the course like the college class it is (4 credits - is 8-12 hours per week in 1 semester, we do it over 2 semesters - so 4-6 hours per week).

But I accidentally ended a sentence with "you cannot get an A in this course."  And that is what is remembered.  Now that ending sentence fragment was part of a speech that you need to study to do well.  And the whole sentence that ended the speech was "If you do not study, you cannot get an A in this course."

But that is not what gets remembered.  I made sure to correct it and made sure students understood that everyone in the course can get an A.  And I reflected on how I talk about studying and Calculus - knowing now it would be better to say "If you do not study, it makes this course extremely difficult typically" or something like that. 

It is the details that count and we must remember the power we, teachers, have.  And even after a decade I still trip up.  That is why reflection is so important....

So to all my calculus students - studying is important and As are completely possible.

Maker-Space Saturday....

   Today I am at a conference on Makers-Spaces (thank you Sun Prairie HS & presenters from www.naomiharm.org).   My idea today was just to blog through-out the day as thoughts hit me.
    Maker-Spaces are about hands-on.  Using building blocks, electronics, cars - anything, so long as you create.   It is the idea that doing is learning, that doing is understanding.  I know in math that the doing is critically important - but the skill I want to deliver is problem-solving.  And that happens by solving problems -- thinking about and handling problems.
    The first activity was the question what can you do with a paper plate, the instructor used Socrative and we thought about what a paper plate can be used for, then we built something.  It was interesting to think about a problem and then how to solve it.  My gang from Juda (4 of us) designed a car to deliver candy down the ramp at our school building (the cloths pin had a Kit-Kat prior to the picture - I ate it....).    A project that was a problem where students could build, test and revise.  Again - to get "good" at problem solving you must practice problem solving.

   We then discussed room redesign - remaking learning spaces.  The question from the speaker that I grabbed was:  "Is the classroom for me and my stuff or my students?"  After a decade of teaching I need to take a couple of days and make sure my room is actually their room.    I need to continue to make the space multi-purpose, make it a place where the cost of errors is non-existent and opportunity to succeed is always present.  That is part of the maker-space mentality also.
   Finally our group talked about our school.   That was big part of the day for us.  Our school's discussion centered on our vision for students and student learning.  How do we create the environment to help our students become better problem solvers?  And for us it centers on the idea that everyone needs the chance to be hands-on (forget a particular class) and is done for practice (thus not for a grade).  And lastly, probably most importantly, there is a culture where mistakes are not discourage but embraced as a step forward.  That mistakes occur on the path to success and those mistakes along with revisions are a normal part of problem solving (not to be avoided or made fun of).
    It was a good Saturday.

Checking for skills versus procedures

I assess often.  I have many reasons why, but that is for another time.  To help grade efficiency I have rules about writing on one side of paper and leaving space for problems.  I joke about helping an old man out with my students.

But what do we do when a student does not do it?  Should we take points off for not following directions or for being insubordinate?

I don't - I grade math and work with the students for the next assessment.  In the real world you often get chances to correct "format" things (and lets not kid ourselves school is not real world).  And I don't agree that this type of instructions is about responsibility.

I write messages - a :( with a drip of water for a tear on a paper, or a message from a character - like a superhero or singer or a even just from a tree, like this:



While it is tempting to punish, my job is to teach.