A trillion dollar claim
What I like best about my school is how unapologetic we are about demanding academic success for all of our students, which flows from Dr. P and the culture he has engendered. Any student on our D and F list gets targeted for remediation efforts. Targeted!
After a week having a Gucci clad 6th grader come to my class all week during lunch for remediation of geography content in U.S. History -- 3 - F's on essentially the same quiz -- I decided to try a different approach. On the share drive, I found a simple hands-on sorting / matching activity that matched the regions to their critical attributes: Coastal Plain / Contains excellent harbors, Appalachian Highlands / Contains the oldest mountains, old eroded hills, etc. "If you want to eat with your friends in the lunch," I told her, "just sort these cards 3 times in a row correctly."
"Can you just give me the F?" she replied.
In above referenced Atlantic Monthly Article, which was discussed in the Math Department meeting, there is an unstated claim that not investing sufficiently in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) approaches could cost American workers potentially a trillion dollars over the near future. The opportunity cost of not focusing on STEM approaches came in conflict with a different priority recently after the Middle School Council voted to reintroduce Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) as a way to foster a "culture of reading." The Math Chairman questioned the validity of having students read "graphic novels" and, bless his heart, wanted to suggest a more guided approach, including shared reading and deep level questioning -- Jerry was going to have his Algebra students discuss the Atlantic article -- I chuckled at the prospect of having my students, virtually all below grade level readers, tackle the ideas discussed in the article. Excitedly, I pulled out the high interest, leveled, "considerate text" readers suggested earlier in the week by a renegade English teacher who has taken an interest in me, as she prepares to retire, and wants to pass on the treasures she has collected over a brilliant 30+ year teaching career.
Then came the directive: "Reader Choice is a key element of SSR," so after consulting with my team, I put the books away. Not a battle I am prepared to fight. Bring on the graphic novels.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Sunday, October 13, 2013
A good night"s sleep
Yesterday, as I was walking Mabel along a stretch of the Cross County Connector trail near my house, meditating on how I can apply the audio inputs from How to create a mind: The secret of human thought revealed, by Ray Kurzweil,
mom called and the conversation turned to my health. Jim Rohn, In the art of exceptional living, stated the moral obligation to positively address heath factors, "I'll take care of me for you," which helps keep me mindful of how I am or am not taking care of my body.
I learned long ago, from painful experience, the relationship between sleep deprivation and poor performance in a classroom, as well as a correlation between elevated blood pressure and diabetes. My full-throttle approach of teaching through lunch and working with students 2-3 days a week after school, can take a serious toll on my body. That approach also leads to snarky criticism from colleagues and administrators. When I run my machine so hard that I begin falling asleep five feet from the front floor, with Mabel licking my face, or falling asleep on the couch curled up next to Mabel, and don't discipline myself to go to bed and put on my darth vader machine, my cognitive capacity begins to flatline.
All Saturday, I was a walking zombie. None of the items on my list got done. Mom reminded me to use the bipap, so last night I took half an ambien, put on the mask, and got a solid 8 hours of sleep, and now I feel terrific.
There's a time to sleep and a time to roll. Let's roll!
I learned long ago, from painful experience, the relationship between sleep deprivation and poor performance in a classroom, as well as a correlation between elevated blood pressure and diabetes. My full-throttle approach of teaching through lunch and working with students 2-3 days a week after school, can take a serious toll on my body. That approach also leads to snarky criticism from colleagues and administrators. When I run my machine so hard that I begin falling asleep five feet from the front floor, with Mabel licking my face, or falling asleep on the couch curled up next to Mabel, and don't discipline myself to go to bed and put on my darth vader machine, my cognitive capacity begins to flatline.
All Saturday, I was a walking zombie. None of the items on my list got done. Mom reminded me to use the bipap, so last night I took half an ambien, put on the mask, and got a solid 8 hours of sleep, and now I feel terrific.There's a time to sleep and a time to roll. Let's roll!
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Simple Food
As we were leaving Dan's ticket scalping shop, we bumped into his supplier, Gianni, who was wearing an Oakland Raider's jersey. We struck up a conversation. Gianni reminisced about how much he had loved Al Davis. We asked Gianni where me might find a good place to eat. Gianni handed us a business card of his friend, the executive chef of Pinocchio's, and advised that we head away from Fisherman's Wharf, and walk about 10 blocks towards North Beach. Gianni said that Pinocchio's was within walking distance, and to tell them that Gianni had sent us. It was more like a 15 block walk. There, we were greeted by a person who must have been the owner. He said, "Welcome to Pinocchio's, where the food is good, but the service is lousy." He sat down at our table and had a Peroni with us. We asked for his recommendation. He replied simply, "pasta." As he made his rounds, he serenaded his guests with Opera. His regulars joined in.
Normally, I am the first to finish. That night, I finished last. I savored every morsel, smelled deeply for every hint of every ingredient, noticed every texture as it rubbed against my tongue. The portions were not large, but they were perfect. Pinocchio's thus became my standard for simple, authentic Italian food. The owner seconded my observation that authentic Italian food is simple, with each ingredient allowed it's own unique voice.
Tonight, I searched and found an excuse to drive my new used 2012 Ford Focus, which I bought earlier in the day from Khalid over at Enterprise Rental Cars in Woodbridge. My little schnauzer Mabel rode shotgun on my drive up the street to the 24 Hour CVS in King's Park. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that a new Italian restaurant, Giardino's had opened up in the same location as an Italian restaurant which about a year ago had spiraled into oblivion through mismanagement and lousy food -- the last three pizza's we bought there were badly burned -- and the restaurant food was worse, but the staff was friendly. After the third burnt pizza, Joe never let us buy pizza from there again. After I discovered an unpleasant surprise in my food one night when we went there for dinner, we were done.
I noticed that Giardino is affiliated with Paradiso, one of my favorite restaurants. I went to the original Franconia Road location when it first opened up in 1991, and dropped in recently when I had to go to DMV to renew my license. I overheard a couple comment that the menu looks the same, but that they would give the pizza a try. I went in, hoping to try a slice, simply curious. I was introduced to Tony and his wife, who own Paradiso. Tony and his wife told me that they had just opened up last Tuesday. I mentioned to Tony and his wife what the couple had said about the menu being about the same, but shared with Tony how excited I was about the affiliation with Paradiso, and was certain that the quality would be great. Tony and his wife shared with me how the grease had been about an inch thick, and how he had hired professionals to steam clean the place. Tony's wife handed me a VIP discount card, offering 10% off. They offered me a drink, but as sleep deprived as I was, I declined.
Tony explained to me that unlike the chains, Giardino's makes the dough from scratch, every day, and that the cheese is authentic high quality mozzerela which they shave from blocks. After I related to Tony my experience with Pinocchio's, he agreed that simple is best, and said that he prefers a simple cheese pizza, so I ordered a 12" pizza, hoping to reconnect my boy Joe to authentic wood fired pizza. Delicious! Joe loved it! Tomorrow, we will order a pizza for dinner. For years, I've felt we've needed an authentic Italian restaurant close to home. Thanks to Tony and his wife, we finally have one.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
More Dog Walks: Dyke Marsh
I will probably "catch a little _ _ll" for this post, since I revealed to Mom this morning that Interim grades are due, along two IEP Teacher Narratives, the need to complete my IEP software certification, not to mention the typical instructional preparation side of things, but I will make this a quick post. Tick, tick, tick ...
Part of the way my particular ADD mind works is that I tend to filter all experience through a set of cognitive lenses which cloaks everything I do in a layer of excitement or fun. I tend to avoid doing the boring things like sitting at my desk and taking care of professional paperwork obligations unless I have something fun or exciting to look forward, or I feel the breath of some catastrophic threat breathing down my neck. Thus, I habitually look at things as fun and exciting or catastrophic, which is the only way I seem to be able to marshal my powers of focused attention. Ergo, danger is fun! Posting, thus, moved to the top of my list ahead all of my staggering professional responsibilities. Can't do the boring stuff until I've walked along the razor line.
My canine "daughter" Mabel views things through a similar set of cognitive lenses, which is probably why we get along so well. Lately, Mabel has been able to cleverly exploit my feelings of guilt for working so many hours by persuading me to take her in my "Twuck" in search of better parks. She loves hanging her head out the window.
Today, Mabel helped me discover two hidden gems that have been sitting side by side, right in my own back yard. Instead of being satisfied with our normal Saturday morning 1.5 mile walk around the neighborhood through Accotinck Park, during which we often meet up with other dogs she looks forward to sniffing, such as Bandit the Basset Hound, she tugged me toward my old Chevy truck. I often try to drive to different parks, so Mabel and I have been getting bored with simply going around to normal park entrances. Today, I got on the Beltway heading toward the Wilson Bridge and the GW Parkway, in the general direction of Mt. Vernon. The Belle Haven Marina looked like a good place to pull over.
Little did I know, the Belle Haven Marina sits next door to one of the premier Bass fishing places in the area, Dyke Marsh. Mabel tugged me over to a rental hut. A man was getting help from the dockmaster, loading his bass boat on to his trailer. I inquired about about the kayaks, and in the course of conversation he mentioned how great the bass fishing is. I responded enthusiastically, this would be a great place for a weekend family few hour get away, during which, I could reconnect with Joe, Mabel's "bruddah." The life of a teacher and the life of a student athlete pull us in different directions, but there's always vacations.
As I was walking over to Dyke Marsh, my phone rang. Dad called to inquire about the naming convention for programs of study, curricula, objectives, units, and activities. With the recent republication of a lost Fulton Sheen book, and the encouragement of Guy Stevenson, dad is preparing for a possible meeting in Los Angeles, CA with a person who is responsible for the curricula for all of the Catholic schools in the USA. Dad is hoping to find someone to develop justice-based curricula for high school and college students consistent with principles of social and economic justice, which he considers a moral omission that is plaguing public education. My input was to steer him in the direction of the idea of "engaging learners" by developing activities where students were responding to real life projects such as "build a model justice-based city from the ground up," or "invent a groundbreaking new technology" using principles of economic and social justice.
I reminded dad of my brief association with Dr. Larry Kohlberg, who in the 1980's was using "moral dilemmas" to teach school governance in developmentally appropriate ways. After a CESJ annual conference, Larry invited me to attend his Conference on School Climate and Governance at Harvard University, where I practiced using Larry's tool, Moral Dilemmas, along with educational leaders from inner city schools, who were implementing many of Larry's student adjudication procedures.
As I was walking through Dyke Marsh, cellphone in hand, which must have annoyed all of the birdwatchers, I discussed the need for any curriculum designer to be able to generate assessment data, to show that the curriculum was having measurable results, and the need to develop visuals for the central dichotomy he hopes to insert into all humanities curricula, "own or be owned." My suggestion to dad was that, if he wanted "own or be owned" to be inserted into every curriculum, someone needed to develop an icon as recognizable as the icon for Coke.
Tick, tick, tick ...
Part of the way my particular ADD mind works is that I tend to filter all experience through a set of cognitive lenses which cloaks everything I do in a layer of excitement or fun. I tend to avoid doing the boring things like sitting at my desk and taking care of professional paperwork obligations unless I have something fun or exciting to look forward, or I feel the breath of some catastrophic threat breathing down my neck. Thus, I habitually look at things as fun and exciting or catastrophic, which is the only way I seem to be able to marshal my powers of focused attention. Ergo, danger is fun! Posting, thus, moved to the top of my list ahead all of my staggering professional responsibilities. Can't do the boring stuff until I've walked along the razor line.
My canine "daughter" Mabel views things through a similar set of cognitive lenses, which is probably why we get along so well. Lately, Mabel has been able to cleverly exploit my feelings of guilt for working so many hours by persuading me to take her in my "Twuck" in search of better parks. She loves hanging her head out the window.
As I was walking over to Dyke Marsh, my phone rang. Dad called to inquire about the naming convention for programs of study, curricula, objectives, units, and activities. With the recent republication of a lost Fulton Sheen book, and the encouragement of Guy Stevenson, dad is preparing for a possible meeting in Los Angeles, CA with a person who is responsible for the curricula for all of the Catholic schools in the USA. Dad is hoping to find someone to develop justice-based curricula for high school and college students consistent with principles of social and economic justice, which he considers a moral omission that is plaguing public education. My input was to steer him in the direction of the idea of "engaging learners" by developing activities where students were responding to real life projects such as "build a model justice-based city from the ground up," or "invent a groundbreaking new technology" using principles of economic and social justice.
I reminded dad of my brief association with Dr. Larry Kohlberg, who in the 1980's was using "moral dilemmas" to teach school governance in developmentally appropriate ways. After a CESJ annual conference, Larry invited me to attend his Conference on School Climate and Governance at Harvard University, where I practiced using Larry's tool, Moral Dilemmas, along with educational leaders from inner city schools, who were implementing many of Larry's student adjudication procedures.
As I was walking through Dyke Marsh, cellphone in hand, which must have annoyed all of the birdwatchers, I discussed the need for any curriculum designer to be able to generate assessment data, to show that the curriculum was having measurable results, and the need to develop visuals for the central dichotomy he hopes to insert into all humanities curricula, "own or be owned." My suggestion to dad was that, if he wanted "own or be owned" to be inserted into every curriculum, someone needed to develop an icon as recognizable as the icon for Coke.
Tick, tick, tick ...
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Presidential Letter Commemorating Masako's 100th Birthday Party
Yesterday I was given a nice excuse to post a short update that involves little effort on my part, and little risk of raising concerns that I'm going ADD, i.e., putting my job at risk by not focusing on writing lesson plans, not completing my certification training so that I can create online IEP's, and otherwise not holding the wolves at bay. Certain family members worry that my blogging is a dangerous thing, given the high levels of risk involved in being a Special Education Teacher, and all of the scrutiny which comes with the territory, but I have developed an uncanny ability to filter my words, so that I can say what I want while maintaining an edge. Grandma's commemorative Presidential letter provides a useful cover for my living a little on the edge.
Mom called at about 8:30 on Thursday night, but I had already gone to sleep. I had several alarms set in intervals to go off starting at about 1 am, so that I could complete my 3 emergency sub plans, and fill out all required paperwork to go in my substitute folder, and thus meet a Friday deadline. Dr. P runs a tight ship, and I did not want to fall afoul of his staff. On Wednesday night, as Joe was getting ready to go to sleep at 2am, my alarms were going off to wake me up so that I could have my sub plans ready for my sub on Thursday. Poor Karen! I was giving all praise and thanks when I awoke at the appointed hour. Joe still had not completed a few high level questions about the Declaration of Independence, including connections between John Locke, questions about why Jefferson switched from Life, Liberty, and Property to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness, so I quickly fed him the correct answers so that he could get to his Spanish. Karen was imploring Joe to please get to sleep!
While on a lunch break yesterday, I called mom back, which seemed to reassure her that I was holding up professionally, which was likely the real reason she was calling -- to check up on me. Already, I have had three mini observations, and I have been fortunate to have had reasonably good lesson plans in place each time. Nobody has complained about me yet, but my assessment data has been, frankly, somewhat concerning. It bothers me that my students are a minimum of 1 week behind the pace of the rest of the 6th grade.
While talking to my mom on Friday, who called to let me know about over 200 residents in grandma's assisted living apartment complex showed up to the birthday party held for Masako at her apartment earlier this week, I remembered that I had never received the scanned file of the letter that was presented to my grandma Masako in August at the Green Hills Country Club in San Bruno, California. My mom turned to my sister, who immediately sent the file. Thanks Dawn!
This morning was the first time I have been in the gym all month. After stepping on the scale yesterday morning, and much to my chagrin, I had gained weight, despite my recent purchase of a Nutribullet. I thought the twice daily Nutriblasts would provide immediate results, but even though my dietary habits have improved dramatically thanks to the Nutribullet -- Love it! -- still, in order to continue to be a high energy teacher, which is how I teach best, I need to restart my workout routine. My interval training on the OctaineFitness Lateral trainer this morning raised my average heart rate to 142 beats per minute for 55 minutes. Not bad! Plus, I took Mabel on two long "walky walkies."
Although I straitened out my work space, thus preserving a little of my remaining sanity, unfortunately, no work got done! Back to business!
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Poor concentration: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life
Poor concentration: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life
One of the "best practices" setup tasks on my getting ready for Tuesday list in preparation for the first day of school involves listing "books" that I am reading. A non-conformist, rather than simply listing hardcopy or ebooks, I view this requirement from school administration as an opportunity to communicate my core belief to incoming 6th graders that the purpose of literacy, or mathematics for that matter, is to enable people to participate in a conversation that spans from the beginning or recorded history to today. Reading, or doing mathematics for that matter, in my view, is not a one way street with knowledge coming down from a mountaintop, with the reader merely a passive consumer of information. Rather, I have long viewed reading as a 2-way communication process in which the reader becomes, ideally, an equal participant, fully capable of responding, and in fact, having a duty to respond or not respond to what an author has been communicated. The decision to respond or not respond and to what degree should be fully conscious decisions on the part of the reader, through a filtering process.
Having been exposed to the benefits of adaptive technology through my training as a special educator, I no longer totally mentally segregate reading, or the consumption of information paper or ebooks, from audiobooks to which I can listen repeatedly on my Smart Phone. As I plan my response to this request from administration, I envision using Mind Mapping software and including book covers on my "What I am reading" poster, along with brief attractive blurbs intended to draw out a response from students, and hopefully attract students to want to become readers.
One of the categories I plan to include on my poster under an email icon will be items that my dad sends me that have found his desktop via his global network. The link between poverty and education is something that every educator in a high poverty school deals with on a daily basis. Ironically, as was the case when I got my first teaching opportunity in 2007, high poverty schools is often where opportunities open up for the teachers least equipped to dealing with cognitive problems associated with poverty, not least of which, include speech and language delays, which I suspect are rooted in the lack of daily talk between young working mothers and their infants, too often single mothers themselves just struggling to survive. The cumulative affect known as the "Matthew Effect," i.e., the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, is a root cause of the performance gap we find on state level testing, as well as nationally, and is well-documented.
But now is not the time. I need to take care of me so that I can take care of others. Time to hit the gym for the first time since last Sunday. I shut down my classroom at 10pm last night, after not being able to sleep and waking up at 1am to prepare for Day 1 and arriving at 8am for training on setting up my gradebook. I had no competition for the copier at 7pm and copied all the curriculum materials as well as classroom management documents provided to me by my awesome team! Truly, in different schools, I have not thrived professionally, whereas in Dr.P's school, my 6th grade Administrator, my Special Education Chair, they seem to get me. To the gym I go, then to dinner to celebrate finally getting a job.
Hallelujah!
One of the "best practices" setup tasks on my getting ready for Tuesday list in preparation for the first day of school involves listing "books" that I am reading. A non-conformist, rather than simply listing hardcopy or ebooks, I view this requirement from school administration as an opportunity to communicate my core belief to incoming 6th graders that the purpose of literacy, or mathematics for that matter, is to enable people to participate in a conversation that spans from the beginning or recorded history to today. Reading, or doing mathematics for that matter, in my view, is not a one way street with knowledge coming down from a mountaintop, with the reader merely a passive consumer of information. Rather, I have long viewed reading as a 2-way communication process in which the reader becomes, ideally, an equal participant, fully capable of responding, and in fact, having a duty to respond or not respond to what an author has been communicated. The decision to respond or not respond and to what degree should be fully conscious decisions on the part of the reader, through a filtering process.
Having been exposed to the benefits of adaptive technology through my training as a special educator, I no longer totally mentally segregate reading, or the consumption of information paper or ebooks, from audiobooks to which I can listen repeatedly on my Smart Phone. As I plan my response to this request from administration, I envision using Mind Mapping software and including book covers on my "What I am reading" poster, along with brief attractive blurbs intended to draw out a response from students, and hopefully attract students to want to become readers.
One of the categories I plan to include on my poster under an email icon will be items that my dad sends me that have found his desktop via his global network. The link between poverty and education is something that every educator in a high poverty school deals with on a daily basis. Ironically, as was the case when I got my first teaching opportunity in 2007, high poverty schools is often where opportunities open up for the teachers least equipped to dealing with cognitive problems associated with poverty, not least of which, include speech and language delays, which I suspect are rooted in the lack of daily talk between young working mothers and their infants, too often single mothers themselves just struggling to survive. The cumulative affect known as the "Matthew Effect," i.e., the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, is a root cause of the performance gap we find on state level testing, as well as nationally, and is well-documented.
But now is not the time. I need to take care of me so that I can take care of others. Time to hit the gym for the first time since last Sunday. I shut down my classroom at 10pm last night, after not being able to sleep and waking up at 1am to prepare for Day 1 and arriving at 8am for training on setting up my gradebook. I had no competition for the copier at 7pm and copied all the curriculum materials as well as classroom management documents provided to me by my awesome team! Truly, in different schools, I have not thrived professionally, whereas in Dr.P's school, my 6th grade Administrator, my Special Education Chair, they seem to get me. To the gym I go, then to dinner to celebrate finally getting a job.
Hallelujah!
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