RIP

Looking at the man you would see a very proper, very rigid person.  His huge heart and his love for his students was hidden from the outside world, but not from the ones who had the privilege of being in his class.

The first time I learned about his heart was when we were getting ready to enter report card grades.  He showed me grades of a girl and asked if I would pass her.  Just looking at the data I didn't think she should pass.   He looked again and decided to pass her, based on classwork.  I knew he was okay then.

I had the honor of sharing a room with him several terms.  I saw the care he put into each lesson.  I saw the special projects he had the students do to help them understand and I saw the special relationship he developed with them.  He even got into a major fight with his AP when it came to finding books for his students to use.  He never hesitated putting himself on the front to help them.

This man also loved a good ping pong game.  He stayed late to supervise student games, giving them tips and beating them when he could.  His only reward was the joy he got from being with them.

I really got to know this man when we both were assigned the job of scanning regents exams.  We had a long wait and spent an entire day together.  He taught me a bunch of Chinese proverbs, things he used to send our former AP to make a point.  We laughed and had fun but also got the job done as efficiently as possible.

I remember discussing with him how different people were when they came from foreign lands and how their expectations and behavior towards others was often a product of their early environment.  He told me he was now an American and adjusted to live and think like one.  He had no respect for those who came here and could not break loose.

We met one night in the college and I told him about how difficult my students found factoring.  He showed me a fool proof method I had never seen.   To this day I use it is one I use and my students love.

This wonderful man only got to enjoy one year of retirement before passing on.  Words can't express the sorrow in my heart knowing I will never get the benefit of his wisdom.


RIP.  If there is an afterlife, you will have a great one to reward you for all the good you did here on earth. You will be sorely missed.

Dilbert Explains

Dilbert explains why there are so many incompetent principals.  They were put in place by an incompetent education mayor who chose an even more incompetent chancellor.  And then these incompetent principals hired incompetent assistant principals, those people with no real experience in anything and they in turn hired teachers who had no idea how to teach.

It's Only A Name

Teachers often have a hard time choosing names for their children. We've taught too many students that we just want to forget and students who acted so crazy in class we just don't want those names associated with our own off springs.  Some names I know I would never have considered;

Mary-Jane ( Mary the dash is not silent Jane)

Shampoo and Conditioner (Cousins)

BoyA and BoyB ( mom was too lazy to change the names on her twin boy's birth certificates)

Cinderella

Fuk (Father kept correcting teaching when she pronounced it Fuke until she explained the meaning of the pronunciation he wanted)

When The Shit Hits The Fan

Dilbert writes about engineers.  It is also the way school administrators are chosen.  How else would inexperienced APs be chosen to run a department of experienced teachers.  On a recent retired teacher trip I heard of a 30 year veteran teacher saying her 29 year old supervisor asked who taught her how to teach reading. The 29 year old never taught 5th grade, the grade she was teaching.  And then there is the former math teacher who took a few weekend courses and is now telling everyone in special education what they are doing wrong.

Eventually the shit will hit the fan in engineering and in education and everywhere else the wrong people are chosen for jobs.  Think of how much will be lost in the interim.

How An A School Keeps Its A

Several years ago I was given a double class of seniors who had at most one math credit.  The school needed them to graduate on time and it was my job to get them to pass.  They were given two credits for the class.  Many were taking the exact same class during the evening and in late afternoon school.  (Multiple credit while learning nothing different.)

I spent the first semester trying to teach them math, along with how to answer the questions just using a calculator.  The second semester I just concentrated on getting them to pass, emphasizing that I was not teaching them math, just skills to get through.  I told them they would need remedial courses in college as they were learning little in class.  Most didn't care.  But, the regents exam is a joke and 27 out of 28 passed.

I occasionally run into these students at the community college.  I am greeted warmly with much enthusiasm and I greet them the same way.  When we talk I find out they are floundering in college.  Math was not the only subject they got through knowing nothing.

Our A school kept their A that semester.  We had a high graduation rate.  No one cared that the kids were prepared for nothing.  No one cared that these kids graduated with ruined lives.  The school was highly rated, the admins got their bonuses and no one cared about anything else.

Black Angels Over Tuskegee

One of the best things about living in New York is theater.

Just came back from seeing Black Angels Over Tuskegee at the Actor's Temple on Broadway and am speechless.  The story of the Tuskegee airmen is something everyone should know about.

The play is written by the brilliant, award winning Layon Gray who has written many plays dealing with African American topics.  He tells his stories in ways that are entertaining and informative and makes the history come alive.

If you have a chance, go see it.  If you can, take your class to see it.  It is much less expensive than a Broadway show and better than many.  The actors are fantastic and the story is riveting.

What This Chihuahua Does Best

Self Esteem

When a person is constantly put down, told they are no good, they begin to doubt themselves, even believe the things being said.  Intellectually, you know the things being said about you are not true, but after hearing them so often you start to believe.

That is what happened to me and lots of others when we taught, and are still teaching high school.  One teacher was yelled at when her students broke a window shade when she was absent.  The AP claimed if she trained them better, it would not have happened.  Another teacher was blamed when a student threw a water bottle out the window.  Still another was blamed for unruliness of his students but the head of security told him every student had a file 5 inches thick and he called deans less often than anyone else.  Newbies could got everyone to pass while veteran teachers did not.  Our methods were just not good enough and we even began doubting our skills teaching.

I think this is one of the reasons I am having trouble giving up teaching at the college.  Here I am respected and cherished for what I do in the classroom.  The students are learning and happy.  Even the ones who don't pass don't blame me.  The administration thanks me for coming in.  I am asked to cover classes because I am a "strong" teacher who knows the material and knows how to get it across.

The college, like the high school, is a city institution that has no control over the money I am paid. While they can't reward me financially, they reward me and other with kind words and words of appreciation.  These words make me want to do more for my students and for all the students in the school.

It is too bad today's schools won't do the same.  The kids wold benefit so much.  But I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  The almighty dollar sign is what rules schools today.  The dollar sign is what put so many incompetent administrators in place, incompetent administrators who get rid of good teachers.

Why

My former AP told  us to never to use the word "why" in class.  He didn't believe it had a place in a math lesson.  He felt "how" was all that was necessary, especially with weak students.  He felt many were incapable of understanding the reasoning and  we should just concentrate on getting them "to do" so they would pass the regents.

When I went to school a zillion years ago, no one ever explained "why" either.  We memorized the rules and "did".  I never understood the reasoning behind choosing the proper signs when I factored or why the "a" in a quadratic equation could not equal zero or much of anything else.  But, I was a good student.  I studied, memorized the rules and did well.  It wasn't until I had to teach someone how to factor that I grasped the "why" of the signs and understood the implications of "a" not equal to zero or even why I could not divide by zero.  It suddenly became crystal clear and the factoring which I had previously been able to do with much trial and error was easy.  Now, when I teach the topic, I make sure to make sure my students understand "why" each time.

My students do not all get this.  I would be kidding myself if I believed I reached them all but I know I have succeeded with many.  I love watching their faces as they look at examples, analyze the problem and successfully arrive at an answer they know is correct because they fully understand "why" they did what they did.

The math they learn in my classroom will probably be long forgotten by the time they graduate and go on to careers in their chosen areas (unless of course it is an area that requires math) but I am convinced the "why" will be a lesson never lost.  Understanding reasoning is the first step in solving problems in any area, whether it be academics or life.

Tips For Fixing The Nation's Education System--From The Onion

Tips For Fixing The Nation’s Education System

INFOGRAPHIC • Education • News • ISSUE 50•36 • Sep 12, 2014

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Public schools throughout the nation continue to contend with budget shortfalls and insufficient classroom resources, while U.S. test scores remain far behind those of many other developed nations. Here are measures that can be taken to fix America’s troubled education system:

• Discourage teacher turnover by downplaying the importance of having money and respect
• Limit school shootings to once a year in order to give students more time to focus on schoolwork
• Allow students from disadvantaged areas to be bussed into stronger schools, such as those in Finland or South Korea
• Maybe get some underprepared, overconfident recent college graduates in there to figure things out
• Federal law that prevents Dylan from raising his hand and wasting everybody’s time with the wrong answer
• Get rid of fungi unit
• Begin offering tenure to children who have been in the public school system for more than three years
• Offset the failures of the education system by de-emphasizing the importance of success, self-worth, and intellectual ability in our culture at large
• Tattoo grades on foreheads to shame low performers
• Toss Northrop Grumman another $4.5 billion and see what kind of curriculum it pumps out
• Whatever you do, don’t change anything about a property-tax-based funding system in which rich schools get richer while poor schools get poorer. That’s working just fine.
• Cut losses and reallocate funding to nation’s prison system

Experience Counts

I knew I did a good job teaching a complex topic last night when I looked at the smiling faces of my students as they walked out the door.  A particularly happy young man said he was smiling because he "got it" and was grateful that I made the topic easy to understand.

What this young man does not know is that teaching this topic was not always easy for me.  When I first taught the course I spent hours making sure I mastered the topic and mostly taught with the method shown in the book.  As I got more comfortable with the topic, I found better ways to teach the topic, ways to make understanding easy.

It takes years to become a good teacher.  I feel sorry for all the students with brand new teachers in schools with only brand new teachers.  These teachers need years to learn and they need experienced teachers to learn from.  Oh don't get me wrong.  Many of these new teachers are good.  But, experience matters.  No one would want a surgeon straight out of college operating on them.  They at least want a seasoned doctor supervising the procedure.  Teaching should be treated the same way.

Effective Teaching

Although I am teaching a pre-calculus class in the college, I know many of my students will never take another math class when they walk out the door after the final in December.   While it is important to me that they pass, it is more important that they learn to think and to analyze.  They need to see the relevance of math in real life, even if it only helps with problem solving skills.  It is also important for the ones who are math phobic to learn that math is nothing to be afraid of and can be mastered if they stop, break the problem apart and think it through.

I haven't reached them all, but I know I have been successful with many in the past.  If I can do it again, I know my term will be successful.  That is all I need to show me I am a highly effective teacher.

Giving Thanks

I sat on Rockaway Beach Friday afternoon, listening to the waves, feeling the ocean breeze while the sun gently beat down on my face and thought, this is the way to live.  I gave thanks to my former AP.  While I did not leave because of him, his attitude towards me went a long way in helping me make the decision to retire.

I could be spending the dog days of summer in a sweltering classroom or in one with a loudly running air conditioner.  I could be packing up my things every forty five minutes and moving to a new location to greet another group of kids who are tired and hot and not ready to be back in school.  I could be waiting for the door to opened by a scowling administrator admonishing me because a kid is sleeping or one is 30 seconds late.  I'm so happy this is all behind me.  The beach is great and knowing what I would have been doing if I did not make the decision to retire makes it so much greater.

Importance Of Homework

One of the problems with my college students is that they don't do homework.  They don't understand  homework is designed to help them.  They need the practice and the reinforcement.  A 2.5 hour class twice a week is just not enough.  Last term I promised to drop the lowest test grade for those who did homework.  It didn't help.  This term I decided to walk around the room and collect homework individually from each student.  Those who did not have it had to give an immediate excuse.  They did not like that.  Last night I walked around again and gave back the assignment and requested it from those who did not hand it in the first night.  I left with a full folder.

I don't know if this will last but I hope so.  If I can get them to do homework, I can get more of them to pass.  This is a pre-calculus class and the students should be doing homework without this much prodding.  What should happen and what does happen are not the same.  Hopefully they will do assignments, succeed, and learn to do homework in every class, whether it is collected or not.  Hopefully they will now understand the value of doing it.

(Picture from Rockaway Beach-nothing to do with story but I thought this was a really pretty bird.  I loved the red beak.)

Missed Graduation

It was a big deal, a really big deal.  The special ed students finally passed all their exams.  A special graduation ceremony was held in their honor.  Two of their teachers, both retired came to honor and applaud them.  The students were thrilled to see their former teachers and the teachers were so proud of what the students accomplished.

Too bad the administrators, the ones who will really benefit by having their stats improved did not bother to show up.  They didn't appreciate the work both by the students and their teachers did to reach this pinnacle of education.  They are probably just happy these kids are gone.  They think-two less burdens to deal with.

Love This Graffiti

While driving down Union Turnpike I spotted some writing on the median.  I stopped to get a closer look and was thrilled to see all these math formulas written in stone.  My only complaint is about pi which is not equal to 3.14 but approximated by it.  Probably petty, but it is something that always irks me.

To Start Your School Year

Wishing all my teacher friends a good year.

Can't believe how many chihuahua videos are out there.