Author: samjshah

Recollections of theorems past

Yesterday I watched “King of Kong,” and a while ago I fell in love with “Spellbound.” Both of those movies are documentaries about strange subcultures of people — where the norms and values of these subjects are so foreign to the viewer that it’s a bit of an anthropological expedition.

While watching “King of Kong” I decided that a movie needs to be made about a mathcamp somewhere.

Some backstory: I went to mathcamp. Twice. And I was a counselor there once.

Those summers (especially those during high school) were transformative. I was one of those kids who were freakishly [1] good at math, astounded by the elegant beauty of it all, and I just got it. And I was always hunting for more. I would pick up second hand math books and study them, did the AMC (then AHSME) competitions, and did the write-in USAMTS competition. I was on my first high school’s math team (my second high school didn’t have one). And still, that wasn’t enough. I wanted to go to a place to study math for 5 weeks.

Seriously.

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Why? I’ll tell you why I have to remain silent…

Dan Meyer asks the question:

Unless my experience as a classroom manager is several deviations below the mean, other people are struggling with this as I have struggled. New teachers are struggling with this. So why is classroom management the farthest topic from anyone’s blog?

Before reading the comments, to see what his other readers thought, I suspect that others will agree with me: talking about classroom management meaningfully often times requires speaking in specifics about individual students or incidents. For those teachers blogging under their own names, there’s the added thought: “what if…”

What if students come across the site (probability: likely)?

Don’t get me wrong. I think a lot of value can be had by sharing these stories, getting advice from others, and just commiserating about the difficult moments that come up in the day-to-day. But doing so publicly makes it harder, because specifics have to be pitched out the window. (I don’t want a student coming across my blog, knowing a post is about him or her, and feeling uncomfortable.) And for an issue like classroom management, it’s all about specifics. The individual student, a particular incident, a conversation or punishment. Without that, it’s all and all (just) another good teaching tale.

That’s not to say that conversations about techniques on how to keep a classroom running smoothly and effectively aren’t worth having. It means that talking about when a classroom isn’t run smoothly is harder.

That being said, I’m going to hopefully give Dan something to play with… I’ve typed up a list of notes I took before starting teaching this year, given to me by a veteran teacher: Advice to New Teachers on Classroom Management. I normally eschew prescriptive teaching talk (someone telling me this is the way to do things), but these tips are so useful that I ignored my initial gag reflex and I’m a better person for it. (I’ve noticed that I do a lot of these things naturally, which is a good sign for me, I think.)

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My First Post

I’ve been blogging about my first year of teaching at my school in Brooklyn. But until now, the blog has been under wraps, private, an archive of the good, the bad, and the ugly. As I’ve been getting more and more into reading math teacher blogs, I’ve been getting more and more antsy to contribute to the conversations they’re having.

And so with no further ado, I here start my own public blog, and here is my first post.

“Wait! Wait, Mr. Shah! This blog has a ton of posts before this one.”

(Ah, ever the astute reader.) Yes, I’ve imported about half of my private blog here. The other half will have to remain private.

teachable moment, ahoy!

Today I had one of those “teachable moments” that teachers talk about, when the stars align, the opportunity presents itself, and you deviate from your lesson and really capitalize on what’s going on around you.

On Friday there was an incident at my school; a threat was made to one of the students, and there was an implied threat to the community at large. The school was put on lockdown (which means that students weren’t allowed to leave for lunch). Without going into details of the specifics, it caused a bit of panic among members of the community who didn’t know what was going on or why (students, teachers, and parents).

Today, the teachers had a meeting before school, the students and the teachers had a community meeting at the start of school, and then in homeroom advisers were instructed to talk about the incident with their advisees.

My homeroom didn’t really want to talk, much, which is fine. However, when my first period calculus class met, they were in a tizzy to talk about it. They said they didn’t get to finish what they were talking about in homeroom, or their homeroom teacher didn’t really let them talk about it, and they wanted to have that conversation.

I put down my book, and we had today’s “teachable moment.” I let them talk, I would sometimes interject my opinion or get them to think about what they were saying critically, I didn’t defend or attack anyone’s thoughts, I just let the dialogue unfold. Students talked to each other, got things off their chests, and really thought about the situation. Finally, when they were done, I suggested that they write down all their thoughts and feelings about this incident and how it was handled by the administration now before they forget. Those views will be useful when the faculty meet to talk about the administration’s handling of the threat.

Yeah, we didn’t get through some basic integration stuff. But guess what? This. Was. More. Important.

Math Photos!

It’s cold outside, and I’m bored inside.

I decided to spend some time making an image archive of math things for my SmartBoard presentations. Using Flickr, I found some choice images which I culled together[1]:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/92124730@N00/favorites

Also, I had a thought. What if we used a ; instead of a ‘? Typographically, wouldn;t that look so much more appealing? I;ve been thinking about this, and at least in serif fonts, this holds true. It might become my “thing.”

[1] dy/dan would say that I’m doing things backwards. First we need content, and then the image should be there to engage, not just entertain. But you know what? I think pictures and vibrant colors which show some prettiness will be damn good enough for now.

The Privileges of Childhood

When browsing the blogs today, I came across this post about childhood privileges on a blog about the politics of access. I definitely recommend clicking on the link below and seeing what he has to say.

All the popular blogs are doing it.From: What Privileges Do You Have? – based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. (If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.) [Jose Vilson]

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college.
4. Mother finished college.
 5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
 8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
 12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
 16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
 22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
 27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
 31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.