On Time

Last week I was rushing to get to one of my classes, after not being able to get away from one of those hallway conversations with a fellow teacher. I made it down the four flights of stairs and as I walked into the room panting, the students — looking at the clock — hollered “just 5 more seconds Mr. Shah… if you came in just 5 seconds later you would have been late!” Indeed, they were right.

This moment struck me deeply.

Why? This is the moment that tells me I’ve succeeded. I have clear expectations with my students regarding certain things, including being on time to class. And I make damned well sure that if I give myself permission to call out those who come in late, I’m going to be in the classroom every day on time.

I like that they’ve internalized it. This moment could never have happened otherwise.

Another failed AMC 10/12

So my school offered the AMC 10 and the AMC 12 (math competitions) last week. And although we have a number of pretty strong math students, none of them broke the 100 point mark. No student in recent history — apparently — at my school has done that. The fact is that to do well on these competitions, you have to be familiar with the types of questions and methods to solving them. There are techniques to doing well, tricks that any student who has seen enough of these can put away in their mathematical arsenal. These contests require a different way of thinking, a different way of approaching problems.

I am the faculty adviser for my school’s math club, and I just go with the flow. I listen to what the students want and we do it. Sometimes students bring an interesting problem or an extension of a problem. Sometimes I bring a problem. Sometimes we watch a video. Sometimes we work on contest problems.

Last year and this year, the students haven’t wanted to dedicate time outside of math club to doing math. We have only 25 minutes a week to meet. Well, frankly my dear, you can’t get through much in that time — especially if students don’t want to concertedly work on problems outside of math club, and then use math club to present solutions or failed methods of attack. When it comes down to it, to do well on these contests, you need to practice.

I’m okay with students not wanting to spend time outside of mathclub working on math problems. They are all busy and well-rounded and are juggling a ton of different things.

Still… I am waiting for the day when someone in mathclub says: “Everyone, I am going to solve every one of these 25 competitions problems by next week” and goes at it. Whether or not they succeed, it’s irrelevant to me. That’s the kid I want to take under my wing.

PS. I finally got around to taking the AMC12 under testing conditions (75 minutes, no calculator). I scored a 108. Which is around the same score I got last year and when I was in high school.

Convenient Order of Integration

I’m teaching double integrals, and there was this really great problem:

\underset{R}{\int\int}x\cos(xy)\cos^{2}(\pi x)dA

over the region R=[0,1/2]\times[0,\pi].

The problem is supposed to show that changing the order of integration can make the problem really easy or really hard.

\int_{0}^{1/2}\int_{0}^{\pi}x\cos(xy)\cos^{2}(\pi x)dydx is easy to solve.

\int_{0}^{\pi}\int_{0}^{1/2}x\cos(xy)\cos^{2}(\pi x)dxdy is hard to solve.

However, I don’t think the second integral should be impossible to solve. It’s been so long since I’ve really dug into integration, and we tried in class and couldn’t find a quick way to solve the second integral. Any ideas?

For those who know calculus but not Multivariable Calculus, the hard part of the second integral is simply being asked to solve: \int_{0}^{1/2}x\cos(cx)\cos^{2}(\pi x)dx, where c is simply a constant.

My Algebra II Student Evaluations

I’m a big fan of anonymous student feedback, because I know I always have things to learn. I struggled this year when decided what format I would use to solicit this feedback. It was a decision between:

  1. a set of short answer questions and numerical responses (e.g. “On average, how long do you spend on homework each night?” or “If you could change any 3 things about this course, what would they be, and why?”)
  2. an open-ended narrative comment

This year (as I did last year), I decided to have students write the open-ended narrative. The reasons I made this decision were the same as last year. First of all, if I pose the questions, I’m pretty much telling students what to focus their criticism on. I’m telling them what I think is important. Instead, I want them to tell me what’s important. Second, I write comments on my students at least twice a year. Students should have the opportunity to write comments on me too. At the beginning of the year, I told my students that we are making a contract with each other. I want them to know that I care if I’m keeping up my end of the bargain.

My charge to them:

Hi all,

Your homework is to write a comment about the class and about my teaching. I am always looking to improve and to keep on with what I’m doing well, and so I really appreciate you taking the time to write these comments. You don’t have to make it anonymous. It’s totally up to you, but you should feel more than free to do so. Please type it into the form attached, and print it out before class to hand it!

Always my best,
Mr. Shah

Write an comment about your experience in this course. You can write about anything — things that are going well, things you’d like to see changed, aspects about my teaching that work and don’t work, your opinion of smartboard, anything.

And that’s it. I’m not leading them to talk about anything specifically. And I think that the feedback I got has been really valuable. More than observations from administrators, student feedback is the most valuable.

Honestly, there’s a terrifying aspect to these evaluations. I’ll put it this way… I asked for these recommendations in January. I didn’t look at them until early February. I couldn’t look at them until early February. I carried them with me to and from school every day, waiting until a moment when I felt like I could face them. What if they were all terrible? Or they focused on areas of my teaching that I’m sensitive about? What if I am a terrible teacher?

But when I finally countenanced them, it was after I realized “even if I’m bad at what I do, I need to know that in order to do better.” I mean, it’s what I tell my students — you have to know where you are weak in order to know how to become strong. You can’t just bury your head in the sand and hope things will change. You have to change them.

Here’s the rundown of my Algebra II student evaluations. Which made me realize the anxiety was uncalled for.

I. Am. A. Good. Teacher. (Not that I don’t have places to improve.)

MY ALGEBRA II EVALUATIONS

strengths

  • “[M]y experience has been… surprisingly positive for a math class”
  • “[Y]our fast-paced teaching style… suits me”
  • “[A]bility to interpose math applications to real life” *
  • “Smartboard [will be] a valuable reference for studying for midterms”
  • “I appreciate your ability to interpose math applications to real life, like the fractals activity” *
  • “I can always count on… your organization. You always have your [Smartboard] ready and you are always punctual”
  • “You make math fun”
  • “[Y]ou have a lot of energy, and that makes the class really interesting. Unlike some subjects, every day class is different, this makes learning fun and enjoyable”
  • “[I]t’s helpful that you are so willing to meet for extra help”
  • “Rather than just writing ont he board what we can earily just take notes from in the textbook I feel you are really teaching us algebra”
  • “I can also tell that you really care that your students learn what you are teaching”
  • “Our class gets along very well which makes this class interesting as well”
  • “[Mr. Shah] is probably the first teacher that compels me to work in class rather than fall asleep. This is for a variety of reasons; it could be his dress, which is always vibrant, his enthusiasm, or his witty power points”
  • “Generally I have found the class to be an extremely gratifying experience. It is well-paced, well-taught, and well-structured”
  • “I appreciate how you tell us about assessments in advance, and the use of smartboard shows me that you do care about the students and teaching”
  • “I feel accomplished when I do well on one of your tests”
  • “[Y]ou do a really good job of keeping the class focused and on top of what’s going on. You always make sure that everyone knows what is going on”
  • “[M]eeting with you is SO helpful… I know for sure that meeting with you has boosted my test scores up”
  • “Math class is one of the very few classes I don’t dread going to”
  • “I like that with the [Smartboard] presentations the materail is broken down into manageable pieces at a time and then throughout the period we work up to the whole concept”

areas for improvement

  • “I can imagine… if I were ever to miss a day of class… it could be a problem”
  • “[Change] the amount of time we spend going over the homework”
  • “[C]hange the amount of practice problems we do. Sometimes, I feel that we do the same type of question a lot of different times”
  • “[I]t might be helpful if we could slow down a bit”
  • “As a teacher I’d give [Mr. Shah] a B+/A- (more A-)… because sometimes our questions are unanswered”
  • “At some points I feel like the class is moving too fast for me”
  • “[T]he class seems boring at times… I know math is not boring and can be made fun”
  • “I would like to suggest that it’s ok to go off on tangents and talk about topics that are slightly unrelated”
  • “I’d recommend that [it] would benefit me… to slow down a little”

*I actually do not do this much, but a few students did mention it! So I guess I should look for applications, and try to integrate them into what we’re doing more often.

dy/dan’s Annual Report Results

First Place: Ben Wildeboer

Second Place: Frieder Knauss*

Third Place: Simon Job

Dan Meyer’s Favorites: Frieder Knuass & Sam Shah (that’s me!)

To determined First, Second, and Third place, Dan had each entrant send in their favorite top 3 annual reports, in order. So Dan was using some form of preferential voting — which could have led to disaster. How, you ask? Well, it’s a bit of an interesting paradox.

Say we have 3 people ranking 3 candidates (A, B, and C).

PERSON 1: A B C (in that order)
PERSON 2: B C A (in that order)
PERSON 3: C A B (in that order)

Who wins? The great Englightenment thinker Condorcet noted this paradox.
*Mr. K’s (Frieder Knauss) annual report was my #1 favorite. If you want to read why, click on the “Second Place” link above. My blurb is posted there. Part of my interpretation wasn’t correct, as Mr. K points out on his blog.

Looking for a new teaching job?

It’s about time for hiring season to begin for independent schools. It’s truly begun this weekend, interviews and all. Good luck for those looking for jobs!

I have old two posts that I thought I’d highlight that might help you out.

1. My musings on being on a hiring committee
2. My musings on being on the job market

I hope they help any of you looking for a new job or considering looking for a new job. If you have any questions about my experience teaching in an independent (read: private) high school, feel free to ask. I have a lot of really great things to say about it, but there are a number of trade offs too. I’d be happy to give whatever counsel I can.

Why don’t you ever have a tape recorder when you need it…

Earlier in the year, I was talking with a student who clearly wanted to do better  academically but realized his laziness  and penchant for procrastination was preventing him from achieving change. (This is a very self-aware kid.) But making big, vague imperatives to himself — like “I will get an A in math”, or “I will always do my homework” — weren’t working. At that point, I told him he should try to work on the small stuff. Don’t make big pronouncements, but take small baby steps that would help him in the long run. I said: “Hey, don’t say I will do something for the quarter… say that for the next week, I will sit at the desk in my room and work on homework for three hours, only taking at most one 10 minute break. I can try this out this week”

This idea of short-term baby steps had never occurred to him.  When we finished that conversation, he was so excited about this idea that he left saying he wanted to his mom got in on it and for her to hold him accountable for monitoring his short-term goals.

Recently I was talking with this student, one quarter after our previous conversation. I didn’t bring up all the things we talked about. I let him guide the conversation. And what came out was amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I interrupted him twice to say that I wish I had a tape recorder so I could get everything he was saying down.

He said that the biggest change that has led to his success last quarter was doing homework. Not just hastily writing down answers to get it done, but spending time to really understand it. He said that was the biggest factor that caused his turnaround. He also said that by doing the homework, studying for exams wasn’t hard anymore. Because it wasn’t all cramming, but simply review. He already knew the material from the homework. (Gasp!) He wasn’t learning it again for the first time. Studying for tests became so much easier this quarter. Lastly, he said that even if a class is totally dull beyond belief, boring as all heck, he has started paying attention instead of zoning out. Why? Because for some reason, he noticed that when he did pay attention, he knew the material and could much more easily recall the information.

Can you imagine how I felt after this conversation? I wanted to grab every word he said, bottle them up, and make every one of my students this year take a long, refreshing swig. It was so powerful coming out of his mouth. I say these things to students, and it’s all hogwash. A friend says this unsolicited to a friend, it’s inspirational.

All I can say is that I hope he is proud enough of the strides he’s made academically to share his wisdom with others. They’ll believe him.