During the school year, I have very little social life. This is because I have 3 preps this year (like last year!) and I haven’t been able to recycle much (any) material from last year. Which adds up to me not being able to go out on weekdays — because I’m at home making lesson plans, writing up packets, grading this that and the other, and doing all the other little things which add up. My time is like a grocery store receipt. When I go to the local Key Foods, I buy a bunch of small but necessary items (many on sale) and I go to check out. Nothing exceeds $5, but the total somehow reaches $8o or $100. I’m always perplexed how that happens. And this, coming from a math teacher! But yeah, that’s how I feel about my time also.

I have a rule that I don’t work on Saturdays. I have broken that rule — when I have a long commitment on Sunday or if comments are due — but rarely. I need this rule to set boundaries so that school doesn’t consume my life. As much as being a teacher has become central to my identity, I don’t want it to be my entire identity.

So this weekend I had a lot of work to do — grading Calculus tests, grading Algebra II homeworks, entering a ton of things in my gradebook, emailing a number of students, and creating my three lesson plans for Monday. And I almost started work on Saturday. To get a head start on the week.

But I said NO. 

Standing with defiance , I vowed to be a complete bum on Saturday, and catch up on a lot of terrible TV and Movies. (I even enlisted the help/company of a friend.) It was heaven. And on Sunday, I put on a bunch of things in the background when doing my work.

1. MOVIE: What Happens in Vegas
2. MOVIE: Made of Honor
3. MOVIE: P.S. I Love You
4. MOVIE: Definitely, Maybe
5. TV: Battlestar Galactica
6. TV: The Office
7. TV: Dollhouse
8. TV: 30 Rock
9. TV: House
10. TV: The Daily Show

Congratulations Mr. Shah. You’ve officially earned that PhD in Sloth that I always knew you were capable in achieving.

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.

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.

I am calling on the collective powers of the online teacher community to see if anyone can help me out. I know it’s a long shot that anyone will respond. But hey, you might know the answer for your school, or you might not know the answer and be intrigued enough to find out the answer.

(1) What are the disciplinary infractions that get reported to colleges by your school?

(2) Does it matter when in high school the offense was committed?

(3) In your school, who makes the decision whether something gets reported to colleges or not?

The reason I’m curious is that I’m on the Student Faculty Judiciary Committee (SFJC) at my school, which is composed of 8 elected students and 3 faculty members, which hears all cases involving student misconduct. (Yeah, yeah, I know… fancy… we didn’t have anything like this in my public high school… but I think student-centered disciplinary committees are common in the private school universe…)

We’re now about to have a discussion with the administration about our current set of disciplinary responses, about infractions getting reported to colleges, about what sorts of offenses warrant the college counselors reporting them, and if it matters what grade the student is in.

If a 9th grader cheats once, should that get reported to a college? What about a 12th grader? What about if a 9th grader cheated 3 times? What if a 12th grader cheated, after being sent before the disciplinary committee for cutting 3 classes the week before?  What if a student cheated in 9th grade, and then again in 12th grade?

It gets really sticky, especially with something as high stakes as college admissions, and a clear policy — or at least general guidelines — needs to be drawn up so that there aren’t gross inequities in what happens to one student and what happens to another.

So anyway, any idea of what the policy is in your school? Or if you don’t know the answer, muse a bit in the comments with your thoughts about how you would deal with this in your ideal school: what kinds of things you would say HAD to be reported, and where you would draw the line between something being reported and something not being reported.

PS. If you care, the Common Application has students fill out the following:

Read below for a challenge!

Tasks accomplished today:

1. Sent info to all high school students regarding the upcoming AMC competition.
2. Organized my advising conferences on Thursday and sent all my advisees this info.
3. Learned that I have to re-organize my advising conferences because of an administrative snafu.
4. Had someone proofread comments written for students who got a C- or below this quarter, and edited them, and gave the appropriate people copies.
5. Scanned and emailed a letter of recommendation for a student.
6. Planned tomorrow’s Multivariable Calculus class.
7. Did homework that I assigned the Multivariable Calculus class tonight.
8. Wrote an Algebra II exam and sent it to the other Algebra II teacher.
9. Put some copies of the Algebra II exam in the Learning Center for students who need to take it in a “distraction free setting”
10. Met with a number of students who had questions about math.
11. Met with administrator and student about a sensitive matter.
12. Talked with administrator about a sensitive matter.
13. Uploaded PDF of Smartboard for students to access in Algebra II, Calculus, and Multivariable Calculus.
14. Sent students homework in Algebra II, Calculus, and Multivariable Calculus.
15. Photocopied my Multivariable Calculus Quarter 2 students exams for my own personal records.
16. Emailed a lot of students about math — and setting up meeting times for individual help for tomorrow.
17. Met with administrator who observed my class last Thursday for him to debrief me.
18. Tried (and failed) to find out if my advisees were supposed to get their metro cards soon.
19. Reminded department head about upcoming Mu Alpha Theta induction.
20. Dealt with late homework.
21. Created a sign out sheet for students who are going to use the restroom in my classes.
22. Printed out my new seating chart for my Algebra II and Calculus classes.
23. Assisted the AP calculus teacher with a sticky math problem.
24. Read an email from a teacher friend at another school who wants to shadow a Biology teacher at my school next week; tried to set that up.

I was thinking today, with all my tasks large and small, about what I spend my time doing. Being a teacher is so much more than just planning classes and writing and grading exams. Such little time, proportionally, goes to those things. I know most teachers wish that we had more time to devote to lesson planning! At all points during the day, I am juggling a number of various responsibilities, small and large.

Challenge: Make a list of the things you did today. I’m curious what tasks, large and small, consume your attention. I think it’ll speak volumes about teaching in general, about your school culture and your teaching style in specific.

I have a bit of teacher-musing, and then I want to share a funny story that happened in calculus class yesterday.

MUSING

Everyone is always saying “make math relevant for your students!” Well, great. Sure. Okay. Will do. I think that’s a bunch of hooey. It’s not about making math relevant, but making math into problem solving skills [1]. I don’t care if students will ever have to use what they learn in my class in the “real world” (what world are they living in now?). But I do care that they can see a problem and break it apart into its component pieces. That they can go down dead ends without getting frustrated. That they can see that there are often multiple ways to solve a problem. Sure, sometimes one solution is more elegant than another, but that can be okay… because sometimes problems don’t have elegant solutions at all!

All this being said, I’m terrible at doing this. At least, I’m terrible at doing this in my non-accelerated classes (which are my Algebra II and Calculus classes). I stick close to the basic skills and concepts, we don’t do too much investigation; I’m focused on making sure they can do basic skills. That they can verbally explain the concepts. Which is unfortunate, because after students learn basic skills, they should be given the opportunity to draw connections, hit dead ends, and all that good stuff I just listed above.

As a teacher, it’s so easy to make excuses (we have a fast-paced curriculum, the class period is only 50 minutes, my students are working on so many different ability levels, there isn’t enough time in the day to design these classes) of why not to do it. I also think that investigative work doesn’t go well in the non-accelerated classes.

But that’s probably a function of me not knowing how to do it right — how to design and implement these sorts of lessons without spending too much time at home or in class working on them.

FUNNY STORY

So back to what I was saying… the mantra “make math relevant” actually took a funny turn after my calculus class yesterday. To set this up, I have to remind you that I teach at an independent school. Tuition is high and students tend to come from wealthier backgrounds. It’s a different world [see my post about that here]. Anyway, after school, one of my calculus students said “Mr. Shah, I have a math question for you. It’s not related to what we’ve been learning in class.”

Turns out, he found out that he and one of the other seniors both resort at the exact same place in the summer. And after thinking about what a strange coincidence it was, he wanted to know “what are the chances that two seniors at this school both resort at the same place?”

So that’s math in context for my students, apparently. 

(These are the sorts of moments that I realize that this world is so different than the world I grew up in. But I really like these kids.)

If you care, my answer was that we can definitely figure it out together. I then told him about the birthday problem (how many people do you need in a room before the chances that two of them have the same birthday reaches 50%?), and how we could use that as an analogy to solving our problem.

In the birthday problem, you have people in a room, and each of these people have a birthday from the calendar year (each person could have one of 365 birthdays). In our problem, we have 80 seniors, of whom “only “ resort. Each person who resorts goes to one of a certain number of places (we’d have to do a back of the envelope calculation/Fermi problem to find an approximate number of resorts that people from my school could go to).

Then the analysis would be the same as the analysis for the birthday puzzle.

If you’re curious, you need about 23 people in a room to have a 50% chance that two people in the room have the same birthday. Of course, you’re going to need 366 people in a room to guarantee that two people in the room have the same birthday. (Do you see why?)

[1] That’s not to say that I don’t think the the content is unimportant. The content is always my primary focus. And I guess when I say “relevant,” I mean specifically “real world applications.”