CP II: Week 1

This week went splendid. The two courses I am assigned to teach are geometry and business math, and I am transitioning into being the full-time teacher for each at different paces. On Monday and Tuesday, I continued to observe my two cooperating teacher's lessons and walked around to help students individually. On Wednesday, I started teaching for business math a chapter on health and life insurance. It has been fun learning experience working with seniors. Most of them think the class is pretty easy and just need to pass to graduate, so it has been somewhat challenging classroom management and keeping everyone interested. So far, I already am making great relationships with the students and my cooperating teachers, and loving lesson planning. In geometry this week, the students have been finishing up a chapter and reviewing for their test. I did a few problems with the class on Wednesday, passed out permission slips for TPA 4, and administered my student survey via GoogleForms. In AVID, I tutored. Mostly, the students work with one another and the tutors walk around waiting for questions or probing the students to ask questions. Finally, I help out and want to continue to help in an algebra class for English learners with a teacher who is involved with Math for America. I get some additional insight from his teaching and helping his students. I am excited for this second week, and the many more weeks to come.

Business Math Rap

So, I am lesson planning away for the business math class I'm teaching this semester. Everyday there is some vocabulary to go over and I am trying to teach it so the students remember it and so it is fun! I wanted to share a poem/rap I wrote for a life insurance section's vocabulary words: 

Whole life insurance is for

When you die or need more…cash

Cash value is the money you get when you cancel

These lines don’t rhyme

But, different types of life insurances are

limited payment policy where you pay for a certain amount of time

& universal life insurance, you pay a minimum, the rest earns interest

What do you think, should this go on Pinterest?

One Teacher's Friday Ritual

Some of you may have seen him in the Twitter world, John Berray, a math teacher from Santee (check out his blog: http://johnberray.wordpress.com/). I read one of his posts, "My Friday Ritual," where he writes about the fun stuff he does between classes on a Friday, and like the sub-title of his blog, tries to "make math class awesome." Every week, Berray chooses one or two students, who have shown him something notable. This can be something like a student asked good questions, improved greatly, or showed consistent hard-work. This could also be something like a student helped another with an academic or life problem or stood up for a peer. Berray creates a slideshow that he plays between classes, complete with music!

Example of one slide:


His rationale for doing this is that the students "deserve more attention than they get." As teachers, we are often the people who get to interact with young people the most, so we should praise them. Something else interesting that Berray noted was how having to pick students every week made him a better teacher. Usually deciding on which student to choose is easy, but when it's not, that's good. During those times, he gets to dig deeper and find something positive about everyone. He has to be reflective about his students and get to know them better. The lessons get to be tailored more and more to the students' interests and skill-levels. Anything to make the school day more exciting, make the students feel good, and help the teachers design better lessons should be a wonderful adaptation. I love this idea!

Observation Reflection: iPads in the Classroom

On 3/12/12, half of the CSUSM Single Subject Credential program went to El Camino High School to observe two high school math teachers use iPads in their classrooms. My group observed the following classes: geometry and math analysis with one teacher, and geometry again with another teacher. Since I have been observing at ECHS the last several weeks, nothing was too new to me, but it was a fun experience to show everyone around and see my future students. As for reflecting on iPads in the classroom, these math classes use them almost always. Only sometimes is bookwork done at home. It apparently promotes student learning because students did considerably well in the classes, and they were able to ask questions of the teacher one-on-one. Furthermore, the students could look-up and store any information online at anytime in the class period. I believe that as long as students know where to find information and can apply it to a problem they are trying to solve then they will be successful in life. However, for standardized testing, these students may have a disadvantage because maybe they haven't gotten used to memorizing formulas and certain pieces of information. When the principal spoke during debrief, I learned about what makes the school unique - that they care the most about making sure students learn. This day of observing relates to the theme of EDSS530 because it is expected that everyone will use technology at their own pace, but there are certain requirements so that students learn enough to be competent in the new age of technology.

Are Grades Necessary for Learning?

Watching Dan Pink speak about how he took French for many years and always got an A, but now knows no French, shows something is wrong with our educational system. Also, this is an issue I have had throughout a good amount of my classes; where I pretty much just did the work and passed, but felt like I didn't learn anything. The difficult question to answer is what would happen if we took grades out of the equation? I believe that if we did, it would have to be a process. There would have to be some way in order for us to see that the students were ready to participate in class and complete their work simply so that they learn and not for a grade. I think it is more important that we grade based on individual student growth, and we shouldn't compare students against one another. Also, the students should have the opportunity to assess themselves, reflect on how they grew, and identify what they learned. These kinds of higher level questions increase student's cognitive development. In addition, students would probably, more often than not, learn more if they didn't earn a grade because there would be no set standard and the students would probably grow above and beyond what they would have if they simply got an A. 

Disrupting Class (Chapters 1-5)

1. Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity.  How is education currently organized?  
Interdependence and modularity are ways to describe the way a product's components relate to one another. If components are interdependent of one another, they are dependent on each other's design. If additions are interdependent, it makes the most sense for them to be created at the same time because the future is unpredictable, and if a lot of time and energy goes into one addition, hopefully the subsequent additions fit it. On the other hand, modular architecture allows for customization. The components will fit together, therefore they need to be well-understood, have to meet specifications, and have to be flexible. Our education is currently highly interdependent because we have standards that are not flexible and there are interdependent structures, such as hierarchy and physical. Customizing an interdependent product is expensive. 

2. Explain the disruptive innovation theory.  What does this have to do with schools?

The disruptive innovation theory explains struggles with innovation and how to succeed in innovation. The innovation disrupts the product's trajectory of improvement by bringing a good or service. These changes happen in order to benefit the nonconsumers (those who weren't using the original product). Therefore, the changes may not be better, but they are different. 

This relates to schools because changes to public schools have required them to adjust, and they have also improved. They have done a good job of preserving the important values while doing the best they can at new innovations. NCLB and Nation at Risk report are examples of disruptive innovation.

3.  Why doesn’t cramming computers in schools work?  Explain this in terms of the lessons from Rachmaninoff (what does it mean to compete against nonconsumption?)
Cramming computers into schools will not allow for student-centered classrooms. Computers have the opportunity, though, to disrupt current instruction and allow teachers to provide more individual attention. In terms of the lessons from Rachmaninoff, the idea of playing a phonograph instead of hearing live music relates to putting computers in a class and expecting them to teach instead of the teacher. Technology should only compete against nonconsumption, where there is no alternative to taking a class from the computer, that  it would be necessary instead of supplementary. 

4a. Explain the pattern of disruption. 
Disruptions first compete against nonconsumption so that the technology improves and the cost declines. Then, the technology starts applying original applications to the new plane to eventually create student-centric technology. This transition's pace follows an S-curve, which means that the initial pace is slow, then it steepens a lot, and finally it slows down and approaches the entire market.

4b. Explain the trap of monolithic instruction.  How does student-centric learning help this problem?
The trap of monolithic instruction is the idea that teachers must meet all of the same expectations for all students. Therefore more advanced or other classes are frequently unfunded for differently-abled students. Student-centric learning helps with this problem because teachers have more time to meet individual needs, and can push students to meet their furthest potential. Specifically, students can be taught based on their learning styles.

5. Explain public education’s commercial system.  What does it mean to say it is a value-chain business?  How does this affect student-centric learning?
Presently, education is a like a VAP (or value-chain) business, which means value-adding process. These types of businesses bring inputs of materials into one end, add higher value, and deliver the higher-value products to their customers at the other end. This affects student-centric learning because we have a lot of opportunities to improve on it, but at the same time there aren't many supports because it is new. 

Problem Based Learning

In the math methods class, we have been working on an assignment where we design unit plans with a local high school. The units are problem based, which means that a "big" problem is proposed, and the tools that are needed to solve it are the lessons to be taught subsequently. In most of these types of units (or at least ours), the students first decide what kind of information they know and need to know in order to solve the problem. I love this idea because with real-life problems we will not be told what tools we need to use or how to use them. However, there are ways to use our resources and prior knowledge to figure this out. Next, the students are guided and taught what they need to know. Students collaborate along the way and are interested in each other's thinking and ideas. Typically, what is collected at the end is a portfolio of work completed leading up to the solving of the unit problem. It has been an insightful and valuable experience to be able to plan and observe lessons for this assignment. If you are interested in learning more about PBL, check this out for strategies: http://www.studygs.net/pbl.htm