Oops! The price of getting behind

Last night I worked until 8, mainly on Globaloria. I had not kept up with my learning log. I have a feeling that many of my students have found themselves in the same situation.
I spent a lot of time finding the computer assignments I had typed up and reading students' blogs and emails to make sure I had matched the assignments and dates correctly. It was a pain.
I've resolved to stay up to date with my learning log. I need to put a procedure in place for myself!

Blogging for 6th Graders

In my last entry, I wanted to insert video of the song I referred to, "If Tomorrow Never Comes" by Garth Brooks. I searched youtube and couldn't find a version by Garth Brooks. That meant I had a few versions of the song, none of which were what I had in mind, that I needed to pick from. Since my target audience is my students, I tried to pick the version that they would be most likely to enjoy and understand. No easy feat considering it's a country song! Just a note on one of the many details bloggers have to/get to consider!

Mortality

On Tuesday, Mom called to tell me that Dad was in the ER at the Heart Hospital. I got there quickly and learned that the doctors thought he was in danger of having a heart attack.
My parents and I are very close. Dad is the picture of health. He's been very careful about his diet since we learned about the dangers of cholesterol (I guess that's been about 20 years) and is scrupulous about getting enough exercise each day. He hadn't been going on his daily walks with Mom and their sweet dog Hannah for the past month or so because of the terrible weather. Turns out that may have been a lifesaver!
The doctors fitted him with two stents (which look a lot like the fingertraps I've given my students for rewards). It seems that an artery that gets blood to the left chamber of his heart was more than 95% occluded. He was a ticking time bomb. Any stress could have dislodged the plaque or starved his heart of oxygen.
As it is, though, he is fine. His heart is not damaged at all. The stents are securing the plaque against the walls of the artery and opening up the artery so blood can get through.


There's an adage that "all's well that ends well." I have to disagree. Even as a fan of math, with its numbers and operations that lead to exact answers without thought to circumstances, I still have emotions. Seeing Dad in the hospital and knowing that he was so close to death is scary. I'm glad everything's OK now, but my family is still pretty shaken up.
Just another example of our mortality. My theme song for now is "If Tomorrow Never Comes."

Giving thanks

I've always said that my kids (students) are naturally brilliant. I don't think they understand what I mean. Maybe they think I'm just joking.
I mean what I said: my kids are naturally brilliant.
On Friday the 20th my Group D students had a serious talk with me. The conversation was an example of what I want from my students: led by the students themselves. I just facilitated the conversation by trying to figure out who should speak next. Eventually, the kids took that over by writing and crossing off names on the overhead themselves. I think they got a good idea of why it is important to take turns and how difficult it can be to be fair in deciding who gets to speak next.
The students displayed courage and trust by telling me how they feel based on what teachers say and do. They also gave me some insight into how their families feel about their education.
I'm not going into detail because the kids shared some very personal stories with me. All I feel comfortable blogging about is that I now have some very difficult questions to guide me when I teach. First, what is success? Second, how much should parents be involved in their kids' educations? I think educators everywhere have struggled with these questions forever--or at least, I hope so! These questions are examples of what makes teaching an art form. There are no pat answers; we have to figure out what our students need. It's different for each kid, so if teachers somehow figure it out for one kid or one class, replicating it with others isn't really likely to work.
To all my students, please know that I am thankful for and proud of you. You guys are wiser than you think.

It's about time...

...and I have none! I'm spending a few quick minutes in the computer lab with Group B and thought it would be a good opportunity to update my blog.

There are so many things I wish I had time for. I want to take dance lessons again, or at least get to the gym a few times a week! I also would like some divine intervention to provide me with the time and energy to coach cheerleading.

And with that, I'm out of time!

Life, Death, and Grammar

Now who would've thought I'd be blogging so much? Given how much I love to talk, I bet everyone but me!

I have been doing some volunteer work for the Texas Defender's Service, which helps lawyers representing people on death row in many different ways. I would not usually talk about my work with the death penalty, because I think it is of paramount importance that you (my students, my colleagues...anyone who doesn't solicit my opinion) make up your own mind. However, this is in the context of my belief in the Constitution and the rights it guarantees Americans. One is that in death penalty cases (and many others), the person who is accused--the defendant--has the right to a lawyer and to "due process," which pretty much means that the courts will follow the rules. The word "due" in this context means "your guarantee just because you're human" so you can think of due process as the process that you deserve because you're a human. So in that spirit, I'll tell you about one of the many quirky things about the criminal justice system.

If you think about it, the Constitution's guarantee of fair "process" doesn't sound like what we usually think makes justice. I grew up thinking "justice" means that you figure out the truth and then figure out what consequences everybody should get. But the Constitution doesn't say that kind of justice is what we are guaranteed. Instead, it says that the "process" will be just. "Process" means all the different steps you have to do to finish. So the Constitution says we all get the right to have all those little steps done without cheating.

In the case I was researching, I was trying to figure out whether the court that convicted the defendant got one of those steps wrong. To figure out the rule the court had to followed, I had to read a lot of rules, called statutes. And here is where the craziness started: to figure out whether a really important statute was broken, I had to analyze the statute's grammar. Really. Is the letter that accuses the defendant of all the crimes (the "indictment") written in the conjunctive or the disjunctive (does it have lots of "ands" or is it full of "ors"?). Then I had to figure out if there were transitive verbs, and if so, what the nouns they were paired up with meant. And that was only half of the work!

Who would have thought that a person's right to justice sometimes means that the only thing between life and death for a criminal is grammar?

Cheers if you actually stuck along for the ride. This was a complicated post!

Change is Scary!

As the new school year approaches, I am using the few work-free days of summer I have left to prepare. I am so excited about teaching the amazing students of the EACPA. I have a tendency to get so enthusiastic about what all innovations I want to implement that I forget to figure out how to implement them! Procedures, it turns out, are humongously important!

Change, even good change, is stressful for me. I'm glad that I've figured that out about myself. I've noticed that when I'm stressed, I get disorganized and forget about my normal routines. So I'm going to use this space to write a couple high-priority items on my to-answer list. Students, I hope you take time to nail out the ways you're going to actually accomplish all of your dreams.

So...
1. Decide on class- and homework expectations and decide on procedures for students to follow. Where will the warm-up be in the classroom? Where will students turn in their homework? How will students make up classwork from days when they're absent? What do I expect out of an A+ assignment? What is passing?

2. Brainstorm skills practice if FastMath is not ready on day one of school. How will I track students' progress without the software? Perhaps I should give students internet-search assignments until the software comes in.

3. Post "This is important..." poster

4. Gradesheets? Homework? Individual math plans?

5. Homework for first few weeks from The Organized Student

6. How to keep parents involved? Are signed weekly progress reports sufficient?

Lots to ponder with this change, but knowing that can be empowering. Students, by the time you read this, I will (I better!) have implementation procedures that we can mold together to pave the way to your success! (procedures that we mold and pave...what kind of mixed up analogy is that?)