Personal Observation of the Day

Paperwork really sucks the joy out of teaching.

Nonsensical Quote of the Day

See if you can understand this 'cause I sure didn't. "Get it wrong so you know you don't know it." - a teacher's suggested response to when a student always asks, "Did I get it right?"

Teacher Quote of the Day

"When you're broke and over-worked, it doesn't matter what the weather is like." - My co-worker's comeback to an overly optimistic teacher's comment that we shouldn't complain about our furloughs because, "After all, we live in Hawaii, and the weather is always nicer in Hawaii."

Student Quote of the Day

"Again? You used that same story last year." - One student's response to her classmate's excuse that his dog at his homework.

Quote of the Night

"This is...interesting." -- My table- neighbor's description of a fancy-shmancy salad that consisted of Hamakua vine ripened tomatoes, truffled goat dairy, Nalo farms micro herbs, cripsy prosciutto. I would have gone with "weed-like."

Student Quote of the Day

"Take your own advice." -- One student's response when one of his classmates tried to quiet the class by repeatedly yelling "SHUT UP!"

Thoughts for Teachers

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." -- Frederick Douglass

Student Quote of the Day

"Did you just say f@#*ed up?" - Student reaction to my explanation that my recent illness left my sinuses stuffed up.

Student Quote of the Day

"Awww." - At least three students expressed their disappointment this way upon my return from taking my first day of sick leave last Friday.

Student Quote of the Day

"Can I bring my dog to class?" - 15 yr. old student.

Good Cancellation

After a long second day back at work, I was expecting more doldrums as I prepared for our weekly Wednesday meetings. While walking to my meeting site, a friend of mine told me that all faculty groups' meetings were canceled except hers. "Didn't you read the email?" she asked. I had been dreading the meeting so much that I never even bothered to read it because I thought it was the same spiel about the meeting locations and times. It ended my day on a good note.

Who was your teacher?

The problem (no pun intended) with high school level math is that every higher level course relies so heavily on the fundamentals supposedly learned in the basics like Algebra 1. A family friend recently came to me to ask for help with his homework. He is doing fairly well in grasping the concepts of calculus, but struggles with some of his basic algebra skills (like graphing equations and such). When I asked him why he was coming to see me for the first time in a long while, he replied, "I went to go see my Calculus teacher for help, but he got frustrated and told me to ask someone else." He went on to explain that because of his weak algebra skills, the calculus teacher had to go back and re-explain some basic steps in order to do the calculus problems. When the calculus teacher finally got fed up, he condescendingly asked, "How come you don't know this already? Who was your algebra teacher?" The student sheepishly replied, "You were, two years ago."

New Math

Here are some math equations that tend to sum up a lot of different things in life.








Images courtesy of allnewmath.com

Another Underpaid Teacher

I just got paid back half of the four dollars I loaned to a teacher for lunch on the 15th...January 15th.

Happy President Obama Day?

When I reminded my students that there would be no school on Monday, one of my smarter students yelled out, "President's Day right?" One of my other kind of students chimed in, "Oh! Because of Obama?"

Funny right? Yeah, it was funny the first time, but after three different students in completely different classes said about the same thing I got a little worried. Social studies teachers where are you?

Lost Your Noodle?

As a frequent shopper at amazon.com, I have come to keep an eye on their lightning deals page whenever I'm bored. The timed deals' supplies go fast if it's a popular item at a heavily discounted price. I ran across this particular item that sold out really quickly (according to posted comments). One reviewer wrote:

So what is this person's greatest purchase that sold for over 50% off?



Looks like you can get it gift wrapped too.

0.15 Seconds of Fame

Thanks to the sharp eyes of my grandma, I found out that my uncle and aunt were in a commercial before we found out from our source of family news. They're in an ad for Hawaiian Airlines and if you blink you'll miss them (literally).

My aunt shows up a couple times starting at the 8 second mark and again after my uncle passes the camera in front of her at around the 18 second mark. I wonder how much they're compensated for their few seconds of airtime.

2 or more teachers in the same room

When I was in high school, I used to walk by the faculty lounge everyday on the way to English class. I used to always wonder what happened behind closed doors. Every once in a while, a teacher would exit/enter when I walked by, and I would catch a glimpse of teachers lounging on comfy looking couches and chairs, clean tables, coffee makers, and tacky art hanging on the wall.

So what really happens when two or more teachers are in the same room together for an extended period of time? Complaining. Lots and lots of complaining. Surely I would never claim to be exempt from this behavior since complaining is in my top three hobbies (right up there with eating and sleeping).

Last Wednesday, I had to hurry and eat before running to the first of two meetings that overlapped into my lunch hour and forced me out of my last two classes of the day. During my shoveling session, I was joined at my table by two teachers. At first the conversation started out about all the hubbub regarding the two graduates of our school playing in the Super Bowl. Soon the topic switched to where we live. One of the teachers mentioned that he had recently moved with his wife; the other teacher asked what the wife did. Nursing. Then BOOM! "They [the nurses] have so much better negotiators than our union. Last year they successfully negotiated new contracts, but ours are still haggling over the drug testing." On and on they droned about poor working conditions -- short lunch breaks, heavy class loads, not enough money, blah blah blah.

I rushed off to my first meeting. We started discussing how to incorporate education standards and test data into our official documents (IEPs for those of you keeping score). We were doing pretty well at staying on topic (in other words: putting me to sleep) when a teacher asked, "So when are we supposed to find the time to compile all of this data and plan for our classes? I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining, but I seem to be spending so much time making calls to parents to coordinate meetings, typing these documents and creating goals that I don't have time to prepare standards based lessons for my students." The sentiment spread around the room and soon teachers were pouncing on the presenter with all kinds of complaints about short prep periods, heavy work loads, not enough support, blah blah blah.

Now I know why they kept the faculty lounge door closed at my high school; it's not because the teachers didn't want their complaints to be heard, but because everyone else was sick of hearing them.

Not Measuring Up

Wow...I just suffered an immeasurably frustrating day at work. I developed a couple of easy activities to ease some of my students into the "joy" of finding the measure of objects in INCHES. I made sure they were able to line up rulers on the zero (as opposed to the edge of the ruler), count the number of sixteenths of an inch and reduce the fractions properly. I even found a cool site on the web that has printable rulers so you don't have students whacking each other with real ones.

After all this preparation, I handed them a worksheet that included pictures of objects I wanted them to measure. I made sure students understood that they were not measuring the pictures, but the actual objects I brought to class (playing cards, CDs, paper clips, etc.) I thought it would be so inanely simple that most students would be able to breeze through it in no time.

I was wrong.

(photo courtesy of scienceblogs.com)

One student (a junior) commented, "Is that all there is to reading a ruler? I never knew how before."

Number of students caught measuring the pictures instead of the actual objects? Three...in one class.

Found one student measuring everything in centimeters.

Since the ruler wasn't long enough to measure the length of a std. piece of paper, I taught students to mark where the ruler ended and move the ruler to find a second measurement of the remaining part. When I asked what they should do with the two measurements (in this case 9" and 2") a student responded "times?" When I said that was wrong, she guessed, "divide?"

One student tried to be tricky and wrote the the length of a piece of paper was 11" and that the width was also 11". When I asked him if he knew that having both sides of the paper being the same size would make it a square, he said, "Yes." When I asked him if the piece of paper was square, he replied, "No...Oh!" He snatched the worksheet from my hand to correct his answer and I thought I had logically stepped him through the necessary thought process to find his own mistakes. When he handed me the paper again, I noticed his answers were changed...changed to "Height = 11 1/2 inches Width = 11 1/2 inches"

*sigh*

Nerdy Stuff

Back in the day, if something was "nerdy", it was usually pretty bad. The only good nerds came from Willy Wonka. These days, nerdy stuff is more common and can fill the whole spectrum of nerdy-cool to uber-nerdy. I recently ran across these nerdy items from various blogs, but I didn't feel each one would warrant a single post for you folks to read.

The first is an satellite photo of the big even of the day, Pres. Obama's inauguration. It's cool (in a nerdy way) to see how technology captured the event (streaming video, live audio/video on TV, blogs, twitter, etc). It's also cool to see so many people involved in re-shaping the country.

(courtesy of boingboing.net)

The second is a video of an interesting "toy" based on a mathematical feat of engineering. It's called a Yoshimoto Cube, but don't ask me how it works, I suck at math. It's fun to see how everything fits together. It's like a transformer...only nerdier.

(courtesy of boingboing.net again)

Which brings me to my final entry, a much more sad affair. This reaches into the dark end of the nerd spectrum...It's a contest in Japan to see who can use a calculator the fastest. It's sad that they even have a contest like this. It's sadder that 263 contestants showed up to battle it out. And it's even sadder that this is the 12th such contest. Is there really a demand for this kind of thing? What kind of sponsors do they have? What kind of prize is there for the winner? (My guess: a calculator watch)
While the video is in Japanese, seeing and hearing all the tension (and calculator key presses) is a universal language.

(courtesy of tokyomango.com)