I want:
People to stop comparing Obama to Lincoln, MLK Jr., or Jesus
The economy to actually turn around…and soon.
The government not to waste time writing laws that prohibit the interstate sale or transfer of non-human primates. ( google that one )
A new Jay Z, Nas, Outkast, Kanye, and Lupe album.
Dr. Dre to stop teasing us about Detox.
The sequel to the purple tape to hurry up and drop already.
To finish…or at least come close to finishing my master’s this year.
Complete some research and publish before finishing my PhD
Travel.
Save money.
Is it just me or has the Grand Old Party gotten a little…darker over the past few months ?
With the promotion of Michael Steele to lead the party and the media and the GOP making Bobby Jindal the de facto Presidential front runner one has to wonder…just what the hell the Republicans are up to these days ? I’m not skeptical because the GOP is pushing brown people to the forefront…I’m just a bit skeptical of their motivations because of the timing.
If America is ever truly going to work the problems out that are weaved into the fabric of this nation (racism) then we will need representation from people of color in all major political parties. I get that. However…haven’t there always been really qualified brown people in politics for a really long time ??? Why now, all of a sudden, are the most powerful Republicans brown people ?
I don’t want people to somehow think that I think brown people have no business in the Republican party. That isn’t what this is. I have Republican leanings myself when it comes to the spending and the role of government in people’s personal lives.
What the heck are their motives ? Are the Republican, like Bush said, finally working to become more inclusive of all Americans ? If so, great! About time! Or, are the Republicans just capitalizing off of Obamamania and trying to find somebody, anybody, with that crossover appeal ? After all, in roughly a generation years most Americans will probably look like Obama…or Jindal…or some other random brown person. If that’s the motivation…I’m not so upset by that either. They’re just trying to ensure the relevance of their party for generations to come. That’s just good business.
However, if their motives are to just do something, anything, to grab the brown vote without actually seeking out qualified persons to do ,a la Sarah Palin, then they have screwed the proverbial pooch. I don’t know enough about Jindal or Steele to make judgments of their competence as elected officials. I just know the track record and knee jerk reactions of the Republican party when their back is against the wall. They do silly, dangerous things.
I just hope and pray that this isn’t what it looks like. I hope that we have some real substantive change in American politics. Don’t you ?
I’ve been reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed off and on now for almost a full year. I can’t seem to read it all in one sitting because, quite frankly, there is a lot of jargon to get through. I’m also unable to devour it all at once because of how relevant it is to today’s current state of public education.
I wonder what implementation of Friere’s critical pedagogical approach would look like at Any Urban High School USA where the school culture is characterized by unruliness, disrespect, and nihilism. I’ve worked in a school like that for a number of years and the thing that most stands out is that the students want to learn…and the teachers want to teach…but the larger social and political structures that exist prevent both from taking place in a consistent and efficient manner. The students, lacking any systematic way of dealing with their mistreatment, lash out in ways that only teenagers can. Teachers are frustrated because they truly want to teach…but the students, knowing that they are not truly getting what they should, will not allow learning to take place.
This may be my most critical post of the series and probably the one that I go back to and say to myself “this should have ranked higher”, later on.
Once the kids know that you care…they begin to really care what you know. They will ask you the usual teenage math student question “when will we ever have to use this?” and you better have a good answer prepared for your group of students.
Students in urban settings, more than any other, need to know that their time isn’t being wasted by someone who knows little more than they do…about life…as well as the mathematics content.
I have had students who were pregnant in the 6th grade. I have had students who have had to sell drugs and leave school to take care of their families ( siblings and children). I have also had students with parents in poor health who had to step up and be the man or woman of the house because mom and dad couldn’t carry the load. These kids can’t afford to have a teacher in the room who can’t tell them why algebra is important…or how sequences related to computer science..or any other money making application of the content you want them to care so desperately about.
Giving these kids the old line about how “education unlocks doors” is not going to cut it…unless you can be very specific about what type of education opens up specific doors…and how that can change their lives for the better.
I have seen good students give up on mathematics because a teacher gave them a throw away answer to the “when will we use this” question because the teacher either didn’t care, didn’t know, or didn’t have the foresight to go find out. Don’t be that teacher. If they ask…and you don’t know…then tell them that you don’t know but also tell them that you’ll find out.
Know your stuff…and know how it can be used in the real world. Many of your students will live in the “adult world” today. They need to know that time in your classroom is time well spent.
I have officially begun my personal jihad against the convoluted mathematics curriculum that is the Georgia Performance Standards.
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the superiority of the GPS as compared to Georgia’s antiquated QCC. However, superiority over a randomly created and poorly defined set of curricula isn’t exactly hard to attain.
My major qualm with GPS is the forced and artificial connections it tries to create in the middle grades and seemingly randomly assigned pacing guides that accompany the standards.
The GPS generally follows this pattern for middle school:
In 6th grade get a little algebra…a little geometry…a little data/stats…a little number and operations..a little measurement…..but don’t master any of it.
In 7th grade get a little algebra…a little geometry…a little data/stats…some number and operations….but don’t master any particular branch of mathematics.
In 8th grade….get a lot of algebra….a lot of number and operations…some data/stats…some geometry. Hopefully by then you’ve mastered it all.
Also, GPS was first implemented, not in the primary grades, but instead in the middle grades, much to the chagrin and disappointment to countless teachers, students, and parents who all want to know why their very intelligent students are failing all of a sudden.
Thus, this is my official declaration of war against the GPS. I invite math teachers all across the state to join me in my quest to design an alternative curriculum for the middle grades that makes chronological sense…and that actually builds on a student’s prior knowledge rather than jumping all over the different, yet connected, branches of mathematics.
I propose that the revised GPS or RGPS ( my own name 
) take the following basic structure.
6th grade – Number and Operations and Measurement ( integers, exponents, squares and square roots, fractions, decimals, percents, converting from metric to American standard )
7th grade – Basic Euclidian Geometry and Pre-Algebra ( volume, area, surface area, constructions, dilation, translations, Pythagorean theorem, solving one and two step equations, evaluating algebraic expressions )
8th grade – Algebra ( functions, domain and range, linear equations, systems of equations, slope, sequences, recursive and explicit definitions )
Leave the set theory, descriptive stats, linear regression, etc. for high school or for an advanced 8th grade curriculum where students can actually apply meaning to those concepts.
If the RGPS follows the above outlined structure then students will actually be able to master the content presented to them in the various grades and use that knowledge as a foundation to build upon.
The entire curriculum will be deisnged to follow the VVS ( another of my own creations ) structure where students will justify their mathematical conclsusions by being able to represent their thinking verbally, visually, and symbolically.
So, my fellow math teachers…what do you think of the proposal ? Convincing or do I more proof to convert you to the dark side of the force ?
My next post on this subject will include a pacing guide….calendar…and some sort of sample curricula.
Here is a very rough draft of how I propose to amend the 6th grade curricula.
So, I delivered the lesson that I’m offering as a download on my freebies page and the end results were mixed.
2 of the 3 classes that I delivered it to today were able to conduct the experimental piece of the task with relative ease. I let them use the graphing calculators to assist with the calculation.
A few (2 or 3) students were able to dig into the questions after the experiment.
I plan to go back and adjust some of the directions…perhaps adding a video component to the directions so I don’t have to waste time delivering them again and again.
Also, my students who are poor readers struggled to understand what it was that I wanted them to do once they got to the questioning.
My students who never do anything…still didn’t do anything. And their “do nothing” approach flies in the face of all of the research that claims that manipulatives will make math more engaging and accessible to struggling students….I never really bought into that anyway. If you’re willing to work you’re willing to do so if the lesson is s lecture or a project.
Overall, I think it went well…but my lesson was tainted but not one, not two, but three back to observations of my classroom. One of the many joys of working in a NI school is that I get observed ALL THE TIME…I mean…ALL THE TIME…to the point where it is distracting to me and disruptive to my students.
Ahhh well…back to work.
Oh yeah, I’ll post pics and video once I’ve completely delivered the lesson in its entirety.
One of my colleagues has taken to calling my repeater iTunes.
iTunes is absent today and all is right with the world.
Am I wrong for that sentiment or do all teachers have that one student who just pushes all of your buttons?
I have a new favorite teacher blog
http://chalkdustmakesmesneeze.wordpress.com/
Sometimes I wish I blogged under a pseudonym.
I actually laughed out loud at this one.
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