Short Story Reflection of My Reaction to Hateful Words

Friday, May 18

On Wednesday May 16, I was the "sub" in the 1st period Geometry class, as I was left alone with the students because the sub for the class had to leave for another class to occupy. There wasn't much for me to do; the lesson plan called for an independent practice/review worksheet to be done by the students. I was mainly prepping for my class coming up and helping students with questions when they had them.

Near the end of the period, maybe around 9:15 AM (class got out at 9:30), I overheard some students gossip about a male peer that they discovered was gay. The most resonating thing I heard was when two girls mentioned that he was a "waste of life." This moment in their conversation was preceded by an acknowledgment that this young man they were speaking of was a good-looking fellow, though they said it with less-attractive vocabulary.

I eavesdropped a bit more as I helped a couple other students. Their gabbing eventually fizzled to another, probably mindless, teenage topic. I felt irked, disturbed and upset about what these girls had said though; so much to the point that I needed to address my concern.

So I did. To the entire class. Before the bell rang. I asked for their attention and received immediate silence; not something I necessarily expected. I was running on adrenaline from here on out, although I had good control of my heartfelt intention to promote civil, intellectual, and respectful discourse among those in our school community, as well as in society as a whole. I said:

"I think it is very distasteful and wrong, and often hurtful, to judge someone based on who they are. If you want to make a good judgement about a person, do it based on what they do; do it based on their actions.

What Martin Luther King Jr. said in the 60's is pertinent today, and it always will..We need to judge people not my the color of their skin, nor by their sex, or ethnicity, nor by their sexual orientation, but rather by the content of their character. Calling someone a waste of a life (I didn't look at any students in particular during this whole time) just because he is gay is something that disturbs me very much, and it should disturb you all as well. You know there is just so much other crap going on in the world, so many more important issues to contemplate and deal with, that talk like that is, just...hateful...and stupid...."

At this point my voice had gotten shaky, emotions showing, eyes watering up (seriously).

I then thanked the students for their time as the bell was close to ringing. I had a completely silent room for those moments before the bell. There was an intense, stale air in the room. The air conditioner attached to this standard, rectangular prism-shaped, portable high school classroom was on the verge of rumbling on for the first time that morning. I was able to compose myself fairly quickly.

The bell rang, the A/C followed suit, and vibes returned to normal frequency.

The past two days, I've felt like this event didn't really happen, that is how surreal it felt. But after prepping in the same classroom this morning (today was the first time this class had reconvened since the "speech"), one of the students approached me after the bell and told me that what I did last class was really cool, and that all the kids were talking about it afterwards. This, along with putting a smile on my face, confirmed the event's validity, and compelled me to write about it before the memory gets foggy (or before my verbal storytelling alters its details).



How have you reacted to similar situations? Any comments, stories, tips, etc., that you have are welcomed:)

My Successes in Parallel Co-Teaching

I have been co-teaching at Carlsbad High School for about 8 weeks now. I have read blogs from my classmates, such as Chris Dolnik's "The Descent of a Man" blog. He wrote in March that "Preparation allows for better fluidity, direction, and purpose in my lessons." And this is no doubt been evident in my student teaching as well. While I still need to learn better preparation and lesson planning, I have had to incorporate co-teaching strategies into the mix. I have done so with encouraging results.

I have found great use and appreciation for parallel co-teaching strategy. From Villa, Thousand, & Nevin (2008) A Guide to co-teachng: Practical tips for facilitating student learning, "Parallel co-teaching is when two or more people work with different groups of students in different sections of the classroom. Co-teachers may rotate among the groups; and, sometimes there may be one group of students that works without a co-teacher for at least part of the time...Key to parallel co-teaching is that each co-teacher eventually works with every student in the class.


In one of my classes, Geometry, there is only one big white board at the front of the room. Instead of having us split up into to groups in the same room, my cooperating teacher and I have one group stay in the class with one of us to go over a topic, while the other half goes outside to do an activity where a white board is not necessary. In my other class I am teaching, Algebra II, I have a white board on the front and back walls of the class. Sometimes we take half the class outside, and other times we make proper use of the back board. When you have classes of 35 or so students, there is a huge difference between working with only half of those students at a time.

To those whom are co-teaching, what has been your experience with this method? Is it your favorite? What has worked best for you?

The "F" Word You like to Hear in your Class

Today in the Algebra II class I am student teaching, I heard one of my students (whom is usually the one spacing out) say "This is fun. Lets do more."

It was a great thing to hear. I hear so much these days from students in the public schools that they hate math. And my class I am speaking of is no exception. This class is an intermediate Algebra class with students whom have struggled with high school math for 2+ years. Its a little tougher to get through to them than other students, but days like these can prove it worthwhile.

And I don't mean to sound like my class has been the antithesis of a "fun" class; I've employed a fair share of strategies to make class engaging. When you hear that "F" word though, you know you're doing okay.

Reflection on my Digital Reflection

This blog post was inspired by Carl Maas' Reflection on the same project, of which I completed late last night.

In the making of my digital reflection presentation, I was able to add new aspects to my PLN. For example, my presentation was created on Prezi, the first such time I used this software. I feel like the extent to which I took advantages of Prezi's features was much less than its potential. I used Sangit to record my presentation and upload it to YouTube. I discovered this software in my perusing of digital reflections of semesters past, and am definitely grateful for that.

I also love reflection projects because it makes me reflect. Its really as simple as that. One of the things we learn in our credential program is the value of reflection. I have come to realize its potential over the past year, and this project did its job in allowing me to look back on and absorb all that I have accomplished in this semester-long course.

There was a struggle to get going at first, but I have crossed the line of being a complete "visitor" of the Internet world into at least a part-time "resident." My question to the #csusmedu peeps: should we give up the csusmedu hashtag to the next group of cohorters? If so, what should our new hashtag be so that we can continue to network in the future?

Visit to El Camino HS - March 12 - Reflection

On Monday March 12, I, along with other Single Subject Teacher Candidates, attended a visit to El Camino High School in Oceanside, CA, in order to see how iPads have been implemented into the general classroom. Although I was excited to learn about how iPads could enhance the learning process, I got home that day with many questions still unanswered.

1. How was technology integrated into the curriculum?  Do you feel that it promoted student learning?
   - In Dr. Nank's classroom at ECHS, each student had an iPad that they could use individually. The iPads were attached to the desks so that they wouldn't get "lost." That day, all math classes were preparing for the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), so I was unable to witness them being used to teach new material, which I was more interested in learning about. The students were working on an assessment through Moodle on their iPads, and most of the students had a pen and paper out to work the problems by hand.
   If I were to make a hypothesis, I would say that iPads have a tremendous opportunity to promote student learning (if used properly)
   
2. Is there anything you saw that makes this classroom/school unique?
   - The school had a great feel to it, a great sense of community. The classroom I observed in was part of a new-looking math and science building. The layout of the school was open and welcoming. I was very impressed. If you were to ask me about the students in the classroom I observed, I would say they seemed to be used to, and comfortable with, the use of iPads in the classroom. they were not off task (eg playing Angry Birds, or checking FB).
   
   
3. What did you learn and how does it relate to the class questions?
   -I learned that the use of iPads to assess students is awesome. Dr. Nank showed us how he is able to randomize the questions he asks on the tests, so that he is comfortable with letting a student who fails a test relearn the content and retake it, without worrying that all he/she did was memorize what questions were on the test previous. I still have questions about how you can teach students new content effectively using iPads. I have many ideas, but I would like to witness it first hand. Thus, I would be more than willing to visit El Camino high School again sometime when they are not practicing for a bloody standardized test!!
   

EDSS 530 Digital Reflection

Attached to this post is my Digital Reflection Presentation created on Prezi. I had a fun time making it; being able to reflect on all that I have learned, and to realize of how much I have yet to learn. Cheers!

EDSS 531 Reflection

              My experience in this class, The Reflective Professional, has been one that allowed me to realize the importance of reflection upon events and individual students as a means to meet students’ needs and continually grow at a teacher. What I learned throughout the course this semester, in addition to the significance of reflection, is that it is important to understand my own beliefs and biases and to increase student creativity and right-brained thinking through different teaching models such as synectics.

              We started this course with a journal which allowed me to reflect on my first clinical practice experience, in which I put myself in the shoes of my students. In this journal, I described what it is like for them to be students in my class and to move through classes in a day at my school site. It was a great way to start this course and remind myself that it is my duty as a 21^st century educator to try to eliminate the “shuffling” that goes on in public high schools these days.

              In the 3^rd week of the course, both the night and day cohorts participated in an online dialogue in which we responded to the following prompt: “What are your biases and how do you mitigate your behavior when working with students?” This was one of the highlights of the course for me, because it synthesized an in-class activity with an online-based assignment. Many of the assignments I had this semester were open to interpretation because there wasn’t much class-time for discussion. This particular assignment had an entire class devoted to this topic and it resulted in a very rich experience for all involved.

              I also had a great time with my model presentation assignment. My group had a lot of good preparation on the assignment, and got help from Jannis well before our assignment was due. I thought synectics was the coolest of the different models presented and thought we did a good job of explaining its aspects and benefits. I have yet to try this model out in my clinical practice yet, but I will keep it in my back pocket until I have the right need for it.

              I know I might be going over the one-page requirement , but I wanted to note the appreciation I have for you reminding us that writing down our thoughts and being creative through writing poetry  or participating in games such as Two Truths and a Lie are fun ways to create experiences that will endure in my memory. In addition, I realize that this was semester with an experiment, and the cohorters were “guinea pigs;” but I appreciate all you guys did to understand our situation. Being a teacher means being flexible, and you all emulated that fact. I hope you don’t take it personally when some students attack the way this semester went. To me, to be that upset shows a lack of flexibility.

531 Journal 5 - CPI Reflection

Q: Looking back at your teaching last semester, what did you discover about the needs of your students in your classes? What kinds of "needs" surfaced that surprised you?

A: Last semester I realized that my students needed remediation on fundamental mathematical skills that are crucial to progress in higher-level mathematics and in the material I was required to teach. This need certainly surprised me in that it was so widely prevalent in my class.

Another need I discovered about my students was the fact that many did not have the trust in their abilities to  "get" the right answer. On many occasions, I would help a student with the steps in completing a task, only to have them ask me at the end if their answer is correct. The first few times I was asked this question I was surprised. but I found out that many of my students have the same insecurities. I have no doubt that the fault here lies with the way in which my students have been taught mathematics up until that point in their lives. My students have been taught that there is usually only one "right" way to do math. Over time, after being told that they have been "wrong" over and over, my students feel dumb, end up hating mathematics, and completely distrust their own abilities in the subject. A colleague of mine working at High Tech High North County wrote a great blog on the issue recently (see Bryan Meyer - Putting the Cart before the Horse).

On top of all this, the majority of my students need tremendous help with organizational skills.




Q: To what degree do you think you really understand the needs of your students? How wide is the "gap" between them and you?

A:  See Journal #3




Q: What might have surfaced in the reading or in your teaching (about the realities of students' needs) that triggered a negative response in you? Try to identify why this response was triggered and how it relates to your biases.

A: The fact that my students are unable to organize their work in my class definitely triggers a negative response in me. Having many of my students asking for materials that were passed out and lost by my students is really frustrating. It is a waste of time for me to have to make up guided notes handouts for every lesson. Because of the expectation that the students won't take notes without graphically organized handouts makes the teaching profession a lot more tedious and time consuming. This relates to some biases I have in that I feel that many of my students today are less independent and held less accountable for their learning than when I was in school.

Educational Philosophy/Model Integration

              As I approach the end of my second week of CPII, I have thought a lot about my philosophy of teaching and how I can best help my students effectively learn and be able to “do” mathematics. It has been a struggle, so far, to have a cohesive unit of 32+ students engaging in effective dialogue that promotes the Socratic method of learning that I wish to employ in my classroom. But I realize that this type of classroom cannot form out of mid-air. Thus, I will not allow myself to get too distracted by this challenge. And after the past couple semesters in the credential program here at CSUSM, I have learned that to transform education into more student-centered and socially just environment, I must be professional, reflective, as well as innovative in my practices.

              This semester I have many students whom “shut off” their learning caps when they themselves are not talking or being talked to the teacher.  It seems like I need to be their sole source of assurance that they understand something, instead of self-checking, asking peers for their thoughts, or speaking when I encourage whole-class discussion. This problem is compounded when their “shut off” routine leads to talking to their neighbors about something other than the subject of the class’s lesson. In order to counter this effect, I need to plan lessons that prevent student “shut off” mechanisms. In my 531 class this semester, I got in-depth looks into different models of teaching that are out there. To help me with my teaching and to meet the needs of my students, I find the inductive thinking and memorization models to be important models that fit well with my philosophy.

Inductive Thinking

              As human beings, my students are natural conceptualizers. Comparing and contrasting is something we do with every aspect of our lives. I love lessons that make the students inquire, sift through information, and eventually construct their own knowledge based off of their experiences. I recently tried to have my students “construct” the formulas for the lengths of the sides of special right triangles (30-60-90 and 45-45-90 triangles) I spent the night previous drawing different sized triangles of this category and cutting them out. During class, I had the students pick up a couple different sized triangles and trace them onto their paper. After measuring their lengths, I recorded their data in a table on the white board in the front. I thought the lesson would be a great way to see the relationship between the lengths of the sides of these triangles. Unfortunately, I feel like I rushed this phase where students examine and enumerate the data. My rushing led to a superficial inquiry of the data, something I regret now that I reflect on it. I feel I lead the students toward the formulas more so than I wanted to. In any case, I am happy I tried to get my students to create their knowledge of these triangles, instead of “spoon-feeding” them the formulas, something I see too often in classrooms these days. To be honest, I find this is the reason why online resources like the Khan Academy have gained popularity; because if all the teacher is going to do is lecture about formulas and examples you can find in a textbook, then you don’t need the teacher after all. But I disagree that this is the best way to teach; because the world we live in is a mathematics textbook, all our students need is a guiding hand in the conceptualization processes.

Note: This triangle lesson went superb in regards to student engagement. I had much less of my normal percentage of students shutting off during the activity, and felt like the students liked the hands-on approach. I have ideas on how to make it better and feel inspired to do so.

Memorization

I will not spend too much time on this, because I don’t think much time in the classroom should be spent on memorization. But it does have its place in the mathematics classroom, as much as my philosophy says otherwise. I think memorization should be taught after the learning of concepts has occurred. For example, in my high school calculus class, I learned the song, “low d high, minus high d low, square the bottom and do see do,” to help me memorize the formula for taking the derivative of a function that has an expression in the numerator and the denominator (I hope I’m not losing you with all my math talk about triangles and derivatives). This memorization did not take the place of my learning of how and why this formula works, but it was a supplement of my teacher’s lesson to help the concept stick. I haven’t forgotten this song, but thankfully I don’t rely on the song, or memorization techniques in general, for my source of knowledge. If needed, I could prove to you that the formula works, and this is because of the excellent way my teacher presented the material before giving us the nifty song.

Journal: What are my biases?

What are your biases and how do you mitigate your behavior when working with students?

This journal is long overdue. I had some great dialogue with my classmates on the CSUSM Grouply site on the matter, and was unaware of this journal being separate of that assignment for some time.

One of the biases I have with teaching math is that many students don’t have an imagination. By the time many of these students reach my high school class, they have been taught procedural information without connecting it to anything relevant in their lives.

The fact of the matter is that mathematics can explain why the world we live in works. Newer technologies today can make exploring the outdoors more of chore than a privilege, something I find extremely disturbing. This disconnect is only becoming more extreme, and it is leaving our students less engaged with the real world (yet more engaged in virtual realities that are visually, not physically, stimulating).

To mitigate my behavior when working with students of limited imagination/creativity, I will remain calm with my students and give positive encouragement for them to be more fanciful. I have found my free-writing/poetry sessions in Jannis’ class to be some of my most memorable mind-opening experiences in a classroom (along with some great synectics sessions). Oh ya, and that reminds me; I am going to try to stimulate my students’ creativity by trying out some synectics sessions in my own classroom. Therefore, my bias in this regard is only fuel for my fire to inspire.

I also have biases that resemble stereotypes(i.e. Asians are good at math, African Americans are good athletes, Jewish people are frugal with their money, etc.). I do my best to not let those biases affect me when I am presented with a situation involving persons or things that fit certain stereotypes. I bring this mentality to my classroom persona. As a teacher, I have the responsibility to teach my content, but also to prepare students to be effective citizens in a Democracy, which is a privilege I take seriously. Teaching critical thinking skills and the ability to make judgements based from experiences, and not from external factors such as the media, is my main philosophy on the matter.

Are Grades Necessary for Learning?

Some words on the Use of Grades these days...Inspired from the video segments found on Larry Ferlazzo's blog


After watching the first excerpt from The Daniel Pink interview, I felt I could totally relate to Pink's beliefs about how grades end up being the reason for going to school. He got straight A's in his 6 years of learning the French Language, but he admitted his inability to speak French today. I had only 3 years of Spanish classes, but I too can say I have little knowledge on how to speak the language. I agree that grades are a form of performance expectations that, if met, do not necessarily relate to the meeting learning expectations.

If we took grades out of the equation I totally feel that students would be better off. I would expect that students would learn more as well. The stress of grades, on BOTH students and teachers, make the learning process harder than it needs to be.

Pink also says on the second chopped YouTube video that he feels that Science (and I'm assuming Math too!) is too much presented as a bunch of facts rather than being built around inquiry. This hit to the core of me and to what I have been thinking about recently as I approach the end of my schooling to become a mathematics teacher. I think about how all the content of our math and science textbooks came to be known. I think about how many generations of curious humans were out there when they thought about and wondered why the world we live in works. People have the brain capacity for wonder and empathy. We as teachers need to foster these abilities in our kids. The way I think about it, the ones who didn't have the textbook growing up were the lucky ones. The Newtons, the Einsteins, the Pythagoreans, the Aristotles (I can go on forever) of the world were the lucky ones. Because they all experienced "Ah-Ha!" moments in their lives. Its a shame to have our kids learn these beautiful subjects without letting them experience "Ah-Ha!" moments. We don't have to have them invent crazy math formulas for this to happen either. Just a little bit of time for student-centered exploration will do the trick.

News of the Day: Reflection

This blog is supposed to describe my usage of Twitter as a search engine for my news, as well as my brief thoughts on what I read today in San Diego UT's front page story on Gary Stein, Marine Sargent from Temecula, CA. He has been identified as the Marine whom started a Tea Party FaceBook group and recently posted hateful and defiant speech towards the President of the United States, Barack Obama. I saw the article in the UT while eating a slice of pizza at Allen's in Carlsbad. I felt the urge to talk about it so I gave the paper over to the gentleman near me eating, told him this was a good, but sad read. I wanted to talk about it some more, so I looked up articles on the matter by searching "Stein Military" in my mobile TweetDeck App. and was directed to articles from Yahoo, Huffington Post, and a newspaper co. site. The UT quoted what Stein said on FB, which was in regards to his thoughts on disciplinary actions possibly happening to those whom were involved in the recent Koran burnings in Afghanistan. I will not repeat the quote, as many other news articles have refrained as well, and the latter story is another conversation in itself. I at the moment I am sickened, and scared, of people like Gary Stein.

I don't care about the story from a political standpoint. As a supporter of Barack Obama, some may feel I am mad at him because he doesn't support my views politically. But the way he spoke about the president was vulgar and disrespectful to the point that it made me upset. He and many Tea Partiers have been distasteful, hateful, and racist at times (See Part 2 of the video here). Coming from the standpoint that Nazis used hate to create political momentum, I feel that this is the most "nazi"-istic party America has ever bred.

Every person entering the U.S. military repeats an oath swearing to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and "that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me." This an oath to good maintaining good form, supporting the republic for which its stands; it is also an oath of not supporting unethical behavior, like the burning of the Koran or urinating on dead Afghan civilians.

It's time to Learn Outside

This post is in response to my reading from a Tweeted link It's Time to Learn Outside.

As a future math teacher, it is a huge goal of mine to instill respect and understanding, if not love, for nature. Mathematics is a very effective way to understand the world in which we live in, and beyond! I have seen that textbooks have noticed this correlation, but there is something lost in translation when a teacher explains nature to a class reading from a textbook. Unnatural, is my pun-intended way of thinking about it. Your simply not going to get an enriching experience in understanding nature unless their is the physical presence of nature in your curriculum.

Now there is a small amount of this "learning outdoors" happening in public high schools today. For example, in learning trigonometry, many teachers send their students out in pairs with a clinometer to measure the angle of elevation of a tree or some other tall object. Then, by using the angle and the distance they are standing from the object, they can employ trig formulas involving right triangles in order to find out the height of the object. This is fun and all, but it doesn't teach the concepts; it just allows us a simplistic way to use the concepts.

In his blog, William Sterrett writes, "We'll need leaders who understand how the natural world works and how humans are a part of nature." No better place to foster this understanding than outside.

Learning in New Media Environments

After watching the TED video of Mike Wesch, I had some revelations about how media affects societies. Mike's stories about his experiences in Papa New Guinea were able to open my eyes about how this happens. I realized that when media changes, relationships change too. Mike said "media mediates relationships," and it can be positive or negative in its effectiveness. For example, I have found that my words can be misinterpreted a lot easier over a text message than when I am physically sitting next to a person at a coffee shop. Media can make you detached if misused.

As a educator, it is my responsibility to make sure the use of technology and various medias are used in a way that make the best of our innovations, rather than let the innovations get the best of us (through eliminating individuality and critical thinking abilities). For example, I see students in math classes using a calculator without being able to explain their procedures and their answers. Whats the use of using a $100 calculator to calculate an integral of a function if there's no connection for the student?!

I need to teach students to foster their creative minds to "analyze, criticize, see new information, create new connections, and ultimately create information." Our technology had made being knowledgeable unimportant. The ability to be able to use the knowledge technology provides us in a productive manner is what I see my role as an educator to be today.

Disrupting Class - Reflection on how disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns

Chapter 1: Why Schools Struggle to Teach Differently when each Student Learns Differently

1. Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity.  How is education currently organized?  



   - We have an interdependent architecture in our schools today. The curriculum is rather similar no matter where you are or who you are teaching because there is mandated standardization, and trying to change one part of the school system causes a change from another part and so on. On the other hand, "[m]odularity allows for customization" (Christenson, 2011, pg. 23). Modularity will allow us to teach students differently because we know they learn differently. In addition, students need to build knowledge off experiences. Different students have different experiences, and thus our teaching toward them should be different as well.


Chapter 2: Making the Shift:  Schools meet Society’s need

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


   - Chapter 2 describes two types of innovations that are visible in any industry. The first, there are the type of innovations that improve and sustain an existing industry. In Disrupting Class, the authors write about how "[a]irplanes that fly farther, computers that process faster, cellular phone batteries that last longer, and televisions with clearer images are all sustaining innovations. On the other hand, disruptive innovation is the phenomenon of products entering a market that are not labeled as "breakthrough improvements," like the improvement of high definition TVs. A disruptive innovation benefits people who had been unable to consume the oft-expensive product that the sustaining industry offers. In the text, the authors explain how the personal computer is a great example of a disruptive innovation. Successful disruption changes the market; everyone (almost everyone) has a personal computer, and I have never even heard of minicomputers.
   What does this have to do with schools? Well, the the problem with the public education system is that it is basically a monopoly. In addition, everyone uses it (kids/adolescents basically have a requirement to be educated). This means that it is basically impossible for the new business models that disruptive innovation theory creates to be allowed to develop on their own and mature naturally. 
   Our schools need to improve by embracing disruptive theories within existing schools, a task not yet done successfully in a private industry (yet there is hope, as schools have proven to be able to assimilate to disruptive redefinitions of performance in past).


Chapter 3: Crammed Classroom Computers

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?)


   - We have implemented computers in school by "cramming" them into the existing teaching and classroom models that were in place before they arrived. We have yet to let them disrupt the old methods to improve and transform the way we teach and learn, with the idea to become a more modularly framed school system. 
   We have been trying to implement computers into a classroom in such a way that would be analogous to selling tickets to people expecting to see Rachmaninoff play his second piano concerto, but instead having Rachmaninoff push the play button on a phonograph recording of himself. It would seem ridiculous. The phonograph did not get popular by replacing live music, but by providing music to those whom could not be at a concert when they wished to hear music. Disruptive innovations originate and mature by competing first with nonconsumption. For example, the personal computer originated by providing a computer to those whom did not want to put a gigantic and expensive minicomputer in their garage. 


Chapter 4: Disruptively Deploying Computers

4. Explain the pattern of disruption. 


   - The pattern of disruption, where new substitutes for the old, almost always follows an S-curve when measuring the percentage of the market using the new approach over time. "[T]he initial substitution pace is slow; then it steepens dramatically; and finally, it asymptotically approaches 100% of the market" (Christenson, 2011, pg. 97). 



5. Explain the trap of monolithic instruction.  How does student-centric learning help this problem?


   - The trap of monolithic instruction is that teachers in this model teach in a way that benefits very few types of learning intelligences. With limited time to instruct, the teacher can't possibly cater to all learning styles for each bit of content students are to learn. "As the monolithic system of instruction shifts to a learning environment powered by student-centered technology, teachers' roles will gradually shift over time." With student-centered technologies, teachers will be able to "coach" students to fit their unique style. 


Chapter 5: The System for Student-Centric Learning

6. 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?


   - Public Education's system operates like a value-adding process (VAP) business. A VAP business "brings input materials into one end of their premises, transform them by adding value, and deliver higher-value products...at the other end" (Christenson, 2011, pg. 126). Using this definition, students in a school are the input materials, and they are the educated material output the other end. 
   The public education's current commercial system hinders student-centric learning. Textbooks are predominantly geared toward the dominant learning style of the authors whom create them, which are geared toward the style of the standardized assessment given at the end of the term that checks for understanding. The current business model could be more student-centric; but, if publishers were to create "different books for each type of intelligence, their volume per title-and their profitability-would decline markedly" (pg. 129). The text goes on to say that a new facilitated network, rather than a VAP business, needs to emerge to provide student-centric products for students in our public school system.


Note: I found the question about value-chain business to be synonymous with VAP business. If you feel I am incorrect here, please comment.

EDSS 531 Journal #3

Robert Gordon

Journal #3

Prompt: To what degree do you think you really understand the needs of your students and what they need for the 21st century?  How wide is the “gap” between them and you? In what areas are the gaps? What can you do to make connections?
Response: I feel that I understand the needs of my students in the 21st century. I believe that schools need to be reformed in order to equip the needs of diverse student bodies in a way that fosters right-brained innovation (instead of placing it in the backseat). Along with this thought, the world of standardized testing needs to be revamped to be able to recognize students of all abilities (and races) that are required for 21st century jobs.
Because of the globalization of modern economics, America today needs to educate kids to become innovators. Its been said that this century is going to be the one where the right side of the brain gets its time in the sun. However, like Daniel Pink has stressed in his book, A Whole New Mind, analytical thinking shouldn’t be thrown away with. Rather, it needs to be conceptualized in such a way helps capture context and emotion. For example, Pink writes, “Storytelling doesn’t replace analytical thinking...it supplements it by enabling us to imagine new perspectives and new worlds...Abstract analysis is easier to understand when seen through the lens of a well-chosen story” (Pink, 108). It places educators in a situation where the old way of doing things will not suffice. This shows that we need to be able to give academics a higher conceptual meaning for students to gravitate toward versus repel from.

This leads to the gap between me and my students; they want that good story to inspire them into gaining knowledge. I think our students today, whom are bombarded by technological stimuli, are losing their sense of imagination, and hence the need for stories to give them interest in academic content.Teaching with a good story will help form my students’ thinking about whom they are and whom they are to be. We need to enhance the creativity of our kids, and the resulting imagination is what is going to help sustain human life on Earth (although we mustn't forget the dramatic loss of wildlife we have seen and will continue to see unless we do something about it)..

Although I am older than my students will be, I grew up in a time when social media was starting up and Internet was becoming widely available. I understand my students need to be able to become comfortable with technology without “relying” on technology, where the latter often seems to be the case these days. This is where I feel our gap is the smallest. I am going to be able to mentor my kids into using the technology around them to their advantage, to see the big picture in things, and to be proactive with the use of their time (which can get out of hand when using technology!).

The need for more creativity in our student bodies must be reflected in the way we test our students. Standardized testing, as it stands right now, is no way to determine the growth potential of a 21st century student. I have heard that the government has invested a lot of money to research new methods of testing students and I hope it evolves into a more equitable assessment tool than it is today.

Thoughts on Linsanity

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/jeremy-lin-gives-sports-world-much-needed-wow-moment

I tweeted this link to an article written by Greg Couch, but here it is through another medium.

So, I realized tonight that I hadn't gotten my 5 minimum posts, so here is another. Although I am rather happy to post, as it allows me to give my thoughts about the recent "Linsanity" and my personal biases....

Jeremy Lin is one of 4 Harvard grads to make it to the NBA. (You are, statistically, more likely to become the President of the U.S. than you are to become a professional basketball player if you are someone who graduates from Harvard). His first six games as a professional are among the best in the world.

You can read the article for specifics, and the author does some great analysis that makes you think. For example, Couch wonders, after noting that Lin is an Asian-American, "How many scouts look at a guy like Lin, or even looked at Lin himself, and passed because he didn't look the part? How many college coaches? None offered him a scholarship out of high school...In fact; it makes you wonder how deep these stereotypes sit in our sports psyche. Do parents, who more and more keep specializing their young kids in sports, steer them into stereotypes? How much greatness is missed?"

As someone who loves the world of sports, the game of basketball being the least of possible exceptions, I would hate to imagine being one of those kids that Couch contemplates gets overlooked because of the way he/she looked off the basketball court. It should be your quality of play that determines your basketball respect.

I mean think about how many black basketball players would we never have known unless Jackie Robinson and the color barrier was dropped. Makes you think now "How many Jeremy Lins have we missed during our blind steering toward stereotypes.

I have biases. I don't know if I have acknowledged them in my 4+ posts (or if I ever want to, as I feel that gives them more credibility), but I work all the time to get rid of them. I try always to remember the golden rule.

I had a friend whose dad was a mathematician. He was a great person to talk about because he always formulated his own opinion based off of his personal inquiry and experiences; he never came off as one with preconceived notions. If he wanted to know something about you, he asked nicely. If he wanted to know what you thought about particular subject, he did so cordially. It made me think about how I can be less likely to succumb to my own preconceived notions, because it limits your ability to truly connect with an individual.

I am going to bring this mentality toward my future students, as I've had good time to practice my preach/reflect on my experiences with this gentleman, which has been over a year now since his passing (5+ year bout with cancer).

We need to provide equity in the classroom. Lin was privileged in that he didn't rely on his basketball skills to support himself. He made sure to go to college, something many of our student-athletes forget to do.

I want to educate kids so that they can try to understand this world, and to teach them beliefs need to originate from within, not from media, parents, nor even teachers. Teachers just facilitate the liberating process that is learning.

EDSS 531 Journal 2

Journal 2_Tovani Chart

Quote form the Text/Video	What it Means	Deeper Thinking
1. “Creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” - Sir Ken Williams	1. Educators in schools should foster creative thinking. Teaching only about what is known to be right or wrong is not going to prepare kids for a future that we ourselves have no ability to predict or imagine.	Kids are not frightened of being wrong, which is a perfect time of their lives to be allowed to create things and let their minds “invent.” Much of the high stakes teaching strategies prepare students to bubble in the “right” answer. When you are bred this way, students get transformed into thinking it is not okay to be different, it’s not okay to get an answer that isn’t what the back of the book says. Fostering students’ creative minds means that we need to prepare them to be “wrong” sometimes, and to learn from their own mistakes. Because, as Sir Ken said in his talk, “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
2. “The purpose of public education around the world is to produce university professors.” -Sir Ken Robinson	2. The hierarchy of subjects in school are universally the same. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts.
3. “The education system has mined our minds the way we’ve strip mined the Earth: for a particular commodity.”	This way of education will not service for the future.	We need creativity now more than ever before. The Information Age of the world has exhausted the uses of the left side of our brains. Computers today can do most of what many people used to do for a living. The jobs in those industries that do remain are being outsourced to other countries where labor is cheaper. We need to rethink the way we teach our kids. We need to foster and nurture their creative minds. We need to stop putting the right-brained function in the back seat.
4. “Abundance has brought beautiful things to our lives, but that bevy of material goods has not necessarily made us much happier.” - Daniel H. Pink	“The paradox of prosperity is that while living standards have risen steadily decade after decade, personal, family, and life satisfaction haven’t budged.”	Contrary to how the world has changed so dramatically in the past couple hundred years, our genetic make-up is very much the same. Every person has the desire to be happy. I think that there is something happening, in our peripherals in such a way that when we turn to look at it, it seems to disappear, something that has counter-balanced the awesomeness that has been the technology and information era that we’ve grown up in. I have a deep respect for the laws of physics, and Newton’s Laws of Motion are some that we all live by whether we like it or not. Newton’s 3rd Law says that for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. I think that we have exploited the system in we live on and call Earth in such a way that “defies” the Laws of Physics. We need to be conscious of our actions. We have exploited the resources of Earth for the material gain of a few. This material gain hasn’t made us happier, and I imagine it likely never will.

Recent Student Interview and My Thoughts

 2/6/12

            I conducted a student interview with a student from Carlsbad High School last week. The student, lets call her Sara, is a 10^th grader whom is currently enrolled in Algebra II. I understand that she took Algebra I in 8^th grade and Geometry in 9^th grade (last year). She says that math is not her favorite subject (usually gets A’s in her other subjects vs. B’s and C’s in math). For the interview, I provided paper (blank, lined, as well as gridded), a ruler, protractor and compass for Sara to use. 

Note: The problem is the following area/perimeter problem one might see in a geometry textbook. My instructions as interviewer are to simply be the observer. I am there to try and examine the student's mathematical thinking & understanding, and to not play the teacher role.

You can see some of Sara's work on the sheet

            Sara seemed to be really stuck at the beginning. I asked her first to restate the problem for me. She said that she needs to figure out which area was biggest and which was smallest. I then asked her to try to verbalize to me what she was thinking. She didn’t have much of anything to say so I asked her “What do you know about area?” She contemplated about that for awhile, thinking that it meant length; I told her I thought length was a measure of distance, like the length from one point to another. She remembered, agreed with me and was able to come up with her own definition in saying that area was the amount of space something has.

            Now this dialogue of determining what our goal of the problem was resulted in Sara still being stuck. I asked her to reread the informational portion of problem statement and tell me what it means. She said “The pastures are made of half-circles. Pasture A is made of three half circles.” I said that was interesting and to show me these half circles because “I am having a hard time seeing them.” From the attached work, you can see that Sara drew the boundary lines of all the half circles in the figures. At this point I asked her if she felt she had all the tools for answering the problem and she said she wasn’t sure. This led to more questioning…

            She said she could remember the formula for area of a rectangle, length times width, but that she couldn’t remember the area formula for a circle (despite high marks on her geometry report card). Resisting the urge to verbally damn the teachers (or school system, I know it’s not always the teachers fault) of Sara’s past, I brought up similar problems to give to Sara that I was confident she could solve. I asked her an alternate area problem involving rectangles (see attached work). She knew right away that the area of a 2x3 rectangle was 6 and the area of a 2x4 rectangle was 8. I wanted to tell her the area formula so that she could solve this problem the most accurate way, but as veteran student interviewer, I kept my cool. I asked Sara instead how you can answer an area problem without using multiplication, there was a pause. So I drew the previous 2x3 rectangle in grid form and she told me right away that you can count the number of squares…

            I won’t go into the nitty gritty of the rest of the interview. I was much temped to be a teacher in the situation, especially watching the student try to count squares. But a method is a method. I did notice some important aspects of Sara’s mathematical understanding. The main one was that if two circles (or half-circles in this case) have the same radius, then they must have the same area. When Sara noticed that the three pastures all had a large semi-circle of radius 6, she decided not to try and count those squares. Similarly, she noticed that the 3 smaller half circles in Pasture B were of the same radius length and therefore of the same area, hence the equal 7 count written inside those semicircles in her work.

            What I also learned about Sara’s mathematical understanding is that her arsenal for solving problems is often maintained only for a short period of time, often forgotten soon after it will no longer be on the test. I asked her what problems she had done like this before and her response was that she did problems like this in geometry the school year before but could remember what she did to solve them (what the formula was). To her credit, memorizing the area and perimeter of a circle is really the only way kids are able to “understand” it at that point in their public school mathematics careers.

            It is in my opinion that one student in a public school like Carlsbad High could not grasp the reason of why the perimeter and area of a circle is “2 Pi r” and “Pi r-squared” (respectively) until they have learned trigonometry, without intrinsic motivation to understand “why.”

            I respect the subject of math in such a way that I see it unfair to teach rote memorization to kids as they do today. I have been able to learn a lot, in a little bit of time, in my observing of kids’ mathematical thinking. My challenge now is to absorb, analyze, and respond to this thinking that will effectively foster their mathematical minds.

EDSS 541 Week 2 Reading Responses

Please click the link to my GoogleDoc for Reading Responses 7-10. Feel free to leave comments for me in red.

EDSS 530 Blog Post: Reflection of Dr. White's "Residents and Vistors"

Dr. White's video relating web users as residents and/or visitors of online “space” is a very well thought out and accurate picture of the online communities today. Visitors and Residents often have very different views of the web. Visitors often see the web as a collection of “tools.” Visitors who go online are like opening an untidy toolbox, grab what they need, use it, and then close their toolbox until they have another need for it. Residents see the web as a “space.” They are visible and work at remaining visible; especially on the platforms like twitter that is constantly refreshing itself. 

In watching the presentation/video, I found myself thinking how I view myself as a visitor in certain spaces and a resident of sorts in others. As a mathematically inclined individual, I was very much drawn toward the portion of Dr. White's presentation when he explains that he himself identifies himself on different parts of the continuum relative to the context. In regards to the professional aspect of his life, he revels in the opportunity to be an online resident, and he is comfortable when his name appears in public spaces that reference this part of his life. On the other hand, he identifies himself as, and chooses to be, a visitor to the online world with regards to his non-institutional, or private, life. He doesn’t want information about his family or his whereabouts to be so visible in this world.

My views seem to coincide with Dr. White. In the professional, or institutional, part of my life, I plan on being very visible and hope to be an effective collaborator with educators and colleagues in the online world. With regards to my private life, I plan on being relatively the same in the future as I am now. I have a Facebook, but I have it blocked to the public. I use it to socialize with friends that I have in my non-institutionalized world. I plan on keeping that platform for that purpose. My other platforms will be an open space for me to broaden my professional and educational horizons.