A rolling thread where we are teachers

1000

ha there's an undergraduate class at my institution that's gonna be reading the entirety of A Remembrance of Things Past. i wonder how that's gonna go.

^i did that as an undergrad (though can't remember if it was grad course) & it was one of my fave courses ever

can't remember if it was 2 semesters or one (prob 2)

god years of grad school is like river of lethe

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/634624c6-312b-11e5-91ac-a5e17d9b4cff.html#slide0

Student monitoring service Skyfactor, which is sold in the US and used by 130 universities there, advertises itself as a risk management service, promising to help academics “quickly see which students need attention and resources now — before it’s too late”. Course tutors are given access to a dashboard that documents each student’s class attendances, assessment grades, participation in sports practices, and visits to the campus financial aid officer. A door icon placed next to each name, either closed or open, signals the program’s prediction of how likely the student is to leave the institution early. If their high grades drop, or their passion for basketball begins to wane, Skyfactor will flag these individuals in red.

David McNally, chief technology officer at Macmillan Science and Education, which owns Skyfactor, says the early warning mechanism is beneficial for all involved. “In the US more than the UK . . . losing a student is a very expensive loss to an institution because they pay high annual fees,” he says. “If you can get to a student before they drop out, you can keep them in the institution.”

When asked about privacy implications, McNally says his company — a competitor to Pearson, current owner of the Financial Times — is “extremely serious” about abiding by both US and UK data security laws. He adds that the information is “being used for the greater good, which is better education for everybody”. He insists it is not only students being tracked: the same programs that measure their performance are being used to compare how effective their tutors are and how well one school is teaching its pupils compared with another. In the future, it will be possible to compare entire local education authorities.

That's pretty creepy. We do data analysis with stuff like Revel - interactive digital textbooks that allow tutors to monitor reading and have micro-assessments that enable changes in performance to be tracked over time, and it's pretty common to have centralised systems for attendance / grades, but i don't think we would ever want to monitor extracurricular activities or "visits to the campus financial aid office".

it has 'sky—' right in the name

i mean cmon

units of alcohol served on student card, nights spent not in own bed, pages read per week

good lord

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-human-proof-classroom.html

http://edushyster.com/i-am-not-tom-brady/

is this even like

real? how could ppl???

One of my best and weirdest moments ever as a teacher at dismissal today. A former grade 6 student of mine, now in 8, came up and asked me what my five favourite films are. Interesting student, related to a Nobel Prize winner in literature--he seems to be just getting into movies, and he'll occasionally drop around to tell me about something he's just seen. Anyway, I rattled off a quick list of the usual suspects, then asked him what his were. His list: 1. Pulp Fiction, 2. Zodiac, 3. The Shining, 4. There Will Be Blood, 5. Taxi Driver. Remember, this a kid who's 13 or 14. Allowing that there was probably a small element of him wanting to impress me, it was extremely gratifying, even though I had to go through the motions of doing the teacher thing: "M_______! What are you doing watching these films--these are not for someone your age. You've got to stop watching stuff like this immediately...warning, warning...blah blah blah...isn't Zodiac amazing?" I'm taking 15% of the credit/blame here.

Going back to grade 3 next year after 15+ years of 6/7. (I asked for 4--pretty close.) No more "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Warhol, Godard, Kent State, or Republican debate clips. Well, I can probably keep going with the latter--they'll understand.

i teach 6th grade, i'd love to hear what from godard you were showing to students!

Every year on his birthday, I'd show a clip--usually the five minutes from 2 or 3 things with the coffee cup, some years the dance from Band of Outsiders.

Cool, thanks

I mentioned an ex-student of mine a few posts back, how excited I was that he coming up to me all the time to talk about the Scorsese, Kubrick, and similar films he’d been watching. He joined the film club we run, worked away on something at home for the past couple of months, and we watched his finished film today (hadn’t seen any of it before today). Fantastic! It’s called A Trek Through the Cold Wilderness, and he’s going to enter it in the experimental category for our board competition. The film’s exactly as advertised, about five minutes’ worth (he told me how much he’d liked The Revenant, and I’m guessing that’s the guiding influence), with an operatic score and lots of great Cinemascope-like shots of snow and fields and trees. You can take it straight-up, and just watch it as a really impressive piece of work for a kid his age; it’s also a pretty good comp for an SCTV parody of a Bergman or (if they were around today) a Béla Tarr film. We were just killing ourselves watching it.

We fought the law, we won.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-teachers-ruling-1.3545989

Took 30 students to my board's film festival today. Exciting seeing two of our films on a big Cineplex screen. The funniest thing was one that started like a horror film, leading to a character getting a phone call from her future self: "Donald Trump is president," followed by 10 seconds of first-rate screaming.

Found this very encouraging: out of the 30 films we saw (ranging from grade 3 to grade 8), two of them--one very specifically, one more symbolically--amounted to "Put the fucking device away and open your eyes."

(Probably filmed with iPhones, but it's a start.)

chicago teacher among the 1000 fired recently:

http://www.progressive.org/pss/official-phone-call-don%E2%80%99t-tell-me-it%E2%80%99ll-be-fine#st_refDomain=www.facebook.com&st_refQuery=

xian is one of my teacher heroes. he's v active on twitter and with the educolor group.

I call parents so infrequently--usually only when some piece of work is egregiously overdue--that when I do, like right now, the conversation generally begins, "Hi, it's Mr. D_______...Johnny's teacher...Right, right--we met last October."

ha, i teach mostly seniors and i think i made one phone call home this year, it was bad

should say ENTIRELY seniors now

I assume you're speaking to the seniors themselves, not their parents...

He means 17 year olds

Yeah yeah, I talk to them all the time. I am VERY popular *pops gum*

Only job in the world where 7 cm of snow can make the whole day a nightmare, but 8, like today, is pure bliss.

One of my boys today was distraught because he couldn't find his yogurt. Boy across from him: "Maybe it's in your pencil case, J_______." Opens pencil case. "It is in your pencil case--I found it!"

Destined to be either the world's most ingenious detective or most inept criminal.

Was it a gogurt? How does a yogurt fit in a pencil case? Poured into the bottom?

I am starting my first big PBL in a few days. Kind of intimidating!

good luck ... YOU’LL NEED IT!!

j/k you’ll be fine

its just i worked at a 100% PBL school for four years and still have PTSD when i see the letters

I’m toeing the dread/anticipate line.

I do a lot of project-based work already, but I keep it pretty buttoned-up and teacher-structured. This new unit is interdisciplinary, month-long, standards based, and requires ~10 different types of student roles. The outcome is more conceptual, and I have NO idea what it’ll be like.

doing new stuff is fun. i am teaching a music appreciation course this semester and, aside from the textbook, have built all my materials and assignments from scratch. it's a lot of extra work but i am really enjoying it. learning a lot too!

it's tempting to wish for a rut in which to relax
i figure that is what summer is for

also it's really only brutal the first time
the next time, at least the framework is there

Was it a gogurt? How does a yogurt fit in a pencil case?

A gogurt, yeah--I didn't realize they had a different name.

http://www.generalmillscf.com/~/media/images/product/product-detail/yogurt/yoplait-portable/42163000-yoplait-simply-go-gurt.ashx

I'd never heard the term "PBL" before--figured that must mean project-based-learning from the subsequent posts. We call it "inquiry" up here. If the movement is 100% in that direction, that's one more reason I'm ecstatic I'm done next year.

It is very much in that direction. In theory it is great. In practice, it's been ... bumpy.

x-post to LL: I have always had to make all of my materials from scratch. It's not by choice, though. My district requires expects extensive personalization/adaptation of all curriculum, and my colleagues are sometimes pretty protective of their materials. Or, their materials are freely shared much more lecture-y than my wont. In short, I've never found resources that are differentiated enough for the classroom I run. In one room I teach G&T, gen-ed, and special-ed inclusion, and most prepared materials have (at best) an "extension question" or a hokey graphic-organizer as supplmental to the orthodox design. Out of 20-25 students, I usually have, say, six to eight different variations running at a time, and at least a few ELLs. I'd say that in an average year I've had to create ~ 300+ pages of new documents. It's exhausting, and I truly don't think non-teachers have any idea of how much work goes into my prep.

This year, though, I started teaching two subjects and the prep got overwhelming. My supervisors have been good and they've been steering me to use lots of materials from tolerance.org, Smithsonian, commonlit, and the Choices program (out of Brown University). There's some great stuff out there, but I would LOOOOVE if somebody had a year-map for my content area(s) so that I didn't have to sequence day-by-day, week-by-week, and semester-by-semester. I used to adore creating new content/new units, but at this point it would be a delight to go back to previous material.

That's something I've always been terrible at (or just plain lazy): differentiation. I do it to a certain extant, but a lot of times it's just "You do this, and you that too, but less of it." (Also, ditto--good luck.)

I'd say that in an average year I've had to create ~ 300+ pages of new documents. It's exhausting, and I truly don't think non-teachers have any idea of how much work goes into my prep.

this is horrifying
300 pages?! every semester?! that can't be helping you deliver individualized instruction.

i have the same issue

i spend so much fucking time making worksheets its ridiculous

it's my fault for always working at charter schools that implement cost-cutting measures like ... not buying curriculum

it's one thing to do it once -- why would you have to do that every semester, or even every year? what is the administration's rationale for requiring this?

i make changes to my materials all the time, but i don't make 300 pages of all new materials every time. that would not leave me time for eating and sleeping and general physical maintenance.

then again i am also a course coordinator and have tp prepare materials for classes i may or may not be teaching
that's another issue though

oops TO prepare

in my case, it's because i'm always teaching new courses - i am authorized in chemistry, physics and math. so when i teach math i tend to get switched around between different levels. and the switch from california standards to common core meant a lot of redesign.

i teach regular and AP chem and physics, and they (college board) redesigned AP chem in 2013 and AP physics in 2014, so i had to redesign my materials. for regular classes i also had to redesign from california to NGSS.

and then on top of that i've been at three different schools in 12 years. the first was 100% PBL with a very high proportion of special ed students. the second was very traditional in a super high-achieving school with very high SES. and now i'm at a 100% free and reduced lunch school with a very high proportion of language learners. so every time i switch schools i have to re-jigger my materials for a new population.

i'm hoping it settles down soon ... but it's kind of been a perfect storm i guess ...

To be fair, I create three hundredish pages per year, not per semester. My school year runs 185+ days, and I create something new at least a couple of times per week, usually 2-3 pages in length. Then I modify and adapt. I’m a big advocate of a student-led classroom, and when I’m roped into a set/previous curriculum I end up feeling like a cart before a horse.

Middle school is really hard to teach, because in the same classroom I’ll have kids reading/writing as college freshman, and kids struggling w/ comprehension on a third grade level. I’ve never found a textbook/curriculum that is interesting enough to engage both ends of the spectrum - but it’s no sweat to make something compelling on my own from ready materials (i.e. why we read Robert Frost and ee cummings and Gary Soto and Amy Tan and Avi and Sandra Cisneros and Judy Blume and Langston Hughes)

The cost of this, though, is that I don’t get to spend a lot of time thinking up creative pedagogies, and my in-room practice has gotten increasingly stale.

i agree with you completely about customizing and the lack of utility of a pre-made curriculum
know what you mean about teaching multi-level classrooms
my mom taught middle school for 30 years and there are extracurricular challenges that no amount of worksheets and handouts could solve

ultimately we all have the same problems -- people expect us to be wizards monomaniacally focused on teaching above all else
i don't think this is fair or reasonable esp considering the compensation, grief, and, who knows, arms training we might need to go through :(

plus everyone thinks they know how to do our job
godspeed, everyone

Hello, thread. I am a) old (early 40s) and ii) an RQT, teaching English at a secondary school. I'm a classic midlife crisis, basically. The job is fucking mental, isn't it? It's a bit like parenthood in that if anyone could actually communicate the day-to-day chaos of it, no one would actually do it. That said, I do love it. Most of it. Well, bits of it.