The Little People

One can appreciate the students we have once one has tried to teach a group of kids who (you do not have the degree to teach.) in my case, I got to teach kindergarten to second grade. What a different experience. I can not say I really enjoy the little little people! It is a whole new world when it comes to little little people. They are fascinated by the oddest things like a green markers and paper airplanes! I have little patience for the immaturity of high school students ... So the young minds of 5 - 7 year olds. Save me, please!! They also lose interest very very very very very very very very very very very quickly!! Even my amazing Moses and the burning bush picture ....

           

... Didn't interest them. Oh well. Little people ... are ... a ... whole ... different ... BALLPARK! I like high schoolers! Enough said! 

The Problem Fix: Hoarding

As I said in my post, Teacher Vice 1: Hoarding, teachers like to hoard. I found a friend who has enlighten me that hoarding is unnecessary and I am going to enlighten you on how I started to fix the problem.

1) The first thing I had to decide is if I could downgrade my furniture. Currently, I have a giant desk that houses 5 years of teacher junk, my 24'' flatscreen TV, my X-Box 360, my Wii, and Zeus knows what else. I have a twin size bed, which includes mattress, box spring, and metal toe smasher. I have a set of drawers (I need to learn to use!) and finally THREE bookshelves FULL of books, movies, and video games. So, downgrading! Ultimately, the only thing I could downgrade is the GIANT desk (I don't even remember getting. It just appeared one day.) At the Dollar General, I found a small, but functional 2 tier shelf. I has all the space I need to put my X-Box and TV.

2) Remember how I said my desk has 5 years of teacher junk? What is teacher junk? Well to me it includes the massive amount of materials I obtained in college, student teaching, and my first year of teaching. My friend (whose blog can be found here) enlightened me about teacher junk. If I haven't used it in several years throw it away, if I use it e-file it and throw it away, and e-file everything and don't keep a filing cabinet full of papers you (I) won't ever look at again. So the spiral bound copy of "Regulations Establishing Standards for Accrediting Public Schools in Virginia" that I received when I student taught and have hoarded for nearly two years is going to the waste bin, because who needs it and it is online if I ever need it (and when would I?)

3) Downgrading the number of clothes I own. We all have that shirt we do not wear. Why keep it? I am going through all my clothes and sorting them, TEACHER CLOTHES, Civilian Clothes, Donations, and throw away.

My problem starts at home. If I clean up my act at home, I will be able to clean up my hoarding in my classroom. I will keep you posted. Thanks goes to M of M* Print for aiding me in my problem of hoarding teacher stuff. Her blog can be seen here.

True/False: Students always bring their materials to class?

False! We all have that one student would drives us up the walk because they never bring a pencil, pen, paper, or textbook to class. Admit it, you got frustrated because Tommy did not bring a pencil 12 days in a row. I always have a pencil to spare for students, but I get rather annoyed when they begin to abuse my "generosity."

                         

I always have something there, behind my ear! Anyway, I did finally give up the pencil war before the end of the year, my first year I supplied my students with 9 boxes of 24 count pencils, 2 boxes of 144 count pencils, and 9 boxes of 36 count pens. that is over 800 pencils and pens. I must also say this does not include the large box of pencils and pens my dad collect for me over the years while working as a janitor at a local high school. So, in all, i supplied over 1500 pencils and pens this year alone! That is CRAZY!!!! So, this battle ... can it be won? Everyday students "forget" to bring their pencils, pens, paper, binders, textbooks, calculators, and homework to class and we do the single most stupid thing! we either give it to them or allow them to go get it with little to no consequence, thus creating a more epic problem later! I have thought long and hard about this problem and how I hope to fix it! (or crawl in a corner and cry cause it failed!) so what do I plan to do? 

1) In the syllabus, I am going to put the following statement in the grading section. " Each student is expected to bring to class everyday the following materials -- a pencil, their binder filled with loose-leaf paper, their textbook, their textbook and their calculator. If they do not bring each of their materials daily, 3 points will be deducted from their daily homework grade for EACH item they do not bring to class.

Altogether that is five items and if they do not bring them they will loose 15 points from their homework grade. Which could result in a very low grade if it is an assignment, I decide to grade for correctness. 

2) If a student does not bring their homework to class or does not do their homework, I will make them fill out the "Why did I not do my homework?" report. Since I value my time in the classroom, I will check student homework as they walk into the door. This way I can do 2 things, take roll quickly and check to see if they did their homework. If they did not do their homework, I will give them the  "Why did I not do my homework?" report, which I will take up and put in their student file. 

3) I will use an idea my mentor teacher taught me, if I loan out a pencil it will have a little duct tape flag at the top, so I can keep track of each pencil i have loaned out. also the idea has surfaced on Pinterest. 

                              

how do you coax your students to bring their materials? Suggestions?

Teacher Vice 1: Hoarding

Alright let's all agree teachers have a single common problem, we hoard. I don't care of you are the most organized teacher in the world, you still have a stash of hoarded materials squirrel away somewhere. We all collect ideas from other teachers, the beginning of the school year is like Christmas to teacher we have to buy the cheap school supplies, and we keep everything (student work to administration paperwork). But we can hoard our materials in a organized matter (at least some). My first vice is I am a compulsive collector. I collect everything from ald text books to the coolest pencils and much much more. I fall under the category of a hoarder. What ever you think a hoarder is keep it to your self, but to me I find security of having a hoard of stuff around me. Sadly, I have to change my ways! Why must I you ask? Well look at the following picture.

                                   

 


Do you see I have a problem? If I am like this at home, can you imagine my classroom. I thrive in disorganization, but it stresses me out and forces me to freak out at the wrong times (can not find a test. Noooooooooooooooooooo! Worst feeling ever!). I have 5 step program, I am going to follow to clean up my dirty little problem.

1) Categorize all my books, video games, and movies
2) Sort my clothes into teacher clothes, civilian clothes, and Salvation Army clothes
3) Bag up all trash. The only papers I will keep are important papers like bills, official school papers, and awards.
4) Put all the money I find in a jar and count it as I go.
5) Organize book cases, drawers, closet, and storage bins in an organized manner.

How do you keep from hoarding? How do you keep organized? Comments will be appreciated.

Favorite Things #1: Thrift Stores

Okay, I cannot take full credit for this post! I have a friend and colleague that started posting her favorite things, so I too jumped on the bandwagon! Check her blog out as well, M* Print.

As with her favorite things, will cost no more than $20 and most are free.

Well I like to get a GREAT DEAL. Ever once in a while, I will go to the local thrift stores and go through their book section. Most, if not all, thrift stores have a cheap book section. Now I do not always find a book that I can use or want, but some times I get lucky and find the deal of the week or month.

Today is Friday, June 21, 2013 and I went to the local thrift store in Chilhowie. It is a Goodwill (I am currently humming the song, you know that song). If you are lucky, you can find a lot of good deals. This week anything that had a red dot on it was half off. So, I found a Trig book that cost 1.47 and it was red dot special, 77 cents! Today was a good day for thrift shopping in the book section.

We as teachers should have a small collection of books at our disposable to give students some thing to read once they are finished with their assignments or extra resources for when the internet, supplied books and materials, and other teachers can no longer provide examples and problems.

ESTIMATED COST: $0.45 to $1.47 at my local Goodwill

Adventures of a Math Teacher

This past week I got to enjoy a well deserved trip to Orlando, Florida. I have in theory tried to go to Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure again since the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but with the marriage of two friends, countless hours of planning with other friends and then getting mildly disappointed because the friends backed out. FINALLY, I got to go! I did highly enjoy the trip and I just want to share a few pictures with you.

I really enjoyed the Butterbeer. It was a mixture of Cream Soda and a really frothy butterscotch-flavored whip cream. I enjoyed frozen and non-frozen cup of each. I got a really nice cup, too. 

There is something satisfying about seeing a castle that has been a major part of my childhood for over a decade. The castle was amazing and I wish I could have climbed the rock and sit near the castle.

Of course you can not have Hogwarts without Hogsmeade. It had all kinds of shops and eateries for one to enjoy the full experience of the wizarding world. 

The final location that needed the to be shown is non other than Hagrid's Hut. IT WAS AWESOME! Fang was barking at me! 

Budgeting for Tomorrow

For the past two years, I've taken off on a night trip to Charlotte, NC/SC (it is on the line of the two states) in October. In October, Carowinds holds its yearly Scarowinds. They turn the theme park into a haunted play land for wimps like me (ask my friends Steven, Shy, and Jonathan, I am a wimp). However, it has grown to be repetitive and no new haunted houses from year to year. So this year I've set my sights a little bigger. As a teacher, I am given three personal days! I am going to use two of them for this trip in October. Why would I waste your time to tell you this? Well our students have three problems with their education:

One) we give them a calculator
Two) we force them to take high stakes tests
Three) we don't teacher consumer mathematics

Since we don't teach consumer mathematics any more I am going to write my students a guide to consumer mathematics that I hope to give to them as seniors. The first topic is budgeting. Since my trip is in three months I can sample three budgeting techniques. Here is the criteria I will follow:

One) On the first day of July, August, and September I will explain the technique I am planning to use for the month.
Two) On the fifteenth of each month, I will give a mid-month review. This review will tell you where I am in my budgeting for my trip and how I feel about the technique.
Three) On the last day of each month, I will detail the pros and cons of the technique and give my full blown opinion of the technique

Now you should wonder...
Where am I going?
Who am I going with?
How much money do I need to save?
When am I leaving?

All answers are simple, No Idea!

Okay, do have answers, but you'll have to wait!  

Relating Math to the World

The plague of today's math classroom is the idea that a "word problem" is a "real-world application." Students are given a problem and then find some formula or method that will enable them to "solve" the problem. Do we see the problem with what I just said? Applications today are full of pointless and meaningless problems, Sally has 8 apples and she sales them for $0.82. If Sally only sold 6 apples, how much did she make? This problem is a pointless and meaningless! Pointless because it does it is simple multiplication. It also does not introduce the new big thing, rigor! We as educators are expected to teach students how complete basic problems with increased rigor! Our apple problem does not support the new challenges that are expected of our students. This problem is meaningless! It has no true real world application and it is merely a problem we introduce to allow to students to use simple multiplication. So, how do we increase rigor and make it more of a real-world application?

We need to look at two factors:
1) Find an article that details some thing to do with the problem you are creating.
2) Ask yourself three questions
     A) Does the article have mathematical significants?
     B) Can you formulate a question from the information given?
     C) Is your problem multi-step and solvable?

I am going to use this article I found from www.nytimes.com, Cheetahs’ Secret Weapon: A Tight Turning Radius.

Does the article have mathematical significants? This article talks about the speed of cheetahs.

Can you formulate a question from the information given? Yes, let's make one.

The average speed of a cheetah is 33 mph with a standard deviation of 8 mph. What percentage of cheetahs can run faster than 58 percent?

Is your problem multi-step and solvable? Yes and yes!

In conclusion, the first thing you need to see is we need to make problems that have meaning to the student. This can be done by determine the likes and dislikes of the student. We also need to make the problem truly have some point to today's world. If we find an article that has mathematical significance and relate it to the concepts we are teaching, then the student will begin to understand math is a governing force in today's world.

Fatal Flaws

The problem with today's youth in my experience is we five them to much! We give them the knowledge they need and then more! We leave no room for personal growth. A day did not go by when a student did not come to me and asking me "Mr. Powers I can't do this!" I would always respond "Did you try?" And they would nearly always respond "No." We are ultimately creating a generation who cannot think for itself! The funny thing is it is not entirely our fault! There is an EOC test in which we are expected to give the students the knowledge to pass! In a way, this test determines if we are good or bad teachers. A teacher can give his or her passion and love for the subject everything they got and daily give 200% to their students and still only obtain 60% pass rate on the EOC. We are hindering our students by taking away creativity and problem solving from our students. In which hinders them in the future, who wants to hire an uncreative "I don't know how to do it" person. Let's consider creativity and problem solving as two entities.

Creativity is the ability to express oneself in a way that is unique. This includes the ability to write, draw, and create ideas that express ones individuality. With the EOC, activities I did when I was in grade school can not be done effectively and the learning process is slowly hindered. In my non-EOC class I ran into several problems in which the students did not want to create a creative poster for thier project. It could've been the lack of interest or pure laziness, but we as teachers know our students and these students could not do the math unless they had STEP-by-STEP instruction. It wasn't their laziness that prevented the to create an appeasing poster, it was the ingrainment of years of lost creativity!

What scares me more than lack of creativity is the lack of problem solving. Students are presented a problem in which has many solutions. However, they failed to find even one solution because they could not derive the four steps to problem solving. As they traveled through the grades they are forces to solve problems by the methods of books and teachers who have found that they have found the next best thing (I.E. LATTICE MULTIPLICATION AND MULTIPLY WITH LINES.) what happen to old fashion letting the student figure it out? Tricks and methods are good and necessary, but there needs to be some form of problem solving going on for something to truely stick in the minds of our students.

Implementing creativity and problem solving is hard, I know! I hope as I get into this blog I will be able to show you how I implement both, even in the slightest.

Introductions to J.P.

My name is Jonathan Powers. I am from a small town located in the heart of Southwest Virginia. I currently hold a Bachelors of Science in mathematics through a small liberal arts college known as Emory and Henry. I currently teach mathematics at the high school level and I overly enjoy every moment of my teaching career. I have three dogs whose company I enjoy daily and a loving and supporting family who enjoys my extreme ideas and constant pursuit of mathematical knowledge.

I am a weird math person! I enjoy reading and writing ( even though I don't care to much about grammar and spelling). We as humanity are only as good as our words. We may come up with amazing mathematics and concepts, but with words we can express our knowledge to the world. So, in my classroom, my students write and express the concepts I have taught the in their own words for two major reasons: a way for me to check for their understanding and a way for me to use the ability of the students to express concepts in a way that all students will understand. Concluding, I have decided since I make my students write. I have decided that I too should begin to write and express my ideas to the world.

I got this idea from a really close friend of mine. She, too, harps the idea students should write (she's an English teacher) but does not write enough herself. I invoke her to force me to do this on a regular basis. I desire to transform my ideas into reality and they start with motivation and the friends, I hope I have!