Tit for Tat

An old high school pal of mine has recently returned to the blogosphere. Reading Allen's blog was part of what got me interested in posting my own ramblings in the first place. He has been on a hiatus for a while, having become a first-time dad this past Fall, but he has triumphantly returned. Pencils Down was the subject of one of his first articles.

In a follow-up post, Allen referenced one of my posts regarding the famous Monty Hall Problem. He goes into great detail about his personal peccadilloes in the set-up of the problem, discussing the different strategies the game show host might take, and how they would affect the statistical outcome. As he says, the host's prior knowledge of the prize locations is a key element. This reminded me of some recent argument I've seen online as to whether Deal or No Deal comes down to a Monty Hall Problem. Any contestant lucky enough (or ballsy enough) to make it to the final two boxes is always offered the chance to switch by Howie Mandel. The general consensus seems to be that Howie has no prior knowledge of the game and so his offer can not affect the contestant's odds.

I'm not sure why Howie is believed to be any less duplicitous than Hall. Perhaps it is because he is Canadian.

Birds, Bees, and STEM

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) just released the results of their Research on Gender in Science and Engineering (GSE) program. It found that while things have markedly improved for women over the years, some myths still endure. But there is still hope for improvement, they say, and better education for women will translate into gains for both genders and all levels.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Job

It's back to school time, and everywhere I turn, I find an edublogger lamenting some problem or concern they will have to face this year. While I certainly empathize with their worries/fears, I also would like to grab them by the shoulders and shake the hell out of them.

Good teaching comes with a sense of responsibility that eclipses many other professions. To stand before a classroom, means to tilt against an impossibly powerful opponent. It is an endless battle, and one which is predominantly beyond your control. You will be blamed for every failure, by critics at large and the one within. You will ask yourself, "Did I do enough? Did I ask the right questions? Could I have pushed harder? Did I push too hard?" You will beat yourself up over everything, agonizing over each lesson plan, focus in on excruciating details, in the hopes that the self-flagellation will make you a better educator. And when it's all said and done, it really isn't, because you get to do it all again in a few months.

What kind of self-loathing lunatic would sign on for this? Well, me for one. I know it's easy for me to be critical, safely on the outside looking in. Maybe I'll feel differently in a few years, but right now I am desperate to charge full speed into the fight.

I am a sucker for cheesy sports movies, especially underdog stories. I would say to my edublogger friends what those coaches say to their teams at half-time, when the deck is stacked against them, and winning seems impossible. The other team will always be bigger and stronger, more talented, better equipped, and have many more reserves. They will inevitably win 99 times out of a hundred. But that still leaves the one time. That one student on the verge of dropping out, the kid who doesn't think college is for kids like her, the child with the undiagnosed learning disability. A good teacher gets to win big every once in a while. They get to point to a child and say," There, that one right there. I helped that one." They may not earn a decent wage or get the thanks they deserve, but they know in their hearts that the world is a little better because they were willing to fight a battle when others said it couldn't be won.

That sounds like the job for me. Put me in Coach. I'm ready to play.

Uhhh....What?

Good thing she's pretty.


Nod to IB a Math Teacher.

I'm Talkin' Bout the Funk

The Best Laid Plans

School starts in just over a week. At that point, my plan was to cut back to a maximum of 30 hours a week at Pottery Barn. I figured that would allow me to keep my health insurance as well as help pay back the student loans I will be receiving. Most of my first year will be review, so I should be able to handle the load.

That was my plan, and like many plans it has gone awry.

Two weeks ago, my immediate supervisor put in his notice. If you've ever worked retail before, you know that the holiday season begins soon, and that put us without a stockroom manager for the busiest time of year. As it turns out there is already an intelligent, hard working fellow familiar with the stockroom. I think you see where I'm going with this. The promotion means that I will have to work a full 40 hour week, but I will be making half again as much as I am right now. The offer is just too good for me to pass up. My boss has known about my school schedule for some time, and she is perfectly willing to work around it. She has even given me the first week of classes off, so that I can acclimate myself to college without worrying about work. So come the second week of September, I will be working full-time and carrying a 16 hour course load.

Don't tell my adviser.

On the Same Page

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with a bright, creative student on improving his writing skills. We spent a great deal of time discussing how to assess the intended audience, and how diction, tone, and detail must be adjusted accordingly. In everyday conversation, a staggering amount of background information is assumed to be shared. When you write, you typically reach a larger audience, and you can assume far less.

Just for fun, I have selected a random reading comprehension sample from the net to see just how much core knowledge is required for real understanding. The test is aimed at students on the fourth grade level.

How many things can you see in the night sky? A lot! On a clear night you might see the Moon, some planets, and thousands of sparkling stars.

You can see even more with a telescope. You might see stars where before you only saw dark space. You might see that many stars look larger than others. You might see that some stars that look white are really red or blue. With bigger and bigger telescopes you can see more and more objects in the sky. And you can see those objects in more and more detail.

But scientists believe there are some things in the sky that we will never see. We won't see them with the biggest telescope in the world, on the clearest night of the year.

You might find it hard to imagine that stars die. After all, our Sun is a star. Year after year we see it up in the sky, burning brightly, giving us heat and light. The Sun certainly doesn't seem to be getting old or weak. But stars do burn out and die after billions of years.

As a star's gases burn, they give off light and heat. But when the gas runs out, the star stops burning and begins to die.

As the star cools, the outer layers of the star pull in toward the center. The star squashes into a smaller and smaller ball. If the star was very small, the star ends up as a cold, dark ball called a black dwarf. If the star was very big, it keeps squashing inward until it's packed together tighter than anything in the universe.

Imagine if the Earth were crushed until it was the size of a tiny marble. That's how tightly this dead star, a black hole, is packed. What pulls the star in toward its center with such power? It's the same force that pulls you down when you jump — the force called gravity. A black hole is so tightly packed that its gravity sucks in everything — even light. The light from a black hole can never come back to your eyes. That's why you see nothing but blackness.

So the next time you stare up at the night sky, remember: there's more in the sky than meets the eye! Scattered in the silent darkness are black holes — the great mystery of space that's because they're invisible. They're the mysterious dead stars called black holes.

• I can certainly see how this would be an intriguing passage for a fourth grader, but there is a lot that the author has assumed. For example, the reader must know what the difference is between the Moon, planets, and stars. Although context clues such as "the" instead of "a" and the capitalization of "Moon" might be enough to suggest that Earth has only one natural satellite, I suspect that this fact needs to be understood ahead of time.

• The fact that these things are visible each night requires an understanding of periodicity, if not necessarily rotation. The student must know that a telescope somehow magnifies images, and that the larger the telescope is, the more powerful its magnification.

• They must have an understanding of scale as it pertains to the decimal system of measurement. "Billions" is a lot of years, more than most adults can conceive of, let alone a child.

• There needs to be knowledge of the three common phases of matter, as well as chemical combustion. (Although it should be noted here that the flammability of certain gases in our atmosphere has nothing to do with the nuclear reactor of the sun. I don't know if the author is ignorant or finds it easier to massage certain key facts.)
  
• Students also need to understand gravity. They need to know that it is often related to the size of objects, which for the purposes of this paragraph, serves as an indirect measure of mass.

All this needs to be firmly embedded in the child's brain before any of this passage will really make sense. We can teach all the tricks and parsing techniques we want, but unless students have a lot of background knowledge, they are still going to have trouble comprehending what they read. I think this is why we are having so much trouble raising our reading scores on standardized tests. There has been too much focus on "context clues" and not enough on the shear quantities of information that must be shared to even get young readers on the same page.