Getting Sick and Grading Quizzes

In case you were unaware, I've been out for roughly a week because of the flu. It was pretty much the worst. More than kidney stones! Anyway, what did this mean for student teaching? A lot of pretty awful things. I missed 3 days of school (which would have been four if not for the holiday Monday), and I will have to make those up at the end of the semester. I also talked to Nathan, and he said, "At least it didn't happen while you were an actual teacher." Because seriously, who among us has sub plans for that long? It also delayed taking over my first class by a week, which is mildly inconvenient, and means I don't really get to start teaching until tomorrow, even though everyone else did last week.

So there's the explanation as to where I've been all this time. But what do I have to post about from Friday? Lots!

I got a set of quizzes to grade this weekend for 3rd period, since they're now my class for about the next three months. What did I notice? Well, first, Nathan's grading system is pretty much the best thing, and unlike anything I've ever encountered in a math class. He grades each content area on the assessment as a separate gradebook item. Additionally, he grades the entire section on a four point scale:

4 - Exceeds (100%)
3 - Meets (80%)
2 - Approaches (60%)
1 - Falls Far Below (50%)

It's then a matter of assessing a student's work and determining how they performed compared to your expectations. An absolutely perfect paper with no flaws or room for significant improvement gets a 4. If a student seems to have the idea down pretty well, and might have made a few mistakes here and there, they get a 3. If there are a few significant flaws in their understanding, 2. Nothing even close to knowing what the question is asking gets a 1. As a result, something important happens. Students that can produce the right answer and mimic a process with obvious flaws in their actual understanding tend to get caught and given lower grades than those that appear to have a solid understanding of the idea and just tend toward small arithmetic mistakes.

But wait, there's more. The grade items for each section? These get replaced as more quizzes with the same topics occur, with each topic showing up on a quiz until about 90% of the class is getting a 3 or 4 on that section in a consistent manner. This motivation to improve their grades on quizzes makes it so that students are forced to continue to interact with the knowledge even if they fail the quiz on their first try. This is one of the biggest things I think an assessment should accomplish, and it's a great way to create a pattern of students working to improve themselves before the end of a unit. Retakes are an unpopular idea with some (you should learn the material the first time, why should Johnny get an A if he got a C the first time and Belinda worked hard to get a B the first time?, etc.), but getting kids to actually think about what they're learning enough to understand it at some point even if it's not by that first time they're assessed is so important.

That's all for now! Have a great week, and if you haven't yet, get a flu shot!

Building a Rapport

Sorry about the brevity of this post. Meant to put it up yesterday, but the internet at my apartment complex was (and still is) down. As a result, I am typing this on my phone, and lack the patience to really go all out. Expect more on this topic later, but for now, I felt the need to write something to wrap up the first week.

As a part of the first few student teaching, we are required to observe at least two other classrooms in the school to get a feel for how they handle classroom management and the student/teacher dynamic. After checking out a handful of classes and talking to a few of the teachers outside of class, I've drawn a few conclusions.

1) Be strict, but reasonable. A classroom with no rules will turn into one that is completely out of control VERY quickly. No matter how casual you set the tone to be, you need structure.

2) Get to know your students. I was talking to Mike, the RTI resource teacher that's in Nate's class for 5th-7th periods, and he gave me one very important piece of information about the culture of this school: if the kids feel like you really care about them, they will give 110% effort to anything you ask them to do. I learned this lesson very quickly on Friday during course registration for next year, when I talked to several students about their career goals. The ones I talked to and gave real advice to were far more comfortable talking to me than they had been before.

3) Let your students get to know you. This is one that I am struggling to fully grasp, but I am working on it. Wearing your professional teacher face doesn't mean throwing out the entirety of your personality and the reality of your life outside of school. One student asked me, "Mr. Kerr, do you cuss?" to which I responded, "Not as much as Ms. Yoder." This cracked them up, and it won me a few points with them. Be comfortable with who you are and let the students see that--just as long as you keep it relatively school appropriate.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll say some more about the going-ons this week once I have internet access again. Tschüss!

Gargantuan Classes, Classroom Structure with Zombies, and Team Building

Well, I survived the first day! Woo!

I got to the school at 7 AM. Greg and Nate were chatting in the classroom when I got in, and at that point, I learned that something terrible had happened to the math department over break. One of the teachers had quit. This is something that I haven't seen in the middle of school year before, so I was interested to hear how the school was handling it.

The answer? Not well. When this teacher left, they decided that the best idea was to dissolve his classes into the other existing classes. The result is several classes now having 40-55 students. This includes Nate's Algebra II class, which is currently sitting at a cozy 44 students. Luckily, there are approximately one billion teachers in that room (only one of which is technically allowed to teach the class independently). Mike, the RTI resource teacher that hangs out in 5th period and teaches 6th, is now a part of 7th period Algebra II as well, to provide additional support with the outrageous class sizes. Additionally, I'm there, and because she has planning during that period (and nothing to plan for), Hannah's going to be joining us for now.

But back to the start of the day. Nate has planning 1st and 2nd period, so arriving at the school at 7, I had roughly 3 hours of not really having much to do. So I got some silly little tasks to work on. The first of these was setting up the new cards for the groups.

In order to allow for a nice way of randomly calling on people and assigning roles for group work, Nate has playing cards taped to the desks. Each group shares a number, and then each member of the group has a different suit. Being playing cards, these were violently destroyed over the course of the fall semester, and he brought in a new set of cards to tape to the desks. These cards made me unreasonably happy, because each one has a tip for surviving the zombie apocalypse.

Brainnnsssss

After all of this was done, the time came to put together the supplies for the activity of the day. All of the classes were doing the same activity to ease back into the semester. No math the first day back, just practice with group work, and as any of you that are in SMEP with me will attest, this activity had a very Dr. P. flavor about it.

The activity is a simple one to describe. There is an arrangement of colored tiles that I created during the planning period. This is hidden on a mini-fridge behind Nate's desk. Within each group, there are four roles: the diamond is President, the spade is Vice President, and the club and heart are Builders (in groups with only three members, there is no Vice President). The President is the only one allowed to actually look at the arrangement of tiles. The President and Vice President are allowed to whisper to each other without the Builders hearing. The Builders are allowed to ask yes/no questions to the Vice President. The goal is for the Builders to recreate the arrangement of tiles using the limited amount of information they have. This activity was constructed at the last minute, and had not been tested on a group of students before. For all we knew, the entire thing was impossible and disastrous.

Before I get into how this activity played out, I must share my "artwork." The first thing I came up with looked suspiciously like a Chandelure, though some may disagree.

As much fun as I had making that one look fairly nice, we decided it was way too complicated for students to figure out in the limited amount of time with restricted communication, largely due to the boundaries between individual pieces being unclear. Therefore, it got scrapped and replaced with another design, which looks like nothing, but did the job well enough.

It's abstract. Or something.

As the first class began working, we immediately feared that this shape too would be too difficult. I began preparing a simpler one (more symmetry, fewer pieces used), when something amazing happened in the last 10 minutes of class. The groups almost all independently figured out how to communicate about the shapes with yes/no questions, and several groups were able to recreate the shape. This managed to happen, without fail, in 3/4 classes. Given that the one class that didn't get there was the 44 student class that was struggling with time management, I'd call that a success.

This more or less covers what happened in the classes. The RTI class had an additional activity led by Mike that was built around a modeling problem of sorts, which Hannah came by to partake in working with the class for, but there's not really much that I have to say on it. Lunch was exciting, because the math department at this school is decidedly awesome, and each and every one of the teachers in there was interesting to listen to the ideas of. I think that we stand to learn a great deal from them, and I hope to get a chance to bounce around and observe the rest of them at least once during planning periods in the next few weeks.

Anyway, that's about it for today. Tomorrow, the math begins. 1 day down, 84 to go.

Obligatory Introductory Post

Hi all! For those of you that don't know, my name is Brandon. I'm about to start student teaching. I have four classes of Algebra I and one class of Algebra II. First day of classes is tomorrow. I could not be more terrified.

Before we get started, I should introduce a few of the major characters in this upcoming semester. First, we have Nate, my mentor teacher. I've only spent a couple days working with him before, but he seems pretty cool, and I'm looking forward to working with him. Next, the ever-fabulous Hannah. She's basically my best friend here in town, and as luck would have it, she's gonna be student teaching right down the hall from me this semester. Her mentor teacher is Paulette, whom I don't know very much about, but Hannah and I are conspiring to potentially team-teach a few lessons, since we have different planning periods, so she'll probably end up being relevant.

So what's this blog about? Not completely sure yet. My goal is to blog through the experience of student teaching. Whether that ends up being interesting teaching ideas that I pick up, advice for others considering a similar path, general musings on what's happening at the school, or several posts of "ARGGGHHHHH, I QUIT." remains to be seen.

With that, I leave you with the letter I'm handing out to the students tomorrow (sans formatting):

January 6, 2014

Dear Students and Parents,

Hi! I hope you all had a great winter break. My name is Brandon Kerr, and I’m about to graduate with a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics from the Secondary Mathematics Education Program at the University of Arizona. I’m originally from Northern Virginia, and I’ve been living in Tucson for almost four years now. Prior to this semester, I have worked in several schools throughout Tucson as a part of the program, totaling over 100 hours of class time working directly with students and teaching several lessons.

This is my final semester at the University, and I am student teaching in Mr. Adams’ Algebra I and Algebra II classes. Over the course of the semester, I will gradually take over the instruction in Mr. Adams’ classes. I will work with him every step of the way to ensure that the students are getting the best mathematics education possible. Mr. Adams will continue teaching for the beginning of the semester, and after the first week or two, I will begin to take over responsibility for classes one at a time. The exact phase-in schedule will vary for each class, and will be announced in class and on the class website as soon as possible.

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with you all, and I hope to lead the students through a highly successful semester in their math class. For those of you that would like to keep up with what’s going on in class (assignments, quizzes, and tests), I have several forms of communication setup:

1) Text message updates using remind101. Text the appropriate class code to 520-867-9238 to subscribe for updates.
a. Period 3 - @kerr03
b. Period 4 - @kerr04
c. Period 5/6 -@kerr05
d. Period 7 - @kerr07

2) Twitter updates. Follow @kerrmath on Twitter. Note that I will post assignments and upcoming assessments for ALL classes here—be sure to check which class each tweet is directed at.

3) Class website. I will keep an assignment calendar, along with links to any handouts or notes, at https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/kerrmath/home. This site can also be accessed using the QR code to the right.

If you have any questions about student progress or the class in general, I can be reached by email at bdkerr@email.arizona.edu. I will do my best to reply to all emails as quickly as possible. I will be available to help students as needed after school a few days per week; exact days will be announced as soon as possible.

Parents: I would greatly appreciate it if you could go to the class website, click the Contact Registration link, and fill out the form as soon as possible. This will help me to better be able to communicate specific information regarding your child’s progress.

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this, and I look forward to a great semester here at Pueblo!

Sincerely,
Brandon Kerr