I really need to start taking notes when I catch up. Bad me.
Interesting education discussion. I have stuff to add, but no time, so imagine me saying something brilliant.
Susan, that e-mail from your boss was wonderful! I'm so pleased for you and hope that it means many more good things to come.
Job~ma for JZ!!!!
THE CAR IS IN MY NAME!!!!!!!!!!! It only took four trips to the RMV and three to the insurance agency. When I left the RMV today, my new best friend, Pam, told one of her co-workers that she better have gotten it right this time, because if I have to come back again they're gonna have to offer me a job. It was kind of funny.
And while differentiation within a heterogenous group is the current watchword (right alongside standardization @@), in practice I have yet to see anyone successfully do it in secondary math.
WORD. I was able to get one accelerated math class this year, after making the very true argument that complete lack of "tracking" was destroying the chances of those at a high level to even have a chance of reaching true pre-college math, since more than 2/3 of my students will not pass the Algebra state test with only a year of HS level prep.
I love the idea of hardcore differentiation within the classroom, but math at a high school level is really difficult to teach in anything other than lecture style. Some of the computerized programs out there that provide lessons at the pace the student can handle are pretty amazing, but we don't really have the resources for them. I mean, we have laptops, but those programs are pretty much all-or-nothing kind of deals, and I can't have them every day.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if I'm just not being creative enough with it.
Then there was the algebra teacher who marked me down ten points whenever I did a test in pen rather than pencil
I do this, though not with tests: homework only gets half credit if it's in pen. There are some students, like you, that obviously don't need such elementary school tactics, but a pretty significant portion of my students thrive on the structure, and it leads to much less messy and more useful (for me AND them, come study time) work.
This conversation was kinda dead, huh? But it was a whole teacherly thing that I couldn't comment on at the time because I was... teaching! It seems to me I should get a pass.
Tracking is definitely valuable in high school, and I can see it's value for math as young as 7th grade. Earlier than that, though, I think it's generally a bad idea.
This is the Cliff Note of my very detailed philosophy on the matter. At the moment I'm going to yet another cryptic meeting regarding the CHoS etc. Drama.
Susan you should be reading Slacktivist as an antidote to all those dominionist blogs -- [link] Fred, the blogger is awesome and a huge Buffy, The Tick, and BSG fan so things like that are often in his posts. And he has Left Behind Fridays where he's doing a chapter by chapter disection of the book. It's really quite interesting.
I'm already a big Slacktivist fan, and never miss a Left Behind Friday!
A quick run & post, because I had to share...
Now, the comic strip 'Get Fuzzy' is usually pretty darn funny, but rarely does it get as visually disturbing as this - [link]
Yeah. Scared now.
Left Behind Fridays are a very good thing, it's one of the things I look forward to each week.
Y'all help me.
My bosses had a really good idea for our end of the year presentation. I'm usually the one stuck doing it late one night at the conference, so I appreciate the simplicity of their idea.
It's Most Wanted posters with the staff member and their stats. So our coworker who travels a lot will have WANTED: Escapee from Dallas office last seen in Chicago, New Orleans, etc. Great, sounds good.
Then they start saying they want some sort of Mission Impossible thing at the end. !?!?! Stick with a theme people!!!! Also, I do not want to do a cheesy effect where a picture of the whole region disintegrates as the Mission Impossible theme starts up.
Sigh. Maybe I can change the wanted posters to like, CIA files or something.
DJ, could the theme be from "Dragnet", instead?
