Erin, go you with NY mass trans. O how I miss it. LA area, blah! Sounds like you had fun. Do you remember any of the conference??

Oh, yes. There was some good stuff. The Learning Annex was having this big "How to Be a Millionaire" thing at Javits at the same time NCTE was there, so people kept coming up to us and saying, "So, do you want to learn the secrets of making millions?!" and every teacher was all "Are you high? I'm a fucking teacher!"

OK I had a little cry. it didn't help. Could it just be January now, please?

Laga, you need presents. We all need presents at the holidays. It's like a rule or something.

Help me keep from killing Daniel!

He's been napping on the sofa next to my desk all afternoon. Snoring!

Ok, so sometimes he's been reading. But most of the time? Sawing logs like a chainsaw.

I woke him a bit ago, and told him he had to stop, either go up to sleep in the bedroom, or wake up. A few minutes later and he starts with the ZzzzZzzzZzzz so I just about hollered at him. So to get him back I turned the tv on, whoa! static. And now I've got an ep. of Buffy playing. Yup, I'm tough him. But he wakes up, and says, "Besides, I'm not snoring, I'm purring."

Yeah...my family is also big on the Wad O'Cash, which can occasionally be very fun, don't misunderstand, but it's not, like, special. Like I thought about what you would like and picked this.

And I've already been collecting gift ideas for weeks even though we haven't even drawn names yet. I already had an idea of what I would get for them if I drew my Dad, my brother and one of my sisters.

I'm kinda starting to feel like the strong family ties that helped me rationalize staying in California were mostly in my head.

I'm in the middle of grading the first part of a big project I've been doing with my class. This project is really cool - it's based on the Towers of Hanoi game, and has them looking for the pattern that determines the minimum number of moves to win the game for any number of rings.

Looking over the projects, there are very few cases where I'm thinking "Wow, this student really has no idea what's going on." Almost all of the students, with the guidance I allowed myself to give them, were able to come up with some good thinking. I just know that with application of problems like this, over the course of the entire year, I could get some serious problem-solving and mathematical communication out of the students. Not to mention, they'd actually like it. The problem? I'd cover less than a third of what I'm supposed to cover in terms of the actual curriculum, and they would generally do terribly on the Algebra State Exam.

Which leads to the question: is it really so important that EVERY student learn to factor ALL factorable quadratic equations? Or is it better to allow those with that bent to learn such things, but provide ALL students with rigorous problem-solving projects that encourage thinking? The answer seems to obviously be the last one. If I didn't have a state test, I honestly think I'd plan my next unit, over Thanksgiving, around the idea of having 4-5 different problem-solving projects that students could choose from, everything from "Use classroom textbooks and the internet to learn how to solve quadratic equations in several different ways. Explain each of the methods in your own words, choosing one example from each of the following options" to "Imagine that Bob has a free-throw percentage of 50% after the third game of the season. At the end of the season, Bob has a free-throw percentage of 90%. Did Bob HAVE to have a free-throw percentage of 60% somewhere in the middle? What about 75%? 80%?"

The problem? Only those that chose the first project would be able to pass the Regents. And therein lies the problem with high-stakes testing around a particular curriculum.

ETA: Sorry for the rant. Feel free to ignore. I know this isn't really the Teacher Thread.

{{{LAGA}}} No honey, not in your head, they are in your heart, where love should come from.