Blogging Requires Passion and Authority
This morning, Bill Ferriter on Twitter ranted a bit about an e-mail from a disgruntled hater who called his blogging an exercise in self-fellaciating (if that’s even a word). Naturally, Bill was quick to distinguish between those who believe that their blogging not only becomes a central part of the reflective process for their practice and those who simply use it to show off a little. Do edubloggers really reflect in these given venues? How much of it would we consider constructive and fructuous labors that push the national agenda for the teaching profession and how much of it do we see as an exercise in futility and self-serving, looking for pats on the back for doing what they’re supposed to do?
I thought I had a real answer to this question until I finished teaching the morning. Topic: angle relationships with two parallel lines cut by a transversal. Yesterday, I prepared them for the topic by introducing a visual glossary for them to use, reminding them of all the names of the angles they’d seen since 6th grade. They were sharper than I thought they’d be, actually using words like complementary and supplementary to discuss the relationship between some of these adjacent angles. Of course, we had to work through some of the harder problems, like when the sum of two adjacent angles was equal to one whole vertical angle, but then they were steam-rolling through these relationship. Even with the little annoyances, I was rather satisfied with how it went today.
So satisfied, in fact, that I stopped with about 2 minutes to go, where my students started annoying me (in a good way this time). They discussed some of the images they found of me on Google Images, and the social networks I might be on, including Twitter.
One of my smart-asses said, “Yo, Mr. Vilson, I got 100,000 followers.” I told him, “Maybe you should watch your house.” Laughter ensued.
Moments like this make me wonder what teaching was like when we didn’t have to worry about some little curmudgeons and sycophants crunching in numbers, making equations, and churning out pretty pamphlets for mass consumptions trying to establish a firm relationship between standardized test scores and true teacher effectiveness. These moments I share with anyone willing to subscribe to my rants, or accidentally run into this mess through a string of search terms or a click from a referral.
And I guess that’s the whole point of blogging. In spaces where critical feedback and camaraderie may not exist within a school (for various factors), the ability to make one’s own network of professionals willing to discuss critical issues has become paramount for growth.
In other words, blogging isn’t about us specifically.
That’s the whole point of doing what we do. Even when it’s completely non-sequitur, there’s an understanding with edubloggers who take this seriously that there are people of like minds and interest willing to share in their experiences, often hoping they’ll get pushed further in their profession.
Even if the moments are ridiculous. At least I know someone’s reading it. And nodding along.
Mr. Vilson, who has mannerisms even my kids are starting to imitate well. Ugh …
David Bowie Wins Any Argument
For those who’d like a very fundamental and rudimentary explanation for slope and how to understand it as a function of two given variables, (and naturally, a correlation between that and real life), imagine the following:
Start walking for a good minute. Pick up the pace for another minute. Stop for a minute. Walk backwards for a couple more minutes. Then, walk forward for a few more.
In this scenario, as time (your x) increases, the line drawn will have different pieces varying on your movement or distance traveled (your y):
- it’s “going up” (in a positive direction, sometimes at a larger angle depending on how quickly you walked)
- it’s “going down” (in a negative direction, again depending on whether you paced or moonwalked)
- it flattens out (a representation of not moving whatsoever)
Even with that last one, your x variable time doesn’t actually stop, so your line doesn’t just cut abruptly away. The pencil keeps moving.
In the fourth case, and this is probably the best way one can explain in real terms the difference between no slope and undefined slope, the line just drops straight down or straight up. In other words, you moved to a certain distance … without respect to time. It’s as if you teleported in less than an instant.
And for now, that’s impossible.
In this life, we make many choices. Sometimes, our lives take divergent courses and other times they escalate to levels unforeseen. However or wherever we move, or even when we don’t, time will move on without us.
Maybe we should invest in making our slope positive. Continuously.
Mr. V, watch the ripples change their size, but never leave the stream of warm impermanence …
by Jose on February 20, 2008 · 5 comments
in Uncategorized
Last week in the classroom, I started dreading the idea of the two worst words for any regular teacher in this country: test prep. I hate it because it’s a contrived barometer of what they’ve truly learned, and en masse, becomes the data for metrics used to evaluate student progress, teacher competency, school preparedness, and demographic success rates. Unfortunately, only the people on the bottom of the totem pole ever address the malleability of these tests; they change at the behest of the emperor’s needs and not actually creating a standard for what certain grade levels should learn at any given part of their academic careers.
So instead, I decided to pull out the hardest questions from their predictive assessments (I’m a rebel) and help them understand how to do it. Let me show you. I took a problem like this:
and actually made it more multi-dimensional.
Nothing too shabby, but it’s interesting to see the kids’ faces of bewilderment. At first, only the more spatially inclined got how to do it. Then, as I started to show how the whole picture is nothing but a bunch of rectangles, the rest of the kids who were paying attention from the previous week’s lesson on the properties of a rectangle (it took a little reprogramming) were able to decipher the code on their own (for those not geometrically inclined, a hint: all parallelograms, including rectangles have 2 pairs of parallel and equidistant sides).
Of course, then I got really off-the-wall and gave them a similar figure and gave them completely off dimensions. Just to use the diagram above, the 10 was where the 7 is, and I mixed it up with some decimals, so the smart-asses in the class quipped, “But Mr. V, why didn’t you just put the measures where they belonged?”
I laughed, and like the quixotic teacher we’re used to seeing in the movies, I retorted, “It’s not about what you see. It’s about the idea behind what you see. Yes, the lengths are totally mixed up, and you’re already distracted by the mis-measurements. But if you understand that the longest length is the sum of the 2 shorter lengths parallel to it, then this should be no problem for you. Same goes with the the widths. Now, on the test, none of the lengths will be drawn to scale, so are you going to break out your ruler for every problem? I really hope not. I’m just making it obvious that you need to use your arithmetic skills to figure this out.”
Of course, one or two of them were still incredulous, but the rest understood. I was making them think for once. They couldn’t take anything for granted, and that’s important. Instantly, I found buy-in. I even differentiated by breaking the kids up in groups, and handing them cards with specially-made problems. Then they took it upon themselves to break out some chart paper and deliver how they did it to the rest of the class. I allowed for it only if I got to ask them critical questions to each and every student. Done and done.
jose
