152%

That's how much our students surpassed their summer growth goals by. I talked about the diagnostic that we gave the students at the beginning of the summer - and then we go ahead and teach them a bunch of units and subjects for the next four weeks, and then at the end we give them the final exam.

Turns out the final test is the exact same test that they took at the beginning of the summer. Using the initial diagnostic, we use their test results, and many summers of TFA data to determine what their approximate growth goal should be by the end of our time with them. For instance, if a student scored 30% on the initial diagnostic, using the TFA math magic, it calculates their growth goal should be somewhere in the vacinity of 70% by the end of the summer. So when they take the final exam, their score should be around 70%. If they scored 70%, then that means they met their summer growth goal by 100%. However, if they scored something like 50%, that means they met 50% of their summer growth goal. But if a student scores 90% on the final exam, that's like saying they met 150% of their summer growth goal.

The average on the final was 87%.

I don't know any facts or figures for certain, but I would be willing to bet that our students have one of the highest growth goal completions in all of LA institute, if not TFA. Most of the other collabs were reporting scores of 99%, 107%, which is fantastic, don't get me wrong. But I am so proud of our students for completely blowing the statistic out of the water.

It was hilarious because this morning, when we got to school, we all had this really somber attitude, and the students were heavily picking up on it. They were all really psyched to see how they did, and they could tell that we didn't seem very happy. So they were all getting super paranoid... And then we broke the news to them - that they had averaged 87% on the final, and they all started cheering.

Afterwards we met with them, one on one in the hallway, and talked to them about their goals, what they did to get there, and what they can do to continue on that path.

This was such an amazing experience - I can't believe how close I've become to these students after only four weeks. It's hard to imagine what thing will be like after an entire school year.

There were a number of awesome moments that stuck out from today. One is that I spent about 45 minutes talking to the class about a bunch of the projects that I worked on throughout my engineering education, and showed them some videos and pictures of my projects. After class, I had no less than three students who mentioned to me that they had been thinking about doing engineering, and after listening to me they felt a lot more confident about the idea.

Another moment was during class. One of our students, Amber (the same one who organized the cake for my birthday) pulled all four of us aside, and gave us each a card, and then proceeded to tell us what an amazing impact we had had in her life. She said that prior to coming to our class, she felt that she didn't understand math, that it was impossible and that she wasn't very good at it. But somehow, through our instruction, we showed her that not only was she capable of doing math, but she could do it well. She told us that we taught her to believe in herself, to have self confidence, and know that she could achieve what she set her mind to do.

This blew me away... This was the entire reason that I really wanted to join TFA, and I figured that this was an impact that I could perhaps have over the course of an entire school year. But never in four weeks. And yet, somehow it happened.

And lastly (of the many), was another student, Jessica. She stuck around after class, and had something to say to all the four of us. First, I should give a precursor about Jessica. Jessica is brilliant, but she was really sick for a lot of summer school (she missed at least an entire week, which when you consider the fact that we covered four topics daily, is like missing about 2 months of class during the regular school year), and so it was a tough road for her. But she came, she got all the homework, she worked on it, she studied it, and when it came to test time, she rocked it. Jessica had to get up at 5 am, and ride two different buses in order for her to arrive at Hamilton on time.

Jessica started off by telling us that she had had awful math experiences in the past. Her last math teacher failed her because he lost her homework, he lost her test scores, and never gave her mother an audience for a parent teacher conference. She had another math teacher who she said didn't teach her anything, who's life was threatened by a student to give him an A, and he did it. He had no control over the classroom, and she said it was literally a waste of time. She said prior to us, she hated math.

But over the course of the last four weeks, that opinion somehow changed. Jessica has ambitions of attending Berkely, and wants to become a teacher. She always had figured it would be in history or English, two subjects that she feels really strongly about. But not anymore. Now she says she's considering math, because she loves the way that we were able to break things down for her, how she was able to grasp the concepts, feel in control, and actually have fun with it!

And of course, we cried. In all of them, we cried.

What an incredible experience... it's been somewhat like a dream, there have been some definite highs and lows, but at the end of the day, one thing is certain: I'm making a difference.

The Calm Before the Storm

We're administering the final exam today. This will be the culminating event of my summer school experience, and in about 5 hours from now, I'll really be able to tell what kind of improvement my kids have made.

Four weeks. That's all I've had with these guys. And I feel that they are ready for this test today, for the most part. However, the thing that I struggle with the most is that I feel we've been grooming them to take this test, and that were they left to their own resources, they are still unprepared to address many of the principles that we have taught them. We have literally stripped the lessons down to the bare minimum, and made sure that they've mastered that. And those are the kind of questions that are going to be on this test.

The test we're giving them is the same one that we administered the first day of school. The students take the test to see where they're starting from, and then we teach them all summer, and then the last day we give them the exact same test again. The idea is that they should have learned how to do the problems they'll be seeing again, and so they should improve. This is how we're teaching for the test.

I hate teaching for the test. It does very little to support a person in further mathematics. Sure, there are a few kids in the class who have grasped the concepts, and I'd feel confident in seeming them progress further, but for now... it's frustrating. I just hope that once I get into my own classroom, I don't have to do this as much.

It will be good to have today over though. This has been a frustrating week for me, and the highlight of it will be to see it come to a close. And to top it all off, I get to end my week with a 4 hour test on Saturday. Fabulous, eh? .... I can't wait.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

One thing I've come to realize is that I love to mess with my students' heads. I know that math can sometimes be a somewhat tedious classroom experience, and so as part of my quest to continually improve the process and make it more enjoyable for everyone involved, one things that I've found that works is to tell stories.

Given, most of the stories that I've told thus far have been rather humdrum, but the key element is to somehow find a way to relate it to math. So for instance, on my first day of school, I told the kids how as I got closer to California, gas went up in price. Being the math-philiac that I am, I told them that I made a function to model the price of gas, and how much it would cost me to fill up my gas tank. See how I pulled math in there? I made a function? Or anther time I talked about how I went to Mexico last summer, and I exchanged some dollars into pesos, ate some awesome Orange Chicken at this restaurant called "The Blue Dolphin", and then on my way back I exchanged my leftover pesos into dollars. I used this example to represent to represent an inverse function. See here? More math.

There are many more examples, but every one of my stories have something in common. They're only loosly based on true life. For instance, I really did go to Mexico, and I really did eat Orange Chicken at the Blue Dolphin. But I didn't exchange any dollars or pesos, and I didn't really make a function for these things. I just tell them that's what I did.

One time I told them that I hiked Timpanogous, which I did, and when I got home from the hike, I wanted to know how high we had gone. So I did some calculations, and made a function that represented how high we hiked. Their reactions to this were absolutely priceless - I heard everything form gasps of amazement to one kids' comment of "Why in the world are you teaching us mathematics?"

The key is to keep the stories common enough that it seems plausible, yet mathematically dorky enough that my students will think "He can't possibly be this nerdy, it can't all be true." I usually leave it up to them to sort out fact from fiction, and it's the best because at the end of class they always have questions about it. I love it.

So on Friday, I couldn't think of a good story to correlate with the content, and so I made up a whopper, that I thought would be particularly outrageous and they would see through it from the start.

I started off telling them about the neighborhood that I had grown up in, how we lived at the bottom of a cul de sac, and there was a line of trees that separated the houses from the field. I then told them how as a child, we spent a lot of time playing in those trees, and in the fields. One summer in particular, we decided to build a fort down in these trees, and as any fort-building-intent youth would do, we started by digging the deepest hole possible.

This is where the story departed from fact. I told them that we dug for a long time, and we found... (Insert dramatic pause. The students are hanging on my last words. Possible answers are being shouted out... "A body!", "A treasure chest!" etc.) A Rock!

"A ROCK!?!? You found a ROCK?"

"Yes, a rock," I say. "But this was no ordinary rock - it was neon green and glowing brilliantly!"

They're eating this up with a spoon. In my mind, I'm simultaneously thinking "I have them!" and "Oh shoot, they're actually believing this..." So as with any good story, when you have your audience captive - I continued.. I told them that none of us had ever seen a rock like this, and we wanted to know what it was. So we took it down to the local university, and showed it to a professor. He told us it was a special rock, that decayed exponentially.

I used this point as an opportunity to teach them that exponential decay was the rate at which something fell apart, or decayed. "Like a corpse?" Yes Patrick, like a corpse. They grasped it pretty quickly, so we moved on.

I then told them that after he told us what kind of rock it was, being the little math-aholic that I am, I rushed home and created a formula to calculate how much of the rock would remain after 600 years from now. And then I used this as a launching pad to introduce the rest of my material.

From my perspective, this was the end of the story. However, what I had failed to notice was that the class had bought my entire story, and in their bright young minds, questions regarding the rock, the professor, and my equation are beginning to burn anxiously in their heads.

We continue with the lesson, we calculate how much of the rock would remain 600 years from now, and they get some practice in. Following the practice, I gave them an assessment to determine how well they had grasped the concept of the day, and for this particular day, they did pretty well. For the most part, they were able to decipher the process of how to solve exponential decay functions, but it revealed to me that their greatest obstacle wasn't with the exponential functions, but with the multiplication and distribution of exponents. Mental note - do some more practice with exponential multiplication.

After the assessment was done, we had about 5 minutes in class left, and the second that I finished gathering it a hand shot in the air.

"Do you still have the rock?"

I checked Kiyah's eyes for intent - she was serious. As I looked around the room, I could tell that she wasn't the only one who wondered about this, and it unleashed a floodgate of questions.

"What did you do with it? How much of it is left? Did you ever figure out what kind of rock it was?" and so forth.

Evidently there was a breakdown in communication somewhere along the line, and in my head either one of three things took place. Either I had seriously misjudged their ability to sort out fact from fiction, I was a much more convincing story teller than I had originally supposed, or these kids placed a whole lot more confidence in me as their teacher than I had ever realized, and as a result clung to the words that left my mouth.

I had to break down at this point, and tell them everything up to the rock part was true. We did find rocks, but none of them were neon green or glowing, we didn't go to the University to get the rock examined, and I never made a function to model the decay of the rock.

The classroom exploded. "So how much of that story was true then?", "I think it was all a lie!", "We can't believe anything you say!", "We're never listening to you again!"

So I'm left the weekend to ponder - were they serious? But in my heart, I know the answer. They loved it, and they want more of it. Just wait until they see what I have for them next week... :)

Some days it blows my mind to think I've only been teaching these kids for three weeks. I feel like I have known them for much, much longer than that. I can only imagine what this is going to be like once I've been with the same kids for an entire year - they'll be like an extension of my family. One week left. This might be harder than I had imagined.

Over the Hill

Somehow the word got out in my classroom that my birthday was on Sunday. I didn't tell anyone, except my collab, so I'm guessing it leaked through them somehow.

On Tuesday, sometime during the day after the news had leaked out, the class started guessing on how old I was (while I wasn't in the room, mind you). When I walked into teach my period later that day, someone had written on the board "Happy 40th Birthday Mr. Woahn!" I laughed.

Jump to today. Just before class started, Amber, one of my students, walked into the room carrying this enormous cake that said "Happy Birthday Mr. Woahn" with a solitary candle that said "Over the Hill." I cried.

This just blew me away, I never would have expected anything of this sort within such a short period of time, but I think it's indicative of the type of classroom environment that we've fostered. We have some awesome kids, and it's been such a great experience to work with them. Today my FA said that she had talked with TFA to see if she could hire us to finish the last two weeks of class. I'd guess that means we've been doing a good job.

I played "Logarithmic Jeopardy" with my class today, and I think if I had to surmise the experience in a single word, it would be pandemonium. Great kids, but boy are they competitive.

And then I got in a bike ride this evening... what more can I ask for?

Sometimes when you fail, you still win

I taught a lesson today on using logarithsm to solve exponential equations. Child's play, really. Actually, it worked out like this.

As I explained in my last post, I teach in conjunction with three other teachers. The way the schedule worked out this week, I am teaching last every day. And today's particular topic, logarithms, was being discussed in all four periods. So by the time I was to be teaching, anything that I had to say regarding logs was to have been said. And it pretty much was.

And then it was my time to teach, so I stood at the front of the class, and went over some basic log information. It failed miserably... and I stood up there and my mind raced as I considered the possibilities. My first thought was "THESE KIDS JUST BARELY LEARNED THIS!!! I was SITTING here for the lesson where they did this, how in the world did this information already leak out?". My immediate follow up thought was "Ok, so since it appears that this isn't hitting home, do I modify my lesson that I have planned to reteach this material, or should I charge ahead?"

Being the bulheaded young man that I am, I decided to plow ahead. I figured that even though they can't seem to consciously recall the information they need for this lesson, once I get into this stuff, it'll come back. I felt myself floundering, slightly.

My lesson that I had planned was centered around this activity - a puzzle really, that dealt with logarithms, solving them, and also rewriting them as exponential functions. I had planned on this taking up about 20-25 minutes of class time, so it was really important for my lesson that we were able to work on this puzzle. So I gave the directions on how to go about solving the puzzle, and set them off to work. *phew*

The students had divided into 9 groups of 3-4 students, and were racing against all the other students to get the puzzle completed. Which what this really meant was that I had to rush around to 9 groups to put out "fires", or answer the questions that they didn't ask at the end of insructions when I asked the class "Are there any questions?"

It didn't take long for about 90% of the students to really catch ahold of the vision of what I wanted them to be doing, and they took off with it. I was a little worried at first, because my FA (Faculty Advisor, for those of you with a short term memory akin to my own) and my CMA (you'll have to look this one up on your own) were both in the room, and they got up and started participating with the activity. This was nerve racking, because up to this point, whenever they have been in the room, they've been silent observers, hands off. I figured since they were getting involved, I must have done something wrong. I had failed...

And then all of a sudden, the class was over. I had run out of time, but in that time TWO groups had finished, and the rest of them were very close to being done. I really hope they grasped the content of that lesson.

When the class had left, my FA came up to me and told me that she loved this idea, and she thought the puzzle was absolutely fantastic! And later while I was in a meeting with my CMA, she told me what a great group activity it was, and she loved how everyone was involved for the entire time. I mentioned to her that I felt that the explanation was a little weak, and I wasn't sure after all was said and done if the students really had understood what I was wanting them to get out of it. She said not to fret it too much - they'll probably do just fine. Ok.

So, I thought I had failed, but somehow from an outside perspective, it wasn't seen that way. I didn't have time for the assessment to check for how well they understood the material since I ran out of time, but that's going to be the first order of business tomorrow. Hopefully the numbers will prove my success.

On another note, it would seem that Mom wants to hear about everything I mentioned at the end of the other post. I'll talk about them little by little, but not tonight. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures, coming soon!

You win some, you fail some

One thing about being an engineer is that your mind processes things differently. Certain subroutines take place in your brain without conscious thought, and so when people ask you to explain them, it takes a concentrated effort to even realize that there is a possible question there.

Such was my lesson two Thursdays ago (July 9) on the difference of squares method. This is a very simple concept, where when you have an equation of the form x²-b² you factor it into two parts: (x-b)(x+b). That's the way it is, no explanation needed.

The thing is, when you teach math to a class of Algebra 2 students, there needs to be an explanation. I just figured that the explanation for this fact would come out as I explained the process.

Turns out it doesn't work like that.

That is literally how I had planned that lesson; to teach the students that when they saw an equation of that form, that they should recognize that it breaks down into the two stated factors, and it's always like that. Which it is.

The breakdown occured about 30 seconds into the lesson, after I had explained all my planned lesson material, and I realized that the students had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. So I painfully wallowed at the front of the room as I attempted to explain this concept that according to my brain, just works like that. And ultimately, it was a great failure. I had the students work on their homework assignment, which was 20 problems of that form, and ran from student to student, dousing fires of confusion.

What a disaster. Strangely enough, they all did the assignment just fine, but I know that they didn't understand the process or why they were doing it. Thus, at the expense of my students education, I learned a very important lesson early on.

My brain isn't going to interpolate the details of a process that just works when I'm in front of a classroom of 30 students. It just doesn't happen. I mean, maybe once I've been doing this for more than say, 2 hours, it might get easier. But for my second lesson - what a huge failure.

What did I learn? Well, from that point on, as I've planned the rest of my lessons I actually started teaching to myself, out loud, the process of what I'm doing. I explain it to myself in the exact same manner that I'd teach it to my students. And I've gotten to know them well enough in the last two weeks that I've pretty good at foreseeing where they're going to have trouble, and elaborating in those areas.

Apparently it's been working rather well, because on Friday my CMA (Corp Member Advisor) asked if I would explain this process to the other collabs in my CMA group (there are 3 collabs to a CMA group). Evidently they're having the same problem that I was having.

Honestly, after that lesson I felt completely aweful. I felt that I had failed my students, that I had failed as a teacher, and that this was going to be a lot harder than I had anticipated. The thought of having to stand in front of my students and teach the next lesson on Friday almost killed me. How could they have confidence in me as an instructor when I had failed them so badly?

Turns out, students have short attention spans, and had all but forgotten about the previous day - lesson content included. We had to review it at the start of class again. Anyhow, invigorated with the pressing failure from the previous day, I finished the week with the strongest lesson of them all. My FA said that it was a fabulous lesson, and had no suggestions for me, which was very uncharacteristic of her.

However, as cycles go, another failure was just around the corner. Time to set the stage.

Week 1, TFA. We're supposed to have lesson plans for every day of the week. There is a strict format we need to follow, we have to have a daily assessment, homework, guided notes, key points that have been artfully articulated, plus a rough draft of every lesson plan within the next five days. These are due on a daily basis, along with a bunch of other planning documents, and we're supposed to print out every document within an allotted number of pages that they assigned us from day 1. We get 120 printed pages from the computer lab each week, and 700 pages total from the copy center for the entire duration of institute.

Nobody was prepared for the madness of the first week. The copy center was supposed to close at 11:30 p.m., but there was no way that they closed before 1 a.m. a single night that week. My latest night, I got to the copy center at 11:15, I had to wait for 20 minutes before getting a machine, and by the time I left, there must have been at least 100 people waiting in line after me. That was at 11:45.

The group of people waiting for the copy center at 11:45.

I would walk down to the computer lab at 1 am, and every machine would be filled, and I'd have to wait 1/2 hour just to get a computer to print my documents. Fortunately, my latest night that week was 2 am, but when you consider that we had to get up at 5, 3 hours of sleep just doesn't mean a lot. And I think I was on the heavy end of the sleep spectrum.

And this cycle repeated itself every night that week. So that failure story above was running on about 15 hours of sleep that week, and there was a certain level of desperation that was setting it. It was all I could do to get through the week.

The stage is set. Now, in order to prevent a repeat of the previous hellish week, I decided to dedicate my weekend to getting ahead. So Friday I went to bed at 10 pm, woke up at 9 am, and worked on lesson plans for 10 hours. Sunday, I finalized a couple things, went to the copy center early to beat the rush, and I thought I was done. I had my lessons for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all written out, with Mondays and Tuesdays plan printed and ready to go.

My Monday lesson went well, but not fantastic. It was a tough concept, but the students fared ok on the assessment. So come Tuesday, I plowed ahead with my original plan, especially since I had all my handouts printed and ready to go. Plus I was done, so I didn't need to think about it anymore.

Big mistake. I get to class on Tuesday, and pass around the handout. The students didn't do so hot on their Do Now, and didn't follow me at all as I introduced the new material. We were working on completing the square (not to be confused with the difference of two squares), which isn't a concept that is very difficult.

However, I definately chose the rocky route as I explained the concept to them, and it just failed miserably. It turns out that due to the fact that my students hadn't completely internalized the lesson from the previous day, they were still shaky on a number of concepts. But my lesson plan that I had put together had been founded on the fact that they would know that stuff well. And so when they didn't understand the foundation material well, they definitely didn't understand the new material that was building on top of that.

And I realized this, and I attempted to compensate and adjust my lesson to cater to their misunderstandings. Which worked ok, but then I attempted to tie it back into the handout that I had given them, which just didn't align. And so they ended up more confused.

As the bell rang, I stood in the front of the classroom and apologized profusely for the crappy lesson, I understood that things hadn't made a whole lot of sense, and promised them that I'd clarify everything during AIH the next day.

I spent that night vigorously putting two plans together, one a make up lesson to clearly explain completing the square, and the other, new material which was adjusted to compensate for that days weaknesses.

So on Wednesday with my new lesson plan in hand, I effictively explained in 15 minutes what I couldn't even begin to convey in 45 the previous day. Needless to say, it went very well, as did my lesson later that day, and once again, I recieved high praises from Ms. Reisenfeld.

I seriously have the best students though. They are really patient with all of us as their teachers, and they have been fantastic as far as classroom management goes. They participate when we need them to, they are fun and lively, yet work hard and are silent when they need to be. We couldn't have asked for a better group.

It's hard to say whether our students act this way because that's just the way they are, or if it's because of the classroom culture that we have fostered. I honestly don't know, but I'd suppose to some degree it's largely a combination of the two. The real test will come once I have my own classroom I suppose.

At the end of the day, I really do love teaching. There were numrous moments during the week that invalidated any previous failure that I had experienced. Taking the time for those *inhale* "ooooooohhhhhhhhhh" moments are the best, when you work with a student one on one over a concept they have been struggling, and seeing that light of understanding flip on in their eyes. It's awesome. Sure, last Tuesday and the previous Thursday were aweful, but that's all part of the improvement process. It takes those experiences to motivate me to not let it happen again. I can only wonder - what failure am I going to encounter this week?

As I said in my last post, expect more frequent, shorter posts this next week. I want to get off this habit of making posts of "epic" proportion.

Report from the Classroom

Seeing as how this is my first report about my class, yet I've been teaching them now for two full weeks, I'm not sure where to begin. However, I know some of you are screaming at your screen saying telling me to follow my own advice as I wrote last week and do what any good engineer would do, and start at the beginning. So that is what I will do.

Monday, July 6. It was the second time that I had been in my classroom. If you scroll down in my blog, you'll get some images of the exact scene that I entered - a drab classroom, with a future of events unforeseen nor anticipated, yet expected. Within 30 minutes, I would have a classroom full of students whose future in Algebra 2 laid in my hands.

I wasn't nervous, in fact I felt quite confident that first day. We didn't actually have to teach anything, since the majority of the time would be spent taking a diagnostic. This particular diagnostic was constructed by TFA, and was to be used by my collab (collaborative group - consisting of myself, Michael, Christine, and Jose) to figure out where our students were starting from, and what areas of Algebra 2 needed the most reinforcement.

Perhaps I should lay a little groundwork before I continue, so as to create some structure to the madness that is this blog.

Let me start off by saying that TFA has as many acronyms as the LDS church. I could probably write a dictionary with all the ones that are floating around in my head these days. This collab group that I speak of is a set of 4 CM (corp members) who tag team teach the students in Algebra 2. We work together to give grades, homework, teach objectives, and help the students progress in general. The class time is split into two 2 hour periods, with the first 30 minutes of each period spent in AIH (academic intervention hour). During AIH, we're supposed to use that time to the disgretion of our collab, and review/work on the topics that we feel our students need more individual help with. All four members of our collab are present during that time, and we usually split the class into four smaller groups so that we can give some individualized attention to the students.

The remaining 1.5 hours of each period is split into two, and two CM's are present during each period. We're supposed to spend 1/2 of that time teach, and evidently as I found out this last week, we're supposed to remain a silent observer for the remainder of the time. I teach during the second period with Jose, and we rotate who teaches first each week.

Now, our collab is teaching Algebra 2, which consists of two halves of the year - Algebra 2A and 2B. The first period is supposed to be 2A, and the second period is 2B. Since I'm teaching in the second period, I'm supposed to be teaching 2B for the rest of summer school. Some kids only failed 1/2 of the year, and so that's why they have it split up into two classes.

Now that we have that out of the way, I can continue. Those details are imporant, so if you need a reminder, feel free to refer back to it.

As I had mentioned, this first day we weren't going to be doing anything save the diagnostic. So we were just going to introduce ourselves, hand out the test, and proctor the exam for the whole time, with the 2A diagnostic being administered during the first period, and 2B during the second. I was over the second half of the Algebra 2B period, so if the students finished early, I was supposed to have something prepared to cover whatever time remained until the bell rang.

On our roster, we had 38 students listed. All the experienced teachers told us that if you have 38 on the roster, expect about 1/2 of them to not be there. And so we anticipated the arriaval of 19 students, which was ultimately disproven as the full roster of 38 students showed up in our classroom.

There they were, sitting before me in the sea of grafitti laden, gum ensconced high school desks. Since the summer school at Hamilton High (the name of our high school, which I failed to mention previously) serves a much larger area than just Hamilton High, the students came from all over, and most of them didn't know each other. The first day nerves of unfamiliarity and a new environment kept the students silent. It didn't take much to get their attention, explain the significance of the diagnostic, and pass the test out.

As we passed the test out, we found that a number of the students weren't supposed to be in Algebra 2, but Algebra 1. We dropped to 36 students. After the students had the diagnostic in their hands, another student realized that he wasn't ready for this, and left the classroom. 35.

Now the test was in session. Now, I had taken the exam on my own previously, partially just for fun, and also to get an idea for what exactly we were teaching. It probably took me about 30-45 minutes. During that time, not only did I realize that there were many things I'd need to refresh up on, but I didn't know how to do some of them. So I was pretty surprised when 15 minutes into the test, people started getting done. I hadn't anticipated this...

I'm pretty tenacious in my test taking, and if I don't undertand something, I come back to it at the end and spend whatever time I have left trying to figure it out. As the students began to finish early, I realized that they weren't like that. If they didn't know how to do it, they moved on...

I'd say within about 30 minutes, everyone in the class was done. But we had told them that we wouldn't accept any tests before 45 minutes had past, and so we had to hold them to that. When 45 minutes had passed, we asked who needed more time, and no hands went up. So we collected the test. There are two things to remember at this point. 1. We had planned on having the diagnostic last most of the 1.5 hours after the AIH (first 30 minutes of class where we played a get to know you game with the students) and 2. Jose had the first 45 minuutes of class that day, and I had the second 45 minutes. As soon as Jose had finished collecting the tests, still with 5 minutes left in his teaching period, he looks at me at the back of the room and then says "Ok, now Mr. Woahn has some things for you."

I had planned maybe 20 minutes of material, and now I just had 30 more minutes handed to me. Honestly I wasn't sure what to do for the full time, but my plan had been to go over the syllabus with the class. And by some unknown feat of nature/time-space warp, I was able fill the entire 50 minutes with material to spare, and I believe that the class was engaged for the most part.

I don't plan on going this detailed into every day of the first week, but I did for the first day for this reason. And I just realized I failed to mention something else. Since we're not legit teachers yet, every collab classroom has an FA (Faculty Advisor) who supervises the work we do in the classroom, is legally responsible for the classroom, and gives us practical advice as necessary. Our FA is named Ms. Reisenfeld - she's been teaching math at Hamilton for about the last 20 years.

Anyhow, after we finished our first day, Ms. Reisenfeld came to each of us and gave us some feedback based on our first day interaction. When she came up to me, her first question was "You did very well with your time today - are you a motivational speaker?"

I was flabbergasted. I didn't know what to say, because I can't imagine anyone ever mistaking me as a motivational speaker. Not that I don't believe in my power to motivate others, but as you all know me - I'm not exactly the most dynamic person there is. I always imagine these motivational speakers to be people who are energetic, passionate, with some moving life experience that gets you all riled up to accomplish something monumental.

So I laughed. "No," I said, "I've never done anything like that. That's very kind of you to think so, though."

"Well then," she replies, "Surely you've had experience speaking before, because this definitely wasn't your first time."

I told her she was right - and as we continued the conversation with me telling her that I'd taught Sunday School for the last 5 years, I once again gave silent thanks in my head for the experiences I'd had via the church. This just doesn't go away, does it?

That really concluded our first day. Other than being in the classroom, the rest of our day is filled with these mildly pointless classes and large group meetings where we sit and listen to people talk for four hours. I think I'm supposed to be getting something out of them, but by and large, I tune out. Don't get me wrong, every once in a while they'll nail something that snags my attention, and holds some lasting impression, but the majority of the classes seem to be time fillers, in my opinion.

Obviously, if I wrote this much about every day since that Monday, I think I'd start losing my even my own attention. So I won't, but let me tell you that I easily could. Of the many events that have taken place, there are a couple things that really stood out to me, which I'm going to write about in the immediate entry after this. Overall though, I think I'm going to try and write more frequent entries of lesser length.

Some of the highlights before I move on to my next entry though: student confrontation over taking his hood off, complete rearrangement of our Algebra 2 teaching schedule and class orientation (we're down to 30 students) where we are now teaching the same class for two periods, and are teaching 2A and 2B sequentially, whereas previously we had been teaching them concurrently, results from the initial and final diagnostics (we just finished the entire Algebra 2A course on Friday), 20 hours of sleep during the first week, my first big success with a student, my first flop in the classroom, and the teacher staredown. If any of these things sounds remotely interesting to my readers, please note it in the comments and I'll try to include it in my next entry.

For now, I'm off to dinner. Expect another entry later this evening. Thanks for reading!

Why Engineers Make the Best Teachers

This image has nothing to do with my post. It was just way too awesome to not include somehow.

I know you've all been rocking back and forth in your chairs, waiting in anticipation of this post. I feel it would be cruel and unusual punishment to delay it any further, so I'm going to acquiesce your desires and bring forth my opinion on WHY ENGINEERS MAKE THE BEST TEACHERS.

First a few disclaimers. I have a TON of things to write about today, so this post will solely be focused on its title. Later, I'm going to make a post recapping the numerous events that took place this week, because well, let's face it - a lot of stuff happened.

Also, I can't say that any engineer would make a great teacher. There are a few subset qualifiers within the engineering profession that probably should be added to this post. The title of this post in its true, unadulterated form probably should be something along the lines of WHY ENGINEERS-WHO-HAVE-SERVED-A-MISSION-FOR-THE-CHURCH-OF-JESUS-CHRIST-OF-LATTER-DAY-SAINTS-AND-TAUGHT-MULTIPLE-CHURCH-COURSES-AND-GIVEN-NUMEROUS-TALKS-IN-CHURCH-AND-HAVE-GOOD-PRESENTATION-SKILLS-AND-ARE-ABLE-TO-READ-WHETHER-OR-NOT-SOMEONE-IS-UNDERSTANDING-WHAT-YOU-ARE-EXPLAINING-TO-THEM-AND-CAN-SPEAK-OBJECTIVELY-ABOUT-THEIR-OPINIONS-AND-CAN-WORK-WELL-WITH-OTHERS MAKE THE BEST TEACHERS. Unfortunately, that title was a little long, so I just put the essential parts up there. And lest you are all thinking "Jonathan is only talking about himself with this one", I can think of at least one other engineer who meet these rigorous requirements. So no, I'm not just ranting as to why I will make the best teacher. And especially after this week... opinions may have changed. More on that in my next post.

As any good engineer would do, let's start at the beginning. What is the purpose of a teacher? A teacher is a person who teaches or instructs. Pretty straightforward. In my case, I am "teaching or instructing" Algebra 2 for LA Summer School.

There is an important point that needs to be made here before I continue this discussion, and that is just an extension of my opening argument, which is that any field of engineering is probably the greatest education that a person can receive. The reason why we all choose engineering is because we like to figure stuff out, we like to know how things work, and we're usually pretty good at it. Based on these facts, we can extend this desire to satisfy our lust for comprehension to any field. We may not be able to understand something now, but we have an innate confidence that given adequate time and resources, we will be able to. Except with maybe relationships - rarely are they logically based, and so there is no straightforward sequence of facts that can be followed to discover its fundamental elements. So maybe in that regards, we fail. But other than that, I feel I can freely speak for my profession and confidently assert that we don't know or understand everything, but we can.

Going back to teaching. When I signed up for Teach for America, one of the questions they ask you in your application is what subject do you feel most qualified to teach? I looked at the list - English, History, Music, Chemistry, Biology, Spanish, Physics, Statistics, Math - and I checked all of them. Ok, I didn't check Music, but I did check the rest of them. I speak all of those languages, and I knew that if I didn't remember every detail, I was confident that my engineering background wouldn't let me fail. I could go back and relearn it, because at some point during my Engineering education, I had taken advanced courses in all of those subjects, and it would only be a matter of refreshing to be able to teach it. As Engineers, we take such a diverse course load that it only strengthens our conviction that we can teach ourselves anything.

Evidently there is a shortage of math teachers in this country, and for some TFA felt that I was most qualified to teach math. Which I was totally happy with, because when it came down to it, that was the language I'd need the least refreshment of, with the exception of maybe physics.

Once an engineer knows the subject that they'll be instructing, this is where our education and innate nature really come into play. We look at the fundamentals of what we're going to be teaching - what is the foundation that this subject has been constructed upon. In my case, the question was what are the basic principles of Algebra 2 that my students will need to know in order to pass the class? I can relate this back to the many physics and engineering courses, where we would take a potentially complex situation, - such as a sealed, heated water tank that is being elevated through a vacuum being maintained at a constant temperature while losing water through a hose of varying diameter that is attached 3 feet from the bottom of the tank, and being asked to solve for the rate at which the entropy is increasing in the enclosed space. Sure, it sounds complex, but if we just change the inertial frame, set some boundaries, calculate the biot number of the tank, and have a table to give us a few constants - this becomes child play! A proverbial engineers playground, if you will.

Comparatively, figuring out a high school Algebra 2 course is child's play. Plus, Algebra 2 is a class that most engineers took years ago, so for them, it really was child's play.

Once those basic elements of what they want to accomplish have been discovered, the next question an Engineer will ask themselves is - what steps do I need to take to get from point A, where we are now, to point B - mastery of the fundamental elements of our subject. I can liken this stage of teaching to the many times where our teachers would give us an assignment, such as, say, reduce the lead time of constructing a custom foot orthotic from 2 weeks to thirty minutes. We want results in 6 months. At this point we had the vision of where we wanted to be, and when we wanted to be there. Now we just had to backwards plan, and identify every obstacle that stood between us and our objective.

Such as it is with teaching. We have our ultimate objective - pass the state test that will be administered 9 months from now. At this point, and engineer will sit down and meticulously backwards plan every detail that needs to happen from now until the time we sit down to take the test. Details such as in what logical, sequential order should the material be presented to how many #2 pencils am I going to need in order to administer the final exam?

We pay attention to the details. The next time you get in your car on a hot summer day, look at the air vent, from which the cool, air conditioned air is blowing from. Consider the fact that ever little flap in that vent at some point, was considered by an engineer - how it would connect to the vent housing, to the shape of the vent flap and its drag coefficient, and how the turbulence would vary according to the air speed that is flowing over it, and interfere with the overall cooling of the vehicle. That's not to mention the flow dynamics of the piping to get the air from the compressor (meticulously designed by an engineer) to your face (designed by another type of engineer). The details matter.

Now that we have our subject, and have painstakingly hammered out the details of our class, now we have to teach it to our students. This is where our background as engineers in the LDS church really begin to pay off. Even if we don't consider the fact that we spent 730 days in some foreign land teaching people gospel principles, the odds are that from the time we were able to walk, at some point we were standing in front of a group of people, be it primary or the Elder's quorum, giving a detailed discourse on our assigned topic. Our presentation skills have been refined over years of church service, and we feel comfortable in giving presentations before unknown audiences.

As missionaries, we had to ensure that our audiences well understood the material we were teaching them. They had to understand the immense importance of the covenant they were going to make with God. This requires a certain level of being able to read a person's comprehension of the material. In like manner, as an engineer teaching in front of a room of adolescents, we have to be able to look at our students and gauge how far the material we have broken down for them is sinking into their young minds. The quizzical look that appears on a person's face as a result of misunderstanding has duly been impressed on our minds, and it is quickly apparent as we gaze across our classrooms.

The final point I want to make, is that as a teacher there are many people besides your students you have to interact with. There are parents, principals, and other faculty members who all want to have a say in how things are going in your classroom. As an engineer, we have extensive experience of dealing with the masses, compiling their input, and then extracting the necessary data from it in order to make adjustments to our projects. And not only making adjustments from outside sources, but from within as well. As engineers, we rarely work alone on a project, and almost always in conjunction with a team of engineers. It is important that we learn to listen to the input of our fellow engineers, because we recognize that others have insights and areas of expertise where we are lacking. We know that it is only by working together in a sense of teamwork, where all are contributing their personal backgrounds to the project, that the best results are attained. Such are the things in the classroom. As we work with our administrators and colleagues, we need to be able to value their input and years of experience, and incorporate that into our plans.

My intent has been to convert you to engineering in general, but more specifically if you are looking to go into education. And even if you aren't, like I said earlier, engineering will give you the skills to do, well, whatever you want. Or at the very least, that's what your brain will tell you.

But in all seriousness, I have written this hopefully with enough of a fun, semi-sarcastic/serious tone that you have been able to tell where I mean which. The idea for this really came during my first week here at TFA, where the material we covered for the first 4 days LITERALLY was everything that I have learned as a result of being a member of the Church, and in my engineering courses. The classes I attended talked about backwards planning, setting goals, and effective presentation methods - all things that I had either explicitly taken classes on, or had learned as a result of church service. It was frustrating for me to have to sit through these, but as I sat there, I realized that for probably 95% of the other people there, they didn't have experiences that had bolstered their backgrounds in this area.

So I sat in frustration, but I got through it. While in reality, I hold high regards for the thesis of this document, I truly recognize that there are innumerable other qualities that make a great teacher, and they are not only found in many, many areas outside of engineering, but that there are many areas that engineering really doesn't prepare you for. I want to give a shout-out to all those educators in my family, and friends who are doing likewise - I'm appreciative of the work you do, and know that there aren't enough of us out there. The children of our future could use more fantastic, dedicated minds.

Kudos to all of you who have gotten to the end of this entry. I hadn't intended for this to be so long, but as I got going, I realized I had a lot to say. My next entry will probably be just as long, but after that, I hope to make many more frequent, less extensive entries. This week was just crazy, as you’ll see in the next episode. Coming next - week one.

The night before the first day of School

Are teachers supposed to get nervous for their first day of school? If they are, I'm probably in trouble.

I'm sure things will change when we get a bit closer to zero hour, and these kids I'm supposed to be instructing in the ways of Algebra II manifest themselves insode of my classroom, but I'm just not anxious at all for tomorrow.

For those of you who are just catching of up my travels, I left Utah on the 28 of June to head out to San Francisco, California. I spent the week of the 28th in San Francisco, doing our TFA Induction, which included everything from learning the logistical hierarchal structure of TFA San Fran, to completing my first ever benefits package. That was quite the stressful experience, which I actually would like to write about at some future point, but that point will not coincide with today's date. Today, I would like to write about something different.

But first things first. Mom and Dad, remember how I mentioned the other day that the University's huge administration building resembled a mall? Well, it turns out that it was originally constructed to be a mall, but for whatever reason, LMU purchased the building and turned it into their student center/administration building. It's massive - I'm going to see if I can grab the pictures from my phone that I took of it. They don't do it justice, but I just thought that was a funny coincidence.

Second order of business. I think I've mentioned this before, but all the people I've met through TFA have been such wonderful people - they have the most diverse, interesting backgrounds. All things aside, however, they all have their reasons for being here. And the one thing that they all have in common is that they want to make a difference. As such, I have found them to be a very outgoing, accepting crowd to run with, with genuine interest in people.

As entry level conversation tends to go when you meet new people, one of the failsafe questions to ask is "Where are you from?" Well, my answer to this question every time is a proudly stated "Utah." The responses to my answer range from "Oh, I have some friends from Utah" to "I've never been there before." There are a lot of other answers that might not be appropriate, but without fail, the follow-up question is always "Are you Mormon?". Never in my life have I been asked that question so many times.

And all I can say is it's too bad, because it is unbelievable how many missionary opportunities open up from this little question. Most people I talk with share that they have some Mormon friends, or they have some rumor that they'd like clarified about the church, or most frequently, the conversation moves on. But on two occasions thus far, I've had the opportunity to share a gospel converstation more in depth with the person.

Last night I had one of those conversations, with a girl by the name of Rache. Rachel is going to be teaching up in the Bay, and she is actually in my school district. Ever since I met her, she's shown a particular interest in learning more about my mission and what it was exactly that I did in Venezuela. Last night, before the fireworks out in the Bay started up, we had some time to have a much more involved conversation, and she had some awesome questions. She asked about the Book of Mormon, if there were female prophets, what does the commandment to strive for perfection entail, and if I believed that everything in life happens for a reason.

The conversation hit on all sorts of topics, and I was able to incorporate answers into the conversation as I told her about the cycle of the apostacy, of prophets, of Christ organizing his church, of the Great Awakening, and of the first vision. I kid you not, we probably talked for a good 1.5-2 hours without a single hitch, lag, or lull.

And then we got to the part of the restoration - more specifically, the First Vision. No sooner had the words "...hear Him" left my mouth, her phone rang. She answered it quickly, ended it succinctly, and we moved on. Turns out it was a friend from high school that she hadn't spoken to in almost a year.

How many times does this happen? I mean seriously, it happened more times on my mission than I would care to count. It just boggles my mind that we could literally be talking for a full two hours without a single interruption, and then in the climax of the message of the restoration, a friend calls from whom she hadn't heard from in many months. The adversary works in his wiley methods.

Needless to say, overall it was a great discussion. I answered a few more questions, and then another friend showed up to where we had been talking, and we all three went to watch the fireworks from the top of the hill behind the LMU dorms.

What a cool experience though! I'm so happy to be able to have these opportunities - to live as an ensample to the world, and to seek out those people with whom I associate, who are thirsty for the gospel. Who knows what will happen with Rachel - I'll keep talking with her. But just to be able to have that missionary opportunity once again... I'm excited.

In other news, I do have my first day of school tomorrow. This is my classroom below. The girl in the picture is one of the members of my collaborative (a group of 4 TFA members), her name is Christine. Sometime I'll get a better picture of us on here, but just for the sake of reference, the other two are named Jose and Michael.

I know, I know, overall the room is rather drab. The poster that is shown in the middle was my attempt to liven up the room a little (I love that quote, btw). We're going to work on that later - we only had an hour on Friday to do stuff to the room, so it'll take some time for us to get things rolling.

So tomorrow is my first day, did I mention that? Sigh... I'm sure they'll be great kids, they have to be. Otherwise, I might not be ready for this. Night everybody! 7 hours and counting...

PS - Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I've received a lot of comments from people about engineers making the best teachers. Just hang tight, that post is coming, I assure you! :)

A sign of things to come...

At this very moment, it is 11:11 pm. I just finished throwing together my second lesson plan for the day. I'm rather pleased with the first plan that I put together, I think that lesson will go over well. My second plan, however, feels like a last minute assignment that I reached my limit where the marginal benefits have approached 0 and I'm not going to squeeze any further utility out of it by spending more time on it.

In other words, I just put stuff together, and I'm done.

It's really scary how much this attitude reminds me of college. The only difference that I feel right now is the fact that by the time I finish writing this short entry, I'll have to be waking up in 5 hours. Not that the length of sleep is much different from the college days, but it's the time of day. 5 am is brutally early - it's still pitch black outside. Or at least as black as the LA lights allow it to be. And what's even more depressing is the thought that the summer solstice has already passed, and the days are getting shorter. What little light there is in the morning is only going to be decreasing from here on out.

But the good news is I'm done. The plans were only rough drafts anyhow, so I figure I can put some more serious thought into them over the next day or two, and make the final drafts when I've had some time to stew on the ideas. We have our first actual summer school class next Monday, with our first real lesson taking place next Tuesday. The plans that I'm putting together right now are for Tuesday and Wednesday. And since these plans that I will be turning in in 9 hours are only rough drafts, I have plenty of time to improve them.

It was a great feeling as I walked down the hall to the printer, to see all of these other perfectionist TFA'ers hard at work on their plans, knowing that I was on the downhill slope. I know many of them are going to stay up MUCH later than right now. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that I'm on the front end of the nighty-night crowd. But I know my bottom line, which is I don't operate very well on little sleep - 5 hours is already pushing it, less sleep would be catastrophic.

So good night TFA - enjoy what few hours of sleep you might get tonight. As for me, I'll perfect my art after I'm well rested. At some point I really am going to get my entry on why engineers will probably make the best teachers; this entry has some elements that really deserve further attention. On another night.