The Changing Rules of Education

Matthew Carpenter, age 10, has completed 642 inverse trigonometry problems at KhanAcademy.org.
Photo: Joe Pugliese

 

“This,” says Matthew Carpenter, “is my favorite exercise.” I peer over his shoulder at his laptop screen to see the math problem the fifth grader is pondering. It’s an inverse trigonometric function: cos-1(1) = ?

Carpenter, a serious-faced 10-year-old wearing a gray T-shirt and an impressive black digital watch, pauses for a second, fidgets, then clicks on “0 degrees.” Presto: The computer tells him that he’s correct. The software then generates another problem, followed by another, and yet another, until he’s nailed 10 in a row in just a few minutes. All told, he’s done an insane 642 inverse trig problems. “It took a while for me to get it,” he admits sheepishly.

Carpenter, who attends Santa Rita Elementary, a public school in Los Altos, California, shouldn’t be doing work anywhere near this advanced. In fact, when I visited his class this spring—in a sun-drenched room festooned with a papercraft X-wing fighter and student paintings of trees—the kids were supposed to be learning basic fractions, decimals, and percentages. As his teacher, Kami Thordarson, explains, students don’t normally tackle inverse trig until high school, and sometimes not even then.

Read the rest at wired.com

Gamification: The future of Education

Gaming was once seen as evil, but it's quickly becoming apparent how powerful games can be for companies, ideas, and products. Some brilliant people will quickly see the opportunity and benefit of applying it in education, and many of the benefits are outlined here.

I'm not dead yet

It is very possible that this will be my last post on this blog for some time, it might not be. I really can’t tell what the future of this blog will hold – nobody can, not even science (Rob and Rich, that’s for you). But, I do feel that this would be an appropriate time to sum up my experience with Teach for America, and particularly with my school, students, administration, and district. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m going to break this entry up into two distinct parts – the first part will be a summary of the events of the last month and a half (which have been unbelievably eventful) when I wrote my last entry, and then the second part will be about what I am taking away from this entire experience. So, here goes part one.

The last time I wrote an entry, I titled it “Little Warriors”, and it was dedicated to my students (the other entries in the intervening time are ported over from another blog I curate with my friend, David Blake, called “hackingedu.com”). About one or two days after I wrote that entry, my laptop was stolen.

If you were to search back exactly one year, you would find another entry that talked about the same thing. That’s not what I’m referring to – I’m saying that my laptop was stolen again. However this time, I know exactly who stole it, how they got in my room, and what happened to it. Unfortunately, it’s also been a hard lesson in criminology because even with knowledge, if you don’t have proof, you’re sunk. That was the principle reason that I was MIA on my blog.

From that time, the following events have occurred:

1. The PE teacher quit
2. The English teacher quit
3. The Science teacher was fired
4. A security guard quit
5. Our parent liaison was fired
6. We miraculously finished state testing
7. Our principal was absent for 11 of the last 20 academic school days
8. Students who received a referral at any point during the last three weeks of school were given automatic 5 day suspensions. I haven’t seen approximately ½ of my students from that time
9. I’ve sold approximately 50/100 yearbooks that we ordered (it’s been a one man show)
10. My tech lab class completely planned out an end of the year party, complete with materials and a budget which was ultimately ruled unsafe by the administration and therefore terminated
11. I was quoted in the New York Times
12. I have received multiple written reprimands for “insubordination”
13. A current mayoral candidate for San Francisco came to visit my classroom to see the way the public schools are failing our students
14. The Associated Press interviewed a number of my favorite students about the conditions of our school, since we’re one of the 10 schools in the country closing for SIG funding (School Improvement Grant)
15. After my laptop was stolen, the students continued to plague my room with thefts, stealing anything of value from my room (digital cameras, food, etc.). They acted with impunity, and no punishments were ever dolled out
16. My personal yearbook was stolen at the release party. I made a number of key phone calls, and the book was returned to me anonymously the following morning!
17. One of my favorite students was expelled for unknowingly carrying drugs for another student who should have been expelled months and months ago

Plus about a thousand other, common daily occurrences which are probably newsworthy everywhere else, but around this place they’re just the status quo.

It is unbelievable to me the way that things run around here. I could probably have written an extensive entry on every one of those numbers that I listed previously, but I won’t bore you with all the details here and now. The point is, I really don’t work at a school – it is a glorified day care. I wish that my entries were about me trying to figure out how to differentiate, or how to reach that one unreachable student, or how to raise attendance. Instead I feel like they have been about me trying to figure out how to surf the political turmoil that rages here, and keep my head above water.

I can think of no other reason as to why I would push through this entire experience other than I know with all my heart that my students deserve so much more than what they are offered or receive here, and if I can do any of my part to help them receive that, I’ll do it. Now that I’m feeling all nice and nostalgic, I think I’m going to get started on writing part 2. Feel free to inquire about anything you might care to hear more about. I have a feeling this second entry might take me a few days to put together, but stay tuned.

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

 

WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, theJoint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing.

At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender.Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.

So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet. For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift at Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again. Does this look like “A Plan,” either on the state or federal level?

 

Read the rest via TheHuffingtonPost

 

Sal Khan on LinkedIn

Reinvent the future of education.

Pretty Fast

Right after I arrive at school, a student (Q) comes running up to me ...

Q: "Mr. Woahn! Mr. Woahn!  You need to come to our track meet today!"

Me:  I smile.  "Where is it?"

Q: "Kezar Stadium."

Me: Look of concern... "Oh..."  

Q: "It's too far, huh?"

Me: "No, it's not that - it's just that I'm not sure I could make it up to the stadium before your meet was over. How come you want me there?"

Q: "You need to see me run!  I am preeettty fast..."

I'd better get going pretty fast.

Little Warriors

I had two students show up today to class, unable to stop talking about something that had apparently happened on the way to school.  However, the nonchalant attitude they had toward the subject matter made me think it was them just goofing around, and so I tried to squelch their chatter as quickly as possible.

They came in to class, and from the moment they set foot through the door, all they could talk about was a shooting they observed on their way to school.  But then they were laughing about it, joking, and goofing off as if nothing of a serious nature had truly happened.  So what am I to believe?  I mean, I take about 5% of what my kids say as truth - I hate to say it, but it's just not one of their strong points.  I felt that on the remote chance that what they were saying was true, they probably shouldn't be in my classroom at that point.  However, they were being so disruptive with their story as the entire class wanted to hear it, I couldn't get anyone to focus on what I was trying to do, so I wasn't sure where to go next.

I was somewhat relieved when I noticed neither one of them had on their uniforms.  If students don't have on uniforms when they show up to class, they're supposed to go straight to In School Suspension (ISS).  So I sent them to ISS, and figured that someone who wasn't trying to teach a class could determine whether there was truth to their story or not.

Turns out, there was.  There was a lot of talk today, from both the adult and the students, about a shooting that took place no further than 2 blocks from our school.  And in spite of the fact that two people were hospitalized, and possibly dead (they didn't release much details), none of my students seemed particularly fazed by it. 

This caused me to wonder, and worry on a number of accounts.  For one, has this type of event become such a common occurrence in their short lives that it's really not anything out of the ordinary?  People dying, getting shot at, hospitals and critical condition? Is this what normal life is like for them?  For another, those could have been my kids down there, being hauled down to the emergency room with a bullet in their chest. 

Yesterday I attended the funeral of one of my favorite student's mom. She was one of the few parents who was actively involved in her child's education.  It was really hard for me to be there, and I got choked up a few times.  Not that I was super close to the woman, but I looked to my student, sitting alone, looking little there on the front row, knowing that this little guy is now going to have to go the rest of his life without this monumental force for good in his life, the woman who drove him to and from school every day, who called me on a semi-daily basis to discuss her son's habits and progress in my class, with whom I collaborated as I brought her son along on special assignments.  And now she's gone.  What will happen to him now?  This for the parent ... I can only imagine had it been the student.

Another one of my students had her mother show up to school yesterday to pick up her and her little sister up.  However, the mom was so strung out on drugs that she was unable to drive her daughters home, and so she enlisted the support of a minor (13 years old) who "knew" how to drive, and she took them all home, and took the bus back to school.  My student wasn't in school today, but I hear that CPS were called.  I honestly can't even begin to fathom what she is going through right now, but my heart cries out in anguish.

My students are little warriors.  The battle that they wage on a daily basis is more than I feel I've had to take on in my entire life.  But they somehow find the strength to not only press forward, but thrive. At times I take in the gravity of the entire scope of situations that I've encountered during my time here at school, and I start to feel that trying to teach them power number properties seems somewhat trivial.

And I take a step back, and look at the bigger picture of what I'm trying to accomplish.  Sure, in the short run, power number properties won't amount to a lot. But it's the attitude of a scholar - not only am I trying to help them accumulate knowledge, but I'm pushing them to take command of their education. By so doing, I can only pray that it will afford them the tools to elevate their futures to a higher plane that isn't so needlessly afflicted with the pain, grieving and heartache as the world that they currently live in. Education for these guys amounts to so much more than what I have them write down on paper, but it's about teaching them that there's more to life than the street label.  It's how to be civil, to be proper, to be good citizens, to be courteous, to engender empathy for others, to show respect for people, property, and themselves.  It's letting them know that there are people out there who care for them regardless of anything else that's happening in their lives, in whom they can hopefully trust and depend on to see the best in them and push them to new heights.  

I don't know, maybe I'm just blowing smoke to make myself feel like I'm making a difference for these kids... but I do know one thing.  I love my students.