Day One: Fifteen Dollars
I knew that it was going to be one of those days when I thought I had left my black belt behind. I feel like this is a rule: no black belts with brown shoes. No brown belts with black slacks. Simple, right? I spent the majority of my morning wondering where that belt had gone. After scouring the room, I realized it was wrapped up with the very same brown belt that I thought I was going to be stuck wearing.
My Charlie Card also went missing somewhere between my car and hauling all of my gear up to my room last night. I couldn't figure out where it might have gone, so I asked the folks at the front desk. Apparently I left it right at the counter, the moment I checked in. Later on, I found out that it had fifteen dollars on it, which is definitely enough to get me through the week.
I ate breakfast in the lobby with about a dozen people running the Boston Marathon and I was immediately heartbroken. There they are, doing this thing I've wanted to do forever, and now can't do (at least not now). They have bibs to an event that I can't participate in, tickets to be competitors in one of the greatest road races in history.
This is all okay. I ate a huge breakfast and loaded the hump. It's fuel for the fire.
-----------------------------------
Chelsea High School has a copy center. I'm not talking about a room with a copier. I'm talking about a room with three industrial copiers, all run by people who might work a full 40 hour work week just making copies for teachers. To get copies, we have to email him the jobs we want and the quantities we need, or fill out a work order complete with specifics like how we want them stapled or holepunched. It's a teacher's dream: people there simple to make sure the copiers run right.
The photocopied first day's work was waiting for us when we all got there. An elegantly made packet of practice work, all on box and whisker plots and measures of central tendency, made in advance by one of the teachers on the team. Formula sheets are made in advance on cardstock and there are Scantron sheets (SCANTRON SHEETS!) that match to a pre-assessment we can use. The pre-assessment even comes with an item analysis sheet that will give a count for how many students get things right. These people do not mess around.
It feels weird because I know this isn't my style, but I know there is only so much I can do my way. I can only take kids on so many adventures out of the building and on so many walks and find so many unique ways to take data and analyze it before I just have to insist that they practice. I think sometimes we teachers lull ourselves to sleep dreaming that we can create an innovative pedagogical playspace for our students all the time, making novel and innovative and fun curricula that does the trick without the drudgery of practice. But that wears off quick, and that's not even the purpose of the fun stuff. The fun stuff is meant to be an anchor, a vivid example students can draw from when their memory or notes or understanding fails them. The fun makes the practice stick. It does not supplant the practice. Sometimes learning sucks. We must persist anyway.
I happily took the packets of work. I'll take them tomorrow. Later in the day, I agreed to write the packet for Thursday. I'm feeling it: the motivation, the ganas.
------------------------------------
I insist on knowing kids as well as I can when I'm teaching them. Good teaching and good learning rests on a strong foundation of healthy relationships and their maintenance, and if this isn't present it will not work as it is meant to work. Remember your best teachers? I bet they remember you, and I bet you probably felt like their classroom was a place you could call your own. There was a seat at that table just for you, and you were willing to work at it. We all know what that's like, I'm betting. We did our best in those classes.
I have seven kids this year and they are freaking great. They're smart and funny and eloquent and honest. They tell me precisely why they are here. They want to pass the MCAS and get their diploma. Some have dreams of college. Others just want to do work they like when they become graduated adults. But they, like other kids who've attended these acceleration academies, need to pass the MCAS to graduate, and they are determined to do that.
I ask all seven kids to write down in their notebooks what they prefer to be called, something interesting about them, and a guess about how old I am. I use this as my first data set, just like last year. While item number two is tough to write on (what do you tell someone about yourself who doesn't know you?), every kid is eager to answer item number three. They guess with relish. This year, one of them is actually right. In previous years, I've easily been mistaken for forty, even fifty. This year, the range ran from 31 to 42, with someone guessing my age precisely (33). We find the mean, median, and range (there is no mode). We find the quartiles and the interquartile range, and the box and whisker plot. We talk about why we do this plot. I ask the kids to make a new one when the security guard at the end of the corridor, Linda, predicts that my age is fifty. They do it. I reveal my age, and the student that guessed correctly boasted. It all goes so smoothly.
----------------------------------
I found my anchor example of measures of central tendency when a student walked by in a baseball uniform. It turned out that Chelsea had a baseball game going on that day and I could not pass up that opportunity. The sun was out, the air was a refreshing 70 degrees, the breeze was cool. Not taking this chance would have been asinine. After clearing the field trip with my assistant principal and security, I take them outside and we get lost wandering around trying to figure out how to get to the ball field. It is lost time, but it doesn't feel like a waste. I talk to the kids and ask them about their school and their lives. They have their struggles and their problems, but they are optimistic and positive. They know the baseball team sucks and will lose, so not one of them has ever seen the baseball team play. When they tell me this, they seem excited that they're getting the chance to watch anyway. One student tells me about how much he loves Deadpool, and another student asks me to bring her coffee from the hotel lobby tomorrow morning. I told her I'd think about it. (I've already thought about it. The answer is no.)
We get to the field, and I ask my students to take two data sets: the numbers of all the players in the game, and the pitch counts for nine at-bats. They trade notes and guess what the numbers are ("Is that catcher wearing a six or an eight?"). One of the students walks right over to those on the bench and asks them to turn around so she can see their number. ("Yo, dude, turn around. Let me see your freakin' number thingy.") This is a hilarious exchange, and we all laugh.
Three at-bats in, and we're talking about how much the baseball team stinks when a player from Saint Clement's hits a dribbler back to the pitcher's mound. The pitcher fields it and holds onto the ball, at home plate, because there is a gigantic kid barreling down the third base line. The at-bat was a two-pitch at-bat, but we did not care at that moment because the starting pitcher was going to get annihilated. He did, and held onto the ball. He got the out and the inning was over. The pitcher came over and recanted the story: "I just got the ball and thought, oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit..."
The assistant principal eventually found us and delivered a student who came in late. She stayed for a bit of the game when the coach for Chelsea found her and said, "hey! You never come out into the daylight like this! Good to see you!" She comes over and observes that she didn't know math could be so much fun.
We take the data and get back to the classroom. The data goes on chart paper in the form of a box-and-whisker plot and a line plot. Too easy. Perfectly done.
--------------------------------
The day only fell apart right at the very end. This schedule has a problem: a two-and-a-half hour block of time between lunch and the end of the day. This is where students practice, and they practiced until they had nothing left in the tank. Some finished the whole first day packet, which was designed to take five whole hours. Others just ran out of steam.
I couldn't let that be what they remembered from the day, so I taught them how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mav2kkvakGY. I tell them they've run their own marathon today.
--------------------------------
Later on in the day, I visited with a former student who was in a calculus class I taught a few years ago. We met over coffee in a small cafe off Boston Common and talked about our lives and how they were going. She told me about writing and studying writing, I told her about my teaching, we talked about RPGs and Call of Cthulhu and college and graduation and pets and living in the city and a whole litany of other things. It is always wonderful to see how far students go when they leave our class, and I'm always in awe when a student can regale me with adventures indicating their wisdom and expertise. They grow up, in ways that are so uniquely them, and it's fucking amazing.
This student has done this very thing: grown up in a way that is so her. She's published and has become an editor-in-chief for a magazine at her school. She has just started DMing. She has learned about writing the hard way, and she's exploring internship waters. She has wonderful insight about college and about writing and thinking and I learn a lot from what she has to say. It's great to listen. I ask questions and take the answers in. I ask more questions. I tell her about why statistics is just the math for her, and she tells me about what it's like to send manuscripts to agents. We talk about the calculus class she was a part of, and how it changed my teaching forever. It is great conversation, and it is great to see her again.
--------------------------------
I leave late and walked toward Downtown Crossing and stop into a store called Gordon's. This store has an amazing whiskey collection, and I think about taking a bottle of Whistle Pig home. It would be so nice to take that home so I could sip it while I write, but I decide I just don't need it. It is time to go home, and I have other things I need. I do not need more whiskey. Maybe later, but not now.
I head down the stairs to the stop at Downtown Crossing so I can make my way home. As I weave my way through the corridors, I meet a woman who is sitting on the floor crying. She is wearing dirty clothes and eating a bite of packaged food. She is thin and looks incredibly exhausted. She has one small green backpack that looks close to empty. She is holding up a sign that says, "Please help. Need $32 to go back home. Every little bit helps."
I know there is a $5 bill and a $10 bill in my bag. This feels like a word problem: "Which do I give her, the $5 bill or the $10 bill or neither? Which is the right answer?" I know the right answer.
I walk up to her and I ask her, "Do you need a hug? You look like you could use one." Between tears, she replies, "I won't refuse one."
I give her the hug and she is audibly sobbing. Something awful has brought her to this point, clearly. I cannot stand to see people this way, and I cannot stand to see people walking on by either. I ask her, "What's your name?"
"Rose," she replies.
"Where does $32 take you, Rose?"
"Hartford."
Hartford. Fuck.
"How much do you have now?"
"I have $4.50 to my name. And I'm not even sure about the 50 cents. I just need to get out of here and go home."
"Well, here," I say, and I dig through my bag. I hand her the $5 and the $10 both, and she begins to cry again. "If my math is correct, this should put you up to $19.50. Take it."
She tells me she's so grateful and I tell her I hope she gets what she needs to go home. I tell her that I'm sorry it's gotten to this point for her. She tells me something heartbreaking. "Don't pity me. This is a result of bad mistakes I've made."
I tell her the only thing I can think to say. "Yes, that might be true, but you're not the worst mistake you've ever made, either. You're something better."
I fumble around for a piece of paper and a pen. When I find it, I write my email address, phone number, and name on it, and give it to her. She asks me what I do while I'm writing, and I tell her I'm a math teacher in town for the week. She tells me she was never any good at math.
I tell her to email me or call me when she makes it home. I give her one more hug and I tell her to please take care of herself.
------------------------------------
Chelsea won the game over Saint Clement's, 7-5.
My Charlie Card also went missing somewhere between my car and hauling all of my gear up to my room last night. I couldn't figure out where it might have gone, so I asked the folks at the front desk. Apparently I left it right at the counter, the moment I checked in. Later on, I found out that it had fifteen dollars on it, which is definitely enough to get me through the week.
I ate breakfast in the lobby with about a dozen people running the Boston Marathon and I was immediately heartbroken. There they are, doing this thing I've wanted to do forever, and now can't do (at least not now). They have bibs to an event that I can't participate in, tickets to be competitors in one of the greatest road races in history.
This is all okay. I ate a huge breakfast and loaded the hump. It's fuel for the fire.
-----------------------------------
Chelsea High School has a copy center. I'm not talking about a room with a copier. I'm talking about a room with three industrial copiers, all run by people who might work a full 40 hour work week just making copies for teachers. To get copies, we have to email him the jobs we want and the quantities we need, or fill out a work order complete with specifics like how we want them stapled or holepunched. It's a teacher's dream: people there simple to make sure the copiers run right.
The photocopied first day's work was waiting for us when we all got there. An elegantly made packet of practice work, all on box and whisker plots and measures of central tendency, made in advance by one of the teachers on the team. Formula sheets are made in advance on cardstock and there are Scantron sheets (SCANTRON SHEETS!) that match to a pre-assessment we can use. The pre-assessment even comes with an item analysis sheet that will give a count for how many students get things right. These people do not mess around.
It feels weird because I know this isn't my style, but I know there is only so much I can do my way. I can only take kids on so many adventures out of the building and on so many walks and find so many unique ways to take data and analyze it before I just have to insist that they practice. I think sometimes we teachers lull ourselves to sleep dreaming that we can create an innovative pedagogical playspace for our students all the time, making novel and innovative and fun curricula that does the trick without the drudgery of practice. But that wears off quick, and that's not even the purpose of the fun stuff. The fun stuff is meant to be an anchor, a vivid example students can draw from when their memory or notes or understanding fails them. The fun makes the practice stick. It does not supplant the practice. Sometimes learning sucks. We must persist anyway.
I happily took the packets of work. I'll take them tomorrow. Later in the day, I agreed to write the packet for Thursday. I'm feeling it: the motivation, the ganas.
------------------------------------
I insist on knowing kids as well as I can when I'm teaching them. Good teaching and good learning rests on a strong foundation of healthy relationships and their maintenance, and if this isn't present it will not work as it is meant to work. Remember your best teachers? I bet they remember you, and I bet you probably felt like their classroom was a place you could call your own. There was a seat at that table just for you, and you were willing to work at it. We all know what that's like, I'm betting. We did our best in those classes.
I have seven kids this year and they are freaking great. They're smart and funny and eloquent and honest. They tell me precisely why they are here. They want to pass the MCAS and get their diploma. Some have dreams of college. Others just want to do work they like when they become graduated adults. But they, like other kids who've attended these acceleration academies, need to pass the MCAS to graduate, and they are determined to do that.
I ask all seven kids to write down in their notebooks what they prefer to be called, something interesting about them, and a guess about how old I am. I use this as my first data set, just like last year. While item number two is tough to write on (what do you tell someone about yourself who doesn't know you?), every kid is eager to answer item number three. They guess with relish. This year, one of them is actually right. In previous years, I've easily been mistaken for forty, even fifty. This year, the range ran from 31 to 42, with someone guessing my age precisely (33). We find the mean, median, and range (there is no mode). We find the quartiles and the interquartile range, and the box and whisker plot. We talk about why we do this plot. I ask the kids to make a new one when the security guard at the end of the corridor, Linda, predicts that my age is fifty. They do it. I reveal my age, and the student that guessed correctly boasted. It all goes so smoothly.
----------------------------------
I found my anchor example of measures of central tendency when a student walked by in a baseball uniform. It turned out that Chelsea had a baseball game going on that day and I could not pass up that opportunity. The sun was out, the air was a refreshing 70 degrees, the breeze was cool. Not taking this chance would have been asinine. After clearing the field trip with my assistant principal and security, I take them outside and we get lost wandering around trying to figure out how to get to the ball field. It is lost time, but it doesn't feel like a waste. I talk to the kids and ask them about their school and their lives. They have their struggles and their problems, but they are optimistic and positive. They know the baseball team sucks and will lose, so not one of them has ever seen the baseball team play. When they tell me this, they seem excited that they're getting the chance to watch anyway. One student tells me about how much he loves Deadpool, and another student asks me to bring her coffee from the hotel lobby tomorrow morning. I told her I'd think about it. (I've already thought about it. The answer is no.)
We get to the field, and I ask my students to take two data sets: the numbers of all the players in the game, and the pitch counts for nine at-bats. They trade notes and guess what the numbers are ("Is that catcher wearing a six or an eight?"). One of the students walks right over to those on the bench and asks them to turn around so she can see their number. ("Yo, dude, turn around. Let me see your freakin' number thingy.") This is a hilarious exchange, and we all laugh.
Three at-bats in, and we're talking about how much the baseball team stinks when a player from Saint Clement's hits a dribbler back to the pitcher's mound. The pitcher fields it and holds onto the ball, at home plate, because there is a gigantic kid barreling down the third base line. The at-bat was a two-pitch at-bat, but we did not care at that moment because the starting pitcher was going to get annihilated. He did, and held onto the ball. He got the out and the inning was over. The pitcher came over and recanted the story: "I just got the ball and thought, oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit..."
The assistant principal eventually found us and delivered a student who came in late. She stayed for a bit of the game when the coach for Chelsea found her and said, "hey! You never come out into the daylight like this! Good to see you!" She comes over and observes that she didn't know math could be so much fun.
We take the data and get back to the classroom. The data goes on chart paper in the form of a box-and-whisker plot and a line plot. Too easy. Perfectly done.
--------------------------------
The day only fell apart right at the very end. This schedule has a problem: a two-and-a-half hour block of time between lunch and the end of the day. This is where students practice, and they practiced until they had nothing left in the tank. Some finished the whole first day packet, which was designed to take five whole hours. Others just ran out of steam.
I couldn't let that be what they remembered from the day, so I taught them how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mav2kkvakGY. I tell them they've run their own marathon today.
--------------------------------
Later on in the day, I visited with a former student who was in a calculus class I taught a few years ago. We met over coffee in a small cafe off Boston Common and talked about our lives and how they were going. She told me about writing and studying writing, I told her about my teaching, we talked about RPGs and Call of Cthulhu and college and graduation and pets and living in the city and a whole litany of other things. It is always wonderful to see how far students go when they leave our class, and I'm always in awe when a student can regale me with adventures indicating their wisdom and expertise. They grow up, in ways that are so uniquely them, and it's fucking amazing.
This student has done this very thing: grown up in a way that is so her. She's published and has become an editor-in-chief for a magazine at her school. She has just started DMing. She has learned about writing the hard way, and she's exploring internship waters. She has wonderful insight about college and about writing and thinking and I learn a lot from what she has to say. It's great to listen. I ask questions and take the answers in. I ask more questions. I tell her about why statistics is just the math for her, and she tells me about what it's like to send manuscripts to agents. We talk about the calculus class she was a part of, and how it changed my teaching forever. It is great conversation, and it is great to see her again.
--------------------------------
I leave late and walked toward Downtown Crossing and stop into a store called Gordon's. This store has an amazing whiskey collection, and I think about taking a bottle of Whistle Pig home. It would be so nice to take that home so I could sip it while I write, but I decide I just don't need it. It is time to go home, and I have other things I need. I do not need more whiskey. Maybe later, but not now.
I head down the stairs to the stop at Downtown Crossing so I can make my way home. As I weave my way through the corridors, I meet a woman who is sitting on the floor crying. She is wearing dirty clothes and eating a bite of packaged food. She is thin and looks incredibly exhausted. She has one small green backpack that looks close to empty. She is holding up a sign that says, "Please help. Need $32 to go back home. Every little bit helps."
I know there is a $5 bill and a $10 bill in my bag. This feels like a word problem: "Which do I give her, the $5 bill or the $10 bill or neither? Which is the right answer?" I know the right answer.
I walk up to her and I ask her, "Do you need a hug? You look like you could use one." Between tears, she replies, "I won't refuse one."
I give her the hug and she is audibly sobbing. Something awful has brought her to this point, clearly. I cannot stand to see people this way, and I cannot stand to see people walking on by either. I ask her, "What's your name?"
"Rose," she replies.
"Where does $32 take you, Rose?"
"Hartford."
Hartford. Fuck.
"How much do you have now?"
"I have $4.50 to my name. And I'm not even sure about the 50 cents. I just need to get out of here and go home."
"Well, here," I say, and I dig through my bag. I hand her the $5 and the $10 both, and she begins to cry again. "If my math is correct, this should put you up to $19.50. Take it."
She tells me she's so grateful and I tell her I hope she gets what she needs to go home. I tell her that I'm sorry it's gotten to this point for her. She tells me something heartbreaking. "Don't pity me. This is a result of bad mistakes I've made."
I tell her the only thing I can think to say. "Yes, that might be true, but you're not the worst mistake you've ever made, either. You're something better."
I fumble around for a piece of paper and a pen. When I find it, I write my email address, phone number, and name on it, and give it to her. She asks me what I do while I'm writing, and I tell her I'm a math teacher in town for the week. She tells me she was never any good at math.
I tell her to email me or call me when she makes it home. I give her one more hug and I tell her to please take care of herself.
------------------------------------
Chelsea won the game over Saint Clement's, 7-5.
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