Elianna

I could barely get through this post without crying. Do you even hear yourself? During the Holocaust, there was huge sentiment against letting in Jewish refugees from Germany. It sounds like you're agreeing with that and applying the same logic to refugees from ISIS. It's so sad and troubling to see such a history (people openly and unabashedly stating racist ideas) repeating itself in my lifetime.

My husband would like to move to one of the few European countries I can't easily get a work visa for (I'm an EU citizen). I actually wouldn't mind the country so much, and right now I feel ready for early retirement, but I'm pretty sure that after a few months I'll get restless.

Interesting that you say this. One of the health care providers in CA seems to do just this - Kaiser Permanente (an HMO in CA - I don't know if they're nationwide) airs commercials promoting walking and other exercise.

Nevermind, found one.

Adam and I just saw the Minions movie. It was rather cute if you are in the mood for that kind of thing (we were planning on seeing "Inside Out" but it was sold out). If you enjoyed the movie, stay through the end of the credits.

She sounds like she learned Math, and still thinks of Math, in a very procedural way. I try to encourage students to NOT memorize procedures, and always go back to first principals to figure out what is going on, until the procedure makes mathematical sense, and they can create the procedure from an understanding of the mathematics involved, not the memorization of that specific problem. It's hard, though, because I don't get them until they're 15 or so, and retraining them when the've experienced success in the past by relying on (temporarily) memorizing.

Add another American (California if that matters) vote for "drunk driving" or "drinking and driving" being very common. "drive drunk" or "drink and drive" are also acceptable variances. Here's how I would use these phrases in a sentence: "He was arrested on a charge of drunk driving"/"Drinking and driving is dangerous and illegal" "Don't drink and drive"/"He's been known to drive drunk" The first two pairs are using the action as a noun, and the second as a verb. I think I change construction based on tense, too.

For a point in my life, I was making most of my money playing professionally, and made a decent income at that. However, I do not think that I qualify at all. I am just pointing this out, because I think that just making most of your money from bridge (i.e. being a professional) is not enough to actually have a quality position on many bridge issues, and having an opinion that people value, as I'm sure that most of the people on that list, while very polite, would not necessarily view me as their equal, nor would I view myself as an equal of many of them. In other words, I'm not sure that this is a worthwhile exercise. I think that upvoting might solve much of the problem of "white noise".

I just made this recipe with butternut squash instead of yellow squash: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/yellow-squash-casserole-recipe.html (with extra onion but no carrots because I forgot them). It was fairly easy, and went over well with my husband. I imagine that you could probably boil the vegetables and cook the onions a day ahead of time and then mix it all up before the meal (but I've never done that so Im not sure).

The problem is that many of my students don't have internet at home, so I can't put things online. Also, while we have a wifi network at school, we don't have enough devices for students, so again, I can't put internal class documents online. And yes, it may take only a few minutes to start a print job, I have to stay by the printer in case of a jam (and in fact, that happens about every 500 pages or so, and that takes time to clear). You're right - it's the collating/organizing/storing/setting up that takes up that 3 hours. and it's not 3 hours a DAY, it's 3 hours over five days, so that's 36 minutes a day, and I don't really see how to be more efficient than that. I do try to have a student do some of this for me after school (giving community service hours), but I can't have her do anything that involves tests/quizzes, and she doesn't know how to manage the machine to use colored paper. Plus if other teachers are trying to use the machine, they will just preempt her, so I end up doing this myself. I usually end up having her sort exit tickets (which I did not put in my time above). She's much slower at this than I am, but at least it's her time and I don't have to supervise her.

I work at a charter school and I've worked at a private school. I can tell you that looking at my school and colleagues, the way to create a long-term sustainable workload for teachers is NOT through privatization. We have many international models of education that seem to work both in terms of student outcomes and for teachers. None of the ones I know of involve privatizing education. I will say that I seem to take on more and more each year. For example: Two years ago I taught Geometry from a curriculum that the school created, and created my own Precalculus curriculum. Last year, I changed a lot of the Precalculus curriculum, and took on Chemistry and Algebra 2. For Chemistry I relied on the main Chemistry teacher to set up labs/create plans, and I could concentrate on Precalculus and Algebra 2, both of which I taught in the past (even though I was changing some things about how I taught it). This year, I am still teaching Precalculus, and pretty much sticking with what I did last year, with modifications (but not significant structural changes, so I can still use many of my lessons). I am, however, adding on two new courses that are new to me, and which no one else at my school teaches, so I am solely responsible for them. I do have hopes that next year I will not teach a new class to me, but then I think that many students would benefit from having a Honors version of Precalculus, or AP Physics, and I know that I'm basically the only one at the school who can teach them, so... Even if I don't teach anything new and never have to plan again, there will always be: grading (I don't grade HW - so this is only tests, but I do allow students to retake tests - which is actually a school policy) - Maybe about 5 hours a week. Much longer when I assign reports. Making copies for each class - about 3 hours a week. Tutoring students in mandatory office hours - 3 hours a week. Tutoring/counseling students outside of the mandatory office hours - 5 hours a week. Meetings - 3 hours a week Right now, I would say planning is probably around 10 hours a week, and I think that it would never get lower than 2 hours a week, because I would always look through them and see if there's something that can be improved on last year (and let's face it, there always is). Typing this out, it looks like I spend 29 hours a week outside of teaching, which is 25 hours a week. So it seems that I have 54 hour work weeks. Just typing this out makes it seem like a lot. No wonder I'm stressed out during the school year.

I initially took your post in exactly the same way. FYI, I work about 12 hours a day on schooldays, and probably around 4 hours a day on weekends. There also certain teacher only days that are training, both during the week and over summer. This year I had about 20 of them, for 8 hours each. So 12*180 + 4*40 + 8*20 = 2,480 hours total in the year. In other words, I don't do 1/2 of my job in 1/3 of my time, I end up working MORE time than "normal" workers. Other countries reduce the teaching time to even it out, so that those teachers DO have closer to 2,000 hours of work. From what I know talking to friends who are teachers in those countries, teaching is a job highly valued by their societies, and so they have more training, higher wages, and more job security, so more people want to become teachers. I don't know that I believe we have a teacher shortage, I think that we have a capable teacher shortage. Whenever my school has an opening, we always have 20+ applications per position, but maybe 18 or so are not people that we would want to see in front of our students. I really think that I would be a better teacher if I taught only three periods a day (instead of the five I now teach), plus I think that I would be a better person to be around, and more likely to not feel burned out, like I am afraid that I might feel in a few years, if I continue on like this.

One rule that works for me is if I appear in it, it will be cancelled quickly. I'm at 100% on this. (But it's not an iff.)

At the school I teach at, students are required to have planners and write down their homework in them, and also the bottom of each page has a bathroom pass (two per week). I have a young gentleman in my school (16 years old for more context) who has drawings of male genitalia on every page of his planner. He claims that a "friend" steals it, draws on it, and miraculously puts it back in his backpack, all without his knowledge. He's a terrible liar by the way. What I want to know is what motivates the drawing of male genitalia on whatever he gets his hands on (or whatever "his friend" gets his hands on). There have been other young men who have the propensity to doodle male genitalia, but I have yet to see a female draw genitalia (of either gender) on school material. So why do boys do this? Or perhaps, why do girls don't? This kid won't explain it to me (not that I really expected that he would).

PARCC and Smarter Balanced are the two test makers (and are basically private companies) that have vied with each other to have states sign up with them for testing. (These tests being private is another thing that has people upset about CC.) It's interesting to compare PARCC with SBAC (the one that CA signed up for). SBAC has only one test for HS - in 11th grade covering Alg 1, Geo, and Alg 2. We're working out how to test at the end of the year so that we know how students are doing BEFORE the big test. As to whether my students could solve that problem, I honestly highly doubt it. Especially since they would be taking it at least one year after they've had Geometry. I would guess that many would do it with trial and error if they could do it.

Most states (I first typed "all states" but realized that I don't know that for sure) have historically had "standards" that students are expected to learn. They usually were created (somewhat) independantly, and stated things like "Students solve a quadratic equation by factoring or completing a square." However, what was in certain courses differed from state to state. I'm told that courses labelled "Algebra 1" in some states differed on whether they included quadratics! (This is big to me because in CA, quadratics are very big in Algebra 1). One of the goals of common core was to create a common basis of terminology so that similar courses in different states cover similar material. For Math, there are two main parts of the common core: 1) Subject specific standards 2) Common Practices The subject specific standards are by grade level for K-8, and then in bundles (my terminology) that districts can organize as they choose. Districts can choose to continue with the "traditional" sequence of Alg 1, Geo, Alg 2 or switch to a curriculum that incorporates parts of all three over three years (called "Integrated Math", which is more like they do in other countries, I've been told). The common practices address habits of mind and are: 1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. 2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. 3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. 4. Model with mathematics. 5. Use appropriate tools strategically. 6. Attend to precision. 7. Look for and make use of structure. 8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. These common practices are expected to be reinforced at every level. You can find California's version of the common core here: http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/ Basically, it's how California suggests braking up the main strands, and has the two suggested pathways for HS. It's rather confusing to read though. Also on that site you can scroll down to see CA's previous math standards.

I know that your point is not all about deriving the quadratic formula, but I do have to say that I "teach" this in that I teach "completing the square" as a method to solve quadratic equations, and then I have students do it with symbols to get a general formula (I usually have to help them on the combining fractions step). So basically my students have had the opportunity to derive the quadratic formula before it's taught to them (in my class. To be perfectly honest, they actually learned the QF in Alg 1 before they get to me in Alg 2, but they're so caught up in what they're doing that they don't realize what they're looking at until we get to the square root part). I tend to be rather protective of keeping high expectations of all students, probably because of where I work: 90% of our students receive Free or Reduced Lunch, and most of them were on track to fail out of HS. Our goal is to get them to-and-through a 4-year college. Many of our students struggled through school not because of any learning disability but because very little was expected of them, and so they expected little of themselves. We spend much of their 9th and 10th trying to convince them that they are capable. If anyone is interested in reading about the educational inequities in the US I recommend reading "Savage Inequalities" or "Shame of the Nation" by Jonathan Kozol.

Historically, the ACT did not penalize incorrect answers, and the SAT did on the multiple choice sections. (Both of these are used as college entrance exams.) I know that the old California Standardized Tests did not penalize, but I am not sure about the new tests. What I do know is that as they are adaptive, my guess is that students cannot skip questions, and so they do not penalize per se for missed questions, but they adjust future questions based on results of the previous questions, so if you miss the middle-of-the road questions you will start getting easier questions, but have less of an opportunity of getting a higher score. There are two companies that are making tests for common core, and states have signed up for them in roughly equal proportion. California signed up for Smarter Balanced (SBAC), and I forget the other one. I know that the example I came up with was not great, but on my behalf, I thought of it in 5 minutes. If someone wants to see actual sample questions, they can go to the smarter balanced webpage, and try out the sample test: http://sbac.portal.airast.org/practice-test/

One would not be able to have students construct a whole proof in multiple choice questions, but what I see on the state tests goes something like this: Alex is trying to prove that vertical angles 1 and 3 are congruent. (I'm using <1 as meaning "angle 1") Statements Reasons 1. m<1 + m<2= 180 1. <1 and <2 are a linear pair 2. m<3 + m<2= 180 2. <3 and <2 are a linear pair 3. m<1 = 180 - m<2 3.____ m<3 = 180 - m<2 4. ____________ 4. Transitive Rule of equality And students would be given a multiple choice question to fill in the blanks.

A bit of background for those who don't know me: I teach HS Math, and have been to many district meetings about common core (at least at the MS/HS level). The "explain your reasoning" types of questions take place in different forms: (I'm using VERY simple Math so everyone could understand) 1) x + 3 = 5 a) x= 8 because 3 + 5 = 8 b) x = 8 because you have to add 3 to both sides c) x = 2 because 2 + 3 =5 d) x = 2 because 7-5 =2 Basically, students have to not only choose the correct answer, but have to choose the correct reasoning. Note, the choice between c and d could be confusing if d said "because 5 - 3=2", but I haven't seen ones where there is a distractor (incorrect choice) with plausible reasoning. 2) Constructed response questions where students have to come up with answer and explain their reasoning. As a teacher, as long as the reasoning is mathematically valid (i.e. I couldn't use the same logic to reach an incorrect answer) I accept their reasoning, but like others have said, I worry about the readers on the actual test. I should note that my students are much more taken aback by the multiple choice questions than by the constructed response. They especially struggle with MC questions that require multiple responses, and are right if they only if they choose EXACTLY the correct responses.

I upvoted it before I saw Ken's reply, and then was going to reply to him to say that I think that you were being sarcastic, but I see that you've beat me to it.

Or even not know Trig proofs (work on one side completely to show it is equal to the other).

It kills me that my husband won't watch this movie on the basis that it was in black-and-white and filmed before he was born. I think that I was about 14 when I first saw it, and thought that it was great. There were parts that didn't make sense to me that on a rewatch as an adult made more sense (and others that I felt were unnecessary as an adult), but I still enjoy that movie.

I think that it's a two-edged sword: People (like you) are trying to be helpful by giving the OP advice on things she can do to try to minimize the pain that she is feeling. However, sometimes advice can sound like "if you didn't/don't do this, then you deserve whatever you get", which sentiments I think that we can all say we would disagree with. I don't have a solution to this, because tone is hard to read online, but I do wonder if GreenMan is reading the second thought into what you said, whereas you intended the first.

I think that my goal for 2014 is to not volunteer to teach Summer School, and try to play bridge over summer.