It's Sunday, and I am anticipating another week. My students get a 3-day weekend; the faculty get a Monday ride to Charlotte for diocesan development. I am not looking forward to the bus ride, but the inservice should be fine. It never hurts to learn and relearn what I need to be teaching. In my case, there is always one outstanding question: do I go to the high school math seminar or the K-12 technology seminar? I usually go to the technology seminar since we have a total of 5 math teachers, myself included. We shall see.
Last week seemed to be spring break for many of our alumni now in college. There were several who showed up at the school last week. I enjoyed spending a long time talking about college computer science with one of my former AP CS students. After school on Friday, 2 more former Honors CS students came by to chat. Frankly, I really don't remember them in Hons CS, but I do remember them in Algebra 2 (Honors or not, I cannot remember). It's good to see them grow into their future, and it's great to know that my work was not in vain. I think every teacher needs that now and then.
I chaperoned the Junior Class Retreat on Thursday and discovered that I have reached that age when I find I am older than I feel. I jumped off a short wall with less grace than I expected to have. My left leg landed fine, but my right leg kept on going to the knee. Nothing really hurt but my pride and a small bruise. Now I understand about those older people who try to do something again that they used to do well and end up with a broken bone. Henceforth, all jumping off short walls will be done where the landing area is soil and not concrete ... just in case.
I'm back to feeling like a grading automaton. If I'm not grading math, I'm grading programs. If I'm not grading anything, I'm writing lesson plans. It's just one or the other. I also try to fit exercise into all of this, plus ironing my clothes and washing bathrooms and anything else I feel like doing at home to keep things in sync. No wonder when the school year ends, I find myself at a loss for about a week with little structure in my life.
Showing posts with label computer science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computer science. Show all posts
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Substitute teaching days
When I finished working for my initial teaching license, I started substitute teaching at a local public high school. My experiences showed me that substitute teaching should be a composite part of teacher training. I learned so much from the regular teachers such as having a folder for make up work for missing students; it makes helping students catch up so much easier. (Now, I want to create some locked "box" where students can put their make up work. Currently, the make up work gets mixed in with the on-time work.)
Some things I figured out on my own, and I use them for those who substitute for me now. Not only do I include seating charts in my substitute folder, but I include seating charts with student photographs. It is so easy for the substitute to know the students by sight. Never underestimate the power of knowing someone's name when they are starting to make trouble.
One thing I didn't understand then was the difficulty of getting a math substitute. At that school, one of the math teachers found out that I was licensed in secondary mathematics, and she got me to substitute for a conference day. She said that she could never get someone to substitute who knew math. The day came, and it was a rather easy task since math was one of my fields of expertise. The situation of getting a substitute with math skills became apparent during the last class of the day. An algebra 4 student came to me with a question about a problem on the worksheet. I worked it out on the whiteboard with him. He went back to his seat, and I overheard this conversation: "Did she know the answer?" "Not only did she know the answer; she knew how to work the problem!"
I'm remembering all this because I will be out on the Junior class retreat on March 8, and I have asked a former math teacher to sub for me. She can do all the math stuff. The computer science classes will just have to work in the labs without me. Maybe I can get the tech coordinator to do his "why not use wifi" presentation in the Honors CS class. Hmm.
Some things I figured out on my own, and I use them for those who substitute for me now. Not only do I include seating charts in my substitute folder, but I include seating charts with student photographs. It is so easy for the substitute to know the students by sight. Never underestimate the power of knowing someone's name when they are starting to make trouble.
One thing I didn't understand then was the difficulty of getting a math substitute. At that school, one of the math teachers found out that I was licensed in secondary mathematics, and she got me to substitute for a conference day. She said that she could never get someone to substitute who knew math. The day came, and it was a rather easy task since math was one of my fields of expertise. The situation of getting a substitute with math skills became apparent during the last class of the day. An algebra 4 student came to me with a question about a problem on the worksheet. I worked it out on the whiteboard with him. He went back to his seat, and I overheard this conversation: "Did she know the answer?" "Not only did she know the answer; she knew how to work the problem!"
I'm remembering all this because I will be out on the Junior class retreat on March 8, and I have asked a former math teacher to sub for me. She can do all the math stuff. The computer science classes will just have to work in the labs without me. Maybe I can get the tech coordinator to do his "why not use wifi" presentation in the Honors CS class. Hmm.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Thoughts on trying to reach the emotional areas of the brain.
I just received this year's AP CS A exam results. I knew before Easter break just what those results would be, and I was right. No matter how many times I told my students that they were going to take one of the hardest AP exams and that they could not wing it by cramming at the last minute, most of them did not listen. Most of them did not pass. What does it take to reach the part of a student's brain that realizes that I am telling the truth?
Last year my entire class passed that exam. Since they were all mentally geared towards the subject, I could have done nothing, and they probably still would have passed. My experience has been that the individual student's desire to pass the exam and interest in the software creation concepts side is a far better predictor of success than anything else. The interest in software concepts I have a good sense of, but how do I help them desire passionately passing the exam? I don't believe in using my emotions to manipulate students although I will use manipulative techniques to get them to do the work in class. It's getting them to work in the lab that is a big problem. I shall have to think seriously on this one before the fall. I have the passion that I need to pass on to them.
Last year my entire class passed that exam. Since they were all mentally geared towards the subject, I could have done nothing, and they probably still would have passed. My experience has been that the individual student's desire to pass the exam and interest in the software creation concepts side is a far better predictor of success than anything else. The interest in software concepts I have a good sense of, but how do I help them desire passionately passing the exam? I don't believe in using my emotions to manipulate students although I will use manipulative techniques to get them to do the work in class. It's getting them to work in the lab that is a big problem. I shall have to think seriously on this one before the fall. I have the passion that I need to pass on to them.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Working on the house
I've been preparing my kitchen in anticipation of scraping the ceiling. We plan on putting up a tin or fake-tin ceiling this summer. I will finish taking down everything on the cabinet tops today, my husband will wash clothes this evening, and I will cover the lower cabinets and appliances tomorrow and start scraping. My father would probably tell me that I take too long to do these things. I think he would be right, but I like to do quiet things in the heat and humidity of the afternoon.
My younger brother, however, seems to think I do a lot in the summer. He skyped me yesterday and made a comment about how busy I am when school's out (I don't remember his exact words, just the gist of what I got from them.). I do know that I hate doing the work, but I love the results, so I do it. Plus summer can be a waste if one does nothing useful. Besides, it's either do physical labor or exercise by walking down the greenway. Right now the physical labor is winning. Going up and down the step ladder for a couple of hours each day is great for my leg muscles.
I'm also trying to finish my Moodle site for the first quarter of a math class. I know that I will either have a study hall or a different math subject this fall, and I want to be ready in case the latter happens. I also need to do the same for both my Intro CS class and my Honors CS class. One thing I learned this past year is that I need to insure that my CS students cannot find the answers to their problems on the internet. For some reason, they don't think they're cheating when they do that.
My younger brother, however, seems to think I do a lot in the summer. He skyped me yesterday and made a comment about how busy I am when school's out (I don't remember his exact words, just the gist of what I got from them.). I do know that I hate doing the work, but I love the results, so I do it. Plus summer can be a waste if one does nothing useful. Besides, it's either do physical labor or exercise by walking down the greenway. Right now the physical labor is winning. Going up and down the step ladder for a couple of hours each day is great for my leg muscles.
I'm also trying to finish my Moodle site for the first quarter of a math class. I know that I will either have a study hall or a different math subject this fall, and I want to be ready in case the latter happens. I also need to do the same for both my Intro CS class and my Honors CS class. One thing I learned this past year is that I need to insure that my CS students cannot find the answers to their problems on the internet. For some reason, they don't think they're cheating when they do that.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Back to Traffic
I noticed that it has been about 2 weeks since I wrote. Basically, my cold took longer to go away, and the first quarter end hit at the same time. I survived field day by doping myself up with cold medicine (I always wonder why it is called cold medicine since it does not help get rid of the cold; it just makes it possible to function at a low level without causing others to notice one's condition too much.). The day was supposed to be sunny, but it was overcast and breezy instead. I had taken my own advice by wearing layers which made the chill tolerable. Some of my homeroom, however, didn't take the advice as seriously as they should have. ... and what is it about teenage boys that they can go around in tee-shirts without jackets or sweatshirts or anything else and still claim not to be cold? The teachers all agreed that it was not wise to change the date of field day just because of a play. I hope that this mistake will not be repeated.
As I feared, my cold did not go away but hung on. The problem with a cold is the fact that it drains my energy. That's good for making sure that I get enough rest to get rid of it, but it wears on my teaching and non-teaching tasks. I struggled for the next 3 days to teach, to catch up with grading make up work, and to answer students' questions about their grades. Thankfully, on Friday (Halloween) there was no school so that faculty could get their grades done. They were due online by 8:15 Monday morning. I actually didn't spend long at the school since most of my work could be done on the internet. I had some problems with accessing my computer science students' programs, but other than that everything else was almost ready. I loaded up the needed programs and headed home after I got some help with my immediate problem.
I decided to defragment/pack my hard drive and install the compiler I needed so that I could grade my students' programs at home rather than at the school because it would be much easier for me. I messed up the download of the compiler somehow, spent much of the weekend trying to figure out what I had done/not done, and ended up downloading a different compiler so that I could finish grading the programs.
I zipped off to school on Monday, getting there 1 1/2 hours before the deadline to tweak the grades. In my math classes I always drop the lowest quiz grade and 1/10 of the homework grades at the end of the quarter, and I had not done that yet because of the time I used in trying to fix a problem that I never fixed. I was finished on time, though. This past week has been easier because the seniors were out on their required 1-week internship. I lost 2 classes completely for the week, had 3 classes with 6 or fewer students, and only had one class that had only 5 seniors (missing) to 18 juniors. That class (computer science) had videos about computers and science fiction all week.
I spent a lot of time at the school planning for my Honors Probability and Statistics class which is the only class that I had never taught until this year. I've learned over the years to keep my notes on my computer science and my functions and modeling classes intact so that I can start from them each year. I never really needed to keep notes from one year to the next when it came to teaching straightforward algebra, but functions and modeling is an applied mathematics class, so I need the notes for reference. The computer science notes I keep have to do with the programming language I use (Java) and not computer science itself, since I come from the world of private industry and computer programming and systems analysis ... plus I'm a computer science grad school dropout (not due to grades ... my grades were fine).
Thursday afternoon and evening and all day Friday were set aside for parent-teacher conferences, but I had very few of those. The teachers for the freshmen and sophomores get most of the conferences. I did get time to help another teacher change the format of her homework website from an icon-driven menu to a "frames" version, i.e. no icons. I am not sure what it is about English teachers, but most of them think it's important to look sophisticated. I guess most math teachers don't think that way because it is hard enough getting students to understand how necessary and useful math is so that they will actually want to learn. We tend not to be so distant in our own ways.
I am over my cold completely. I do find it hard to go back to my healthy way of life every time I get sick. I have not exercised for nearly 3 weeks, so I am having trouble convincing myself to start up again. I will do it, though. Likewise, I need to get back to blogging.
As I feared, my cold did not go away but hung on. The problem with a cold is the fact that it drains my energy. That's good for making sure that I get enough rest to get rid of it, but it wears on my teaching and non-teaching tasks. I struggled for the next 3 days to teach, to catch up with grading make up work, and to answer students' questions about their grades. Thankfully, on Friday (Halloween) there was no school so that faculty could get their grades done. They were due online by 8:15 Monday morning. I actually didn't spend long at the school since most of my work could be done on the internet. I had some problems with accessing my computer science students' programs, but other than that everything else was almost ready. I loaded up the needed programs and headed home after I got some help with my immediate problem.
I decided to defragment/pack my hard drive and install the compiler I needed so that I could grade my students' programs at home rather than at the school because it would be much easier for me. I messed up the download of the compiler somehow, spent much of the weekend trying to figure out what I had done/not done, and ended up downloading a different compiler so that I could finish grading the programs.
I zipped off to school on Monday, getting there 1 1/2 hours before the deadline to tweak the grades. In my math classes I always drop the lowest quiz grade and 1/10 of the homework grades at the end of the quarter, and I had not done that yet because of the time I used in trying to fix a problem that I never fixed. I was finished on time, though. This past week has been easier because the seniors were out on their required 1-week internship. I lost 2 classes completely for the week, had 3 classes with 6 or fewer students, and only had one class that had only 5 seniors (missing) to 18 juniors. That class (computer science) had videos about computers and science fiction all week.
I spent a lot of time at the school planning for my Honors Probability and Statistics class which is the only class that I had never taught until this year. I've learned over the years to keep my notes on my computer science and my functions and modeling classes intact so that I can start from them each year. I never really needed to keep notes from one year to the next when it came to teaching straightforward algebra, but functions and modeling is an applied mathematics class, so I need the notes for reference. The computer science notes I keep have to do with the programming language I use (Java) and not computer science itself, since I come from the world of private industry and computer programming and systems analysis ... plus I'm a computer science grad school dropout (not due to grades ... my grades were fine).
Thursday afternoon and evening and all day Friday were set aside for parent-teacher conferences, but I had very few of those. The teachers for the freshmen and sophomores get most of the conferences. I did get time to help another teacher change the format of her homework website from an icon-driven menu to a "frames" version, i.e. no icons. I am not sure what it is about English teachers, but most of them think it's important to look sophisticated. I guess most math teachers don't think that way because it is hard enough getting students to understand how necessary and useful math is so that they will actually want to learn. We tend not to be so distant in our own ways.
I am over my cold completely. I do find it hard to go back to my healthy way of life every time I get sick. I have not exercised for nearly 3 weeks, so I am having trouble convincing myself to start up again. I will do it, though. Likewise, I need to get back to blogging.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Short class week
One advantage of teaching is that the schools do create those in-service days so that we can earn our license renewal credits while the schools do not have to pay for substitutes. Hence, I taught for 3 days only this week. The students loved the idea of having a 4-day weekend, but I gave my Advanced Functions and Modeling students an assignment that will take longer than the usual half-hour assignment I give for school nights.
Why only a half hour? We do not use a block schedule (Thank God!), but our students have 7 classes a day -- some juniors and seniors give up their lunch to have 8 classes a day, so I do not give more than half an hour's worth of homework for one night on Monday through Thursday. Studies have shown that high school students tend to retain best when they have 2 hours total of homework (that's all subjects combined). Less than that, they retain less. More than that, they do not retain nor learn more. I do tell my students that if they are working on my homework Monday through Thursday nights and they hit 45 minutes, to stop right there and tell me about it the next day. Since my math classes are filled with students who have learning disabilities, I know that some of them will pay dearly for taking longer to do their work if I don't give them an out. I remember when one of my daughter's middle school teachers assigned 2 hours of work every night for each of the 2 subjects she taught my daughter, and I never want that to happen with my students. Weekends, however, are fair game for longer assignments.
I received an email on Thursday afternoon from a former AP Computer Science student who graduated last year and is in his freshman year of engineering. I have changed and italicized words and names to protect his privacy.
Why only a half hour? We do not use a block schedule (Thank God!), but our students have 7 classes a day -- some juniors and seniors give up their lunch to have 8 classes a day, so I do not give more than half an hour's worth of homework for one night on Monday through Thursday. Studies have shown that high school students tend to retain best when they have 2 hours total of homework (that's all subjects combined). Less than that, they retain less. More than that, they do not retain nor learn more. I do tell my students that if they are working on my homework Monday through Thursday nights and they hit 45 minutes, to stop right there and tell me about it the next day. Since my math classes are filled with students who have learning disabilities, I know that some of them will pay dearly for taking longer to do their work if I don't give them an out. I remember when one of my daughter's middle school teachers assigned 2 hours of work every night for each of the 2 subjects she taught my daughter, and I never want that to happen with my students. Weekends, however, are fair game for longer assignments.
I received an email on Thursday afternoon from a former AP Computer Science student who graduated last year and is in his freshman year of engineering. I have changed and italicized words and names to protect his privacy.
Hey Ms. D.,
I'm here at college and had some free time so I thought I'd see how things were with you at the high school.
I just wanted to also let you know how a few things in your class are coming back in classes I have now. I thought I'd tell you so when students ask when they'll use it, tell them I'm using it already, less than a month into college.
In my Engineering Exploration course (required of all freshman engineering students) we're doing flowcharting. Our third quiz will be almost solely on flowcharting and our first test will deal with it some. My next homework assignment is to create a flowchart to find the volume of a frustrum cone and return only certain values. I never did any flowcharting because I did independent Honors CS, but I know you teach it in the regular class. I haven't had to use any Java yet, but my professors have said that just a basic knowledge of Java will help when we touch on some other programming languages used more by engineers.
So, thanks for everything over the years.
Take care,
Your former student
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
No chairman yet.
I spoke with my principal yesterday. Our choice for the math dept. chairman said "no", so he tells me that it's just not settled yet. Ha! Although I am not longer receiving the chairman stipend in my pay, he and the guidance department are still calling upon me to help. To paraphrase LB Johnson, I will not seek the chairmanship, nor, if asked, will I take it. I really need to concentrate on other school issues like the state of computer science classes, currently electives, in my high school and state plus other technology concerns for the faculty (I need to do something with my masters and my specialized license.). I'll be at the school tomorrow for a few hours, and I'll talk with the principal more then. It's really his problem, but the department suffers when the leadership is not there.
I did work on my shirt more yesterday while watching the History channel's 3-hour show on China's first emperor. I did not realize that it would end at midnight, but it was worth the time. During the school year I usually go to bed between 9 and 10 and get up between 5:15 and 5:45, so even in the summer I am not inclined to be awake past 11 at night. I made some serious inroads on the shirt, so I am up to the sleeves. Nothing worth doing is ever easy, but it can be satisfying. I'd love to get that idea into the brains of my students, but it is difficult.
I did work on my shirt more yesterday while watching the History channel's 3-hour show on China's first emperor. I did not realize that it would end at midnight, but it was worth the time. During the school year I usually go to bed between 9 and 10 and get up between 5:15 and 5:45, so even in the summer I am not inclined to be awake past 11 at night. I made some serious inroads on the shirt, so I am up to the sleeves. Nothing worth doing is ever easy, but it can be satisfying. I'd love to get that idea into the brains of my students, but it is difficult.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
What a difference 2 days can make!
We finally had rain ... severe thunderstorms ... wind ... rain ... lightening strikes ... rain ... and so on ... We are now on the other side of the isobar, and it is much, much cooler. There goes my sewing days for a while, but I did finish repairing our favorite comforter last night. (Our cat just came in, damp from outside. I wonder under what did she walk to get her fur so damp?)
I went to the school yesterday and discovered that my AP computer science students from last year did not pass the AP exam. Ouch! Teaching coding and concepts is the easy part. I've had trouble teaching the logic of certain structures that I find easy to understand myself; hence, the trip to the computer science workshop early this month. I needed someone else's eye to help me see what I could not. I have some great activities to center my students on the logic and structures. Also, they will be required to spend at least 3 extra hours a week in the computer lab outside of class. Plus they will be taking progressively harder practice exams every Friday. I intend to ram the learning down their throats, even if they really don't want it. After all, they chose to take the AP class, and they cannot drop it after the first week due to school policy.
This morning before and after my daily walk I will be working on something new to me: Alice programming language/system/?. I think I can use it to get the idea of object-oriented coding more entrenched into my AP students, plus I have an idea of how I can use it to create an animation to use in my math classes to entice more students into computer science for the following year. I just need to learn how to use it better. Of course, I still have the shirt waiting to be pinned and cut out, but that can hold off until later today.
I went to the school yesterday and discovered that my AP computer science students from last year did not pass the AP exam. Ouch! Teaching coding and concepts is the easy part. I've had trouble teaching the logic of certain structures that I find easy to understand myself; hence, the trip to the computer science workshop early this month. I needed someone else's eye to help me see what I could not. I have some great activities to center my students on the logic and structures. Also, they will be required to spend at least 3 extra hours a week in the computer lab outside of class. Plus they will be taking progressively harder practice exams every Friday. I intend to ram the learning down their throats, even if they really don't want it. After all, they chose to take the AP class, and they cannot drop it after the first week due to school policy.
This morning before and after my daily walk I will be working on something new to me: Alice programming language/system/?. I think I can use it to get the idea of object-oriented coding more entrenched into my AP students, plus I have an idea of how I can use it to create an animation to use in my math classes to entice more students into computer science for the following year. I just need to learn how to use it better. Of course, I still have the shirt waiting to be pinned and cut out, but that can hold off until later today.
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