Another week for looking forward

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. 

Another day, another ...

My alarm clock, i.e. my cat (my electric alarm clock is only a backup for when the cat can't wake me for her breakfast), starts my day.  The important things first: feed the cat!  Then I continue through my morning ritual:  start the coffee, start the oatmeal, take the meds, eat the oatmeal, drink the coffee, shower, and dress.  Only trouble today was the fact that I forgot not to get my hair wet since it's my off-day for washing my hair.  Not a good way to start the day. 

Since I must wait for my son, a.k.a. my carpool, I get on the internet to check out what is happening with my high school friends, college friends, and my extended family.  After which, I cringe and get on my school's email site.  It's not too bad this morning, but there have been mornings that started out with a parent's tirade.  I hate that, but, being a parent myself, I understand it, too.  Now, all I have to do is get to the school to continue the day of a teacher.

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.

Paper Shuffling

This past Friday I noticed just how much paper shuffling teaching takes.  When I was in private industry, there were papers to shuffle, but they were not in the same realm as the ones I deal with now.  I have papers to grade, both homework and tests/quizzes.  I have papers to write: homework, tests/quizzes, lesson plans, and student recommendations.  I have other grading to record: programs and projects from computer science classes and online work for math classes.  Then, I have to put all this on the online grading system ... plus I have to put assignments, etc. on the internet ... plus I have to create a certain amount of online work so that my math students get more practice.  Also, in the modern American way, I have to send out either by email or the post office progress reports in case a student is failing or close to failing.  Aaaagh!

I am working on moving our school to an LMS (Learning Management System).  I personally like Moodle, partly for its free software and constant upgrades, etc. from the international Moodle community, but our school would need to have it hosted by someone else ... and that is where the problem lies for Moodle.  Or for any other LMS around.  Any suggestions, anyone?  I could certainly use them.

What's this about a teacher's short day?

There seems to be a misconception that a teacher has a short day because an official school day is usually 7 hours long.  Well, those 7 hours make up the students' day, but not the faculty's day.  I start my day at least 1/2 hour prior to the "official" start of school.  Actually, I have already checked my school email from home and dealt with some of the issues in them prior to leaving home.  I do not leave the school until about 45 minutes after the last bell.  I see students before school and after school to help them and to let them make up their tests and quizzes. 

Then, there is the grading.  Wednesday night was the open house for parents of current students to meet their children's teachers, so I really had no time to grade the homework I took up that day.  Hence, on Thursday night I stayed up an extra hour just to grade the waiting homework plus the quizzes I gave that day.  I plan for when I will grade work, so make up work is pushed to the end of my to-do list and may take some time for me to grade.  I usually do make up work on the weekends.

With the grading comes the responsibility of keeping an eye on which students need more than most.  I discovered in grading the quizzes that I have a student who will need extra effort on my part to help the student demonstrate the math skills he/she has learned.  That means more meetings with parents, the student, administration, etc. outside of the official school day.  Plus I need to make sure that that student's tests and quizzes allow the student to legitimately succeed.  I do not believe in false grades, but I do know that not everyone has good math logic abilities.  I'm so glad my art teachers didn't grade just on my ability to shade properly -- because I didn't shade at all usually -- but also included my best art skills, i.e. structure and form.  I try to remember that gift when teaching students who care and work hard to succeed.  They need to know that they have math skills, just not necessarily in the same way as their classmates.  St. Paul was right: we are all parts of the same body, but we each have different gifts to share in that common body. (My interpretation.)  Besides, nothing succeeds like personally-achieved success.  I have faith that this student will strive to achieve as much as possible in math when he/she knows what is possible.  I've seen it happen before.

After saying all that, I guess I lost track of my original subject, but I regained my incentive to be the best teacher I can be.

Waiting for the hurricane

I felt the title was appropriate since our NC community usually gets the tails of hurricanes, and, right now, we are getting an increase in humidity, clouds, and wind.  It also fits the beginning of the school year.  It's the first Saturday after the return of the students, and I am so glad to have the weekend off because I need the chance to rest and review for next week.

After 17 years in the profession and 10 years at my current school, I have very few problems with student behavior.  (I just wish sometimes that politicians and people-concerned-with-education knew how few of the first ten responsibilities of a public school teacher have to do with actually helping students learn.  They deal mostly with managing student behavior at all times and in all situations on the school property.)  Since part of my responsibility, training, and interest lie in using technology to help teachers teach and students learn, I am always adding technology to my lessons.  Currently, I am in year two of trying out Moodle with the intent of switching to it or some other LMS (Learning Management System) next year.  This year all but my AP CS classes will have internet assignments through the school's Moodle test system.  In addition, my math students will also be using the Khan Academy as part of their learning and practice process.

So I spent part of the week helping my math students start using our Moodle system and getting set up with the Khan Academy.  Yesterday, to get as many students ready to go further on these systems, we were in the general computer lab.  I felt like we were the shakedown crew because my classes were the first ones to use said lab this school year.  We kept on running into software problems, but at least the computer technology coordinator and I learned some important lessons for next year.  My poor students in all my classes get to be guinea pigs for almost all new general educational technology for the school.  I think they feel it's a badge of honor to be the first to try things.  They certainly end up with several stories to pass on to their friends.  Last year, my Intro CS class used Moodle all year, so each quarter they each had an extra project grade to compensate for being first in using Moodle at the school.  I believed that part of their learning was the input they gave us in using said system and in tolerating problems well I had with the system until I learned it better.  This year there will be no extra grades for using these systems.  They will, however, lose grades if they don't use the systems and do their work on time.  Obviously, I am not concerned with my students liking me personally; I just want them to learn.

While keeping up with lessons and help for the 4 subjects I teach this year, I am also trying to finish helping other teachers get their homework websites up to date on syllabi.  This school is the only one in which I've been required to have a syllabus for each subject area.  Syllabi are mostly used in college, not high school, but we are a college-prep school, so it makes sense.  It also makes it easier for the parents to know what their children should be learning and what the teacher's requirements and expectations are.

There is one new habit I want to have this year.  I want to carry my planning book with me always and everywhere so that I keep up with all my lessons and all my other duties plus having the school's calendar items in one place.  I mean to carry it with me because I teach using my classroom upstairs and 2 different computer labs downstairs, not to mention faculty meetings and parent-teacher conferences.  I have always had a poor short-term memory, so note-taking is one of my talents.  The problem lies with the fact that I don't always put my notes where I can use them; hence, the need for carrying my planning book with me and keeping my notes in it.  Wish me luck.

Thanks, Dad.

This is a story of something I learned from my father that still has value.

When I was in college, my husband John and I owned a Hoover apartment washing machine and dryer set.  The washer had 2 main parts:  the washing section with the side rotator for agitating the clothes, and the smaller bucket that rinsed and spun out the water from the clothes.  The user did have to stand by the washer while it worked, but it was better than taking the clothes to a laundry since we had no car for 2 years.

At some point, the turn-switch for the washing side no longer moved.  We had to time the wash cycle which was a hassle.  I determined that since it was a mechanical tool, there had to be a logical fix to it.  Hence, I took the washer apart by removing its back and looked at everything there was to see.  I could not see anything that looked broken, so I called my father and explained my dilemma.  He said that it sounded like the timer needed oil and told me how to do that.  In the meantime, John who had been at work returned home to see the washer in pieces.  They were big pieces, but they were still pieces to his eye.  He was shocked and asked me what happened.  I told him that I was determined to fix the problem and put it back together.  He went to take a nap with serious doubts about my ability to put together that which I tore apart.  Following my dad's instructions, I oiled the timer, tested it to discover that it now worked, and returned the washer to its complete state, i.e. I undid what I had done.  John awoke to no more problem and was very pleased and relieved.

It has been more than 30 years since that experience and 14 years since my father's death.  We now have a portable dishwasher that the turn-switch suddenly quit working on the drying cycle.  John woke me up at night to lament that it was broken, and in the back of my mind was the thought that the timer might need oiled.  He said that he turned it off and would try it out with a new load just in case it was a glitch in the system.  Okay.  Back to sleep.  When he tried it out 2 days later (we rarely have a full load in 1 day), it turned on but did not move.  With the memory of my father's help so many years ago, I pulled out the turn-switch knob and oiled the timer.  It has worked well since then.  Thanks, Dad.

Summer preparations

It's summer, so I am preparing for the next school year.  Considering that this is one of my 2 unpaid months of the year, that is unpaid labor, but no one cares about that.  It's my choice to spend extra UNPAID time now so that I can concentrate on teaching and other tasks "as assigned" starting on August 15.  So what have I done so far?

When we were camping, I planned out the first quarter of my Honors Computer Science class.  When I spent 4 hours in a government office (NCDMV) yesterday, I planned out the entire year of Intro Computer Science.  Before we went camping I also worked on my Algebra 3/Trig class, but it will be an ongoing planning situation because of day-to-day challenges of the different students.  At least this year I have "only" 4 subjects to teach.

I am currently fixing up the homework pages for our new teachers.  That'll teach me to volunteer, except that I really like helping my fellow faculty members with their computer work.

I have found one thing different this summer, though.  For the past 2 summers, I was concentrating on doing things for my mother and seeing her at least twice a week, so I did not do as much sewing and working on the house as I had before.  Now that she is gone, I am having trouble getting back to the sewing.  The work that the house needs is another ongoing situation in my life, so that hasn't changed all that much. 

The tiles for the "tin" ceiling are supposed to be ready by tomorrow, and I am not looking forward to doing that work in this heat.  Maybe I'll just move our new air conditioner to the kitchen for the duration of putting up the new ceiling.  I just keep on reminding myself that I will be so happy when it's done.  I'm making that my mantra for the time being.

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.

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.

Opportunity knocks!

My son and I went to the school yesterday morning so that I could have an accounts payable "bill" signed and faxed to our host's office.  It should have taken all of 5 minutes, but it took closer to an hour.  The business manager was on the phone, so we had to wait.  A teacher borrowed my son to help him with computer hardware problems in his classroom while waiting.  I taught a new teacher the basics of using his homework website.  Then I got the paper signed and faxed.  Son was still working in the one classroom, so I spent some time talking with a graduate I taught a few years back.  Son was still working, so I spoke with a teacher about setting him up with a Moodle account for testing purposes.  Son finally returned, but he had not been able to fix the problem.  Funny thing is that the school pays for 2 full time tech people, one being my son's boss who was out yesterday, but the faculty call on my son whenever they have a problem and he's at the school because they have had no success with getting help from the other tech person.

Meantime, I finally took my serger sewing machine to a repair shop.  It's been broken but usable for more than 10 years, but I was always leery of leaving it with anyone to fix it.  The last time I left a sewing machine to be repaired (in another state), it really wasn't, so "once bit, twice shy" am I.  I hope these people do a good job because I need a reliable repair place for my other sewing machine ... the one that has the problem that was never fixed. 

In regards to both the one tech person at the school and the repair shop that never repaired my machine, I wish people would understand that life is far more than earning money.  One's life has to have meaning as in doing the best one can do for others, like fixing machines or solving computer problems.  Perhaps it's my religious view, but I believe that we all need to help each other whenever possible and appropriate.  No one was ever put on this earth "to make money", no matter how much he/she wants to believe that.

If I'm not being paid for the summer, why am I still working?

Frankly, I cringe when people talk about teachers having "summer vacation".  It's not true.  Teachers are 10 month employees who are not paid for the other 2 months of the year.  Vacation is paid time off, so teachers do not have summer vacation.  They have unpaid time off.

I note this because I am still working on school stuff.  I am currently creating new websites for new faculty as they get hired.  Today I go back to the school to arrange payment for the host company of our teachers' homework sites.  Of course, I am still working on lesson plans for the fall, but I know I'd do that anyhow.  I think my father did a very good job of instilling in me the need to do everything as well as I can.  Hmm.  Is that a good thing or not?  Time to think on it.

Overachiever

My husband says that he did not realize what an overachiever was until he married me. He is always trying to get me to slow down. My personal opinion is that I can do more but I am too lazy to actually do more. (My father used to say, "Good enough never is." I think that idea really stuck in my heart and soul.) Anyhow, I am now in the midst of overachievement. I volunteered to teach some teacher renewal classes on using certain technology in one's classroom. I planned on doing these classes in small groups after school. We have an upcoming inservice day, however, and the principal did not have any renewal classes planned. Hence, I am taking my small group ideas and making them into a big group idea (the principal's, not mine). Overachievement.

Over this weekend I have to write up the basic concept and plan so the superintendent can approve the renewal credits. I'll send my write-up to the principal, (God bless email!) who will make any changes he deems necessary before he sends it on to the superintendent. So much for this weekend. Next weekend I will be putting the finishing touches on my 2 1/2 hour lesson since the inservice day is Monday, Feb. 16, i.e. Presidents' Day. Do I have everything ready? No, but I will have the write-up done this morning and in the principal's email. I have been planning my lesson all week, but it will take this week to finish the plan prior to putting all the technology into action. Plus I'm still teaching 6 classes a day including grading, etc. Overachievement. No wonder my husband always tells me not to volunteer.

Snow Day!

I always liked snow days when I was a student. In my last year of college the governor even closed my school for a blizzard; that was the only time during my first degree stint in which I had a snow day. I guess it was fair since there were no snow days when I was a high school senior, the only year of my 1-12 schooling that I had no snow days to be off. Anyhow, today is an official snow day at my school, and that is the theme of today's blog.

Tom Batiuk put it right in his comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" when he had the teachers more enthused about a snow day than the students. Most teachers at my school really enjoy the occasional snow day -- the operant word being "occasional". Too many snow days makes education a difficult task because the students lose their focus. Back to the topic.

When I taught in the public schools, only teachers who had enough years in the public schools to have more "vacation" days than the school year allotted could stay home on snow days. Since I did not have those extra days, I had to risk my neck getting to the school at the normal start time. For those of you in private industry, like I was for 14 years, schools are unforgiving. If you're in private industry and know that you may have trouble getting to work, you call in and make adjustments. In the public school system, you basically cannot do that; you must be at the school at the usual start time -- when I was teaching in the public schools, my high schools started between 7:15 and 7:45 a.m. depending upon the system. It's a bit perilous driving into school when: (1) you are ahead of a lot of the snow plows in your area; and (2) there may not be anyone to open up the school for you (Yes, Virginia, most teachers do not have keys to their own places of work.). Thank God, that in my non-public school the faculty do not have to come to the school on snow days. The principal believes that we are professional enough to do our work at home. Considering how much of our work is on the internet, it's much easier to do schoolwork at home. (In fact, I have suggested that we have school on the internet on snow days when there are a lot of them. My suggestion has not been taken up as of yet.)

When I moved from the Pittsburgh area to the Southeast, I thought that people holed up when it snowed because they simply did not have enough experience driving in the snow. That's a little true (I had never lived in an area before where people did not know what studded tires were.). What's really true, though, is the fact that most snow down here is wet. Cars slide on the wet snow because it gives no traction. Then, it gets really cold, and that wet snow becomes ice with no cold, dry snow in between. Ice storms are an occasional problem here, too, with the loss of electricity. Of course, we do get the cold, dry snow also, but that is the exception, not the rule.

Hence, on our presidential inauguration day, I will be sitting at home watching the inauguration while grading papers. I hope that my students will be watching the inauguration, also, but that's an iffy hope. We had the okay from the principal to have our classroom monitors tuned to the inauguration prior to this week, but I would have missed much of it because the monitor faces the students and not the teacher. My suggestion for the future: either make every presidential inauguration Tuesday a school "holiday" or have a special school function to take it in by all students and staff. Just an idea.

Boredom attacks!

I just finished giving the first semester exams this past Friday, so I've been very busy. However, I did notice something about myself when I was doing the exam review for my 3 functions and modeling classes: I discovered that I was bored. I make my math exam reviews as animated PowerPoint slide shows and tweak them from one year to the next; hence, there was nothing new in them for me. Plus the said 3 classes I teach in a row (periods 2, 3, and 4 to be precise), so I guess that going over the same stuff in the same way 3 times in a row just bored me silly. I am thinking this over because I realized that I've probably been unconsciously bored all along. It's definitely time to put some spice into my teaching!

New Year's Resolutions

I remember (even if it's a false memory) my mother saying that what one did on New Year's Day, one would do all year, so I try very hard to do things each January 1 that I want to do throughout the year. That's really how I deal with my resolutions. School resolutions I make every summer based upon what worked and what didn't work during the prior school year. So what am I doing today?

1) I am back to exercising. I got out of the habit in late October when I had a cold. Illness does that to me. I kept on trying to start up again, but lethargy is so much easier. I actually started working out on weekends and continued during Christmas break, but my lack of practice/exercise definitely showed up. Hence, I already exercised today. By the way, for those couch potatoes and teachers who already have no time to exercise, let me tell you a secret: exercise is one of the best panaceas around. I sleep better, I have more energy to do any and all work including grading papers (my anathema), I do everything faster, and I do not have as much trouble with depression over time. Better than any pill available. Teachers, find the time to exercise, and you will have more time available for everything else!

2) Talking about procrastination, I will get those projects graded today! I plan to be teaching all year, so I need to do some teaching activities today. I also have a few quizzes and tests to grade plus the always-popular make up work.

3) There are other things I'll be doing, but they are the home things involving my husband and my adult son, so I will not include them here.

Happy New Year!

Breaktime chores

I am about to write 2 recommendations for students that must be postmarked before January 1, 2009. I would say that I'm procrastinating, but recommendations require some serious thinking, at least for me, since I want to be honest and positive at the same time. In these 2 students' cases it's not a problem because they are good students who do well in their work. One I've had for 2 years, the other I've only had for this year. The latter asked me for a recommendation mainly because he is applying to my alma mater, and he thought it wouldn't hurt to get one from an alumna. I agree, especially since I've worked to get any student to look at my alma mater over my years of teaching, and he's the first one I hooked. It helps that about half of his family also went to the same university, but I like to think that I am such a good influence that he was drawn to that school. Now, if I can only convince the admissions people that he's a keeper.

After that I get to start grading projects that were due on the last day before Christmas break. I'm glad that I have such specific rubrics since they keep me honest and actually make it easy for me to grade them. I figure that will keep me busy for the remainder of this morning.

Homework Confessions

I am just sitting at my computer procrastinating as usual. It's usual in that I have a stack of homework, tests, and make up work to grade. I absolutely hate to grade homework! So I procrastinate since it is the homework that I need to grade the most.

I am trying some self-psychology at this point. I am reminding myself of how much better I feel whenever I am caught up in my grading. It is true that I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of me whenever I have all the grading done, but I still hate to do the grading. Hence, I procrastinate. Even writing this confession is a form of procrastination. Yet, I want my students to do everything in a timely fashion. I am such a hypocrite!

There is a reason why I hate to grade homework and classwork. In order to save the school money and myself time plus make the expense of buying the textbooks worth their while for the parents my homework assignments are usually out of the textbooks. This means that the students will put their work in various sheets of paper requiring some effort on my part to figure out what is what. I do require that all problems be numbered even if they were done out of order; I am not going to spend my time trying to figure out which answer goes to which problem. I also require that the student's name be on the first page of the homework, I allow my students to use my stapler in order to keep homework with more than 1 page together, and I take the "teacher's prerogative" of determining what different characters and words are if they are difficult to read -- I refuse to argue on those points because it is the student's responsibility to insure that his/her work is legible. Frankly, saving the school money by not making and copying worksheets is messy for me. I have fellow math teachers who are absolute fiends about copying worksheets partially to make the grading easier. With the economy the way that it is, I wonder how long they will be allowed to continue that.

Now, there is another way to deal with the said homework grading, and I have used it. It is to put the answers on the board and go around checking that the students did their work while they check their answers. It is faster, but the students learn to make marks that look like work when skimmed by the passing teacher when, in fact, they had done no work at all. I found that this method did not do much in the way of helping my students learn the subject. So I collect their homework and grade page by page .... and I procrastinate when it piles because I have not had time for it.

There is another way to deal with homework that is accumulating. That is to just chuck it in the trash without looking at it. I knew a principal who said that he gave daily quizzes when he taught and he would throw away occasionally ungraded quizzes when time was short. I do not give daily quizzes, so those I do grade, but I do trash some homework and classwork at times. The caveat for me is to check every piece of paper so that make up work does not get trashed also.

I do not have the same distaste for grading tests and quizzes that I do for homework, and there is a reason for that. My tests and quizzes are all done on photocopied sheets so they are not messy in form. It is much easier to go through them, so I usually do them rather quickly.

There is one other thing regarding how I grade both homework, tests, and quizzes. I mark every answer whether correct or incorrect. Correct gets a check mark, and incorrect gets circled. I also write notes and examples on their work so that I can do a little one-on-one in their work that gets returned to them. My intent is for them to learn no matter what; it is not just to "give" them a grade for their effort. (I have noticed that students "earn" an A, but they are "given" a D or worse. It is amazing how their viewpoints change about their work based upon their grade. I guess they do not realize yet that they are fooling no one, especially their teachers and parents, with their words.)

New teaching tip from old exceptional children's teachers

In the South, just about any amount of snow or ice on the road means either a snow day or a one-to-two hour delay or a one-to-two hour early dismissal. Well, for the first time in the 24 years that I have lived here, we had snow before Thanksgiving. Hence, on Friday we had a two hour delay to the start of school. Normally, that would not be a problem for me, but the math department was assigned Fridays for tests and major projects, and I had planned to give tests all day. I had already printed the tests for my first 3 math classes with the intent that they would take the better part of our usual 47 minute periods. What to do?

I did not want to completely reprint the tests since that would be a waste of paper, so I went through them and crossed off 4 problems, leaving 37 to do. In the first class, there were a lot of complaints about the lack of time and the students' desires to move the test to Monday. Knowing the principal's opinion of such an action, I said no to their request and had them start. At the end of class I had agreed to the following: those who wanted to finish their tests later in the day could, and the others' tests would be graded on what they already did with the caveat that each problem would be worth more. The students were satisfied, but I was not. I had 2 more classes taking the same test, so I needed to think quickly.

When the next class started, I told them that I decided to give them their tests one page at a time. They would do one page, hand it in, and receive the next page. That way if they did not finish within the shorter class, they could finish on Monday (As another math teacher pointed out early on Friday: we cannot give tests on Monday, but we can complete them then.). All but one student finished the entire test within the time allotted. That one student was upset because she had to do one page at a time, so she only worked on the first page. I assume that she had talked with students from the first class and believed that her class would get the same deal from me. I will not go back on my word for any particular class, but that does not mean that I have to offer the same to the remaining classes. Every teacher knows that one makes the most mistakes on the first class in the day of a particular subject, and I did that in this case. By the third class, everything was running smoothly for this test.

I learned this technique from our learning support/exceptional children/special education teachers. We have students with diagnosed requirements of extra time to take tests, so what our LS teachers do in those cases is give the tests one page at a time. That way the students do not know what's on the next page if they have to finish their tests later in the day. I offer this tip to all teachers who, like me, find themselves having to give an already printed test in a shorter time frame than originally planned. It works. Now, if I could only go back on my word to my first class ... ;-)

Of parents and teachers in high school

There is a major difference between the parents of students in "poor" public high schools and the parents of students in "well-to-do" public high schools and non-public schools. The difference is the accessibility of the parents to the teachers and the willingness on the part of the parents to show up at school functions in order to talk with their children's teachers.

When I taught in public high schools, I always seemed to be teaching in poor schools, the type considered to be schools of failure -- and with 4th year freshmen, i.e. 18-year-olds, some of them had really earned that title. I learned early on that the students who believed that their parents would never hear of their misbehaviors were the worst behaved in classes. We would have open houses for the parents, and I would be lucky to see one parent even though I taught mostly freshmen and sophomores. I did learn to call parents between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturdays because that was when parents were more likely to answer their phones rather than letting their children do so. I did have a few interesting situations because of this. The first one was when the mother said to me, "Well, what do you expect me to do about it? She treats me the same way!" At least, I tried in that case and had documentation of it. Another time I heard the mother turn around to her daughter and use the worst language in screaming at her daughter for making her receive a phone call from a teacher on a Saturday morning. In that case, I spoke to the girl privately later when we met between classes. I try to make it a rule never to say that what a parent does is wrong, but I kind of broke that rule then. I told the girl that most parents don't use profanity when talking with their children. The girl and I agreed from then on to work things out between us because I was never going to call that mother again.

Where I teach now, the parents are an integral and important part of the school community. Many of them volunteer to work in the office and other places. They seek out their children's teachers in order to speak with them. There are, of course, some "missing" parents, but they are the very small exception to the rule. Usually when I try to contact my students' parents, I have very little trouble finding them. Our open houses are full, both the ones for parents of current students and the ones for parents of potential students. I would say that the cost of a non-public education is the main reason for this, but my acquaintances who teach in well-to-do public schools see the same types of relationships, so out-of-pocket cost is not the only reason. There are parents who are vested in their children's education and those who are not. Now, if we could only get the unvested ones to be vested. Hmmm.

I close with a story told me by another teacher. The way that legislators look at public education and teachers is much like the idea of making dentists responsible for the state of their patients' teeth without taking into account how the different patients take care of their own teeth when not in the dentists' offices. Educating young people takes responsibility of all people involved in their lives, all the way from birth until high school graduation. In our society, that's very hard to do sometimes.