When in the course of human events...

it becomes necessary to tell a student "Alex!* Get your hands out of your pants," you begin to wonder if self-discipline is something of a problem. Don't worry, the situation wasn't quite as lewd as the wording would suggest (he had gym shorts on underneath and was trying to hide his phone while texting), but the phrase caused a ruckus nonetheless.

In other news, Bonnie* was being disruptive during a class today and got moved to the back of the room (isolated from other students). The student then accused the teacher of reviving the practice of making African Americans sit in the back of buses back in the 60s, asked if the teacher was racist, and just generally made the event into a drawn out scene. Ironically, the same student frequently disparages the Chinese and asks me questions like "do you know martial arts," "do you eat Chinese food every day," etc. While my responses generally range from sarcastic to very direct, I don't think the student knows why the questions bother me. I feel like this is going to require a personal discussion at some point, a discussion that I do not look forward to having.

Race is a recurring conversation topic and appears in all different contexts. In another instance today, two students today were making comparisons between being told not to talk during a test and being slaves. Very early in the year, I was accused of being racist for forgetting a student's name. I do not want to avoid the subject, but I have admittedly not mentioned it before, despite its prevalence. At some point in the future, I will write a more fully developed post on the matter, but for now I thought it important to at least acknowledge.

* Names changed to protect the guilty, taken from the list of hurricane names for 2010.

Madder 'n Hell

Actually, I'm not mad at all, but it fits in with the word problem for this week. As mentioned in a previous post, I had decided to do the Math Forum problem #3340 with the students. It was the first word problem I've done since returning from break, and had quite varied success with. I also assumed that the students would be less interested in charity donations, so the problem was altered to be about the Madden video game. The rewritten version can be found here.

In both classes, I decided not to go through the explicit process of Noticing & Wondering. The students did not really seem to buy into it. I replaced it with a nearly equivalent process where I projected the problem statement on the board. I then had the students prompt me to circle what they thought was important. The process more closely emulates what they might do on a homework assignment or test, and reduces the amount they have to write which lead to a noticeable improvement in participation. On the flip side, if they're not writing are they still learning?

After the last attempt at encouraging the students to work out a solution themselves, I did not feel that allowing them to work together would be fruitful. Instead, I tried to lead the entire class to a solution. I accomplished this in different ways for each class, and the results were similarly different.

During third hour, with a total of 10 students, I threw them into the deep end without floaties. After having them read the problem statement, I immediately tried to convince them that the number of donors and total budget represented a coordinate point. I found the step to be logical, but if anything, I've learned that you can't force students to reach a result. Instead, you have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs and let them arrive to the result themselves. As soon as I talked about replacing the x-y plane with a donors-budget plane, I had lost nearly everyone. Trying to connect the problem to y = mx + b, was also futile. Usually, the quicker students can help to pull the class along, but most of them were missing on this day. It got to the point where I asked one student a simple question and he ignored me. For several uncomfortable minutes. Last year I taught a lab class at the undergrad level, and the NCRTL told us that you just have to wait it out. I don't think they considered a case where you only have 15 minutes to make your point. I pushed ahead, but had lost any momentum that I had started with.

Determined to correct my mistakes in third hour, I spent the lunch break rethinking my approach to the problem. This time, I deliberately ignored the linear relation. Instead, I had them rewrite the statement,

The company started by setting aside  a  certain  amount  of  money  to  produce  the  game.  To  encourage  their 60  richest  fans  to make  individual contributions, the company pledged to also provide an additional fixed amount for each fan who made a personal donation to the budget.

in the form of an equation. We ultimately ended up at something like B = FA+C, where B represented the company's part of the budget and F was the number of fans who donated. All it took to convince them that this was the same as a line was writing the slope-intercept form directly beneath it. Despite the success in this initial portion, I still think many of the students had difficult thinking of the data in as coordinate points. However, there were definitely several students that grasped the concept and helped move the class forward. While we were able to find A, time ran out right before we could finish the calculation for C. Nevertheless, change in the students' attitudes was palpable.

Who explained working hard may help you maintain

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Return to the Fold

Well, at least the students remembered who I am, and some even seemed excited to have me back. I just started a new term and will now be going in to class on Thursdays and Fridays. I hope that the consecutive days will provide more flexibility in doing problem solving with the students. Instead of try to wedge everything into a single day (or two disconnected ones), I'll be able to continuously engage the class. Come this Thursday I will be doing my first word problem of the term, provisionally #3340 (with some minor alterations to encourage interest).

Though class was out for nearly two weeks, it seems that no one has lost their vim or vigor. In fact, several of the students appear especially stressed. This may be related to threats that they'll have to repeat the first term material if they fail to pass their midterms, or maybe it's just the return to school. I am usually content with letting Molly handle the discipline and restricting myself to instructional efforts, but trends have convinced me to be more confrontational with the students about their actions. In particular, several students use talking out, throwing things, and harassing other students as a means of demanding constant attention. It is no surprise that these actions are detrimental to the entire class (whether one chooses to ignore them or cater to their whims), but I've come across no good solutions. In many cases the parents are not involved enough to care, and removing them from the classroom simply puts them farther behind (which worsens their behavior in later classes). Mentioning that proficiency in algebra is a requirement for graduation merely elicits shrugs.

This suggests several, equally displeasing, possibilities:

• They do not believe that they are capable of passing high school.
• They do not care about passing high school.
• They believe that the issue will simply disappear.
• They do not understand the word 'required'.

The first issue is, perhaps, the most difficult to deal with. Its presence is obviously rooted in (lack of) self-confidence. Though not a universal truth, I feel that most if not all of my students have the necessary faculties to complete high school if they so choose. The solution is then one of how to convince the students that they have such abilities. Any solution that would work on one student is not likely to work on another. Ideally, imparting motivation to the student would not be the responsibility of a single teacher, but rather the responsibility of every person the student interacts with.

The second issue strikes a bit closer to home for me. One of my primary duties in the classroom is to impart a physical appreciation for math and learning in general. This is done with the understanding that if the students perceive a usefulness for education, then they'll desire it. Either this assumption is wrong or I have been inadequate in my description of mathematical applications. Again, it would be a cheery world if everyone participated in demonstrating the usefulness of education, but I believe (with no evidence) that it should only take one or two particularly compelling subjects to carry a student through high school.

As for the third issue; much like when I ask the students to share their work with me, they may believe that the best approach to an obstacle is not acknowledging that it exists. In this case, it's instructive to quote an already over-quoted text (and perhaps convince them that not every adult's memory is short),

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can [...] wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you)."

As for the final bullet point; there are several students that fall into this category and the school's opinion is that full immersion is the best approach to learning a language. I question the wisdom of using a math class to teach language, but such issues are beyond my pay grade.