A Day at the Theater

Yesterday was all about the performing arts for me. First, my first and second graders had their Modern Language Assembly, an event we have been preparing for, almost to the exclusion of anything else, since we returned from spring break. Each class had to sing two songs in the language they are learning, either French or Spanish. After spending the better part of two months with the Spanish language equivalent of the Barney Song playing over and over in my head, I was very much looking forward to getting the performance behind us.

The kids were adorable, of course. It's hard to go wrong with 80 or so seven and eight year olds singing songs, especially when most of the audience doesn't understand a word they are saying. Whether it was worth all of the classroom time we put into it (a precious commodity at less than 90 minutes a week) is another question. I'm sure the parents were pleased, and there is a lot of power to the public relations aspect of these things, but the rest of our curriculum was pretty much on hold while we prepared, so I do wonder.

In the evening, my wife and I went with a friend to see the Shakespeare Theater Company's production of Hamlet in Rock Creek Park here in DC. I've been to outdoor summer Shakespeare in a number of cities at this point, one of the benefits of our peripatetic lifestyle, and I have to say that this was the best I've ever seen in that category. The cast was outstanding (although reading their bios in the program I did wonder if there is an actor alive who hasn't appeared in Law and Order SVU). I was particularly amazed by Ophelia; not a strength in most productions of Hamlet, but in this case completely captivating every time she appeared on stage. I could go on and on about the show, but suffice it to say that I loved it.

All in all, a good day of both amateur and professional theater. The catharsis was an added bonus as we approach the end of the school year at full throttle. The kids are a little crazy these days!

A Proposal: The Green Olympics

A few weeks ago I put up a post about the new Middle School building at Sidwell Friends here in DC. It was one of my most viewed posts so far, which leads me to believe there is some interest out there in the idea of environmental education, and the ways in which we can teach our students to be better stewards of their environment. Today I came across this New York Times article about what some college students are doing to be more green at school, and it got me to thinking.

The article features a sustainable student house at Oberlin College. Among other green activities, the students competed over who could take the shortest shower, and unplugged one of the two refrigerators in the house to conserve electricity.

The competition aspect of it struck me as something that could translate well to a school situation. In addition to timing showers, you could have students calculate the trash their houses produce, their family fuel consumption, or electric bills. You could create charts by homeroom or grade, keep track of scores in a various categories and award green medals. It would be the environmental olympics. It could be a lot of fun.

On the other side of things, one quote from the article stuck out for me. Discussing the fact that the house does not have a TV, one of the residents says, “You have the rest of your life to watch TV." It's a throw away line, but I think it gets at a fundamental problem in environmental education. A lot of these sustainable activities are perceived as things to do in school before your real life begins. Once faced with the realities of the grown-up world, sustainable living drops a long way down the priority list. That's why we send the kids home with green missions for their family, because the kids are way more likely to follow through than their parents. So that begs the question:

What can we do to teach sustainable habits that will actually carry over into the real world once the students are out of our hands.

How to Gain 4 Pounds in 3 Days, and Finish Report Cards at the Same Time

The last few days were spent trying to find a balance between enjoying the holiday weekend and writing narrative reports--know around here as comments--on 66 of my students (22 more are due on Friday).

My wife and I took advantage of the long weekend to drive down to South Carolina to visit a friend from my wife's PhD program and her family. We left DC at about 5:00 on Friday with a couple more friends in the back seat. The traffic wasn't too bad (high gas prices have their upside), and we made it into Greenville at around 2:00 AM. The rest of the weekend was spent eating, and finding things to keep us busy until we got to eat again. Our friend is Indian, and apparently it is part of Indian culture to feed your guests until they explode. Fortunately, her mom is an unbelievably good cook, and every stomach stretching bite was delicious. It was also a great education. Despite my above-average familiarity with the American and British restaurant versions of Indian food, almost every dish was new to me. Eating all kinds of different foods is one of may favorite things about traveling. While this wasn't quite as exciting as actually going to India, it was a pretty good subsititue.

When I could escape from the weekend activities, it was comment-writing time. In independent schools, comments serve a dual purpose. On the one hand, they are intended to give feeback to the student on his strengths and weaknesses. They are more descriptive than a simple grade, and therefore ideally more constructive. On the other hand, they are a customer relations tool for communicating with parents. A well-thought-out comment shows parents that you know their child well, and that all the money they spent so that their son or daughter could have small classes and lots of individual attention was worth it. A bonus from the teacher's perspective is that writing comments also give you a chance to stop and think about your own work, and whether you have been getting through to these kids at all over the course of the year.

As important as I know they are, writing comments is one of my least favorite aspects of teaching. They almost always come at the times of year when both you and the students are worn out and are getting really excited about a break. And finding 50 different ways to say either 'keep up the good work,' or 'Johnny would be doing OK in this class if he ever did his homework,' is a mind-numbing chore.

On the other hand, one of our friends who was traveling with us this weekend was telling me about her high school back in Michigan. The way they did report cards was to generate a list of ten possible comments, things like 1: participates in class, 2:does not complete assignments, etc.. The teacher would then just enter the appropriate numbers for the particular student, and be done. It is an efficient system, and would have saved me many hours of work this weekend (hours I could have spent getting a cultural education in Bollywood movies), but I can't help feeling like it robs the students, not only of a thoughtful comment itself, but of the feeling that their teachers are really thinking about them. There is a lot to be gained from knowing that your teachers are really seeing you as an individual.

More on grades, comments and other means of assement on another ocasion, but now it's faculty meeting time.

Does your school do anything especially good or bad when it comes to grades and comments?

Just One More Reason Why Teaching Is Hard

Just a quick post this morning before running out to our school's Field Day to watch little kids run relay races and pour water on each other and generally enjoy a beautiful sunny day here in northern Virginia.

This article from the New York Times is a few weeks old now, but it fits in with the math theme of the last few posts. The article is about a study from Ohio State University that seems to contradict many people's instincts about how to teach math. Most people, myself included, would think that in order to explain math to the widest variety of students, it is best to apply it to real world situations. The NYT article gives the example of the classic two trains leave a station word problem.

The Ohio State study found, on the other hand, that the opposite may be true; that we learn mathmatical concepts better, and can apply them better, when we learn them as exactly that, concepts. In the case of the train problem, students should learn the algebraic formula first, then learn how to apply it to specific real world situations.

If this finding holds up, it would require a major change in perspective from math teachers at all levels. The problem is, this study suffers from the kinds of problems that so many education related studies suffer from, and is a good example of why it is so hard to come up with a scientifically based approach to teaching.

First of all, the subjects of the study, as with most pychological studies, were college students. Applying what works for teaching 18-22 year olds to teaching eight or nine year olds is a big stretch.

Second, the activities invented for the study, in order to find a mathematical concept that would be new to college students, strike me as a little bit artificial. It's not like the experiment was done with quadratic equations, or something else more relevant to teaching school-age children.

To me, this is why teaching is still a mix of an art and a science. There is information out there, but the information is far from perfect. The skilled teacher is able to sift through it, figure out what will work, and put together appropriate lessons for the specific students he has in front of him at the moment. It is always about knowing the kids you have in your class.

Happy One Month Anniversary Build a School

As part of this blog project, I have been reading a number of "How to Write a Successful Blog" blogs. One of the things that comes up over and over is that you should share milestones and successes with your readers. With that in mind, I thought I would take this opportunity to reflect on my first complete month of writing this blog, and share some of the things I have been learning.

It seems appropriate that this would come in the middle of a series of posts on math, because one of the things I have been having the most fun with on this blog has been tracking the numbers. The part of me that has always enjoyed getting up in the morning and checking the Red Sox' box score, now also has Feedburner and Google Analytics to play with. Here are some of my stats so far.

26 posts
Almost one a day, not too shabby.

8 comments
Top commenter honors go to Eric with two so far. What I've learned about comments is that the best way to get someone to leave a comment is to mention them in the post. It works like a charm. I'm hoping as the blog grows that this number will really take off. I'd love for this blog to become more and more of a conversation.

77 unique visitors from 60 cities in 8 countries on 4 continents
This is the greatest thing about the Internet. Instead of having these conversations in my office with four other language teachers, it is going on all over the world. Just three continents to go.

3-5 subscribers (varies from day to day)
One is me, one is my wife, and it's a safe bet that a third is my mom, so thanks the the other two of you, whoever you are.

The most fun part of Google Analytics is all of the graphs. There's just something about numbers displayed visually that makes me happy. Yes, I'm a nerd.



Here's the graph of visitors per day. The spike at the beginning is when I sent out my first big email announcing the blog to everyone I know. Since then I've been averaging about five visitors a day. In the scheme of things, it's still a baby blog, but I'm proud.


Here's the pie chart of traffic sources. The orange 'searches' piece has been growing steadily as there have been more posts for people to find. So far the post that has received the most search attention was my Five Books Every Student Should Read post. Apparently lots of people out there are looking for book recommendations.

The referrals piece is a bit over-represented, since it counts as a referral every time you click from one page of the blog to another, resulting in build-a-school.blogspot.com being by far my biggest referrer. In second place, though, is my friend Stacy at sassafrasmama.blogspot.com. She put up a link to me on her blog, and the clicks have been flowing in. As soon as I get organized enough to put together my own favorite links list, she'll be right at the top.

In terms of the stated goal of this blog, to refine my own thinking about what an ideal school would be like, I have just scratched the surface. What has surprised me the most in writing this blog is just how much there is to say about doing school right. Meanwhile, I am enjoying the journey and plan to keep working at this for a long time, so please join me in the conversation. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Baby Got What?

What is it about math that inspires creativity in such a wide variety of genres? You've got TV shows from Square One to Numb3rs, movies like Pi, and books like Flatland. Really all that was missing was a strong musical presence.

And then there was this:

Baby Got Stats


Who knew Sir MixaLot was a mathematician?


Thanks to Eduwonkette for posting that one on her blog yesterday.

Wyoming Catholic College School for Ostriches

Yesterday I talked about One Laptop Per Child's effort to get technology to as many children around the world as possible. On the opposite end of the technology spectrum is this NPR story about Wyoming Catholic College. A brand new college, whose inaugural freshman class is just finishing their first year, Wyoming Catholic College does not allow cell phones or television, and the students there have limited Internet access. The school offers a classics oriented curriculum, including an immersion program in Latin.

Anyone who has been following this blog will know that I am all for a solid foundation in the classics. I also believe strongly that immersion is the best (maybe even the only) way to really learn a language. But seriously folks, Latin immersion?

Learning philosophy, especially logic, is good. Learning rhetoric is good. Reading Plato and Aristotle is good. Do those things really have to come in opposition to cell phones and TV? College is already a strange bubble that often keeps us separated from the real world, a bubble that many of us are reluctant to leave when the time comes. Making that bubble all the more insular seems escapist at best.

The young woman being interviewed for the report doesn't do much to sell me on the benefits of the program. She claims she wants to be an emergency room nurse when she grows up. How many nursing schools are going to be excited about a student who has spent more time on Plato than on biology, and more time discussing 2000-year-old political theory than keeping up with the latest technological developments? My guess in not many.

On the other hand, the fact that she and her friends are able to make plans together without the use of a cellphone seems like it will come in handy when Armageddon comes.

Are you looking for an escape from the technological rat race?