Adolfo's Email

Below is an email sent to me by a 7th grader a week after school was out. I'm putting it here so I can save it.
Thanks, Adolfo!!

I am very very happy I got the pleasure to have you as a teacher and I will miss You a lot. I am sorry that I did not get the chance to say goodbye in Person but I will sincerely miss you a lot. I hope you have a happy life in New Zealand and I hope you had a Great time in Honduras. I really enjoyed all the classes we spent together and you make classes very fun and exciting. I liked when you talked to me and said positive feedback about me, and in what aspects I could become better. I liked when we walked pass each other in recess lunch ect. And you told me "Hi Adolfo" every time, and I really liked that. I will honestly Miss you ALLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT because you were one of the best teachers that I have had, and will have in my entire life. And you will know that everything that I have said comes from the deepest part of my heart because If YOU did not mean something for ME, I would not have taken my vacation time to express all the gratitude that I feel towards you.

 THANK YOU DR.C

The Sweetness & The Sadness of Farewells

The final assembly, graduation, and our "Farewell Party & Auction" are over. In four days I get on a Continental flight to Houston. In those 4 days I have to inventory the lab materials (which means taking 30 minutes to update last year's inventory) and get some signatures on the check-out sheet. You would think I would have a lot of time for blogging, but the purpose of this blog has run its course. I'm no longer a teacher and feel pretty good about my current decision to never take this job again. If you have enjoyed reading this and would like me to continue with "FirstYearRetireeBlog", leave me a comment to that effect.

On the day of the last assembly I received a present from a 6th grade student. It was a nice painting in a huge frame. I popped the painting out of the frame, packed it, and put the frame in the auction. Better than the picture was the student's note, though. I think I will have it framed: "Dr.C, Science has never been so fun and interesting and that was because of your teaching." It was from the student who puked when I sang "Chicken Lips" to the class. (See Nov. 23,2010 entry)
If you've followed the blog you might be aware of my enjoyment of the 6th and 8th grade classes and my difficulty developing a like for the 7th grade classes.While they were taking their final exam, I counted the problems and half problems in the class. The total was 8 out of 30. Individually most of the class is very pleasant to be around, but when they are together, there is a peer group mentality that causes them to avoid or be bashful about exerting effort or attempting to learn something. After the graduation I was very touched when a few wanted a hug or a picture taken with me or tears would begin to well up when our eyes met. As we left the graduation venue and I walked past a group of 7th graders, one said, "Please stay next year," and then they were all asking. I stopped and told them they would be with me in my thoughts. I considered for a nanosecond giving a lecture on how their peer dynamic made them the kind of class that would not make me want to stay and teach, but they aren't the reason I am leaving. Like so much that happens at this time of year their kindness added some sweetness to the sadness of leaving.
I'm now moving into my retirement acitivites: being a rugby journalist and planning to build a house.
Farewell.

Anyone for Capture the Flag?

Today (Wednesday) is the last full day for the K-5th graders. If you've been following this blog, you know I've been finished since last Thursday. I filled in a little time today playing Capture the Flag with my wife's 3rd grade class and playing keyboard for the choir while they rehearsed for Saturday's 8th grade graduation. The rest of the day has been fiddling with stuff on the computer. I did have a break for a little while when some girls came in to tell me there was a dead bird on campus. I went to confirm that it was indeed dead and to scare anyone who had touched it into washing their hands.
There are seven faculty workdays stretching until the end of next week to fill and there won't be a choir to practice with or anyone to play Capture the Flag with. Maybe I could organize a faculty Capture the Flag game?
I've already slipped into retirement mode, so I don't think I have been writing the "Big Idea" I've learned during 35 years in education the last few blogs. The idea related to this blog is plan to have something you want to do during the last few teacher workdays of the year. This school feels like the worst for stretching out this end of the year clean-up/sign-out process. Most places I've worked it has been only 2 or 3 days after kids are gone. Anyway ... I have my small solar house to plan, rugby articles on Deep South Union and upcoming world cup to write, and this blog.

Eight Workdays & the Rest of My Life to Fill

After playing keyboard for the choir's practice this morning, I have spent the day cruising around the internet. All grades are in and my room is 95% packed-up. There are 8 teacher work days left. What to fill them up with?
Personal Goals for the Next 8 Days:
Draw floor plan and 4 sides of 480 square ft. solar house.
Research online journalism courses.
Write an article on rugby world cup and try to get accepted to rugby internet site.
I suppose that should fill the time.In a few minutes I need to explain the rules of Capture the Flag to my wife's 3rd grade class. We're playing tomorrow. That should take care of a few hours.
I am getting this strange feeling of disconnect with what I used to do for 35 years. Before when summer vacation was imminent, I would create a list of summer activities. Always there would be something that involved preparing for the next school year. Time to create activities for the summer vacation that will stretch through the rest of my life.

Little Bee, Yes Man, & Potential to Change the World

I finished reading Little Bee by Chris Cleave this morning. Towards the end of the book a couple of the characters in the book are discussing when they lost the belief that they could change the world. The way I read it was that both characters felt the notion that they could change the world was a very naive assumption on their part. One of the characters then says something like, 'You changed my world'. That is one of the powers of a teacher. Everyday you step into the classroom you have the potential to change the world, at least the individual world of a student.
Friday a couple of 6th graders popped in to see what they got on their final exam. One wanted her picture taken with me. After the picture and just before she walked out the door, she turned and said, "Dr.C, you're the best teacher I have ever had." It blew me away. I mumbled thanks and something about her always being a wonderful student to teach as she turned and disappeared. I suppose there is some world changing potential in one 6th grader who liked science for at least one year when she was 12.
Friday night the 8th graders had a celebratory end-of-year sleep-over at the school. The homeroom teacher had asked other teachers to help, and I volunteered to conduct a game (Capture the Flag) for the kids. She was looking for teachers to sleep-over, but I am very particular about my sleep in my latter years. Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon I watched the Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man". If you haven't seen it I don't think I am spoiling it by saying it is about Carrey's character buying into a self-help philosophy that requires him to say "Yes" to every opportunity that presents itself. In some ways it was good I didn't watch it before the teacher asked me if I would sleep-over with the kids, but after the Capture the Flag game she was discussing another activity for the evening, the telling of scary stories around the campfire. She didn't come right out and ask if I would stay and tell stories, but she did start talking about how her son (who is a 7th grader) really enjoyed the scary stories I told when the 7th grade had their annual sleep-over. I started pondering if I should stay. I thought about needing to  review my scary story file, having to wait around for another hour, swatting off mosquitoes that seemed to be enjoying the Deep Woods Off I had lathered on, and my growing weariness as the evening slid further past my usual bedtime. I packed up the "Capture the Flag" equipment and slipped away. Perhaps if I had seen "Yes Man" the day before I would have lept at the chance to tell some scary stories. My stories made enough of an impression on a 7th grader that he told his mom about my scary story telling talent; although, I doubt if there is anything there that will change the world.

Administrators' Superficial Stuff

I was cleaning out a folder this morning and came across a form I filled in 3 years ago. The principal wanted us to list our "Personal Goals". No one has looked at it since I completed it in August, 2008. This task supported a theory I call 'Administrators' Superficial Stuff'.  The acronym is related to how the staff sees the administrator when such an activity is introduced. I was guilty of introducing these kinds of activities when I was an administrator. The process for coming up with one of these tasks goes something like this: an administrator, during the summer or during a lull in the usual rush of jobs involved in managing a school, gets an idea. They feel it is a great idea, and most of the time the idea is for all the right reasons. A few minutes on a computer creating a form or adding the idea to an agenda, and the idea now represents time out of the lives of other people. The administrator has now created a monkey for everyone. (See Blog from May 10th on monkey management.)
What administrators often fail to comprehend (myself included) is how much time they will have to spend taking care of the monkey. Take the "Personl Goals" form for example. If this was to be a serious effort to support faculty in achieving personal goals, the adminstrator should have collected the forms, read them, and had a pre and post conference with everyone. The faculty was about 40 members at the time . For sake of ease let's say the process takes the principal a total of 30 minutes a faculty member. That's 20 hours! Also once you start mucking around in someone's personal goals, there's no telling what kinds of monkeys might hop out of their cages. That is just the administrator's time. The 40 faculty members would need to fill in the form and attend the pre and post conferences. Let's say each faculty member spends an average of an hour filling in forms, scheduling and attending conferences, and waiting for the administrator to see them. That's 40 hours. The school secretary would have to check-off who turned in the form, schedule the pre and post conferences, communicate with faculty and administrator. At an average of 10 minutes per faculty member that is 2.5 hours. For a total of 62.5 hours of school personnel time.
Is it worth 62.5 hours of school personnel time to properly support a process for  40 faculty members to reflect on personal goals for the coming school year and discuss these goals with their supervisor? I'm not sure. I think that if you start the process you need to commit to the follow through.  In the principal's defense he did get shot a week before spring break and spent several weeks in a local hospital before being medevaced to Canada. After missing last year, he came back this year. He didn't have us fill in our personal goals.

For those interested my goals were: save money and improve my Spanish, sketching skills, and golf. I've acheived most of them. We live on a golf course. I play at least 3 times a week. The cost was $50 a month, so that didn't impact the first goal (save money) too much. My Spanish is better. I watch a Spanish telenovela every weeknight. The first two years I watched 2 a night. I suppose it was my advancing years that made it difficult to stay awake through the second one this year. A strategy I was going to use was to translate something (newspaper, book, comic,...) every day. That didn't happen. There is something I can shift into my retirement goals. Also, we will be leaving here before our current telenovela finishes, but it is now playing on the Spanish cable channel we get back in Florida. My sketching skills haven't improved very much. I've been working on drawing people. It is rare and usually pure luck if someone is able to recognize the subject of my drawing. I usually sketch people during faculty meetings. Faculty meetings ... those are often another example of "Administrators' Superficial Stuff". At least I found them useful for working on a personal goal.

Exams Done, Clean-Up Begun

I just entered the grades for the 6th grade final exams and no one failed. I put the scores on a curve without knowing which person went with which score. When the dust settled, the most at-risk kid pulled through with a 69.7 average. Below 70 is failing. I won't have anyone for remediation next week.
Thirty-five years now down to 2 weeks of sorting out my room and planning  what I do with the rest of my life. We had a day without electricity on Wednesday, so I got a good start on cleaning the classroom. Bulletin boards stripped, file cabinet cleaned, excess paper piled in the recyling box, materials passed to next year's science teacher, textbooks inventoried and hauled to the storage room, and a start on organizing the lab closet. I suppose this blog should come to an end soon. I'm contemplating whether to start one entitled "First Year Retiree".

Doing Unpleasant Things for the Last Time

I promise I am not going to finish this year with each blog being about what I just did for the last time, but for me this was a big one. I took the stools off the lab tables for the last time.  At the end of each day the last class puts the stools up on the tables so maintenance can clean. In the morning I take them down. Today is the last day the kids come to the lab. When the 6th graders put them up this afternoon, I can just leave them up.
Today will be my last lunch duty. The last time I stand around trying not to catch students speaking Spanish. It is a school rule they are to speak only English on campus. The school is 99% Honduran native Spanish speakers, so speaking Spanish is the forbidden fruit. If we catch them, we are supposed to have a consequence. If they are repeat offenders (which they all are) we can send them to the office and they get an after school detention or possibly a suspension. My consequence has been that they get a 250 word essay on why they should practice English as much as possible. If they don't write the essay, their team loses points. The points have increased each time I have caught someone speaking Spanish. The system started in January when the principal became adamant about enforcing this rule. I am now up to 53 points off for the 7th grade and 24 for the 6th grade. After they write the essay, I edit it and they have to rewrite it correctly. If they don't do the rewrite, their team loses half the points. This consequence has been very successful in making sure those that either refuse to speak English or have problems communicating in English stay well away from me while I am on duty. I'm not sure if it has inspired anyone to speak more English even though most of the essays contain excellent reasons on how they should take every opportunity to practice their English.
The main reason I think such a rule exists is so they begin to think in English. The English they practice with their peers is not pronounced correctly and often the grammer is incorrect. Often I have caught students speaking Spanish, and they were not aware they were speaking Spanish because they just say what they think and they haven't developed the ability to think in English. Anyway, today is the last day I will have to enforce this rule.
I was going to have a big idea of something I've learned over the years with each blog. I think I missed one in the last blog. I heard this in a movie (Burn after Reading) I was watching recently. "Don't sweat the little stuff and it's all little stuff" - except it is not all little stuff. Once in awhile in an essay I get thanked for caring about if they speak English or not.

Is it too early to start thinking about life after teaching?

Monday is mostly over. I have a 6th grade class this afternoon. For tomorrow the kids could elect to either continue reviewing or have their team earned extra recess. Of course they chose recess. Today I am half-heartedly reviewing for exams that start Wednesday. The kids can smell summer vacation and they are half-heartedly particpating in review. If you have read any of my blogs about these end of term exams, you've read enough of my feeling about exams; although, I just had an 8th grader come in to see what she got on her exam. She looked at the first part which was identifying independent and dependent variables from an experimental question. She got most of them right. She told me that they finally made sense as she was reviewing for the exam. Questions float in my mind about was it studying for the exam or was it that she was finally developmentally ready, and if it was the former, how long will she remember.
Anyway it is pretty much all over now for 6th and 7th grade. The mud has been thrown on the walls. Wednesday and Thursday I will check what stuck. Then I'll spend a day cleaning up the lab and 2 weeks thinking about life after teaching.

The Future Gave Me a Hug

I'm half way through checking 8th grade final exams. They move on to the high school at the mothership campus in San Pedro next year. I've had this group 2 years, and they have been superb - possibly the best middle school class I have ever taught. They seemed to come to school every day with a spirit that screamed, 'We like being here; now let's have some fun learning something.' Anything I asked them to do, from debating environmental issues in front of their peers to exploring questions about Piaget and Erickson and their evolving cognitive and psycho-social development, they approached with an open curiosity and a faith that they would be better because they tried and considered the challenges I presented.
As they were taking the final exam I started writing on their homework board (mostly as a joke) "Science Summer Homework". In each space reserved for a specific subject, I wrote a different task.
1) Follow a constellation across the night sky. 2) Marvel at the colors of a sunset and sunrise. 3) Keep a pencil and paper by your bed. Write down a dream as soon as you wake up and try to figure out where it came from. 4).Read a science fiction story and dream about the future. 5) Do something once a week to make the planet better. 6) Grow something and do an experiment with it. Some students would look up and smile or giggle when I wrote one down. At the end of the exam a few wrote down their summer homework before they left my classroom forever.
Big idea about the joy of being a teacher - Sometimes you  touch the future, and sometimes the potential future hugs your heart.

The Serentiy of Watching the Monkey Get Put Back in Its Cage

The big news around our school this past week were stories about the seniors at the mothership campus in San Pedro going wild during a water balloon fight and breaking windows, tables, chairs and racking up around $10,000 in damage. According to rumors, there is school security camera footage of those involved. There are tales of balloons filled with beer and urine and of students tossing balloons at the school director as he tried to stop the vandalism.
Everyone had their views on what the school director should do. It was nice not being in the big chair when something like this happens. I was director of 2 schools and principal of one. I distinguish between the 2 positions in the following way -  a principal reports to another person (school director) and a director reports to a Board. I had a couple of student expulsion issues evolve during my time as director, but never a whole class. I had a couple of management theories that I would use when I had the big seat. I'm not sure if they are real theories and can't remember where I picked them up. I don't think they would necessarily help the current school director with his problem, but as I am unloading the things I picked up during 35 years in the business, I'll share them here.
Theory #1: It is a Non-problem: Someone brings you what they suspect is or will soon be a problem. Your assessment is that it is not a problem unless you start addressing it as one. This happens a lot. The trick is how to ignore the assumed problem without upsetting or alienating those who think it is a problem. This leads to management theory #2.
Theory #2: Monkey Management : When someone brings you a problem, you think of the problem as a monkey they are bringing to you. Monkeys require a lot of care and can be very messy. You need to decide if this is rightfully your monkey that you need to take care of, is it a monkey you need to pet on the head and give back to the person who brought it to you, or is it a monkey that you need to assign to someone else to take care of. There are lots of other ways to think about the monkey, but hopefully you have the basic idea.
Back to the problem the current director is facing. It is a real problem. He can't just decide this was some playful mischief by 120 or so seniors and sweep the $10,000 into some part of the maintenance budget. It is his monkey. He needs to find a way to make it clearly visible that the senior class  is responsible for cleaning up the monkey mess. It's tricky as most of them are finished with school and accepted to college, and the slap on the wrist that they can't graduate with their classmates is not going to upset them or convince those watching (which is the entire school community) that he properly handled the monkey. Too drastic a response which jeopardizes their future could land the school in legal problems and bring all sorts of new monkeys to town. I imagine there are Board members calling often with views on how to deal with the monkey. There is a certain serence pleasure in watching how this monkey is being handled from well outside the zoo.

My Last Lesson Plans

I just sernt off to admin my last set of lesson plans. I suppose the big idea for this blog should be something about good planning. Madeline Hunter's research on effective lessons certainly helped me think through what needs to be considered when planning. I remember observing a student teacher doing an art lesson once in London. She was doing very well, except she hadn't thought through a model of what she wanted the students to do. As she moved from instruction to guided practice, you could see the misconceptions that began to spring forth on almost every child's work. The teacher spent the entire period patiently (but a bit frantically) going to each child a drawing a little model in the corner of their work.
Planning Big Idea #1: A good model is worth more than a thousand words.
Plannig Big Idea #2: Don't let a lesson plan (no matter how long you spent on it) stand in the way of teaching a good lesson. There is nothing like the teachable moment (the random and precious anticipatory set provided by fate) to grab attnetion and motivate students to deep understanding.

Paper In, Paper Out ... Breath In, Breath Out, Move On

This week started with some urgency. On Saturday I received an email from the asst. principal saying that we needed to give the semester exam study guides to the 8th graders on Sunday and that she needed copies of all semester exams by Friday (tomorrow). I sent her back and email pointing out that the 8th graders wouldn't be in school on Sunday and that the photocopying system at school has a 24 hour turn around time, so the earliest I could give the 8th graders a hard copy of their exam study guide would be Tuesday. I then posted the study guide electronically on the school internet communication system and put the final touches to my exams. Yesterday (Wednesday) my last semester exam was completed, checked, and sent to be copied. Today I'll do the stapling. When I was in graduate school studying administration there was  a course on the high school principalship. We had a couple of classes on organization and stress management. If you have ever been a principal, you know how the paperwork can drown you. One of the tips the professor had was (as much as possible) touch a piece of paper only once. Arrange your time, so that when you start going through your inbox, each piece of paper will have an immediate conclusion. You won't need to pick it up (again) and read it (again) and think about it (again) and decide to put it back in the in-box (again). Good advice; and although certain pieces of paper just don't lend themselves to that sort of one time handling (grant applications, resumes for advertised jobs, Board agendas, ...),  it was an idea that stuck with me. I used it to keep my head above the paper flood. I still use the concept of 'touch this paper once' to navigate through the stream of teacher paperwork from creating exams and getting them to admin to responding to parent communication.
Today is the Thursday Jazz Fest Day of the second weekend of the New Orleans Jazz Fest. How I wish I was there!! In 2006 Jimmy Buffett played at the first post-Katrina jazz fest. It was a great occasion, but there were too major disappointments: 1) the Neville's didn't come and 2) Jimmy didn't sing "Breath In, Breath Out, Move On". This song is for me is the emotional equivalent of  touch each paper once. Certainly it is much harder to do, but there are many emotional situations that require the same sort of mindset. A minor example of how it works is: take a soothing breath in (think about admin that has sent you an email on Saturday directing you to pass out a study guide on Sunday & how to handle), breath out, move on.

Don't Use Red Ink in Your Lab Notebook & Science Is Not Boring

I'm sitting here looking up at my grade level charts of student mastery of what I considered important concepts for this year. On the 6th grade chart I have one out of nineteen 6th graders who mastered calculating speed, time, and distance. An earlier version of me would be worried about this. I would spend the next 2 weeks before their final exam hammering away on this, figuring ways to create small groups to explore their misunderstandings, giving individualized homework, and testing individual mastery several more times before the end of the year. Now I'm trying to plan a few fun activities that will leave them with a nice feeling about science and learning.
There is an 8th grade student I tutor one-on-one for math just about every day. Since Janaury we have been working on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions. Occasionally we do other stuff, but I try to spend a little time every day on these 4 operations with fractions. She wants to be a chef one day. To build relevance we talk about altering recipes for larger or smaller groups and how these operations with fractions will be important for her career choice. I give her some word problems involving changing a recipe designed for 20 people to a recipe for 8 people. She applies herself when she is with me, and she is fairly good about doing her homework. But still after 4 months she can't consistently keep straight when she needs to find a common denominator to add or subtract and when she needs to take the reciprocal of the divisor and multiply numerators and denominators. If I can finally manage to get her clear on these 4 operatins so she can do them correctly on the final exam, I have very little confidence that she will remember them when school starts in August. Most of what we finally manage to stick into the heads of kids during a school year quickly leaks out over the summer break.
Yesterday the 6th grade was having a free recess. The team that has the most points can call a free recess. I have probably explained this reward system somewhere in one of these blogs. The length of the recess depends on how many points the team has. For teams that don't have the full recess I give them something to do, usually finding and writing the definitions of vocabulary related to the topic we are studying. Yesterday I had them write things they have learned this year.
Here are a few of my favorite: We learned not to use red ink in our notebooks. We learned to speak more English. We learned to put our name, date, and page number in the upper right corner of pages in our lab notebook.
But buried in among all these silly class and school rule things are a few gems:
We learned how to make data tables.We learned how to complete an assignment following a rubric.
We learned that science is fun and not boring.
Hopefully the last one will stick.
Big Idea: Spend time building positive attitudes towards learning.

The Magic Power of Effective Classroom Management

As I count down to the end of my teaching career in 37 days, the second big idea I've learned is there is no way to teach in a poorly managed classroom. I've seen loads of teachers who start out the year letting students decide what will be the rules of the classroom. They are always fairly young teachers. I even did it when I was starting out. I evolved into a teacher who knew what were the rules I needed to make my class function properly an that was my job - not the responsibility of 12 year olds. While teaching in Collier County an Asst. Superintendent for instruction gave a mandatory training session to new teachers to the county on classroom management. As part of the session he demonstrated a set of rules (see blog entry Aug. 9 - "The Rules Are Up") that took into account the 2 basic situations in the classroom, direct instruction and students working on assignments, with only 3 simple rules in each situation. With a little modification, I have used those rules for 20 years. Classroom management is, of course, not just about the rules. It involves the consequences and reward structure, the consistency with how they are applied, the method the teacher uses to allow students to make choices about their behoavior and the consequences that result, the respect the teacher shows to the students, ...
Until the management is right, the learning will be controlled by the students. Their hidden curriculum will be what they are learning most.
I had a colleague come in on Monday to watch how I managed a class. He joined a team. They had just formed new teams and were getting ready to play a comprehension game ("Challenge!!" is the name of the game). I gave 2 sentences of instruction: 1) we are going to play Challenge with the carbon cycle study guide,
2)team leaders get your teams ready. This is a class that he has some management trouble with, but they went straight to work, comparing answers, checking anwers in the textbook when 2 students didn't agree. The structure behind the activity was not obvious. The individual accountability of every team member to have an agreed upon answer to each question was not evident. My colleague attended a workshop session I did on cooperative learning, but he was not asking questions about where were the embedded aspects of cooperative learning in the structure of the lesson. He was amazed at how they were all on task as if I had some magic power over them.

Leaving Honduras & the Big Ideas after 35 Years

There are only 38 days left until I leave Honduras, probably for good. My wife and I have talked about coming back here for annual medical check-ups and tests. We figured we could fly Spirit out of Ft Lauderdale, spend a week in an average hotel, have a few procedures done (colonoscopy, mammogram, blood work, ...) and save a couple thousand dollars. Medical care here has been great. I had a colonoscopy (which was as pleasant as could be expected) and received a dvd of my colon for only $100.
I only have 15 teaching days left with my 6th and 7th graders (9 days with 8th grade). Thirty five years in education now down to 15 days.
For the last few blogs (and I'm not saying this blog won't morph into MyFirstYearRetired after June 4th) I'm going to try to have a big idea about education or teaching that I have learned.
Idea #1: Teaching is not about the content. It is about facilitating the student's ability to engage in learning in an enjoyable and meaningful way.

The Home Stretch

Spring Break will officially end tomorrow (Tuesday) when I wake up at 5 am. The 10 days of enjoying friends, beach, windsurfing, frisbee in the gulf, grilling, gardening. planning the post-work phase of our life, reading in the hammock, sleeping in the hammock (which usually quickly followed any attempt to read in the hammock), painting faces on palm fronds, sketching, and a thousand other relaxing activities ended yesterday when we drove to Ft. Lauderdale to catch the midnight Spirit flight to San Pedro.
The Honduras immigration people are very understanding. Our residence visa has lapsed and the school is not spending the money to get us a new one for the little time we have left. Whenever our allotted time is abot up, somebody takes our passports to the airport (I think) to get another 30 days added on. I wasn't quite sure what to put on the piece of paper for reentry. We're coming for business, but we have no visa for that. I left it blank and the immigration agent cheerfully said, "Good evening (in English)" and stamped in 90 days. I only need 40 days more and then Honduras is in the rearview mirror and a new life begins.
Over the holiday I would very occasionally reflect on what should be my final instructional concepts. I have enough grades in the gradebook and have covered the material that will be on the final exam. The 6th grade has some fun experiments with flight and a PowerPoint comparing 2 objects (not a planet or the sun) in our solar system. The 8th grade has EarthWeek activities supporting shoe box sales in their assigned classrooms. They will then be involved in their production of The Tempest and return to science class for only a couple of days of review before their exam. The 7th grade has  a little 2 week window of opportunity to teach anything. I'm leaning toward a week of  theories of cognitive development and psychology. I'll use student debates of environmental issues to look at capacity to see issues from more than one side. The last week I'll introduce Piaget and arrange for them to collect data on pre-kindergarten kids ability to perfrom conservation tasks. I usually do that to begin 8th grade, but I doubt if these 7th graders will get that next year. It's not in the textbook.
For those of you who have followed this blog and might be wondering what will happen in 40 days when Continental hauls me and the few items I'm taking out of Honduras to my new life,  I have applied for a job. In case you might feel betrayed that this blog has been falsely presented as being about my last year teaching, I'll let you know that the job I'm applying for is in education but not teaching. I'm not going to jinx the job possibility yet by saying what it is. Stay tuned for that revelation. If the job falls through, my
 wife and I have planned to start building (after our trip to the rugby world cup in New Zealand) a tiny cottage (480 square foot) on a small lot onPine Island. We are having fun planning the space and trying to make it environmentally friendly and futuristic while still being comfortable for a couple of old folks. After all is said, done, and written, we are definitely on the edge of the BIG home stretch.

The Last Spring Break

It's 10 minutes until the bell rings to start "Sports Day", a half-day of fun sports activities. Kids are dismissed at 10:30 and we can leave at 11. The taxi is scheduled for 11:30. Bags are packed and waiting by the door. By midnight we should be home at our cottage on the beach in Florida. The words "spring break" summon up images of beaches. When I was younger, it was the freedom of partying late at beach bars in places like Isla Mujeres or Pensacola and playing rugby, scuba diving, or hunting other adventures by day. The middle years were family vacations to places like Venezuelan dude ranches or a Caribbean beach. Now I dream of lazy days windsurfing and riding the hammock with a book and a nap.
Bell just rang. My last Spring Break is about to begin!!

Boring PowerPoints Left Behind - Miami Here I Come

Today the 8th grade went to their assigned classrooms and presented PowerPoints on foundations they want supported by the shoe box sale we will have during the school's "Earth Week" when we get back from spring break. They seemed to present well; although, there was still a lot of turning to the whiteboard and reading loads of text . I''m not sure what can be done about this. We discussed it. The 8th graders acknowledged that they hate PowerPoint presentations like that. We practice good ones. We went back into the computer lab to fix the PowerPoints. I was watching an 8th grader present to the 1st grade, and she had one PowerPoint which was just page after page of text that she read word for word. The next PowerPoint was full of colorful pictures with very little text. The first graders audibly sighed in awe and relief when the PowerPoint started. Yet the "read the page of text in front of you" style of PowerPoint presentation remains. Last night the guidance counselors and admin made PowerPoint  presentations to the staff and parent community about testing, budget, sustainability, new personnel, .... They read a lot of pages of text from PowerPoints to those assembled.
But tomorrow is Spring Break!! By this time tomorrow American Airlines will (hopefully) have delivered me safely to Miami airport.

Stranger in a No Longer Strange Land

In 1999 I took a screenwriting class in London while I was waiting for my job at Goldsmiths College to start. The first part of each class we examined a few screenplays and the techniques and themes the author employed. One theme the instructor liked was the ‘stranger in a strange land’ theme.


Saturday I was walking over the bridge to the market in “Old” La Lima. As school buses with colorful curtains and neatly scrawled sayings like “Dios es mi guia” honked their way over the bridge, a cart being pulled by a gently trotting horse passed me. A man with his wife, perched on the bar between the seat and the handlebars and holding a baby, pedaled by. The smell of smoke from burning cane fields filled the air and the haze blocked the view of the mountains surrounding San Pedro. As I looked over the bridge railing, I saw people with fishing line trying to catch lunch and others washing themselves and their clothes in the muddy river water. The thing that struck me was this no longer seemed “strange” or different.

I remember when I got off the plane in Guayaquil in 1979 for my first overseas job. The first thing that struck me was the odor. There was no real earthy odor. Coming from the Deep South and thinking the smell of the earth and bayous of the Deep South was so much richer than the smells of Indiana lakes and cornfields where I had gone to high school, I thought going farther south, actually crossing the equator, would make the earth smell even stronger. I’m not sure why I thought that way. After my surprise that there wasn’t an overpowering earth smell, everything else was different and strange: from the size of the people to the condition of their cars, from people selling little bags of water to beggars with twisted limbs (I later found out their parents would often bind and twist their limbs from birth, so they could have a career as a beggar). When I later wandered the market of Guayaquil , I gawked at everything: from the hunks of animal flesh hanging in the sun and swarming with flies to men with cages full of brightly feathered parrots. All those things are in the La Lima market, but I don’t really notice any more. I guess it is time for me to come home. Miami airport always strikes me as very strange.

The Last Three & Calculating my Contribution

I just finished sending off lesson plans for the 3 days of next week that we have classes. Our spring break starts Thursday. Then there are only three weeks to plan for when we get back from vacation. Wow, my last three weeks of lesson plans. I just had to check again, and yep, there are only 3 weeks left to plan for and then a week of exams. I wounder how many weeks of lesson plans I have made during my 35 years in the business. I have been  a classroom teacher for about 24 years. At 2 schools where I was the director I had to teach some classes, so I had some lesson planning to do. For the 3 years I taught at a university I had at least one lesson plan a day. A conservative estimate would be 25 years x 36 school weeks/year x 4 subjects or grade levels to plan = 3,600 weeks of lesson plans. I wonder how much was learned from those 3,600 weekly plans. Let's say there were an average of 15 kids in each class and they learned only two things during the week of the lesson plan (I'm not sure that is a conservative estimate, but I'll continue with this math problem) that would be 3,600 x 15 x 2 =  108,000 concepts or skills. I suppose that is in a way a measure of my contribution.

The Old Dog Can Learn a New Trick but Not Always When He Should

This week I tried something new with the 7th grade. I made a study guide on the disasters that they have been studying. I, also, made a matching PowerPoint with the answers to questions on the study guide on different pages in the PowerPoint. I have 5 computers in my room, so I loaded the PowerPoint on to all of the computers. The 7th graders are in 5 teams. I arranged a relay race to find the answers to the questions. One person would go to the computer assigned to their team and get an answer and then come back and another student would go to find the answer to the next question. While one student was searching the PowerPoint the other members of the team were copying the answers that had been brought back. One of my sections of 7th graders usually do not handle well any sort of "less structured" acitivity, but after a few kids lost points for running and had to go back and start over walking, they enjoyed it and did it very well. One problem they quickly sorted was when the second person left to get an answer to a question on the PowerPoint, he or she hadn't written down the answer to the question the first person had just brought back, so they would answer the same question.
Eigth graders are visiting classrooms to prepare the classes for the upcoming "Shoe Box Sale" to support an environmental foundation which will happen during the school's Earth Week (April 11-14). The 8th graders are to present a PowerPoint on an environmental problem, a foundation that attempts to solve the problem, and a persuasive statement on why a class should pick this foundation as worthy of the money they raise with their "Shoe Box Sale". It amazes me how shy these usually loud, seemingly confident, 8th graders become once they stand in front of a class with whom they are not familiar, even if it is a class of kindergareners.
I have to present and practice their first trip to the class. What they are to do is introduce themselves to the teacher and class, ask if there are any questions, and get the teacher's email. This takes a visual listing of the 3 things they are to do, modelling, and a guided practice. I still had a teacher today saying, "The kids  were nice, but they didn't seem to have a clue why they were in my room; although, they did ask for my email." I suppose that is something. You would think I would have figured out how much time and practice this would take by now.

Why didn't they tell me I didn't need to be on time for work?

Tuesday of this week we had  a meeting after school. Most of our meeting was about where we are with preparing for the SACS accreditation visit next year, but there was a little bit on the end where the principal let everyone know that the following day (Wednesday) those who had over 20 lates would have a note in their cubby and would need to talk to him. We have a finger scanner that logs us "entrada" or "salida" from the school. Everyone is supposed to have "fingered in" by 7:15. School starts at 7:30. The school record for lates this year was somewhere around 84.
Supposedly the teachers who had over 20 lates had a meeting Tuesday evening and agreed to not sign whatever was going to be presented to them in their meeting with the principal. You could hear teachers around school on Wednesday griping about how unfair this was for  administration  to make their tardiness part of their official record.
It was almost like it was the administration's fault for them being late. I heard bits of one conversation between someone who is never late and someone who had in excess of 70 lates. It went something like this:
Over 70 Lates, 'It is terrible that the administration never warned us about this.'
Never Late: 'You didn't know you were supposed to be at school on time?'
Over 70 Lates: 'Yes, I knew I was supposed to be on time, but I didn't know I would be threatened if I wasn't.'
Never Late: 'Didn't you know the finger machine was keeping a record of when you arrive?"
Over 70 Lates: 'Yes, but I didn't know that after 20 lates they would threaten me.'
Never Late: 'So you thought you could be late as many times as you wanted and there would be no consequences.'
Over 70 Lates: 'Yes, or they would warn me.'
Never Late: 'What was the meeting with the principal about?'
Over 70 Lates: 'Warning me that if I continue being late it could affect my being rehired.'
Never Late: 'Isn't that what you just said you thought they would do?'
Over 70 Lates: ' Yes, but I didn't know they would write anything down.'

Maybe there is some logic in "Over 70 Lates" thinking.  After 35 years in this business, working in 9 different schools as a teacher, I always thought my being punctual for work would be part of my work record. Why didn't somwbody tell me I didn't need to be on time for work?

T-Shirts & Making the Cut

This morning I rummaged to the bottom of my t-shirt pile categorizing as I rummaged. Most of the t-shirts went in to the "to be given or thrown away when leaving Honduras" pile. The t-shirt on the bottom was my "BaysDay" t-shirt. When I worked at Goldsmiths College in London, we had our 1st year science students be guides for groups of kids that attended the BaysDay event at Imperial College. The objectives were for the students to be aware of this annual science event for primary age kids and to get some experience with managing kids on a field trip. There were a few side objectives like picking up some science content  from the activities they attended with their group. After our teacher trainee students got over the initial shock of having to cover the transport costs from southeast London to Kensington (about $10) , they generally reported a great experience, and they got a t-shirt and free lunch. I wonder how many remember the experience and have ever taken their own class to the event. (I just tried to Google "BaysDay" and can't find out if it is still happening.) Unfortunately this t-shirt I'm wearing is going in the 'to be left behind' pile, but since I went to BaysDay 3 years, I should have a couple more someplace.
On Friday the school here had Family Day. There was a real admin push to buy the "Family Day" t-shirt. Whenever there is an event here, there seems to be a t-shirt that accompanies the occasion. I escaped buying the "Family Day" t-shirt by making a belated plea that somebody consider having a commemortaive cap or handkerchief for the event. As I was sorting t-shirts this morning and considering if any of the half dozen EILL t-shirts I have collected while here will make the cut and be in a suitcase going back to the USA in June, I came across my coach's t-shirt from my time as the girls' basketball coach. It has my name embroidered on it. I figured that  automatically makes it a keeper. The downside is it is it is made of that slick polyester material which makes it very uncomforable to wear. I can picture the box in the attic  where it will end up. Something for my kids to sort through  after I am gone when they have to do something with all the t-shirts and stuff that have made the cut through the years. I think I remember putting a BaysDay t-shirt in that box.

Mentally Checking Out, Family Day, and the Here & Now

I just finished lesson plans for next week and sent them off to the principal and posted them on my page on the school's internet communication system. Friday will be the 1st of April. There is not long to go now!! Next week will be a grade collecting week. I need to put some grades in the gradebook. I am beginning to mentally check-out but feel I need to collect some data for the grade-machine monster before I can really coast to bimester exam review (May 16th).  For me it is very hard not to mentally check-out months in advance especially when you start packing what is going back to the USA and what will be sold or given away here. That started two weekends ago.

In 30 minutes the Spanish department's assembly will start to launch Family Day. We've already had a morning of classes and after the hour long (or less, hopefully) assembly the rest of the school day will be devoted to eating local food (which wll include everything from pupusas to corndogs) and playing games to win little plastic prizes.It is called Family Day because all the students extended families are invited to come and buy food and play the games.  I've got a one hour shift hosting the 'Grand Prize Game' (kids try to throw a ping pong ball into a bucket) and 2 hour shift selling drinks. The day turns out being fun. My big problem will be how to navigate my responsibilites, so I can sit down occasionally because at my age if I spend 3 hours on my feet, I won't be able to walk tomorrow. I suppose my aching feet will keep me focused on the here and now.

Colonel Klink, The Hidden Curriculum, & 8 Weeks until the Games Over

It's a rainy Monday as the last 8 weeks of my teaching career begins. The 8th grade is debating environmental issues and showing me what environmental confusions I should focus on for the last few weeks, e.g. littering and its relationship to global warming. The 7th grade is considering disasters and if there is anything to prophesies about world ending events happening on Dec.21, 2012. The 6th grade has packed up their science fair projects, taken them home, and launch into the study of the solar system combined with learning about Newton, gravity, and the laws of motion. The big ideas here are: 8th grade - environmental issues usually have at least 2 sides and multiple issues involved, 7th grade - the world is a fragile changing system in a much bigger universe and we need to understand it and take responsibility for the parts we can affect, and 6th grade - the solar system is held together by certain fundamental laws and is both big in relation to Earth and small in relation to the universe and filled with many mysteries.
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Rainy mornings seem to sap everyone's motivation. My wife and I were counting class days over breakfast this morning like kids counting the days until Christmas. I have 4 weeks until spring break and then a couple of weeks before final exam preparation begins. Time to focus and stop these "what's the point" thoughts that creep into my consciousness. The right spark in the right place can make the difference.

I just read  some of my first blogs (particularly Neeharika's email in "What's the Point"). I don't control enough  of this school to make a significant difference in the daily experience beyond a 45 minute science class. A school rule has teachers policing students speaking Spanish during breaks and lunch. If students are caught speaking Spanish they can get a detention. (I give them a chance to write an essay or lose team points.) It puts a weird atmosphere on recess duty, though. The goal is understandable but the method to try to acheive the goal has some sad consequences. The students shift to English when they see a teacher coming. I feel a little like Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes. Whenever I get near, the look-out shouts the warning and they fold up all their escape plans.

I'm not sure why I took that little detour in this blog except I'm struggling with this idea that the whole school experience needs to have an overall beneficial effect on the attitude of the student and something like enforcing a rule like speak English on campus can end up undermining efforts to make the academic activities motivating and engaging. I think I read a book once a long time ago on the importance of the "hidden curriculum".

It's thirty minutes to game time. Shoes laced. The old guy needs to check that all zippers and buttons are fastened and no extremely unsightly nose or ear hair is showing. Computers are on, PowerPoint is loaded, and hand-outs ready. Game on.

Arne Duncan, NCLB, & 82% of U.S. Schools Get an F

I receive an email newswire from The Center for Education Reform. Last week (March 15th, 2011) the one I received had an article in which it claims the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said 82% of US schools are on track to be failing under current No Child Left Behind (NCLB) guidlines. I haven't had to play the NCLB game in awhile, but I remember when I first saw that legislative rubbish from the administration of George W. Bush. I thought there is no way anyone with any statistical training had a look at  this mess. The requirement for continuous annual improvement (or some such jargon) ensures that eventually every school will regress toward the mean - and eventually fail. Hopefully someday somebody will realize a schools success should not be measured by how much kids improve on a standardized test from year to year, but on how motivated the kids have become to improve their lives through education and how schools are doing at facilitating and directing that motivation.

My Last Science Fair - Dedicated to Lawrence Bellipanni

My feet are aching. The projects are all down and the hands-on materials back in the science lab closet. The kids have tucked their ribbons in their top pocket with enough showing so everyone can see they won. I'm trying to think of a science fair where my feet didn't ache at the end. None are coming to mind. It's one of those good aches, though. Not one caused by standing in a pointless line, but an ache with a result. Kids enjoyed doing an experiment, self -evaluating what they did, presenting it to judges, and showing it off to visitors. They have had fun doing science.
 During my doctoral studies Lawrence "Larry" Bellipanni inspired me with his enthusiasm for science fairs. I just Googled Lawrence Bellipanni and read that he died last year. I've read his obituary over a few times and it has me a bit stunned. He was someone I thought for sure I would share some science fair stories with under an old oak tree dripping with moss on the Mississippi Gulf Coast one day.
When I was a lecturer in primary science education at Goldsmiths College, as a project the 3rd year science specialists started science fairs in schools around London. We would have a culmintaing event bringing the winners from all the schools to Goldsmiths for a day of science activities. The popularity of science as a specialty area grew as a result of such projects. I wanted to tell Larry how his influence had stretched across an ocean. Maybe someday at the great science fair in the afterlife universe.

Sluggards, David Foster Wallace, & Piaget

Over the past week I have had a few conversations about the nature of the school's current 7th grade class. One teacher who taught them last year confessed that he just found them "hard to like". I knew exactly what he meant. That very day I had given them their term exam and as I monitored the exam, I went down the rows of students and ticked off in my mind if they seemed to care at all about what I was teaching. Half I ticked off as not caring. At the time I thought, 'For most of them what is there to really care about - balancing chemical equations, the nature of acids & bases, physical properties of matter and how to calculate density.' Really - who cares? I felt kind of lucky that I had ticked off half that did seem to care. But now I was thinking it wasn't just the ultimate uselessness for most of them of what I was teaching. It was an attitude of not caring that permeated all their studies. I thought back to my science lab partner (a very creative and energetic elementary science teacher) from 2 years ago who had this group in 5th grade. She used to come back to the lab after a class with them complaining of how frustrating it was to try anything "fun". An element in the class would be intentionally obtuse or disruptive and prefer the putative peer approval for their shenanigans over any possible 'fun' they could have in learning something. Yesterday I was talking with the 6th grade/art teacher about what she would be teaching next year. She said they wanted her to teach 8th grade, but she really didn't want that group. The conversation took the same turn toward their attitude that made it hard to like teaching many of them.
What to do with this group for the last 9 weeks of my teaching career has been playing in my mind for a week now as I plan my last term. Today, as I was googling somethings I had made note of while reading Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs, I came across David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement address to a college class ( http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words ). The ultimate message was about choosing to "stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out". Institutionalized education should be a major part of the foundation preparing you to remain aware and skillfully alive in one's approaching adulthood. Wallace talks about finding a type of cognitive control. He calls it freedom. He refers to one type as 'the freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation.' This is where I think a lot of the 7th graders are. They have embraced this "kingdom". Soon (hopefully for most of them) they will begin to become aware of the approaching responsibilities of adulthood, but for now the more important freedom Wallace exposited ('the freedom that involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people') is beyond them.
I'm now thinking I should end the year with how I start the 8th grade school year - exploring Piaget's stages of cognitive development. Let them test some of the pre-schoolers with Piaget conservation tasks. Give them a concrete operations perspective task, and then let them try to work out the factors that effect the rate of swing of a pendulum. The goal would be that by experiencing how their brain is developing cognitive functions, the thought will germinate that they need to pay attention to the direction and pace of the development of their thinking. Probably the ones that get it will be the half who already care and the other half will remain blissful in their 'skull-sized kingdom'. Most of them will at least have some fun playing with the pre-schoolers when they give the conservation tasks.

When the 10,000 Year Clock Stops

Over the weekend I finished Manhood for Amateurs  by Michael Chabon. One of his stories "The Omega Glory" was a little unsettling for me as I am about to teach an earth science unit with the 7th grade where we look at possible earth shattering disasters. They are very much aware of the significance now attached to Dec.21, 2012, and what some would like us to believe is a prophesy of doom. We watched the movie "2012" last week to start the unit. Chabon's story/essay expresses his hope that we are not losing 'belief or interest in the Future'. When I teach the unit I give my opinion that the Mayan's saw 12/21/12 as the end of a calendar, and the overwhelming majority of Mayan scholars do not see this as a prediction of the end of the world. If there is a consensus on a Mayan prediction, it is that there will be a "New Age". I kind of picture what we used to back in the 60's call the "Age of Aquarius". I actually thought we had already had that back in the 60's and then "The Age of Disco" took over. Anyway ...
I do try to give the students facts about the fragility of our planet, though. There are some scientific theories (fact is a very hard word to use in science) that indicate we are approaching the peak of teh 11 year cycle of solar activity in 2012 and that the magnetic fields of the sun and earth will be lined up in a way that they haven't been before during this peak. The equinoxes (not the Dec. 21 solstice) is supposed to be the time when this solar activity might have its most profound effect on us in terms of communication and power disruptions. Unless your life is dependent on your GPS or cell phone or having electricity when this event happens you probably will survive. I have a hard time thinking of when my life is dependent on these things. Our power went off Sunday for 12 hours. I had to take a shower with a bucket of water I keep handy for when the power goes off and use candles to finish reading Chabon's book, but otherwise my life was pretty much the same. Disruption of water supply for a couple of weeks could have severe effects. The fear mongering folks who talk about the lining up of the planets seem to be wrong. Check out the website "Solar System Live" at http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar/action?sys=-Sf and move the date to 12/21/12 and you'll see the planets are not lined up as much as they are at other times. There are also conflicting theories about if the earth is in more danger as the solar system drifts to the center of the galaxy or pops above the galaxy and is subjected to more cosmic radiation. We discuss all kinds of earth ending disasters from our galaxy exploding to extinction of phytoplankton. Chabon's article had me worryiong that I was taking away hope for a future from these kids. This is certainly not my goal. The goal is our planet is fragile and we need to take care of it and use our minds and scientific methods to think about preserving it and eventually (thousands of years from now) leave it. But we need to start planning for that now and we need new young scientists.
Chabon felt this 10,000 year clock (as do the designers of the clock - The Long Now Organization http://longnow.org/clock/ ) would cause people to think slowly, critically, and creatively about a very distant future and instil a hope in what that future will be. If you saw my plans from yesterday's blog, I have a week at the end of the semester on "Visions of the Future". Often these lesson gets bumped because of previous content I didn't cover. This year I'll make seeing the future a priority - and we'll think about what the world will be like when the Long Now Clock stops.

The Last of the Last Semester Syllabi

Below is the rough planning for the last semester. We are supposed to turn this into the asst. principal by March 24th. I turned it in this morning. A younger colleague looked at me after I handed it in and commented, 'That is the last semester planning you will ever hand in.!?' There seemed to be a bit of a sense of wonder in his comment/question. I imagine there was a part conscious and a part unconscious rumination going on inside his head about when and where he might be when he hands in his last semeter plans.

6th Grade Science 4th Bimester Syllabus

Week March 14th: Science Fair
Week March 21st: Newton’s Laws of Motion, Velocity Calculations
Week March 28th: Solar System
Week of April 4th: Most Interesting Thing in the Solar System, Research & PowerPoint/ Position Paper
Week of April 11th: Stars and Galaxies
Week of April 26th: Most Interesting Thing in the Solar System Presentations
Week of May 2nd: Gravity & Flight
Week of May 9th:Visions of the Future
Week of May 16th: Review and Bimester Exam

7th Grade Science 4th Bimester Syllabus
Week March 14th:Earth Changing Events (e.g. earthquakes, disasters, floods, asteroid collision, global warming, …), Dec.21, 2012 - End of a Mayan Calendar or Prophesy?, Research and prepare PowerPoint and report.
Week March 21st:Our Planet – Inner Core to Outer Atmosphere, Latitude and longitude
Week March 28th: Prime Meridian,Time Zones, Calculate Length of Day
Week of April 4th: Earth Changing Events Presentations
Week of April 11th: Stars & Galaxies, Light Year, Scientific Notation
Week of April 26th: Earth Week, Debate Environmental Issues
Week of May 2nd: Visions of the Future, Space Travel, Velocity and Acceleration
Week of May 9th:Review all calculations: periodic table, density, balancing equations, length of day, scientific notation, velocity and acceleration
Week of May 16th: Review & Bimester Exam

8th Grade Science 4th Bimester Syllabus
Week March 14th: Environmental Issues, Research and prepare debate report.
Week March 21st: Individual student debates
Week March 28th: Earth Week Preparation, Research and prepare a PowerPoint on a Foundation
Week of April 4th: Carbon and Water Cycles, Phytoplankton Extinction
Week of April 11th: Earth Week Foundation Presentations, Scientific Notation
Week of April 26th: Earth Week
Week of May 2nd: Visions of the Future
Week of May 9th: Bimester Review, Review all calculations: (periodic table, density, balancing equations, scientific notation, velocity and acceleration), Exam

Peace, Love, & Ice Skates

Today is Saturday market day in La Lima. I've been here 3 years and just found the Saturday market this year. I love these local markets. Lome', Togo, was the best - complete with voodoo fetishes, but the people really hassled you to buy stuff. While I was in Lome' they opened a new market outside town. I went there once with a plan I thought guaranteed I would be left alone to wander free of a hassling helper. Lome' is about 6 degrees N latitude. With about 70 miles to a degree of latitude that is 420 miles north of the equator. It is at sea level. It is really hot most of the time. When it is not really hot, it is at bestwarm. (There is often a nice breeze off the Gulf of Benin, though.)
My plan was that whenever someone approached me to ask what I was looking for I would say,  "Ice skates". My French is pretty bad, but I made sure I could pronounce ice skates correctly. As soon as I walked through the gates into the market, someone was by my side asking what I was looking for, and without a  moment's hesitation after I said ice skates, he grabbed me by the hand and led me to a stall that had 3 pairs of ice skates. Thank goodness none were my size.
People hardly ever hassle you here at markets. Occasionally in the tourist market in San Pedro (Guamalito) the booth operators will try to stop you to tell you they have a special good price for you and ask what you are looking for. By now I know which person to go to for the usual Honduran gift items I like (hammocks and Lenca pottery). I've learned my lesson, though. If I am just wandering the booths, I don't ask for ice skates. My reply here is "paz y amor" (peace and love). Occasionally there is the booth operator who is pretty sure that a heavily lacquered wooden toothpick holder with the Honduran flag on it will bring me, "paz".

Iguana, Guinea Pigs, & a Surprise Free Period

It's Thursday afternoon and the pre-algebra teacher has just told me that the pre-algebra group (whom I teach basic skills on Thursday afternoon) already had math today because of a PE scheduling change due to the national soccer tournament.
The student I tutor in math has just shown up because she doesn't go to PE. Usually in the afternoon the lady who cleans my room is here while I tutor. We all chat a bit and the topic of eating algarrobos (iguanas) has come up. The discussion between the cleaning lady and myself began last year when I started a garden with the 6th grade and a major infestation of algarrobos ate everything we planted except citrus trees.The cleaning lady offered to cook any algarrobos I was able to catch. I didn't catch any. This year we joked about eating algarrobos as she cleaned my room and the student I tutor joined in saying her grandfather fixed good algarrobo. Today she brought me a sample. It was a bit of a cross between rabbit and fish with a little gator flavor thrown in. Her grandfather prepared it with a slightly sweet brown sauce with coconut flavoring - not unlike an Indian Korma. There were 3 algarrobo eggs on the plate. They were hard and not much flavor. My student just told me I shouldn't have eaten the whole egg. Oh well, if there are no blogs after today, you will know the reaon - a fatal overdose of iguana eggs.
This now ranks up there with the time I had guinea pig at a wedding in Ecuador. While living there I became friends with the fantastic primitve artist Julio Toaquiza Tigasi. When he would come to Quito, he would stay with me. One time he showed up with his whole family and invited me to the wedding of his son, Alfredo. I took the multi-bus journey to his house en Tigua. The party was fantastic. There was a band and dancing with special steps that the gringo never got exactly right which caused everyone to laugh and insist on drinking a shot of aguardiente with me. This made getting the dance right even harder. I could see and smell a roast lamb on a spit and as dinner time approached I was very much looking forward to a nice piece of lamb with some roast potatoes. Instead as a quest of honor I was presented with a roasted cuy (guinea pig) on a stick. It was certainly the tastiest guinea pig I ever ate.

Helping Students who Don't Want to Be in School

Monday I had a student taking a make-up test. I accidentally passed him the completed test of a student who took the test last week. After about 10 minutes the student taking the make-up test raised his hand and told me I gave him the other student's test. I noticed he had filled in the answers to all the balancing equation problems but didn't have any indication of how he worked them out. I asked him if he did them himself. He said, "Yes." I cut the 5 balancing equation problems off the test and gave him 5 different equations to balance. He couldn't do any of them. He ended up doing none of the problems on the test. I told him that I needed to see him at recess. I started him on the classwork the rest of the class was doing (creating a graph and predicting results when given an experimental question and a data table). He started playing around and laughing with the student next to him. I moved him to  a desk by himself. He completed the graph with several errors. When I tried to explain the errors to him, he looked away and  paid no attention - until I told him, "It is clear to me that you don't want to be here, and I am going to help you make that wish come true." He looked at me with a puzzled look on his face. I said, 'There is no need for you to be here if you don't want to, so I am going to help you.' He said a little hesitantly, 'I want to be here.' I said, 'Yes, you feel you have to say that, but let me help you. Look at all the kids in the class working and trying to learn. They want to be here. There's no reason someone who doesn't want to be here should take time from them. At recess we are going to go to the office and I am going to help you get what you want.' His argument then became 'I didn't cheat. You gave me the other student's test.' At recess he sauntered into my class after having been to the cafeteria to get a bottle of (highly) sweetned tea.
Today he wasn't in class. I haven't heard what happened. I'm glad I was able to help him. The rest of the class reached a new level of effort and cooperation today, also.

The Hits Just Keep on Coming, a Lesson Plan a Day, & The Last Round-up

The Hits Just Keep on Coming
Today over our weekend cup of tea in bed I was talking with my wife about the "audience" feature on blogger.com and how amazed I was at how this blog had been accessed by people from Russia (29), India (9), China (24), Sweden (9) , Poland (8), ... I thought about some of the blogs I have posted and occasionally I have mentioned those countries. I pondered if that was the reason. I had the idea of finding a list of all the countries in the world and just posting that in a blog and seeing if I got some kind of hit from every country. My wife thought that was a good idea. I said that was not the purpose of the blog. The purpose was to be a record of my last year teaching. She pointed out that the blog has become part of my last year teaching. I could do it as an experiment in blogging for the interest of my blog followers. Above I've listed the number of 'hits' I have had from some countries, so I can track if I get any more hits just because I mentioned the name of the country in this blog. I was about to just list a random country that I had never had a hit from and see if that caused some one to visit this site from that country and I saw I had my first 3 hits from the Phillipines today. Thanks for joinng. If you are reading this, do you mind commenting on why you visited this site? The country I am just going to mention though is ... Denmark.
A Lesson Plan a Day
My wife thought I should post a lesson plan a day. I didn't think people would be interested. I have them all saved on USB, so it is not what I need or want a record of . If anyone would like a lesson plan, post in comment some way to send them to you. Hopefully when I read through this in a few years time it will bring back some of the emotions of the year. If my mind has slipped away much more than it has already, maybe it will help me hold onto parts of what was my profession for 35 years.
The Last Round-Up
I seem to be writing about 2 blogs a week and I just counted 13 weeks (not counting spring break) until I hang-up my whiteboard eraser and head to the San Pedro airport for the last time. I suppose blogging has become a part of my last year. I'm kind of sadly looking at the last 26 blogs or so and wondering what is there I want to capture about the last few weeks of the last year of my teaching career. The blooging has taken on a life of its own and helped me take frustrations and frame them as something I want to remember. At the professional development conference this past week, the director of the school had a session entitled something like 'The 3Rs to the 4Cs'. He was looking at education for the 21st Century (which is now, but the idea is the future has arrived, I guess) and proposing that 'Reading, Riting, & Rithmetic' should be evolving into "Critical thinking, Creativity, Communication (evolving digital/global), & Collaboration'. I found out the next day that these 4Cs are related to the work of Cheryl Capozzoli  ( http://web20guru.wikispaces.com/ - a great site for future education connections). The director made the prediction in his presentation that writing would become obsolete and challenged anyone in his audience to debate the prediction. I wasn't sure if he was referring to handwriting skills or the skill of organzing neural firings in the brain and expressing them in some manner so that they can be interpreted by another. I should have clarified that point as I don't think the skill of communicating your thoughts in some organized manner will become obsolete. Even if you could have your thoughts instantly fed into some computer software which imposed  The Elements of Style , spell check,  and grammatical editing on them before popping them upon a computer monitor, I would think you would still need to  review adn make some revisions of your product before making it available for public consumption. Wow, that was a long sentence. Maybe the imposition of that software on my thinking would help as I head into my last 26 or so blogs.

Learning to Blog

I'm currently at a session at a professional development conference on blogging. I have to go save something to my new gmail - oops the computer I was on just crashed and I've changed to a new computer. I've lost what it was I was supposed to save. Now we're on to starting a blog  - on http://www.blogger.com/ and sign in with my new google account. I'll be back.
When I logged into that web address it took me right back to here.

Nice idea I just got to set up a separate blog for students that I tutor. I don't tutor anyone now - but a thought for something after retriement sets in and I long for the thrill of instructional moments and money.

Now what would I call that blog - I'm open to suggestions from any followers. Maybe something like - Dr.C's Tutoree's (Thanks for keeping me from bagging groceries at Publix!). Maybe that's a little long for a blog title.

Hopefully soon we are going to learn some bells and whistles. O.K. we're going to learn some uploading tricks.

I've uploaded the picture I am typing next to right now. The reason behind this picture is because the upcoming 7th grade project on the end of the earth!! It has been a little weird typing around the picture. I'll have more on this picture. Last year I read an article on a major danger to the Earth came from cosmic wind (I think it was ) when our solar system pops above the galactic central bulge. (FYI The picture is from the website emergentculture.com. Nice info on Mayan calendar.)

Now we are going through safety settings. I think mine is set so anybody can read it. Yes, it is. Wow, I just had a look at the "stats". I had no idea so many people had visited - 8 from Poland and 8 from Russia. Spaseeba! 
Now we are supposed to play with it. How about some background color?
We can go now.

Space,Time, & Other Dimensions

My daughter gave me the book Hiding in the Mirror for Christmas. I finished reading it this past week and passed it on to a student who likes to talk about white holes, traveling faster than the  speed of light, dark matter, ... stuff like that. I must admit I didn't understand a lot of the book, especially toward the end when Krauss gets into D-branes, M-theory, different types of string theory, stuff like that. At the end I sort of got the impression he was saying that there is no physical evidence that supports any of the many mathematical theoretical constructs that suggests there are other dimensions out there or all around us. Hopefully it is something 'afterlife' will clear-up.
Not much to do this Sunday as I am pretty well planned for the next couple of weeks and  am treading curricular water between the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th bimesters. Admin moved bimester exams back a week. I missed the meeting that discussed the movement of bimester exams as I had duty and was told by the principal that if I couldn't find my own duty replacement I could get the info from someone else. I chose the latter option. My wife is in school today beavering away and I have spent the past hour checking out what jobs are out there. Not that I am seriously looking, but just for old times sake dreaming about where I might go next. I cruised TIEonline, SearchAssociates, and QSI websites and dreamed about being director of a small school in Kosovo. Maybe another lifetime.
Now for the philosophical question that will hopefully pull this Sunday morning ramble together.
Does destiny exist and if so is it evidence of another dimension?
I was reading an article not too long that said something to the effect that the temperature of the universe is decreasing which indicates a universe that is becoming more organized. Entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics concept) states that energy in a closed system (our universe) always increases. The temperature of our universe should be going up unless the universe is getting more organized. If the universe is becoming more organized what is it becoming organized to be like. Does the universe 'know' what it will be like and are all our actions part of what has to happen to make the universe that way?
In 1984 my 2nd wife, new son, and I were in Quito on a buying trip. We were going to go into the importing South American handicrafts business and leave education behind. We were a little nervous as the next paycheck was dependent on several boxes of sweaters, scarves, straw Christmas ornaments, primitive paintines, and more stuff like that reaching the USA and being desired by folks enough to pay us at least 3 times what we paid for it. We had just shipped off the last of the boxes and were wandering down Avenida (or is it Calle) Amazonas looking for a place for lunch. We had decided against going to La Fuente because we had lunch there almost everyday when we were in Quito. It was where I met artists I bought from. We started at one end of Amazonas and must have gone in 6 restaurants, but for different reasons (not open yet, bad smell, cleaning, available table not in good spot, stuff like that) we ended up at La Fuente. There we saw 2 friends who were teachers at Academia Cotopaxi. One was a high school science teacher who had just gotten his schedule for the coming year and was not happy. He asked me if I could teach high school Chemisty. I said, "Yes." He called the director and chauffered us immediately to meet the director who had jobs for us both. We looked at our baby, each other, and abandoned our handicraft business dream. Coincidence, Fate, Destiny, Dark Energy pulling us toward a dimension that exist which is the future universe where the energy of our current universe has achieved its highest level of organization before it starts to fall apart and heat up? Every person I  have interacted with since then owes our relationship to the sequence of events that pushed us to return to La Fuente. My daughter who gave me the book was born in Ecuador almost 2 years after the fateful lunch at La Fuente.
Oh well - time for lunch. Where shall I eat today?

Why teach science?

In the 1850's Herbert Spencer argued that the teaching of science should be a major priority in everyone's education. John Dewey at the turn of the century was pushing for education that involved kids in experiential exercises that improved their logic and problem solving abilities (scientific method). Today science falls somewhere around the importance of learning a foreign language in most schools. You need 3 credits to graduate.
My doctoral dissertaion was about attitudes of elementary teachers toward teaching science. The research I did back then (late 1980s) indicated that most elementary teachers were afraid of and avoided the subject. I would estimate that over the many years I  have taught middle school science I have had at most 20% of the students that are truly interested in science. Could this be a result of the fear or apathy towards science that most kids experience in elementary school or is it the nature of the subject?
I Googled "educational importance of science" and got some blogs reiterating Dewey's notion of the value is in the process of how to think and some articles on how science education has created the emerging economies of India and China, so countries need to get behind it or fall behind. Back in the 60s (when I was in elementary school and science was being shoved on to the plates of our little minds by very poorly prepared teachers because the Russians had a satellite flying overhead) the image of our competion was of the brightest young Russian scientific minds housed together in schools with the best resources. I'm not sure if that was the case. A brief search of the internet gave some indication that there was a lot of economic resources put into science education in Russia in the 60s, but I couldn't find how that impacted the average elementary school-aged Russian kid. My personal experience is that when kids who are interested in science are in classes together they feed off of each other. When they are spread among the general non-interested student population, they often tend to hide their interest - especially girls. By high school some streaming by ability happens and I have worked in middle schools which have advanced science classes for the interested, but the general rule is one size fits all - which obviously doesn't seem to fit with the U.S. education department's theme of "No Child Left Behind". Or maybe it does. No child gets left behind, but nothing is going to be done to assist the curious and talented in getting ahead. Of course there are loads of criticisms of this huge waste of taxpayer money, so I'll save that rant.
Next week I start my last 9 weeks teaching and deliver (possibly) my last professional development presentation. What will be the value in the science I wil try to teach? 8th grade starts debates on environmental issues and preparing a PowerPoint to support a  foundation they feel could make a positive difference in the world. Sixth grade plows ahead preparing for their science fair. (Dewey would be proud of the individual projects and efforts at making sense out of data collected under some attempt at controlled conditions.) The 7th grade begins exploration of our fragile planet and will begin to prepare PowerPoints on world shattering events that could (in most cases) destroy or irreparably change our lives forever. Generally subject area enthusiasm is high in 6th and 8th grade. Seventh grade I battle a peer culture of apathy for school in general and a group that is quick to laugh at effort. I wonder if ideas related to the possible impending doom of our planet will send them farther into their adolescent world encaged by their desire for peer approval.

Presentations - WILD to Cooperation

The soccer festival was partially rained out Saturday which left me motivated to complete the handout for the local educational conference next week. I worked up my handout on aspects of cooperative learning with an activity (Determining "what knowledge is of most worth" based on Spencer's 1859 view and the 2006 view of the European Union). Then I started reflecting back on what was my first professional development type presentation. Back in 1987 I was trained to be a Project WILD presentor and as part of getting trained you had to have a few presentations set-up to deliver. Those were my first - I believe. One of the hardest of those was one I delivered to a group of elementary teachers who were being paid to spend their summer studying how to teach chemistry to their kids. The grant recipients hired me to deliver a July 4th Project WILD  workshop to the group. Nobody really wanted to be there, but it went fairly well until it started to rain in the afternoon. A 1-2 hour activity of making lifesize drawing of whales in the sands of the Mississippi Gulf Coast turned in to a scramble to find activities to fill the time slot. The participants were kind though and evaluation turned out positive all things considered.

Below is the hand-out for my last professional development presentation.

Cooperative Learning – Theory to Practice
Johnson, Johnson and Holubec: "Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups through which students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning.”
Cooperative Learning in the Classroom, 1994

5 Aspects
1.Face-to-Face Promotive Interaction

Method: Encourage discussion of ideas and oral summarization.

Today’s Discussion: What knowledge is of most worth?

2. Positive Interdependence

Students must feel that they need each other in order to complete the group's task. They "sink or swim together."

Methods: jigsawing information, limiting materials, single team product, team roles (recorder, reporter), or by randomly selecting one student to answer for the team.

Today’s Roles: Chief Operating Officer, Language & Safety Monitor, Quality Control Manager, Equipment Engineer, External Affairs Representative

3. Individual Accountability/ Personal Responsibility

Students must feel that they are each accountable for helping to complete a task and for mastering material.

Today’s Method: Randomly select one person to answer.

4. Interpersonal and Collaborative Skills

Method: Actively teach social/collaborative skills like leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, conflict-management skills

Today’s Process: Include & encourage everyone in sharing, listening to, and valuing ideas.

5. Reflection/Group Processing of Interaction

Method: Give students the time and procedures to analyze how well their groups are functioning and how well they are using the necessary social/collaborative skills.

Today’s process:

As a team decide which answer best suits the way your team worked together and complete the remaining sentences.

1. Everyone shared ideas. YES NO

2. Everyone listened to each others ideas. YES NO

3. We did best at____________________________________________________________

4. Next time what could we improve at and how _____________________________________


Information for Activities

‘What Knowledge Is of Most Worth’

Recommendations of Herbert Spencer (in descending value):

(1) activities that relate directly to self-preservation,

(2) activities that indirectly minister to self-preservation,

(3) activities having to do with the rearing of offspring,

(4) activities that pertain to political and social relations,

(5) activities that relate to the leisure part of life and are devoted to the tastes and appetites.



Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union, 2006,
( in no particular order)

1. Communication in the mother tongue

2. Communication in foreign languages

3. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology

4. Digital competence

5. Learning to learn

6. Social and civic competences

7. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship

8. Cultural awareness and expression

In addition, "critical thinking, creativity, initiative, problem solving, risk assessment, decision taking, and constructive management of feelings” are considered important across all eight key competences.

Old Snail Crawling through Glue

Old age is definitely catching-up with me. I find every other night I'm waking sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 and after relieving some bladder pressure I can't get back to sleep. Only 11 or so weeks of this and then I can prowl the nights and take afternoon naps.
This week seems to have pulled itself forward like a snail through glue. It started it seems like months ago with the 8th graders completing their rocket car design experiment. This website has info on how to make rocket cars http://www.sciencefairadventure.com/ProjectDetail.aspx?ProjectID=137 .  Every student makes a rocket car and competes with their team to see whose is the best. Everyone then looks at the winning car from each team and has an opportunity to modify their team's best car so it will go the furthest on one balloon of air. All modifications need to be explained in relation to which one of Newton's Laws of Motion supports the logic behind the modification. I've done it for years and with various grade levels and kids always love it. The 7th grade is exploring acid-base reactions. They found the denisity of each of the Honduran coins on Wednesday and we then dropped the coins in acids of different strengths. Today during the double lab period they calculated how the density of the coins changed. The acids weren't too strong, so I don't think they will find much change (shucks!), but I suppose on the good side I don't have to worry about any sort of prosecution for detroying local currency. The 6th grade is collecting data for their science fair. Yesterday half the class did their experiments while the other half helped. One student was trying to test which dog food his dog preferred by holding a bowl of one brand under the dogs nose and shaking it for awhile and when he got tired of that he switched to the other brand of dog food. I had him weigh the food and then put it on 2 different plates and leave the dog alone. My most ambitious project was testing which type of dishwashing detergent is best for extracting DNA from lentil peas. The student forgot to bring the recipe for extracting DNA. After we found one on-line, she  just managed to get enough lentil peas blended to conduct the experiment before the blender burned up. But then she dumped one brand of dishwashing liquid into all the blended lentil pea mush she had. There was no lentil pea mush left to try the other 2 dishwashing liquids on, so we have to start over and now she has to blend up the lentil peas at home.
Now I have talked my way into teaching the whole pre-Algebra class basic skills once a week. They are about to arrive, so this snail needs to get the mini-whiteboards and markers set-up.

Penultimate Bimester Exam

I spent yesterday (Saturday) putting together my next bimester exams. I get a little jaded as I try to fill up 2 hours of time with the facts, concepts, and some skills (making data tables and graphs) from the past 9 weeks. I read someplace that it takes 20 minutes to properly teach a concept and 35 to teach a skill. Also, I've read that kids in best of situations retain somewhere between 10-15% of what they are taught. (I also read that over 90% of statistics are made up.) Teachers out there will have a feel that these numbers are close to accurate, though.
I have about 1800 minutes of teaching time in 9 weeks. I need to take out a week for the exams and half a week for review. That leaves about 1520 minutes per week. At 20 minutes per concept that would mean I should have 76 concepts to test. My test are about 120 questions long with a few skills and calculation type problems. Eighth grade are  velocity and acceleration and balacning chemical equations. Seventh grade are calculating density and molecular weight. Sixth grade are figuring out metric conversions and hours of daylight. If they remember 10%, then they should hang on to maybe 5 concepts and one skill. For how long will they hang on to that 10%? I'll need to do soem research on that.
Earlier in the school year I wrote a blog on SuperMemo which is this computer program that helps you learn stuff. My rudimentary understanding is that it helps you figure the optimal spacing for your review of material that you have prioritized to learn. In December I tried an experiment with some obscure (to me) Spanish verbs. I made 3 lists with 10 verbs on each list. I then studied one list every night, one list every other night, and the final list every third night for about 3 weeks until I knew all three lists perectly - 100% every night in a row for a week when my wife quizzed me. Since Christmas vacation I haven't looked at the lists. Last week I asked my wife to quiz me again. I got 8 out of 10 on every list.
I don't review facts every third day with students and certainly not 30 facts at differential intervals over and over for 3 weeks. If I did how would I choose those facts or concepts? I suppose it works out to about the same as the 76 concepts I figure I'm testing on the bimester exam. Maybe I should make the bimester exam in advance and give the kids 20 questions every day, 20 questions every other day, and 20 questions every third day for 3 weeks. Then move on to the next 60 bits of chosen information. Without review (if any are close to my pattern of recall) they would score around 80% with no studying. Of course what is the point?
Anyway onlh one more of these wretched series of bimester exams to prepare.