Zombie apologies

I have a confession and an apology for my zombie followers.

The two travel mugs of coffee did not cure my zombie state this morning. We all laugh and sigh and complain about students on the first day back to school, and how tired and out of it they are, but look at US! We are no better. After staying up to watch "Up" with the kids, dinking around on the computer doing marketing junk until after midnight, and then waking up to skunky dog farts at 6:34 this morning, I was lucky to get to work only two minutes late. D'Oh! Already busted one of my New Year's resolutions.

Luckily I saved many zombie-approved tasks for the day, allowing me to listen to the Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire on my crackberry, including but not limited to:

-drawing pretty lines on the back whiteboard for new homework checklists and word walls

-staple pulling of my absolutely destroyed old word wall

-labeling of name sticks for calculator checkout
(i WILL not lose any this year, i WILL NOT lose any!!!)

-labeling of name sticks for random calling on students
(i WILL actually draw names after the first week!)

-labeling and sorting of file folder tabs for kids to have a dumping place

-filling out my brand new school planner book for 2011
(i WILL actually write down lessons, i WILL!)

-staring off into space at the beautiful straight rows of soybeans growing on the farm just past the building (I do this every year, it's calming and there are always new and odd things in the fields each day, like snow-mobilers, random dogs without their owners, and occasionally STUDENTS.)

I hereby pledge to be a crazy productive "chase you down the hall" kind of zombie tomorrow, not the half-dead, dragging one limp foot behind the other kind. So I am off to bed! Wish me luck!

New school year's resolutions

Tomorrow is officially my first day back to work.

Not that nearly a day has passed over the summer that I wasn't doing something work-related for an hour or two. But for the most part, my attitude this summer has been "I am going to do what I want, when I feel like it". I am hoping to carry this over through the school year.

In reality, I got just as much done this summer by doing things when I felt like doing them, as I did the year before, stressing about my checklist of things that I had to do at such or such a moment. The kitchen and living room got painted and redecorated, the bushes in the front yard got replaced with flowers and a patio, I organized and actually made money off a garage sale, I wrote and published a book, planted and pruned the garden, listed to the entire collection of Jane Austen's novels and all the Hunger Games books on Audible again... and still had time to do some real "work" every day! So the plan now, is how to carry this care-free attitude over into work life. Hence the resolutions for the new school year. Feel free to start taking bets on how many I can keep.

Resolution #1: STOP SENDING NOVEL-LENGTH EMAILS
I can save my rants and ramblings for this blog. No one at work has time to read or understand half of what I type and send into the digital world. If I can't say it in 1-2 paragraphs, I need to get off my lazy behind and either pick up the phone or walk to visit the person I want to talk to.

Resolution #2: GET TO WORK ON TIME
No more hitting the snooze ten times, doing my makeup in the car, showing up 5 minutes after my expected time and scrambling to make last-minute copies before the school day begins. Heck, while I'm being totally unrealistic, how about arriving 5 minutes EARLY!?!?

Resolution #3: NO MORE UNSOLICITED OVER-PLANNING
I am NOT the team lead. I am NOT an island. I do NOT need to make xcel spreadsheets with eight million tabs, with data sorted and analyzed in ten different ways. I do NOT need to have every decision made and all my planning and copying done two weeks ahead of time. The time has come to accept the fact that things will change day-to-day, and to actually work with my team as a team.

Resolution #4: DUCT TAPE MY MOUTH SHUT DURING MEETINGS
My opinion and/or approval is not needed on every little aspect of every minute of the school day. The school functioned just fine before I got hired there, and will continue to function just fine, should I happen to drop dead tomorrow. Yes I would probably be missed for a while, but I'd eventually be replaced with someone probably equally as talented.

Resolution #5: CURB THE NEGATIVITY
I tried this last year and failed miserably. I hope that I am in a better place now. No one wants to hear my rants, complaining and sarcasm. Well, maybe the sarcasm... let's go with one obnoxious comment per hour. I'll start a checklist on a clip-board and put smiley faces when I stick to my goal :o)

Resolution #6: CORRECTING DOES NOT NEED TO BE DONE IN A DAY
It took God seven days to create the world, and no one was bugging him for status reports. If I program my students and parents to expect my portal and website to be updated on a daily basis, I'm going to be up until midnight every night. Oh wait, I am anyway. Maybe it can be doing something with my late nights instead of work this year. Like blogging!

Resolution #7: NO WORKING ON THE WEEKEND
This is going to be a tough one, but with more prep time and only one subject (math) to teach, it might just be doable. I am just waiting for my kids to go to pre-school and start drawing pictures of Mommy glued to the computer (as I am right now). It's not good for them, my eyes, my marriage, or my knees. (I am addicted to sitting cross-legged in my desk chair whenever I'm working.)

And on that note, I think it's time to sign off. Here's hoping I can stick to it! If any readers have additional resolutions for me to add, I promise I won't get offended. Comment away.

Bungee Barbie! and CCSS : My rebuttal

I recently came across this disturbing article by Kathleen Porter-Magee:

Common Core + Bungee Jumping Barbie = Epic Fail

I had just finished reading about the Bungee Barbie experiment in my NEA magazine, and couldn't wait to try it out in my classroom. It aligns with our standards, is research-based and endorsed by NCTM, and above all, is hilariously funny! Check out these sample links for yourself.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?id=L646

http://www.themathlab.com/Algebra/linear%20functions%20regressions%20slope/regression%20lessons/barbie%20bungee/barbbungee.htm

So after reading Kathleen's uninformed dismissal of Barbie as an "Epic Fail", (I can just see her bawling her eyes out in the cardboard box in the back of Andy's Mom's car in Toy Story) I just couldn't help but write a rebuttal. So go ahead, read her article, and then my response posted at the bottom of her blog. (also listed here). Weigh in on it, tell me what you think!

(begin response)
Mandy Bellm

Posted August 27, 2011 at 3:08 PM

Kathleen,
I find it pretty insulting to list “Bungee Barbie” in the title, followed by “Epic Fail” if you don’t take the time to research and understand the math behind it. The Common Core Standards are a necessary step forward for the USA, standardizing expectations across states so that all students are held to the same standards. Many of the states that quickly signed onto CCSS were able to do so because the standards and benchmarks were actually below what they already require of their students. I teach in Minnesota, and that is for sure the case here with our new 2007 standards. And isn’t that the goal of education? To not only meet the standards, but to surpass them?

Looking around the globe at top-performing nations in mathematics, Finland and Singapore (and even Canada) surpass the USA and have common core standards that focus on higher-order thinking skills and problem-solving in realistic situations. While I agree with you that some drill and practice, and some summary tasks are needed, they cannot be the bulk of instruction time. The Bungee Barbie experiment is not meant to teach slope or linear regression in and of itself. The big idea, or essential skill, is to look for patterns in the distance that barbie falls, compared to the number of rubber bands tied to her feet, and to use that information to predict much larger scales of bungee drops than could ever be simulated in the classroom.

NCTM’s Illuminations website has the entire lesson planned out for you. It’s not hard to follow. Check out the link below.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?id=L646

The explicit skills to be taught by the experiment are highly valuable for a number of careers and are expressed in the standards as well. Designing, conducting, reporting and analyzing data from an experiment are critical skills. Accuracy of measurement leads to discussions of multiple trials and central tendency. Data collection and reporting builds fundamental graphing skills and a firm understanding of independent and dependent variables. Analysis of the data for a best fit line leads to deeper understanding of slope and linear relationships because students can visualize exactly how the number of rubber bands affects the distance barbie can fall without hitting her head on the ground. And lastly, students achieve an enormous sense of accomplishment when they can use the information to make predictions, and then test and confirm their results. You can bet they will have their iPhones and Android video recorders out on the day they chuck Barbie off the school balcony, because they sense that it is something big and meaningful. And they will remember it for the rest of their lives. How often does that happen in school anymore?

Now obviously any decent teacher is going to teach foundational skills either before or in concordance with an experiment of this magnitude. A very firm understanding of the goals and objectives and learning outcomes is needed so that it doesn’t turn into, as you call it, “throwing Barbies around the room”. And THIS is the big item that sets the USA apart from Singapore and Finland. We go around and around with what we should teach, and when we should teach it, and change our minds and change our minds again, but teachers need time to plan and test and work with their teams to adopt well-paced, focused and meaningful curriculum. Finland teachers have nearly half of their teaching day set aside for planning effective instruction, and mentor support for improving their skills throughout their career (not just in the first 1-3 years). Students are graded on the progress they make against their OWN prior knowledge, not against that of their peers.

The current testing atmosphere in the USA is quite a bit like running a race. Very few students come out as "winners". I’m sure all of us adults would love to enter a marathon and have our finishing times published and compared with the rest of the field, based on some predetermined groups such as our age or socioeconomic background or race or gender. And, by the way, no consideration is given at all to our physical health or athleticism, nor what training resources and time we had, or where we lived, or if we had a family that supported us emotionally and economically through the whole process. But that's not how it works. We gauge our success in the race on if we beat our time goal, or came in a certain place, based on realistic expectations. Somehow we forget that with kids. And how awful it must make them feel when they fail over and over and over again.

The powers that be need to make up their minds, and quickly, about what education in the USA will mean for future generations. This focus on high-stakes testing MUST be re-purposed into a tool for meaningful improvement. NOT punishment. Whether or not the current state standards, or the new CCSS, or some other listed of standardized benchmarks are used, the mindset behind their use is going to determine whether they are successful. And lay off Barbie, please! Look at the laughs Barbie and Ken got in the Toy Story series. Teens of this generation will laugh and learn and retain much more about linear regression from Bungee Barbie they ever did the antiquated “bouncing ball” version of the same experiment. I will personally post the pictures on my blog in a few months after my accelerated math class knocks this one out of the park. (end response)

Why you may or may not be a math zombie.

Welcome, oh adventurous reader, to the first post of my new blog! 

It is currently 10:53 on the Friday before my summer break is officially over. The kids are asleep. A big fat tabby cat is purring contentedly in my lap. My empty bottle of Lipton diet citrus green tea is staring at me conspiratorially from across the desk, as is the half-eaten bag of peanut M&M's that my son got for his birthday. I can hear the naughty voice in the back of my head whispering again... "Just one more (caffeinated) tea, it's only 10:30! Think of how much more you can get done while they sleep! Go ahead and pop a couple of those peanut M&M's into your mouth, Ethan will never notice the difference!" Okaaay, maybe just a few. And what would another tea hurt... I can always nap tomorrow! Or do laundry... or catch up on the dishes... or weed the garden... or get ahead on school work! Oh, you get the idea.

So the big question for this overzealous, underpaid, obsessive-compulsive, bipolar young math teacher, wife, and mother of two young boys is, WHY IN GOD'S NAME START A BLOG? Don't you have enough to do? Why don't you go play with your kids? Don't you have any hobbies? Spend some time with that husband! GO TO BED! But that same annoying voice in my head convinced me to crack another Lipton just now, and it's telling me to hurry up and say what I've got to say so that maybe I CAN turn my brain off and get some sleep. I don't know if anyone besides myself will want to read this, but maybe someone else out in computer land can relate, or can laugh at me, or can laugh with me. Maybe I can help someone. Maybe I can change the world, one crazy zombie math teacher at a time! Ha!

So you're probably wanting a little background about the name of this blog. It fits me and my career on so many levels. First, obviously, getting no sleep makes me LOOK like a zombie. Or a vampire. Didn't we learn anything about sleepless nights and black circles under eyes from Edward and the Cullen clan? I like to joke with my students about my cold hands, and to keep their paper cuts far away from me, and of course that's why I never sleep! But I diverge. Back to zombies... we've all had math teachers who acted like zombies; rattling on and on in a monotone like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, making us take page after page of boring notes, assigning worksheet after worksheet of drill-and-practice problems, forcing us to complete the even book problems since the odd answers were given in the back. That is the literal, negative zombie comparison, but not the one that I want anyone to remember.  

My working definition of a Math Zombie, is to have a weird obsession with all things math, that grows and festers if not satisfied and challenged. Math is a living thing that cannot be confined to the classroom walls, to pencils and paper and rulers. A real Math Zombie breaks out of the traditional mold, in "Thriller" fashion, infecting the digital world, music, movement, sports, art, and any other medium in which they can spread math out into the real world. "It's ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE!" And... I also think that I come up with the craziest, most zombie-like ideas late at night, when I am dead-tired and totally uninhibited by logic or reason. So if you've made it this far, and it made any sense to you, keep reading my blog! You may be a zombie too.