Teaching Technically

Web Site Design Lesson Plans

2010-01-10T08:51:00.000-08:00

Free lesson plans for high school web site design courses are available at highschoolwebdesign.com. The site contains a complete, 12 week course, including:

Projects with step-by-step instructions
Rubrics
Screenshots
Powerpoint presentations

If you teach web site design, check this one out!

Business Or Marketing?

2009-10-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

There remains a great divide between business teachers and marketing teachers. People not in our field rightfully wonder, what the heck is the difference? Our state's Department of Education recently realized that there was so much overlap between business education and marketing education that they combined these two fields into one license. But it wasn't always that way.

Business Education

The business education license was for what we traditionally think of as vocational education. These teachers taught things like keyboarding, office procedures, accounting, computer applications, and finance.

Marketing Education

Teachers licensed in this area taught marketing & sales, and ran our school stores.

Business and Marketing Education / Career and Technical Education

Within the last five years, Federal legislation changed Vocational Education to Career and Technical Education, and our state combined the business and marketing licenses into Business and Marketing Education. Teachers in this new era teach all of the classes taught above, along with disparate subjects such as: A+ certification, computer programming, sports marketing, and work based learning.

The Divide Remains

Despite the new combined license, the divide between business and marketing educators remains, and I can see this very clearly through the organizations I belong to:

DECA is an organization for marketing students that teaches skills such as: sales demonstrations, marketing plans, business plans, public speaking, and employment interviews.

BPA is an organization for business students that teaches skills such as: financial analysis, web site design, economic analysis, and computer networking.

I've been an advisor for chapters of both organizations. It's like the two groups are from different planets. The BPA people are the geeks and the DECA people are the suits. Geeks complain that the suits don't have any technical knowledge, and suits complain that the geeks don't have any business knowledge.

I see myself more as a business guy than a marketing guy. I find the DECA / Marketing crowd rather annoying, to be honest. I'm interested in making things that work, not in pushing products. However, I see the value in both. The business / marketing divide is a religious war of sorts, both groups talking completely past each other, neither bothering to listen to what the other has to say.

It's like this. If everyone was a Linus Trovalds, we'd have great technology but no one would know about it. If everyone was Steve Ballmer, we'd have a bunch of commercials with nothing to actually sell. What we need are more Joel Spolskys. People who can do both.

Starting A Business

2009-09-27T10:54:00.001-07:00

Good teachers have experience in their respective fields. Good English teachers have been published; good technology teachers have worked in industry; and good business teachers have run their own businesses.

I ran a business a few years ago when I was in college, selling a product I wrote called Attendance Management System. The software tracked attendance for nonprofits such as churches, scout troops, and other community organizations. The profits weren't gigantic, netting about $130 per month, but it was a fun little endeavor.

I'm in the process of re-introducing the product with plans to roll out an online version later this school year.

Starting a business is not as hard as a lot of people think, and for me, it's more of a hobby than anything else. Coming up with an idea is difficult sometimes, but in my case, I wrote the software in my free time specifically for an organization that I belonged to and only later decided to offer it to other people.

There must be something that you can make or a service that you already provide that others would find useful. When you start a business, you can share it with others and make a little money besides.

Swine Flu, Anyone?

2009-09-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

Do you think you'll catch the swine flu this year? It's a bit hard to imagine how the virus WON'T spread when you cram over two thousand students with poor sanitary habits into a single building, and they spend six hours with each other in close proximity.

At least one of our staff members has already contracted and recovered from the virus. In the first two weeks of school, a larger than expected number of students are showing flu-like symptoms. The school nurse has a mandate from the state department of health to send home anyone showing these symptoms. Sick students and staff are required to stay home for 24 hours after their fevers break, which usually takes five days.

Some say that these measures are overreactions to an overhyped problem. It's true that the H1N1 virus in its current form is relatively harmless, but it's still smart to take precautions. We might not be able to stop the spread of the virus, but we should do anything we can to at least slow it down
One of the high schools in our state already has 20% of the student population home with flu symptoms, and there are other districts with very high absence rates as well.

My theory is that it's a foregone conclusion that a large population of students and staff will probably contract the virus sometime throughout the year and that we should just accept it. Vaccines should be available in my state around mid-October. Swine flu is a not a reason for panic, but we shouldn't get complacent, either.

Why I Could Never Be President

2009-09-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

President Obama recently came to my city for a health care rally, and I was one of the fifteen thousand enthusiastic attendees. He pitched his health care reform plan, and for the record, I support it, even if I have some reservations about it. Mr. Obama's approval rating has been slipping lately. When assessing his performance, I count myself in the "approve" column, and I'd vote for him again if I could.

The reason I could never be president is that it seemed like the average IQ of the crowd that day was right around the 60 mark. I mean really, I couldn't believe some of these people.

After the President used empirical evidence and logical reasoning to describe some of the failings of our current health care system, the crowd's response was, "We have to do something!!" I got the impression that no one had any idea what that something should be, or even where to start.

It concerns me greatly when people have very strong opinions on topics about which they have limited knowledge, even if I happen to agree with those opinions.

The atmosphere was very us-versus-them. We are benevolent and they are greedy. We believe tax dollars should be shared with the sick and they want to let people die so they can keep their money.

The truth is, the health issue is not nearly that simple, nor is the tax issue. Conservatives have legitimate concerns about the health plan just as much as liberals have legitimate concerns about our current system. Instead of addressing the other side's concerns, our political discourse has devolved into name calling.

Understanding the issue is not important; forming tribes and outgroups is. Democrats accuse Republicans of name calling, and Republics accuse Democrats of it, and both sides say the other side does it more. Let's please stop this nonsense and start having some intellectual discussions based on logic and evidence.

The president listed some features of his plan: insurance companies would not be able to put caps on coverage, they could not exclude customers with preexisting conditions, and they would have to compete against a publicly subsidized insurance organization.

The crowd went wild. Again I hesitatingly agree with the President's plan for various reasons, but I also recognize that it has downsides. You can't add those extra burdens on insurance companies and not expect premiums to go up, all else being equal. But again, the crowd was one-sided as could be, and failed to even consider the opposing arguments.

So the reason I could not be president is that I'd have to work and fight for a bunch of narrow-minded, ignorant sheep. Mr. Obama is smarter that this; he does see both sides, as demonstrated in some of his interviews. But the very people he is fighting for don't even understand or appreciate the reasons for the battle. That's why I could never be president.

In our classrooms, we need to teach critical thinking skills to our students. Take the other person's perspective. Use logic. Understand the difference between normative and positive statements. Be smart.

Leaving Work At Work

2009-09-19T18:57:00.001-07:00

This year, I have not brought work home a single time, and I never intend to. This new philosophy is working very well. I work hard when I'm working, and I relax when I'm not. I took the advice of several readers and decided to move some distance away from my district. The decision was a great one.

There is more separation between home life and work life now. I'm not constantly thinking about school. I'm not worrying about when I'll get around to grading those papers, because they're at school and I've already graded them.

This is only possible because of all the legwork I put in last year and over the summer. This year, I'm committed to avoiding the death march. I've taught all of these classes before, so preparing for class is SIGNIFICANTLY less work. That first year is brutal, but now it's relatively smooth sailing. People in my life have commented that I seem much less stressed this year than in past years.

When I was a student teacher, mentors often told me that it takes three years to really get into a groove and find your style. This is my third year, and teaching does seem much more natural now. I know the kind of teacher I am, and I'm comfortable with it.

In case you're curious, my classes are going very well so far. I look forward to going to work in the morning. Mondays excite me!

It's still not a 40-hour-a-week job; I'd say it's 50, minimum. But it's what I do. It's part of who I am, and I really like this career. It's just no longer ALL of who I am, and that's a good thing.

Wealth And Health

2009-08-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Teachers don't make much money. Poor people are have short lifespans. There is a well-established relationship between wealth and health. Reasons for this are many, but I think one factor is the differences in the quality of housing that people can afford. We teachers have made a deliberate trade-off between income and how we spend our workdays. Housing quality is one thing we are giving up, and along with it, our health. I've been renting for ten years because I don't have the financial strength to buy a house, and each place I've rented has been less than ideal. These observations are from the places I've lived:

For three years, I lived in rental units next to paper mills and could frequently smell the emissions.
My college dorms did not have a usable kitchen, forcing us to eat the only moderately healthy fare served in the cafeteria for a year, causing some of my classmates to gain the infamous freshman fifteen.
One rental property was in a basement with the upstairs owner's cat's litter box right outside the door, which they never changed. This owner, one day without warning, decided to re-varnish the floor upstairs. His family escaped the fumes by taking a week-long camping trip, leaving us basement renters to either suck in the fumes or take to the streets.
One place had an untested private well, producing water so bad that it was impossible to drink. The only option was to buy bottled water from the local Wal-Mart.
Every multi-unit building I've been in has had a smoker in the building.
In one rental, the vents from each unit were connected, so that when one person smoked, everyone in the building got it.
My new unit has a leaky gas oven which I'm currently fighting about with the landlord. It may be enough for me to break the lease if it's not fixed.
Several rentals have been very old, with plumbing and electrical systems to match. The electrical outlets do not have ground wires. The plumbing systems might contain lead. There is undoubtedly exposed lead paint.

I hesitate to play the victim game because I probably could have avoided some of these problems had I been more diligent and selective in my housing search. But some of these things truly were beyond my control – information that I couldn't have found out until I was actually living in the place, and by that time, it was legally impossible to get out of the lease (trust me, I tried).

Many of us, especially those of us in the business content area, could be making much more money if we pursued careers in the private sector. We all knew about the income hit when we took this job, but did we consider the hit to our health? Is it worth it?

New Class Lists

2009-08-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

I raced through all of my new class lists today, scanning for names of students I know. I became very afraid when I saw some of the names! I had one of those classes from hell last year at the middle school, and I was really hoping that some of the students (incoming freshmen this year) would decide to take someone's classes other than mine. Lo and behold, some of these challenging students decided they liked me so much that they want to spend another whole semester with me!

I'm going in with an open mind, and I'm not going to pre judge them. But these one or two students have the ability to single handedly destroy an entire class if the teacher lets them. I'm not going to be the teacher who lets them this year.

I'll have to be careful not to single them out. I won't treat them any differently from anyone else, UNLESS they give me a reason to. I'll be much quicker in administering disciplinary measures than I was in the past. When students get away with one thing, they basically have license to keep misbehaving. My goal will be to create an atmosphere of LEARNING from the very first day. I'll have to be vigilant to maintain this atmosphere throughout the term.

I want to emphasize that most of my students are great. I'm just talking about one or two here, but that's all it takes to destroy a learning atmosphere sometimes.

Another random observation about my class lists: each year, there are more and more students whose names I can't pronounce. We have a pretty high population of immigrant families in this community. This is one extra challenge that I didn't have to face at the rural district I taught at two years ago. Overall, these students are very hard working and well behaved, it's just that learning their names takes some extra effort. Effort that is well spent.

Has Jeff Atwood Jumped The Shark?

2009-08-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: I love Jeff Atwood's blog and think he is a great asset to the programming community. A lot of what I know about programming, I've learned from him. His new business, Stack Overflow, has helped programmers all over the world get answers to their technical questions.

But I sometimes wonder how his business has become so successful when his business knowledge is so apparently lacking. Here are summaries of a few of his recent posts:

Software Pricing: Are We Doing It Wrong?

Jeff thinks that if Microsoft would radically lower the price of its Windows operating system, the increased sales volume would more than make up for the lower margins.

I teach this concept in my Marketing classes, and it's called Elasticity of Demand. I draw a demand curve on the board for elastic products and inelastic products, and show the differing sizes of the rectangles under each curve when the price changes, and then we eventually conclude that revenue is maximized when the price is set to the point on the demand curve where elasticity = 1.

Had he known this, Mr. Atwood would probably realize that Microsoft has certainly considered the question of pricing very carefully and set their prices very deliberately. He would also realize that the price elasticity of demand for Microsoft Windows does not make his suggestion feasible.

Oh, You Wanted "Awesome" Edition

Here, he says that the Microsoft marketing department is run by weasels because they charge different prices for different editions of their software. As if charging different prices for essentially the same product is some new and radical thing.

I teach this to ninth graders in Intro To Marketing, too. Companies do this with all sorts of products, from breakfast cereals and computers to rock concerts and plane rides. It turns out that there are good and valid reasons for this. But Mr. Atwood chalks it up to "marketing weasels".

What's totally baffling, though, is that he's doing this with his own product, the Stack Exchange engine, even after decrying the practice.

Jeff Atwood is a great blogger, teacher, and programmer. But some of his opinions (including his suggestion to open source his product and destroy his own income stream) show a lack of knowledge of basic, fundamental business concepts.

America is prosperous because of entrepreneurs like Jeff Atwood. One day, some of our students will become entrepreneurs. Let's give them the knowledge they need to be successful. There is value in high school business education.

Makes you wonder who else has jumped the shark.

Photo courtesey Stack Overflow

Are You A Workaholic?

2009-08-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

Most teachers are goal-oriented people. Most are either guardians or idealists. We are not in this profession for the money; we have a deeply rooted dedication to our students and our jobs.

I've been doing some reflecting lately and have discovered that I just might be one of those workaholics we're always reading about. I'm really excited for the upcoming school year. I've been planning, updating, and organizing. I started the summer starting a software company that fell through. Even in my time off, I'm productive.

But I do it because I like my work. In Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida argues that workers today choose careers for different reasons than we did a generation ago. Money is no longer the biggest motivator. People in the creative professions choose jobs that they intrinsically enjoy. Creativity does not always happen from 9 to 5. Creative workers are churning ideas even on their time off. Creative people like their work.

I've always been goal oriented. I've accomplished a lot of difficult goals, including getting my pilot's license and starting a business. My life, to a large extent, is based around projects. If I'm not doing something productive, I don't quite feel alive. But I do know how to relax – on the weekends, all of my projects are suspended and I'm out enjoying the weather, my friends, and my family. Also, not all of my projects are work related.

That I'm always working on projects and goals, and that a lot of these projects and goals are related to my career, might be a symptom of workaholism. Or it might just mean that I'm doing what I love. I'm not sure.

Computer Science: Which Language To Teach?

2009-08-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

Arguing about which language to teach is a favorite pastime of computer science teachers. This is one of those religious wars that will never go away, like Mac/Windows. It should be a language that:

Teaches fundamental object oriented programming concepts
Teaches functional programming concepts
Teaches algorithms and data structures
Allows students to get results fairly quickly (with a relatively shallow learning curve)
Is widely used in industry
Allows students to create graphical user interfaces fairly quickly

This has been extensively discussed elsewhere on the web, and experts have offered varying opinions:

C/C++

Many modern languages derive their syntax from C, so learning C first makes it easy to learn other languages later. C supports pointers, recursion, and data structures, and introduces students to memory management. Higher level languages abstract away these concepts, but it's still important that students understand them. C++ is fully object oriented. Both are still widely used. The main benefit of using these languages is that they introduce students to core computer science topics.

On the con side, they have a steep learning curve and a cumbersome syntax. They are low level languages, which means that it take much more effort to create a working solution, such as a full featured GUI app.

Java

Java is fully object oriented and is a great language to choose if your goal is to teach OOP. It has some vocal critics who argue that students miss out on learning functional programming. It's platform independent and used all over the place. This is the language used in the AP Computer Science curriculum. I think it's a great place to start. Its major weakness is that creating GUI applications is very difficult in Java.

Another great thing about Java is that it is free and open source. There are many free editors and IDEs available as well.

C# .NET

Microsoft Visual Studio makes it easy for developers to create event-driven GUI applications. The language C# is very similar to Java. It's very widely used in the commercial sector. This would probably be my first choice, because it includes all of the benefits of Java with an easy to use GUI creator. The major downside is that Microsoft charges big licensing fees to use it. Some teachers don't like the fact that Visual Studio almost makes coding too easy, the way it automatically corrects errors as you type and gives you syntax hints along the way.

There are ways to code C# for free with the SharpEdit tool and Mono, but they're more cumbersome that Visual Studio

Visual Basic .NET

VB uses the same development environment as C# but has a different syntax which some say is easier for beginners to understand. However, learning Visual Basic first will make it more difficult for students to transition to languages with a syntax derived from C later.

PHP

PHP has many critics too, but I think it's a good choice, especially since version 5, which is fully object oriented. There are several reasons I don't use it in my classes:

It requires a deep knowledge of XHTML, which my students don't have.
The only types of programs it allows you to make are web apps (unless you also learn GTK)
Debugging is difficult
A semester course would give students just enough knowledge to create web apps but not enough knowledge to make SECURE web apps. I don't want students to hang themselves.

Python

I don't know much about Python other than the fact that it is becoming increasingly popular in high schools and universities.

Others: Ruby, Scheme, Haskell, Delphi/Pascal, Assembler, LISP

These languages have some great strengths but are missing a few bullet points on what I consider to be essential characteristics of a first programming language. They are either difficult to use, not used in industry, or have very limited scopes.

Conclusions

For now, Java is a great choice, but it will undoubtedly be displaced by something else in the future. C# has a lot of strengths, but it's expensive.

Where Do Teachers Live?

2009-07-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

How important is it that teachers live in the same community in which they teach? Does living in your school's community create more school spirit or community pride? How important is that for teachers?

I find myself facing this decision for the second time. Last year, I taught in a very rural community (pop. 10,000) about twenty minutes away from a medium size city (pop 90,000). I chose to reside in the small town where I worked. It was very nice being so close to school; I could just hop to work in a couple of minutes if I wanted to. Deciding whether to attend after-school events was trivial. Had I lived in the larger community further away, I would have attended fewer school functions, commuted more, and spent more on transportation.

Honestly, though, I didn't really enjoy living in the small town all that much. I got bored. My personal and social life would have been better had I actually lived where the action was.

I'm faced with the same choice this year. I live three miles from my suburban school now and my lease is up at the end of August. Do I stay out in the burbs or go into the city? I've lived in the city before and rather liked it. The commute would be about 15 minutes, which really isn't that terrible. Many other teachers at this district commute in. But still, there's something about actually living in the community, right?

Part of me likes the idea of having a bit more distance between my work life and my home life, but part of me likes the idea of being a bona fide resident of my school district.

What do you think?

Avoiding The Death March

2009-07-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

Last year, I discussed how teaching can be compared to a death march and how easy it is to become overworked and burnt out. Almost all of my time was spent on work last year, so I'd like to be a bit more prepared this year.

Fortunately, I've already taught all of the classes I'm scheduled for before, which means I've got a good set of lesson plans for them already. Of course, I'll be making some changes to the classes, but the fact that I've taught them before will significantly reduce the amount of prep time for the classes.

I'm going one step further. This summer, I'm laying out the lesson plans week-by-week, so when I ask myself what I should do in class that week, I can just look in my file and pull out a bunch of lessons. That's not to say that I won't be customizing the lessons of course. But it will help tremendously.

I'm also making some changes to my grading procedures. I'm going to research some web-based tools to help me grade keyboarding papers. Also, I won't be grading every single Java program line by line. I'll do this for some, but I'll be spot checking others to make sure they compile and run properly.

I'll also tighten up my policy for late work. I've accepted late work in the past and assessed a minor penalty for it. The point deduction will be much higher next year, and students will not be able to turn in work that is more than one week late.

I have to say that I'm getting pretty excited to get into the classroom again. I'm really excited for what we'll be doing with DECA as well. The rest of the summer will go really fast.

What Are You Doing This Summer?

2009-06-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm starting a software business. Yes, that's all. In order for the business to have any chance of success at all, I need the entire summer uninterrupted. I've never worked on my own for an entire summer at a time, so I'm not sure how this will go. But I think these factors will be crucial to its success:

When you're working, work; and when you're not, don't.
Block out long chunks of uninterrupted time to work.
Treat the new business like a job. Start and stop working at the same time each day.
Maintain work/life balance. I'll still be going to the cabin on weekends this summer for some fishing, water skiing, and mountain biking.
Have a specific goal to complete each day. Actually, 90 minute blocks of time work well for mini-goals.
The initial enthusiasm I have for this business will eventually wane. Use motivational techniques to stay focused.

I have a few other things on my plate this summer as well:

Trips to the cabin and to visit friends and relatives on the weekends
Daily morning bike rides to stay energized and in shape
Eat a healthy diet and reduce the amount of money I'm spending at restaurants.
Read two books per month. The first couple of days this summer will probably be spent just reading.

A few things on my list are actually school-related:

I'll be taking a class to become certified to teach AP Computer Science. The class takes one week in June.
Meet with the new DECA officers at least once this summer to plan next year's Program of Work
Luckily, each class I teach next year is one that I've taught before. However, the curricula are in need of updates and improvements. Spend some time on this, but not until August.

It's important that teachers have purposeful summers. I don't say that because I think teachers should stay productive; I say that because if your summer isn't purposeful, I think you'd get bored really fast. Last summer was busy for me. For the first time since high school, I acted in a play. It was aweseome. I also took some classes and did a bunch of other things. But teachers definitely need to take proactive steps to stay busy during the summer.

It's doubtful that I'll be updating this blog much throughout the summer. I plan on taking a complete break from all things kids and education for a while. I haven't decided whether or not I'll keep writing next school year.

Writing this blog has been a great experience. Thanks to all of my readers and commenters. Have a restful and purposeful summer!

Best of Teaching Technically

2009-06-08T10:00:00.001-07:00

Here are my favorite ten articles on this blog this year. These are definitely worth checking out if you missed them.

That's So Gay: Overcoming Homophobia

Hockey and the Purpose of Education

Where Are All the Rationals?

Death March

Are You Going Through A Rough Spot?

I'm The Real Facebook Narcissist

Smart And Gets Things Done

Flipping The Bozo Bit

Multitasking

Letting Students Experience Failure

Year In Review

2009-06-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of things I learned this year and things I'd like to improve next year:

Inspect what you expect. It's OK to give students responsibilities, but don't give them more than they can handle, and hold them accountable.

Maintain high academic expectations. If students know that they can get away with substandard work, they will. Don't let them. They won't learn anything that way.

Maintain a proper work/life balance. My workout routine took a major hit this year. There were some reasons for that other than work, but physical fitness needs to be a very high priority.

Don't get too involved. This is only a job.

Establish routines and stick to them. Students need predictability and clarity of expectations. This includes everything from how to request hallway passes to when to sharpen a pencil to grading and attendance policies.

Unfortunately, I've learned that teenagers can't be trusted. They make promises they can't keep; they cheat, lie, and steal; they don’t follow through; they bicker and complain; and they generally act like immature teenagers. I thought that my job would be teaching. It's more like 10% teaching and 90% babysitting.

Making Waves

2009-06-04T12:35:00.001-07:00

The district has upgraded me to a full time teaching schedule for next year. I'll be teaching more programming and technology classes, which I'm excited about. I can definitely see the Business department changing direction since I replaced our previous Marketing teacher. We're moving more toward a Business focus and away from a Marketing focus:

Our School Store program is being reduced.
Our Sales and School Store Seminar classes have been cut.
Our OJT program has been cut.
We added a new Web Site Design course for 2009-2010
We'll be adding an AP Computer Science course for 2010-2011
Our DECA program continues its strong growth.

Overall, I like the new direction we're going. Almost all of these changes are a direct result of me, a more business-oriented person, being in the building instead of last year's teacher, who was much more of a marketing-oriented person. I personally advocated and/or introduced most of these changes myself.

My Last Job

I spoke to my friend who took the job I held at a rural high school last year. He informed me that his position has been reduced to a part-time gig because the district has decided to cut the OJT program there. That program was managed by the same exceptional teacher for 10 years in a row. Then I came in and took it over for a year, and now my friend is running it. He's currently looking for another job.

So I've only been a professional educator for two years, but I've already made or contributed to important and lasting changes at two separate school districts. When you enter the teaching profession, you assume large responsibilities. What you do in your school can have widespread systemic effects.

Are We There Yet?

2009-05-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

Nine days to go and my mind is already long gone. I remember feeling this way last year too. I'm so ready to be done with immature kids and move on to other things. I have a big goal for the summer: to start my second software company. I've already been spending a lot of time on it. When it's ready, I'll be announcing details of the business on this blog.

Plus, there's been quite a bit of forward movement in my social life lately, which I've been giving much more priority to than school. And, the temperature is rising and everyone is pretty much pent up and ready to get outside, up to the cabin, to go fishing and swimming and biking and camping.

Surprisingly, the buzz on teacherlingo.com is still all about education and pedagogy. Kudos to everyone for staying so focused so late in the year. How do you do it?

Nine more days!

Nine more days!

Smart And Gets Things Done

2009-05-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

Which is more important: being smart or getting things done? In other words, should people be commended for coming up with really brilliant ideas, or for working really hard at turning those ideas into reality? I agree with Joel Spolsky when he says that both are important.

Being smart includes:

Being creative, that is, synthesizing existing concepts in novel ways in order to develop solutions to problems.
Thinking outside the box.
Developing new ideas.

Getting things done includes:

A strong work ethic.
The self-discipline and perseverance to see a task through to completion.
Project management skills.

Being Smart

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is smart and gets things done. His idea for a social networking site was nothing short of brilliant. But the business only exists because he did something with his idea.

Getting Things Done

When I started my first software company, I had no idea how much work it was going to be. Had I known, I probably wouldn't have even made the attempt. My business was successful because I had a smart idea and got things done. I needed both.

In The Classroom

How are we preparing our students to be smart and get things done? Which do you emphasize most in your classrooms? It seems to me that most K-12 educators focus more on the "gets things done" side of the house. We're more interested in the fact that students complete the assigned work, following our instructions to the letter, than the ideas that students come up with.

If students don't have clear instructions, they become totally lost. All but the very brightest students are unable to come up with creative ideas on their own. We're producing a generation that is really great at following instructions and copying examples.

Making the Facebooks and Googles of the world is a lot of work. But it also requires creativity. Let's not forsake one for the other.

Teaching Is Not Life

2009-05-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

There are some days when I would be glad to never see another teenager again. I mean really. There are 24 days left of school, and summer could not come fast enough! Sometimes I'd rather just sit in a dark corner and get paid to write computer code all day. It's not just the kids. This profession draws a personality type that is quite different than my own. I miss the conversations with my old co-workers about three phrase power generation, artificial neural networks, Monty Python, and rubber chickens.

Wait – it sounds here like I'm complaining. I'm not. This is a great job and I'm extremely grateful for it – and by the way, the trip to LA was super fantastic – and this is just such a great career, and I don't think I'll ever change jobs. But still, teaching is not life.

My original plan for this article was to write a long prose about how many other great things there are in life besides teaching, and how engaging in those other things can enhance your entire life, including your professional life. What are those things for you?

Lately, I've been thinking about some other things that are much more important than this job!

I usually put some sort of judgmental moralistic declaration at the end of my posts but I think I'll skip it this time.

Begging The Question Has Literally Jumped The Shark

2009-04-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

A few additions to my Annoying Phrases List. These rank right up there with I Know Right.

Begging the question when you really mean raising the question.

Saying literally when you really mean figuratively.

Wait. What?

I Know, Right? (added here again just for good measure).

I'm The Real Facebook Narcissist

2009-04-15T17:40:00.000-07:00

May I have your attention please? Will the real Facebook narcissist please stand up? I repeat, will the real Facebook narcissist please stand up? We're gonna have a problem here.

Have you ever noticed how almost all Facebook updates are thinly veiled attempts to broadcast and show off how awesome one's life is and make everyone else insanely jealous? Some recent examples from my own Facebook friends:

Is there really any chance that I will not go golfing today?
[name] thinks playing with seaplanes might be some of the most fun you can possibly have. Who would have thought it qualifies as work....
And another business takes life. I just cant get enough of this entrepreneurship stuff. Bad economy, what?!?!?
[name] forgot how much she loves Hong Kong
[name] is excited her husband is coming home! (this class of Facebook update is my personal favorite)
New business. My girl is here. Its going to be 60 degrees. B$s got crazy work. Drake loves the world again. Weekend of amazingness ahead. Damn, good life.

Here's what some of my updates would look like if I actually WAS the real Facebook narcissist:

Seventy degrees today. Took a wonderful bike ride to the high school baseball game. Chatted with some friends. Watched the team win big time. Biked home. Hit 20mph on the last hill. Awesome!
Met with some professional colleagues from around the state at an educator's conference yesterday. Caught up with old acquaintances and reviewed some of the latest research and trends in the field.
Took 30 smart and motivated business students to the state competition. Smiles all around.
I get to work at 7:30, come home at 2:00, go biking, and then work on starting my second software company!
The national DECA students are a great crew – friendly, respectful, energetic, and smart. Working with them is awesome.
Went flying in a Cessna 172 with an old friend. I still remember how to do crosswind landings!
Running an organization of 80 people. Setting goals and getting things done.
Teaching classes and either corrupting or inspiring young minds.

Teaching is not life. But it's a big part of a great life. To the Facebook narcissists: I'm sure your life is great and all, and no offense, but I think mine is even better. Be a teacher.

And there's a million of us just like me, who cuss like me; who just don't give a flub like me, who dress like me; walk, talk and act like me, and just might be the next best thing but not quite me!

Because I'm the Facebook narcissist, yes I'm the real Facebook narcissist, all you other Facebook narcissists are just imitating. So won't the real Facebook narcissist please stand up? Please stand up? Please stand up?

I'm totally serial.

Dancing Bunnies Or Videos For Your Classroom

2009-04-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

Whenever someone tells me, "Hey, check this out!", I usually just ignore them. It's usually another useless website that I'll immediately forget about, or a clever email forward that's only funny to people who are obsessed with cats, or a cute picture of a dancing bunny.

This picture is only funny to people who like cats.

The people who send these websites and emails my way have good intentions, and sometimes their recommendations are genuinely useful. But we're living in an era of complete information overload. We can't keep track of all of these great websites for teachers and funny cat pictures and dancing bunnies. In the 21st century, learning how to effectively ignore information is actually more important than learning how to find it.

Hey, Check This Out!

There is one great resource that you should definitely not ignore:

TED: Technology, Entertainment, and Design

This annual conference is held in California, and many of the speeches are available as free streaming video online. The conference includes such notable thinkers as: Burt Rutan, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Al Gore, Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Anderson, Dan Ariely, Seth Godin, Richard Branson, and Stephen Hawking. The topics range from business and marketing to technology to sustainability to physics to psychology to economics, and of course, entertainment and design.

This is a chance to stream world-renowned thinkers, authors, and doers right into your classrooms. All of the talks are profound and will get you thinking about things in ways that you never have. There is sure to be a video you can use regardless of which subject you teach. I recently showed the following three videos in marketing class, and the students were hooked.

Malcolm Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce
Seth Godin: Sliced Bread and Other Marketing Delights
Chris Anderson: Technology's Long Tail

Another great resource is Google Tech Talks. Google invites leaders in business and academia to speak at its Googleplex campus. These videos usually run an hour in length, and I've found several relevant talks here for my business classes, too. There are many videos of authors summarizing their new books. One particularly interesting video is this one of Barry Schwartz discussing the Paradox of Choice.

So – check out these great resources! And don't put them into your dancing bunnies folder.

Are You Going Through A Rough Spot?

2009-04-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

There has been recent activity in the edublosophere on the subject of teaching with depression. I'd like to throw in my own two cents based on personal experience. I'll start with a question: what would happen if these air traffic controllers thought about their personal problems at their jobs?

Probably something like this:

What happens to our professional lives when there is overwhelming stress in our personal lives? This issue is important for all professionals, but I'd say it's especially important for teachers. Teachers can not bring their students down with them. When we're physically in the classroom, we need to be 100% mentally in the classroom. I'm not an advocate of putting a brick wall between your personal and professional lives; in fact, I believe that the two are intimately related. However, we have a professional duty, maybe even a fiduciary duty, to our students. They deserve the best education they can get regardless of what's happening in the teachers' personal life.

I was going through a pretty stressful episode about this time last year, and this is what I wrote then:

The reason I got into teaching is for the students and that has never changed, even through all of this. My focus as a teacher is 100% on them. I am completely dedicated to providing a high quality education to them. That's always been my reason for entering this field and it's now my reason for staying. I really do get positive energy from this job. I come into work in the morning, start my first class, and think about how fortunate I am to be doing something like this. Every day I still think about it. The rewards from this job are immeasurable. Students first. That's my plan for the next three months.

I ended up following my own advice, and what happened was surprising. First, my teaching improved dramatically – my teaching during this time was even better than it was at the beginning of the year. Secondly, I became quite happy. I began living in the present, focusing on others, and having gratitude. It works. Who knew?

Here's what I would say to a teacher who is going through a rough spot:

It's not about you. Focus on the students.

Live in the here and now (especially when you're in the classroom!)

Maybe you're not responsible for sorting out air traffic, but what you do in the classroom is still more important than your own petty problems.

Your job is awesome. Live with gratitude.

LAX Fun!

2009-04-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

Guess where I get to go?

This is the approach procedure that pilots follow when landing on runway 25L using ILS (Instrument Landing System) technology at LAX. How sad is it that I actually know what all of this means? I earned an instrument rating for my pilot's license about five years ago, but I haven't done a lot of flying lately, preferring to spend my teacher's salary on food instead of 100 octane avgas.

Our outstanding DECA students earned a trip to the national conference this year, so I'll be taking the group out there. We'll take in some of the local touristy stuff, maybe do some surfing, and oh, and we'll be competing at the DECA conference, too. All in a day's work for a business teacher. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

And we get to fly on an A320! This might be the best part for me, being the geeky pilot that I am.

The Best Way To Improve Your Teaching

2009-04-04T12:32:00.000-07:00

Diet and exercise. Wait, that's two things. Okay then, just exercise.

You've heard this millions of times before. Here's the thing though: just knowing it won't help. You have to actually DO IT. Just do something for 30 minutes a day: take a walk, go for a run, or spend some time at the gym.

Actually you should stop reading this and do it right now. Reading about it won't help. And if your excuse is that you don't have time, just go do it now. What you actually don't have time for is reading blogs on the internet. You'll see how much better you feel and then you'll think, "gee, I should do this more often."

Honestly, you don't know how much this can improve your life until you've tried it yourself. You'll obviously have more physical energy and stamina, which will help you in the classroom. But possibly the most beneficial thing about exercise is that it actually makes your thinking much clearer. You can think better and concentrate longer.

Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.
- John F. Kennedy

That's all I'll say because honestly, you won't get it just by reading about it. Just go for a jog or something right now.

Diet is important too. Eating a lot of fat and sugar makes you sluggish. I have mixed feelings about caffeine. It definitely boosts energy and concentration in the short term, but destroys those things in the long term.

Springtime!

In the dead of winter, I'm much less disciplined about my workout routine. Going to a gym and mindlessly trudging along on a machine is pretty boring. But in the past few weeks, it's gotten warm enough for me to get out on my bike, which is really fun. You know, the fresh air, the birds, the lakes, the smells, the sunsets, all that stuff.

I guarantee that your teaching will improve when you're physically active and eat healthy foods. Every other part of your life will improve as well.

Flipping The Bozo Bit

2009-03-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

flip the bozo bit v. Decide that someone is a clown, and stop listening to them.

From Joel on Software: How To Be A Program Manager

Once the bozo bit has been flipped, it's an almost permanent situation. Once it's on, it's on. Unflipping the bozo bit is a rare occurrence.

Don't Flip the Bozo Bit

Sometimes people annoy me and I'm tempted to flip the bozo bit on them. Even students. But I never do it. Flipping the bozo bit is the most blatant form of the ad hominem fallacy. It's counterproductive and only tears down your team. If you flip the bozo bit on someone, you basically end the relationship and create an antagonistic situation, which can be fatal to an organization, especially if the bozo bit is flipped on one of its leaders.

Some of the people I've been tempted to flip the bozo bit on have turned out later to be among my most valuable team members.

What If The Bozo Bit Is Flipped On You?

In my two years of teaching, three students have flipped the bozo bit on me for reasons which may or may not be valid. One student just decided that he didn't like my class, so he flipped the bozo bit. Another student was stuck in the way that the previous advisor ran our organization, so she flipped the bozo bit on me. For a while, I thought Kevin flipped the bozo bit on me too, but now I don't think he actually has, although he certainly would have a reason to.

If someone has flipped the bozo bit on you, should you just give up? Is it possible to regain any credibility after that point?

After The Bozo Bit Has Been Flipped

The answer is yes, but it's very difficult. You will never be able to unflip the bozo bit yourself; only the other person can. The way to do it is to not flip the bozo bit on them in retaliation. Respect and courtesy earn courtesy and respect. If you treat people with respect and courtesy consistently and are persistent in your efforts, your bozo bit can be unflipped. But it will take some time. Don't try to get them to unflip the bozo bit – don't try to force it. Just be respectful and courteous.

George Bush: Leading With A Flipped Bozo Bit

Most of the country flipped the bozo bit on George Bush during his last years in office. What impressed me was that he kept his chin up despite his unpopularity and despite the difficult situation he found himself in. He carried himself with grace even when the country overwhelmingly threw his party out of office. He did not get bitter. In fact, he did just the opposite. He steadfastly stayed the course with his policies, confidently made decisions, and graciously welcomed the new administration. I'll stay silent on his policies, but this aspect of his leadership style is something I admire and look up to.

More Information On Flipping The Bozo Bit

Jim McCarthy: Dynamics of Software Development
Amplifying Your Effectiveness
Set The Bozo Bit
Wikipedia: Bozo Bit

Crossing Paths

2009-03-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

When I worked in community theatre, the last performance of a play always came with mixed feelings. You worked closely with the same group of people for the last two months. All of you put your best efforts into the production. There were successes and failures. Then, one day, it’s all over. You all tear down the set and go home. Part of you is relieved, part of you is proud of what the group did, and part of you is sad that it’s over. The end of the school year is less than a month away, and I’m already anticipating a similar experience.

People who work in theatre a lot take this as part of the job. It becomes easier with each play you do. You’re sad to see the production end, but you know that more adventures lie ahead.

I wrote that during my student teaching experience. The end of my first year teaching evoked similar emotions, and this year is no different. I can't imagine DECA without this group of kids; I can't imagine the school store without this group of kids. I feel like next year, after these seniors leave, things just won't be the same. When I think about DECA, I'll always think about this group. To me, these people are DECA. I couldn't ask for a better group. And I'm not just saying that – I did not feel the same way about last year's students :)

The logical part of my mind tells me that this is all nonsense. It tells me that next year will bring all sorts of new joys and new challenges and new students. It tells me that I've gone through many, many, transitions before, and I've always been happy after the change. But still, I've got this annoying nostalgic thing going on in my brain.

It's almost unfair. You work all year building relationships with a group of people, and then they all leave, never to be seen or heard from again. Does it get easier? Veteran teachers tell me no.

The answer, of course, is to not hold on too tight. Life is a journey – the fun comes from experiencing it from one present moment to the next, not about reminiscing about the past or thinking about the future. The landscape of my life is full of lots of wonderful people. Wonderful people whose paths have crossed mine for a brief period of time. I look back and remember them all fondly. People from my hometown, people from college, people from my previous jobs. I'm extremely grateful for having had these people in my life.

Ultimately we are all solo travelers. When our paths cross with the paths of others, those are times to be cherished. But all paths inevitably diverge. Don't hold on too tight. Just keep going and see what other paths you'll cross next.

Is this post a bit over-the-top? Maybe. That's why I'm not a professional author. The general principles hold though. Teaching involves emotions. This coming from a stone-faced Rational.

Messing With People's Lives

2009-03-11T16:52:00.000-07:00

Teachers are sometimes forced to make very difficult decisions which have big effects on the lives of their students. This is one of those things that you don't find out until you're actually a teacher.

Last weekend at our state DECA conference, I told Kevin (not really!) that he would be banned from the national conference because of a discipline issue. He was pretty bummed out but also remorseful about what he had done, and he accepted the consequences. Two days later, he not only qualified for nationals, but actually won first place.

I ultimately concluded that my original decision was incorrect, a mistake, and today, I told Kevin that I'd love to have him come with us to nationals, and by the way, sorry about all of the confusion.

Now, I'm leaving out a lot of details here – there are many things that you, the reader, don't know – but the original idea seemed like a good one at the time. However, now I'm convinced that my ultimate decision was the correct one. Anyway, none of that is really the point of this article.

Tough Calls

The thing is, I really wanted Kevin to come with us. Teachers aren't supposed to have favorite students but let's be honest, we all do, and Kevin is one of the top students in DECA. He worked hard on his event. He gets straight As and has been nothing but helpful and friendly all year. I really wanted him to come with. He deserved it. I hated telling him he couldn't go. I didn't want to do it. But these tough decisions were part of my job, and I had to follow through and make the call. In fact, my fear of showing a perception of favoritism toward this student was one reason I was so hard on him initially. My logic here was clearly flawed.

But It Was A Mistake

In my old job as a software engineer, I worked on a computer all day. If I made a mistake, I didn't hurt anyone's feelings. I could go back and fix a mistake on a computer. Mistakes then certainly didn't affect people's lives.

When teachers make mistakes, people are involved. I caused Kevin a ton of unnecessary stress because of my mistake. He's understandably upset. Teachers need to make these difficult calls, and our decisions can substantially impact a person's life, and mistakes actually can hurt people.

Not allowing him to attend the national conference would have been an even bigger mistake, though. He would have missed out on a great opportunity that he'd remember for the rest of his life, just because his advisor said so.

Are you willing to accept that kind of responsibility? Are you prepared to mess with people's lives? For me the answer is yes, as long as I learn from my mistakes and make less of them in the future, but this is a responsibility that I didn't really know was involved in teaching before I got into it.

The Tenure System

2009-03-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

The tenure system does not make practical sense for K-12 educators. It is nerve-wracking for non-tenured teachers, takes legitimate and necessary power away from administrators, rewards underperforming veteran teachers, and harms students. In my state, a new teacher who teaches for three consecutive years in the same district automatically receives tenure.

Non Tenured Teachers

The first three years of a teacher's career are pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition. If a teacher makes it past the three year mark, he knows that he's set for life. If he doesn't, he knows that he has to start completely over from ground zero. These are big stakes. A teacher's first year is filled with enough stressors the way it is. He should not have to worry about a looming Judgment Day on top of it all.

Administrators

Before they let a new teacher get to three years, administrators must be pretty darn sure they want to keep a new teacher around, because after three years, they're stuck with him. In some districts, teachers are watched like a hawk during their third year, with administrators constantly popping into the classroom. Other districts have reputations for dragging new teachers along, only to drop them right before tenure kicks in. I really can't blame administrators for this. If they're being forced to keep someone on their teaching staff, they have a responsibility to make sure that person can perform. Non-tenured teachers know that administrators do this, which sort of freaks us out.

Underperforming Teachers

Every school has some faculty members who simply shouldn't be teaching. Some teachers get burnt out, some don't care about their jobs, and some don't even like kids. Tenured teachers really have no incentive to improve their craft or even maintain an adequate level of performance, because they know that their jobs are basically safe no matter what. This keeps ineffective teachers on the teaching staff when they should be let go.

Administrators need the power to motivate these people and remove them if necessary. The tenure system takes that power away.

Students

This, of course, has the effect of harming students. Students are stuck with poor teachers who should have quit years ago.

Where The Tenure System Does Make Sense

The tenure system does make sense at research universities. It's important that professors and researchers be given academic freedom to explore fringe, controversial, and unconventional ideas, both in the classroom and the laboratory. This is often how social and scientific progress is made. If these positions were subject to chest-beating politicians and administrators, this academic freedom would be lost.

However, the type of learning that takes place in a K-12 system is different than what happens at a university. In the K-12 system, the protection of academic freedom (which tenure creates) is less important than keeping a motivated and effective teaching force (which tenure destroys). For better or worse, there is virtually no need to protect academic freedom in K-12 systems, because K-12 educators are mandated to teach a state-approved, standards-based curriculum. Tenure, a devise whose purpose is to protect academic freedom, is being applied to an institution in which that protection is unnecessary. We're getting all of the drawbacks of the tenure system without any of the benefits.

Nerds

2009-02-13T16:37:00.000-08:00

I found an excellent article which may help teachers understand the nerd mindset. In Where Are All the Rationals?, I talked about these students and how their personalities are completely different than almost all of their teachers'. I suggested that teachers might do well to learn more about this type of student.

As a nerd myself, I can tell you that this article is pretty spot-on as far as describing nerd psychology goes.

So - here you go! Enjoy!

The Nerd Handbook

Where Are All the Rationals?

2009-02-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

Some students want to be engineers. Some want to be computer programmers. Some students want to be researchers, scientists, business strategists, professors, judges, economists, pilots, inventors, writers, and financial planners. Unfortunately, these students have very few, if any, role models in the public school system.

David Keirsey believed that personalities could be placed into four large categories: guardians, idealists, artisans, and rationals.

Artisans are observant and pragmatic. Their greatest strength is tactical variation. Their most developed intelligence operations is either expediting or improvising.

Guardians are observant and cooperative. Guardians seek membership or belonging and are concerned with responsibility and duty. Their greatest strength is logistical intelligence. They excel at organizing, facilitating, checking, and supporting.

Idealists are introspective and cooperative. Idealists seek meaning and significance and are concerned with finding their own unique identity. Their greatest strength is diplomatic intelligence. They excel at clarifying, unifying, individualizing, and inspiring.

Rationals are introspective and pragmatic. Rationals seek mastery, and self-control and are concerned with their own knowledge and competence. Their greatest strength is strategic intelligence. They excel in any kind of logical investigation such as engineering, conceptualizing, theorizing, and coordinating.

Without a doubt, most teachers are Guardians or Idealists. A few are Artisans. Very rarely will you find a K-12 educator who is a Rational. In fact, Rationals make up only 5% - 10% of the entire population, and these people almost never choose K-12 education as a career.

All Rationals share the following core characteristics:

Rationals tend to be pragmatic, skeptical, self-contained, and focused on problem-solving and systems analysis.
Rationals pride themselves on being ingenious, independent, and strong willed.
Rationals make reasonable mates, individualizing parents, and strategic leaders.
Rationals are even-tempered, they trust logic, yearn for achievement, seek knowledge, prize technology, and dream of understanding how the world works.

Rationals are rare, but we do have Rational students in our schools. They are an underserved population. These kids go to school and are a taught by adults whose personalities are completely different from their own. Most teachers don't understand their mindset, and I've seen students become visibly frustrated about this. Almost all teachers are "people people" with little interest in technical or theoretical pursuits. On the whole, I'd have to say that this is a good thing, even for the Rational students. But it's true that these students have hopes and dreams and ways of thinking that none of their teachers can remotely relate to. They pick up on that.

Before you send me any hate mail, I do want to say this. It's vitally important for a school to have a wide variety of personalities on its teaching force. We need Guardians, Idealists, and Artisans. Homogeneity is boring and dangerous, and it's not a very good way to educate kids or open minds. It's important that all students, regardless of their personalities, have someone they can relate to. It's also important that kids be exposed to personality types other than their own.

Teachers should have awareness about this though. We're all trained on how to handle individual differences among students. In college and during workshops, we're trained how to work with ELL, ADD, EBD, learning disabilities, gifted & talented, medical conditions, GLBT, different races and ethnicities, different religions, SES, the list goes on and on. Why aren't we given training on personality types? I don't mean to suggest that Rationals face the same kind of challenges as ELL or GLBT students, but they do deserve more attention than they're getting.

Keirsey's four temperaments are closely associated with the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator. This instrument has received criticism from social scientists, and the Big Five Personality Traits is widely considered to be a much better theory. While the MBTI may not be a totally accurate model of reality, it is accurate enough for the point I'm trying to make here, which is that there is a slight mismatch between teacher personalities and student personalities.

P.S. Brent Spiner is an amazing actor.

High School Theater and Community

2009-02-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

One reason I decided to become a teacher is that I was drawn toward the sense of community one gets by working in a school. By contrast, the business world is made up of “rational maximizers of self-interest” (not my phrase, but one that I like). I worked within corporations for six years during and after college and was somewhat depressed about the individualistic attitude of the whole thing. Schools aren’t like that.

The school’s drama club performed a production of The Secret Garden by Marsha Norman. I’ve been involved with community theater in the past and thought it would be fun to see this. It was amazing. The actors, singers, musicians, and crew were incredibly talented.

When I was at the play, I recognized actors and musicians from some of my classes. All of these actors and musicians were supported by an engaged audience of parents, teachers, siblings, and friends. Where can you find that kind of support in the business world? You can’t.

I was encouraged by the amount of support that the school gave to these performers. But the sense of community went beyond that. In the audience, I was able to talk with some other teachers that I work with during the day and meet some of the parents. In business, the culture is usually “what can you do for me”, but at this play, the attitude was “look what we’re doing together”. It’s really a completely different approach to life, one that I find much more fulfilling.

The Metablogging Post

2009-02-01T07:55:00.000-08:00

My friend is an amateur radio operator. He has a shack full of thousands of dollars of communications gear, which he uses to talk with other amateur radio operators about their communications gear. The whole endeavor seems incredibly pointless. Sort of like using a blog to talk about blogging. But everyone is entitled to at least one metablogging post, right?

Why I write:

"Writing may not change the world, but it might change you." – John Dufresne

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

There are many valid criticisms of blogs, bloggers, and blogging:

Blogging is a sure sign of narcissism.
Bloggers are just in it for the money.
Bloggers are chasing fame.
No one cares what you write.

The main reason I write is to reflect on my experiences as a teacher and grow as a professional. In the military, a debriefing is an essential part of each mission. Debriefings allow teams to analyze what went well, what went wrong, and how they can improve next time. That's my goal in blogging as well. It's my way of debriefing and learning from my mistakes. The way to grow professionally is through experience and deliberate reflection. Experience without reflection does not result in growth. Principals have told me that their best teachers are the reflective teachers – the ones who continually monitor their own techniques and seek ways to improve.

That no one else cares about my professional journey is probably a valid point. However, I don't mainly write for other people. I mainly write for myself. In fact, I started writing professional journal entries a full two years before this website was born. No one read those journals except me.

Having a public blog rather than a private journal has some advantages. First, it keeps me accountable. I've set a goal to write at least one article per week. Because I have readers, I feel more accountable to that goal than I would if the journal entries were just for me.

Having public readers also forces me to improve my writing skills. In fact, I've set this as a personal goal, and I've expanded into other types of writing since starting this blog.

The benefits of this blog accrue mainly to me, but not entirely. One goal of mine is to inform new and prospective teachers about what it's like in the trenches. When I was considering teaching as a career, it would have been very helpful to talk to a real live teacher about her experiences. My career change was one of blind faith; I didn't have a clue what I was getting into. Luckily I found out that the career change was a great move, but I didn't really know that going in.

Blogging allows us to connect with other teachers, too. During the school day, we don't get a chance to socialize much with adults, much less reflective and intelligent adults that generally make up the edublogging community. Being able to read and comment on other teachers' experiences is awesome.

So here I am, another blogger blogging about blogging.

Favorite Teacher Movies (With Clips!)

2009-01-29T17:15:00.000-08:00

Most teacher/school/student movies are totally formulaic and bland, but there are some good ones. Here are my current favorites:

Charlie Bartlett
This is a hilarious movie about a high school student who appoints himself the head psychiatrist and doles out advice to all of his classmates, using a bathroom stall as his office. Very entertaining and a good laugh. This movie would be nothing without Anton Yelchin, whose superb acting has impressed me in other movies as well. I'm really looking forward to his role as the young Chekov in the upcoming Star Trek movie.

Charlie Bartlett at the Internet Movie Database

Rushmore
Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray star in this story about a high school overachiever on academic probation. Also there's a love triangle. Another Wes Anderson movie. Quite similar to his others.

Rushmore at the Internet Movie Database

Chalk
This movie does for teachers what The Breakfast Club did for students. Students have their own groups: the jocks, the nerds, the preps, and the Goths; it turns out that teachers do too. The movie brings out the inner demons of teachers. The evolution of the characters is to watch.

Chalk at the Internet Movie Database

Dead Poets Society
This one really is a classic. It's inspirational and uplifting without being trite. Robin Williams carries the role of the teacher superbly, as expected. Carpe Diem!

Dead Poets Society at the Internet Movie Database

The Man Without A Face
Another classic. Stereotypes are easier to see than reality. This movie goes past the stereotypes and knee-jerk reactions and shows the truth. The book is also wonderful, although it has a slightly different focus. The movie was changed to be less controversial and more digestible for mass audiences.

The Man Without A Face at the Internet Movie Database

A Beautiful Mind
My fascination with economics and John Nash's theories is a reason I enjoy this movie. Honestly, game theory is a compelling field to study. This movie offers a glimpse into the world of academia from the perspective of both professors and students.

A Beautiful Mind at the Internet Movie Database

The Emperor's Club
We used to play this trick on our math teacher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws5is2gjuW4. Kevin Kline gives an outstanding performance.
The Emperor's Club at the Internet Movie Database

Airplane!
Not a teacher movie. But it's the best movie ever made, so I have to include it.

Airplane! at the Internet Movie Database

What are your favorite teacher movies?

P.S. I'd like to specifically point out that Dangerous Minds is not on this list. I didn't like that one. It's a great example of how to make another formulaic inspirational teacher movie.

Writing: Left Brained or Right Brained?

2009-01-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

Trick question.

Whether writing is a left brain or a right brain activity depends a lot on what you're writing. Most of my blog posts are very analytical (left brain!). I used to get paid to design software, and that writing was way left brained. Writing curricula and lesson plans and making assignments and tests is totally left brained.

Actually we don't have two brains, we just have two hemispheres in our brain, so technically the title should be Writing: Left Hemisphere or Right Hemisphere, or how about Hemispheric Dominance to be more succinct. But even those would be quite simplistic and misleading. Yeah, I'm definitely a left-brained writer.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to start writing fiction. I do lots of writing already, getting into fiction should be a piece of cake, right? No. It's a totally different animal. I'm a total novice at this but my attempts so far have been quite terrible. My last story was two pages long and it took me about six hours to write. I can do a two page blog post in an hour. Writing fiction is imaginative. You start writing with no clue where your story will eventually end up. Writing fiction is about making up a world and then describing it. The focus isn't even really on the writing – that part is easy – it's the imagining and creating that's hard. This is a very right brain activity. And to me, it's a lot of work.

I can easily get into a state of flow if I'm designing a new accounting system for our school store or writing software to make our DECA attendance easier or designing lessons and putting them into a neat and logical scope and sequence. I can sit down and lose all track of time and totally get into the work. Athletes get into this state of flow during a game, and musicians enter flow performing a challenging piece of music. I guess fiction authors enter this same mental state when they're writing stories, but it doesn't happen for me. Writing fiction feels much different than doing analytical writing. It's work; there's real friction stopping me from just writing. Doing analytical work is easy and effortless; being imaginative and making stuff up is really difficult and not as pleasant. Still rewarding but a lot more work. Maybe it's just because I'm so new at it.

But my right brain isn't dead. I play music and I've acted on stage – both are pretty easy (right brain). Teaching requires real empathy, which I'm good at (right brain).

So is teaching a left-hemisphere activity or a right-hemisphere activity? I love those questions – the kind whose only purpose is to encourage needless and endless debate.

This was a trick question. There's no such thing as left brained or right brained. I have no idea what the point of this post was. I thought I'd have some moral judgment or something at the end, like some mumbo jumbo about how some students are left brained and others are right brained. But since it was a trick question to begin with, I guess I don't have any moral judgments or shocking conclusions today.

Inauguration Day Celebration

2009-01-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

President Obama's inauguration is a reason to be proud of this country. Others have commented on the historic significance of this day and the reasons we have for optimism. I'm not a political blogger, so I won't offer any commentary other than to say that I'm ecstatic and also realistic about what our country can do.

Other than this historic election itself, what gives me hope is our youngest generation. When we watched the inauguration ceremony and President Obama's speech in class, the students' eyes were glued to the screen. They were into it, totally excited about this new era we're entering.

I can tell you from first hand experience that our teenagers are a great generation, but don't take my word for it. Our youngest generation is both idealistic and civic minded. They care about the world. When making career choices, they are more interested in making a difference in the world than making a difference in their wallets. They volunteer. They're ambitious. They're reversing the trends in teen pregnancies, crime, and drug use of their parents' generation.

The new generation, the millenials, are taking over. We are under new management. Just maybe there is actually some substance to all of this hype about hope and change.

Personalities of Student Organizations

2009-01-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

To what extent does the personality of a student organization reflect that of its advisor? The makeup of personalities in the two organizations I run has evolved since I took the organizations over last September.

The personality of the teacher who ran these organizations last year is much different than mine. She was a very down-to-business, type A, extraverted, get-things-done, rapid-fire kind of person. The student leaders I've been working with this year (who were chosen by last year's advisor) have very similar personalities. They are exceptionally driven and have done a fantastic job leading the organization.

In contrast, my own personality is relatively introverted and more laid back. I've noticed that the personality of the entire organization has been shifting this year. There are some very dedicated juniors who are interested in becoming officers next year. Far from the type A extraverts of last year's cohort, their personalities are closer to my own. Is this just a coincidence? Somehow I doubt it.

So What?

To be honest, I'm looking forward to working with these students next year. It's just easier to get along with people whose personalities are closer to our own. I can't say that this year has been totally frictionless, and some of the friction has been because of personality conflicts. I think next year will go more smoothly.

On the other hand, homogeneity can be a dangerous thing. I'd really like a variety of personalities on the student leadership team. It's always good to have a team of diverse strengths and backgrounds. This year's leaders have openly challenged my own thinking on several occasions, and I welcome those challenges. They've come up with some really great ideas. Plus, working with students of different personalities is very rewarding. It keeps things fun and interesting.

Expect more articles on the effects of personality in educational settings!

Two Meanings of Accountability

2009-01-12T16:26:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, I was discussing accountability with a group of fellow teachers. Tonight, I was discussing accountability with a group of business leaders. I discovered that the word "accountability" has two completely opposite meanings.

Accountability according to educators

Our job as professional educators is to make sure every child is succeeding in our classes. We are supposed to give them every chance in the world to be successful. Leave no child behind.

Obviously, this is difficult for several reasons. Some students are smarter than others; some don't speak English; and some just don't care. If we give a student an assignment, and he just doesn't care, and he doesn't do the assignment, what should we as teachers do? Since our job is to make sure every student succeeds, the argument goes, we need to work with him until he does finish the assignment. We need to find out why he's not doing the assignment, and try to convince him to do it, with sticks and carrots if necessary. We should stand over his shoulder and make sure he's on task. If he fails to turn in an assignment by the required deadline, we should give him another chance.

This is accountability. Teachers are responsible for making sure their students learn. It would be easy for us to ignore this responsibility and put the responsibility for learning on the student, but according to my teacher-mentor (and I quote), "we are held to a higher standard. It is our job to make sure EVERYONE is learning."

Accountability according to business leaders

Today, I attended a consortium of Career and Technical Educators and business leaders. The business representatives had a chance to look at our curricula and give us feedback. We learned what skills employers are most looking for from new graduates. Accountability was a skill that kept coming up.

Employees need to have a sense of accountability, they said. They need to show up on time, work productively, take responsibility for their own actions, stay current in their industry knowledge, and manage their own careers. If they fail to do these things, they get fired. It's the employee's own responsibility to make sure she is successful. It's not the employer's responsibility to make sure that the employee is successful. If the employee isn't meeting her responsibilities, she won't have a job for very long.

The business leaders said that the new graduates they hire do not have a very strong sense of accountability. They are quick to make excuses and expect their employer to look out for them.

What about your own teaching?

My sense of accountability aligns more closely with the second definition than with the first. I am not the type of teacher who is always harping on students to stay on task, but I am the type of teacher who will easily fail a student on an assignment if she decides not to do it. I follow the logical consequences school of classroom management.

This approach works great for me. You may prefer a different style. But we should all be deliberate about what we mean by "accountability". Of course the teacher is responsible for making sure students learn. But that should not absolve students from their own responsibilities. As with so many things, there is no clear black-and-white solution to this, just one big grey area.

New Year Resolutions

2009-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

When learning a new skill, a good technique is to focus on just one aspect of the task at a time. I used to play piano and trumpet. When learning new songs, I would use this technique a lot, focusing only on the dynamics for a while, then just on the rhythm, then just on my fingering. I'd get really good at that one thing I was focusing on. This helped me later when I played the entire piece as a whole.

This can be an effective teaching method, and I've used it a few times with my students. Well, now I'm learning a new skill: teaching. Teaching is a highly complex task with lots of components. This year, I've talked about many of those components – how I've struggled with them and how I plan to improve.

For the rest of the year, I've decided to use this technique for my own teaching. I'm going to focus on just one area and make a concerted effort to improve in it. My goal for the rest of the school year is to focus heavily on increasing student engagement.

Student engagement is defined as the amount of time students are actively participating in a learning activity. This definition is independent of teaching method – it could include time students spend actively listening to a lecture, participating in cooperative groups, working on projects, making presentations, writing papers, conducting research, or any other method, as long as what the students are doing actually contributes to learning.

Research has shown that the number one predictor of student achievement, above anything else, is student engagement. This trumps socioeconomic status, the classroom environment, and even teacher effectiveness. Regardless of all other factors, the more time students spend actively engaged in a learning activity, the higher their achievement is. We have empirical data to support this, but it makes a lot of intuitive sense as well. That's why I've chosen to focus on this particular area.

The second reason I've decided to focus on student engagement is that I know it's an area where I can definitely improve. With respect to student engagement, I think I actually did better during my student teaching than I'm doing this year. Here's why I'm having trouble with it. Some of the classes I teach are lab classes, where students have individual work time on the computers. This is great student engagement. What happens, though, is that some students finish faster than others and sit idle while the slower students try to catch up. The slower students require the entire class period, so they're engaged 100% of the time. That's good. But the advanced students only need half of the time, so they're only engaged 50% of the time. Some of my teacher preparation courses at the University dealt with this issue: how to create differentiated instruction for students with individual differences. We spent some time talking specifically about gifted and talented students. That would be the subject for another article entirely, so I won't go into it here. Creating good individualized instruction requires more work and more time for the teacher, but keeping that student engagement number up is well worth it.

The third reason I'm focusing on student engagement is because of what's happening in my non-lab courses. Computer projects are not part of these classes. These classes use more traditional methods such as lecture, cooperative learning, debates, reading, writing, and written tests. The problem is that these classes are taught in the computer lab, and the computers provide a big distraction for the students. Some days, the students are more engaged with the computers than they are with my class. I keep an informal atmosphere in these classes but I'm afraid some students have misconstrued that as a ticket to be lazy. My plan of attack in these classes is twofold: first, create relevant and rigorous lessons that are more engaging than their computers; and second, create a more work-oriented atmosphere in the classroom.

This goal is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound.

Specific: Student engagement will increase in my classes. This is the amount of time students spend actively engaged in a learning activity.

Measurable: I will measure this by observing how much time students spend on learning tasks. Throughout the remaining weeks of the school year, time on learning tasks will go up and time on non-learning tasks will go down for all students.

Achievable: This goal can be achieved by implementing specific, time-tested policies such as those I've mentioned above.

Realistic: In my own classes, I've observed student behavior vary widely from day to day in response to specific techniques I've employed. Therefore, I know it's possible for me as a teacher to create conditions and lessons which promote student engagement.

Time Bound: There will be good weeks and bad weeks, but generally, student engagement will be higher during the second half of the school year than it was before today.

This article was originally written during my first year teaching experience.

Winging It, Or Not

2009-01-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

I struck up a conversation with another young teacher today. He's been teaching math for five years, and he's just starting at this school district. We were talking about the difficulties of first year teaching: how every class is new and you're doing everything for the first time. I told him that I'd hoped that I would be able to reuse some of the materials I planned for my classes last year. I won't actually be able to, since I'm teaching completely new classes now.

He said that in his five years of teaching, he's had new classes almost every year, so he knew how I felt. He was never able to reuse any of his old lesson plans. Yearly staff changes at his former school district ensured that he'd get a totally new schedule each year. We were both in the same situation. We had prepared other classes, but we wouldn't be able to use those lessons for our classes this year.

Then he surprised me. He said, "I can pretty much just wing it now and teach a lesson on anything. What are we learning about today? The Pythagorean Theorem? OK! Let's go!"

Wow. I'd never be able to do that in business classes. No way. I can see how it would be possible to do this with mathematical concepts, which are basically procedural knowledge rather than factual knowledge. But to just "wing it" for a lesson on globalization, labor unions, or contract law? That's not even possible. Yeah, I could explain the concepts well enough, just winging it, but that wouldn't be much of a lesson.

A good lesson in topics like these must include other resources: newspaper clippings, online articles, worksheets, or videos, for example. Finding and preparing these resources is very time-consuming. This is a task that math teachers can skip (although I'm sure there are some superb math teachers who do this type of research as well).

In math, students don't learn these skills by passively listening. You can't learn to multiply just by watching someone else; you need to practice on your own. Math textbooks provide drill after drill for students to practice these skills. Teachers of math simply need to set aside some work time, assign some textbook drills, and provide individual help as needed. Very little preparation is required.

Business students learn by engagement too. They don't learn how to perform a SWOT analysis just by reading about it; they need practice too, just like the math students do. Only, business teachers can't just have students do repetitive textbook drills like the math teachers do. Teachers must seek out or create their own engaging assignments. I like using debates, essays, research papers, role plays, and even skits as reinforcing activities. Business teachers have to spend much more time preparing these types of activities than math teachers spend preparing drills.

There are a few caveats, of course. In my programming classes, I can "wing it" and teach loops and switch statements just as easily as math teachers can "wing it" and teach the Pythagorean Theorem. If I have a good textbook, I can assign exercises instead of writing my own. Teaching a class like this is pretty nice; the prep work is much less.

Also, I know that there are stellar math teachers who do all of the same research and prepare all of the same activities that I do for my business classes. Math is about much more than just learning rote procedures. I've observed some math teachers in class, and I can tell that the good ones put a lot of work into their lessons. A teacher's choice of textbook makes a big difference, too. If you're lucky, you'll find a textbook that aligns nicely with your course objectives and includes supplementary materials for teachers.

But, I do believe that some subjects simply require more time to prep than others. Some teachers get this condescending tone of voice when they tell you that "teaching is easy" or "I can just wing it". They say this as though they are such expert teachers. If you're just winging it, you're letting your students down. If you think teaching is easy, you're not doing your job (I don't think teaching is hard; I'm just saying that preparing good lessons is a lot of work). Even if you've been teaching your whole life, there are always things you can improve.

Time Management Tips

2008-12-29T09:53:00.001-08:00

If you are anything like me, you started the winter break with a long list of things you wanted to get done, and now you find yourself half way through the break with none of them done, and you've sort of lost the motivation for doing them. You'd rather just read a book.

I was going through some of the journal entries I wrote last year and found this gem. Maybe it will help! Where did I set that book again?

This week, I took a refresher course on time management by reading Steve Pavlina's excellent Do It Now article. It explains several specific time management techniques that you can use to stay productive. The biggest lesson from the article is this: when you're working, work, and when you're not, don't. Don't waste time in a half-brained, distracted, "I'm 'working' but not really" state.

It takes fifteen minutes to enter a state of flow. Once you're there, your work becomes entirely effortless. It still takes discipline to stay there. There are always distractions and you need to ignore them. But once your brain is in a certain state of mind, time seems to disappear and you become completely absorbed in your work. It's easy to stay in this state for 90 minutes at a time. When you need a break, take a break. Take a real break – not an email checking break or a web surfing break – but an actual restful break.

Pavlina suggests that you set aside long blocks of time for your work – up to six or eight hours at a time – and work as long as you can, taking breaks as needed. The only way you'll be able to do this is if you enjoy your work and it has personal meaning for you. Personally, mine does. But finding the motivation is still difficult sometimes.

Another big lesson from the article is to do one and only one thing at a time. I used to be very good at this but I've been slacking a bit. Work really is easier this way. It is extremely inefficient for our brains to keep switching between different tasks. Instead, focus on one task, dedicate all of your energies to it, and then move to the next task. Thinking about all of the other things that you should be doing is a waste of time.

I'm not a self-help junkie, and I don't think that constantly giving yourself affirmations is the best way to happiness and productivity, but I do think that reading some motivational material every now and then is beneficial. Most of us learned these time management techniques in college and are already familiar with them. But in the long winter months, sometimes a refresher course doesn't hurt. Since reading the article, I've been much more productive in my work and felt better about doing it.

Cute, Technically

2008-12-28T18:34:00.000-08:00

One of the highlights of my Christmas was getting to see my little cousins (they're actually young enough to be my nieces and nephews and are technically my step-cousins, but that's beyond the point). It's impossible to look at them and not love them. They just light up the room.

This got me thinking: what is it about kids that make them so cute? I remembered from my M.Ed. courses that this has been studied scientifically. Indeed, "cuteness" can actually be predicted and measured based on the following traits (pdf):

Small body size with a disproportionately large head

Large eyes

A pleasantly fair, though not necessarily small nose

Dimples

Round and softer body features

Playfulness

Fragility

Helplessness

Curiosity

Innocense

Affectionate behavior

That makes sense. The kids in my family whom everyone thinks are so cute have all of these traits. Paul Graham has argued that cuteness in children has many advantages:

It's not surprising we'd have an inborn desire to love and protect helpless creatures, considering human offspring are so helpless for so long. Without the helplessness that makes kids cute, they'd be very annoying. They'd merely seem like incompetent adults.

From Wikipedia:

Konrad Lorenz argued in 1949 that infantile features triggered nurturing responses in adults and that this was an evolutionary adaptation which helped ensure that adults cared for their children, ultimately securing the survival of the species. As evidence, Lorenz noted that humans react more positively to animals that resemble infants – with big eyes, big heads, shorted noses, etc – than to animals that do not.

Does this seem like circular logic to you? Lorenz is saying this: the reason kids are cute is that they possess traits which we find cute. Although that thing about the animals is interesting.
OK, so this post is only tangentially related to teaching. It's more of an excuse for me to be that annoying guy who just talks about his own family and brag about how cute they are. It doesn't have anything to do with my job at all, since the students have grown from cute and innocent kids to ungainly and awkward teenagers by the time I see them at the high school (although one could argue that they do have disproportionately large heads. Ha ha). But we're all in the business of working with kids and this might change the way you see "cuteness".

Cute kids usually trigger an affectionate emotional response in adults. Looking at cuteness scientifically gives you a totally different perspective. It's a simple cause-effect relationship. If an organism possesses "cute" traits, the adult will respond positively because we're biologically hard-wired to do so. There's really nothing magical about it. "Cute" is a survival mechanism. (Except MY little cousins really ARE cute! Sorry.)

SurveyMonkey in the Classroom

2008-12-20T14:34:00.000-08:00

In The New Face of Computer Applications, I discussed how computing is making a gradual shift from the desktop to the web. One great way to engage students using these new Web 2.0 tools is with online surveys. A number of solutions are available, but I tried using SurveyMonkey in my Marketing class last week.

SurveyMonkey lets you easily create free accounts; the only prerequisite is that you have an email address. The free account lets you create surveys with up to ten questions. The question formats and layouts are highly customizable. After you enter your survey questions, SurveyMonkey will give you a link to your survey. You can put this link on a webpage or in an email. Anyone who clicks on it will be directed to your survey. You can log back in to SurveyMonkey later to see the answers that people gave. The software presents your data in a very nice graphical layout.

My Marketing students are in the middle of a market research project, where they need to collect primary and secondary data about a particular organization and then make recommendations on how to improve that organization based on the data that they found. Surveys are obviously a great way to collect primary data about a group of people.

The students made their own online surveys with SurveyMonkey. I put the links to those surveys on my class website, and students spent a day taking each other's surveys online. Students then used Excel to create charts of the data, which will be included in their final research papers.

My middle school Computer Applications class is using SurveyMonkey too, although the requirements for their research project have been scaled down a bit.

The students love this! They like being able to do things with the web, and everyone was very engaged. In class, the students are learning how to conduct social research. We're covering topics such as: reliability & validity, quantitative & qualitative data, samples & populations, basic statistics, inductive logic, and research methods. Online surveys give students a real-world connection to these abstract concepts. I haven't evaluated other online survey systems, but SurveyMonkey has worked great for me, and I highly recommend it.

Hockey and the Purpose of Education

2008-12-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

Have you ever watched a sporting event with someone who knows nothing about the game? Hockey is a big sport where I live. I've watched plenty of hockey games with people who know next to nothing about the sport, and the scene is a familiar one to many sports fans.

The person I'm watching the game with notices that the play has stopped for no apparent reason. I explain to her that an off sides violation has occurred, and then I explain what an off sides violation is. She says that's a stupid rule. Then I explain why it's not a stupid rule.

One of our players scores a goal and the crowd goes wild, more so than usual. To her, it's just another goal, and she doesn't understand why people are so excited for this one. I calmly explain that the opposing team has been on a 5-on-3 power play for the last minute and a half, and our goal was short handed. "Oh, I guess that's quite an accomplishment," she notes, still not fully realizing how rare a feat this really is.

The teams come out for the second period and she exclaims, "hey, they're skating toward the other end of the ice now!" Later, she asks why there's no goalie in our goal any more, sparking a discussion about delayed penalties.

This game would be so much more enjoyable to her if she understood more about it. She's missing most of the things that happen in the game because she doesn't know about them. Watching the game would be much more fun and exciting to her if she knew why a 5-on-3 shorthanded goal is such a big deal. She'd be able to differentiate between a passing strategy and an icing strategy, and she'd know when each of those strategies should be used. She'd see patterns such as wraparound attempts and zone defense. If she knew the history of the teams involved, she'd understand the significance of a particular game. The game would take on a whole new richness for her if she only could see these things. But now, she doesn't even know what she's not seeing. She doesn't know what she doesn't know.

Still, she can get a pretty good general sense of what's happening in the game without knowing these things. She can see who the good players are, who is trying hardest, who is better at scoring, and who is better at blocking shots. She knows an exciting close shot when she sees one. She knows who's winning and losing. She can differentiate between an exciting game and a boring game. She can generally follow what's going on. She just doesn't appreciate the full richness of the game because there is a lot that she's missing.

The difference between a serious hockey fan and a casual one at a game is analogous to the difference between an educated person and an uneducated one in the world.

Education adds so much richness to life. Uneducated people can still see what's going on in the world. I don't need to know what syncopation and diminished chords are to listen to jazz, but I appreciate the music much more if I do. Uneducated people know that gas prices are high. But they simply complain about it, and educated people have to explain to them why they're so high. Uneducated people blame the TV anchors for inaccurate weather forecasts; educated people turn to chaos theory and understand why they're inaccurate in the first place. I'm sure you can think of many examples from your own content area.

Uneducated people think that learning is boring. What they don't realize is that just like watching hockey is much more fun when you know something about it, living in the world is much more fun when you know something about it. Just like the casual hockey fan misses half of the interesting stuff that happens in a game simply because they don’t know about it, uneducated people miss half of the interesting stuff that happens in the world for the same reason.

This isn't an attempt to put uneducated people down. For many, pursing higher education doesn't make practical sense. What I'm trying to argue here is that education is valuable for its own sake. I'm speaking to students who don't understand when they're ever going to use calculus; or who don't want to learn about government because they don't plan on becoming a politician; or who dislike organized athletics because they'll never become a professional athlete. It doesn't matter whether or not a particular course of study leads directly to a practical outcome. What matters is that your education allows you to see things in the world that you wouldn't otherwise see. A good general education makes life richer. Things make more sense to you.

Old Calculators and Old Teachers

2008-12-12T13:35:00.000-08:00

Colton: Did you have calculators like this when you were growing up?
Me: Yes, I did.
Colton (to another student): See, these calculators ARE old!!

Stories like this are only supposed to happen to other teachers! Old teachers! Not young ones like me!

Fun Things About Teaching

2008-12-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

This was a really fun week. Yesterday, the Law class took a field trip to the local university's law school, where they were jurors in a mock trial conducted by the law students. It was cool because they got to experience firsthand some of the things we’ve been talking about in class.

When the judge told them that they were to decide “questions of fact” and not “questions of law”, I was proud to see that the students knew exactly what he meant. They were told in class why the prosecutor always talks first, and on Friday they got to see it. The judge basically explained everything that they had just learned the week before. I could see the expression on the student’s faces that said “we already know that”, and that was really cool to see.

Possibly the most fun part of the day was the bus trip back. They had to wave at each vehicle that passed us, and they thought it was just hilarious when the other drivers honked back. Everyone in the class gets along so well, which makes it more fun too. The students had a great time and it was smiles all around.

On that bus trip, I couldn’t help but compare my job now to what I was doing a year ago – sitting in a desk – maybe smiling once a day, and feeling sorry for the people who are still stuck there. I just think it’s so sad that so many people resign themselves to a joyless career when there are so many other opportunities out there. A year ago, I would have been working behind a computer in solitude playing the daily office political games. Now, I’m spending a day at a law school with 14 energetic and funny people.

I will never go back to a cube farm. If you're in one, you should escape! The other side is even better than you can imagine.

Dilbert's Mom: "What's it like working in a cube?"
Dilbert: "Imagine the most beautiful place on earth."
DM: "OK."
D: "Now imagine you can never go there because you live in a box."

This article was written during my student teaching experience.

Death March

2008-11-29T15:58:00.000-08:00

Recent research suggests that a trend toward working more hours continues, with men working almost 50 hours a week and women working nearly 44 hours. This causes productivity problems for employees. In a Families and Work Institute survey, 2/3 of the respondents indicated they didn't have enough time with their children, and almost that many felt that they were not able to spend enough time with their spouses. More than half of the respondents felt they needed more time for themselves and were overworked in the last three months. The same employees got less sleep and experienced higher levels of stress. One third of the survey's respondents report they often lack enough energy to do things with their families after work.

The study concludes thusly:

Of particular concern are the negative spillover effects that demanding and hectic jobs can have on the quality of workers' personal lives and well being. This spillover is reflected in high stress, poor coping, bad moods, and insufficient time and energy for people who are personally important, creating problems that, in turn, spill over into work and impair job performance.

It's very common for business professionals to work more than 40 hours per week. Software business experts Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood talk about the implications of this in their Stack Overflow podcast:

The Death March book by Ed Yourdon talks about this idea that yeah, you can make programmers work 80 hour weeks, and they will get twice as much done as they did in their 40 hour weeks, but you're incurring debt. And you're going to pay back that debt in triple in terms of just sort of burnout and that kind of stuff. So, you can definitely, if you want to, spend a week, if there's really a deadline, you want to make everybody work 80 hours and get the thing done, that's fine, but the week after that, you're going to get nothing done.

Teachers, though, have deadlines every day. Every day, we have classrooms full of kids who are expecting us to have a top-notch education prepared for them. Most of us write our lessons and grade assignments on our own time after school. Unlike in business, where deadlines are periodic, we face new deadlines every day.

We end up working overtime to meet this week's deadlines, but we don't get a break the next week like Atwood and Spolsky suggest business professionals should. Next week, we have more papers to grade and more lessons to plan. We do get a ten week break during the summer, but the nine months of constant deadlines can be very stressful.

One thing that leads to burnout among business professionals is the situation where employees are given tasks but not the tools they need (including time) to complete those tasks. This situation seems to be quite common in education. It's not that we don't love our jobs. It's not that we don't like the kids. But we're only human, and we have limitations. Many of us spend our evenings and weekends working, especially first year teachers.

I see a tradeoff here. We need to work hard enough to produce a top quality education for our students, but not too hard to completely burn out. Lazy teachers with poorly prepared lesson plans don't help kids. But, teachers who have meticulous and stellar curricula but who are burnt out don't help kids either. It's a classic design tradeoff.

Source: Galinsky, Kim, & Bond. Feeling overworked: When work becomes too much. Families and Work Institute, 2001.

Yay For Mediocrity

2008-11-22T15:55:00.000-08:00

It's no wonder that U.S. students are falling behind. It's no wonder that the public is demanding more accountability for public schools. What some teachers are passing off as education is laughable. Career and Technical Education teachers, who many times are not accountable to any state or national standards, might be the guiltiest of them all.

Case 1

Earlier this year, I was using my prep hour to hang posters for one of our student organizations. I pass by the business classroom, where one of my colleagues is teaching a Sports and Entertainment Marketing class. I decide to hang out in the hall for a while and eavesdrop a bit. Here's what's going on inside the classroom.

She is teaching the class about BILLBOARDS. Yes, BILLBOARDS. Now, let me back up. Billboards might be a legitimate subject for a business class. If the teacher synthesizes this particular form of advertising with a larger conceptual framework, such as the four P's, or the product life cycle, or human psychology, or marketing budgets, or whatever, it would probably be an appropriate thing to talk about. If she's teaching in such a way that actually results in students constructing or learning new knowledge about business, it might be a good topic.

However, my colleague is teaching at the absolute most basic cognitive level. She's teaching students WHAT A BILLBOARD IS. She's teaching them that WORDS SHOULD BE BIG ON BILLBOARDS BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE DRIVING FAST. She is speaking very loudly and slowly, almost as if the students were too dumb to understand a normal conversational tone. These people are old enough to vote, old enough to drive, old enough to enlist in the military, and she's talking to them like they've never seen a billboard before.

I sneak a peak at a grading rubric that one of the students must have left behind. Students are graded on things like: colorful, big words, creative, catchy, and effort. Apparently, the students are given a couple of days in the computer lab to design their own billboards with who knows what software, probably Adobe InDesign. I'd like to ask this teacher what exactly she thinks the students are learning from this.

Case 2

I'm taking over a Marketing course from a teacher who left last year. I looked through her old course materials, and this is what I discovered:

Half – yes half – of the term is spent playing a video game disguised as a business simulation.

Students get to make a collage about themselves by cutting pictures out of magazines! They're graded on creativity.

The most difficult part of this class is designing a new label for a fictitious sports drink.

Really, what are they learning here? This class is an absolute insult to their intelligence, and after going through all of the previous teacher's materials, I have no idea what the students actually learn about business by taking her class.

Reflection

I could go on and on giving examples like this. I could start another whole blog called "ineffective teaching" and I could fill it chock full of stories like this. Teachers who don't know their own subject area or treat students like little kids. Lazy teachers who give out worksheets and show videos and call that an education. Don't get me wrong, there are some stellar teachers in public education, but there are so many duds. In fact, research has shown that on average, college students entering the teaching profession are relatively weak academically (Walker, Kozma, & Green. American education: Foundations and policy).

You won't find students playing video games and making collages and creating sports drink labels in my classes. This is from my syllabus of the Marketing class I'm about to teach, which I've completely re-designed, as I have with almost every other class I've inherited from someone:

These topics are current, rigorous, and relevant. Contrary to what many people believe, I've found that students don't want easy classes. They want classes that challenge them and in which they actually learn something. I've had very positive feedback from students in my classes using this approach.

Honestly, I'd really like to write about some other examples of just terrible teaching that I've seen but this post is already long enough.

The Administrators

My first formal evaluation was a couple of weeks ago. It was during a class I taught in the computer lab. This class has 34 students, and if you've ever taught in a computer lab, you know that invariably, at least a couple of students will be distracted by the computers, either playing games or doing homework or whatever. This was the case during my evaluation, and the administrator docked me for it.

So, now I have this thing in my file saying that I'm below standards in the area of managing behavior, because a couple of students were distracted by the computers for a few minutes. There were some really good things in the evaluation too, but still, there's this black mark.

Rather than seeing how much better these classes really are than what they used to be, and how much work I've done to improve them, and how much the students are actually learning – instead of seeing that – they come in, see a kid playing a game, and conclude that I don't know how to manage behavior.

Wow! I think I'll sit down with this administrator to discuss the situation.

In Conclusion

Students deserve smarter teachers. Administrators should realize that.

Are There Any Doctors On Board?

2008-11-20T14:40:00.001-08:00

Who influences your teaching style? Today the answer surprised me.

We were talking about tax-sheltered retirement accounts in my Investments class today, and I was demonstrating the benefits of pre-tax accounts on the board.

Me: So, let's say your paycheck is $1000, and the government takes 20% of it in taxes (humor me here). What's 20% of 1000?
(wait a couple of seconds).
Me: Somebody say 200.
Student: 200

My face turned into a smile as I remembered one of my old deadpan math teachers who would do this all the time. Ask the class a question, give us the answer, and then politely ask that someone say the answer. This teacher's humor was even dryer and more deadpan than Leslie Nielson in Airplane!, the best movie ever made:

Stewardess, I think the man next to me is a doctor.

I noticed a dorky smirk on one of the kids in the front row whose sense of humor is apparently as dry as mine.

What's interesting is that I only remembered where I got this idea from AFTER I had already done it! What other habits, good or bad, am I getting from my old teachers? Who influences your teaching style? A lot of what goes into it, I think, isn't even necessarily on a conscious level.

I Know, Right?

2008-11-18T14:38:00.000-08:00

Each new generation of youth brings with it a collection of annoying catch phrases. "I know, right?" is the most annoying yet. I was quite taken aback the first time I heard it.

Me: I think poly-sci majors should have a better understanding of economics.
Jim: I know, right?
Me: What do you mean "right"? Of course, that's what I just told you. You don't need to ask me "right" about something that I just said, idiot. If you know, why are you asking me if you're right?

Honestly, how is someone supposed to respond to this? Let's try another example.

Me: It's pretty cold outside today.
Ann: I know, right?
Me: __________________________________

What's the correct response?

(laugh) Yeah!! Right!!!

(don't say anything)

No shit.

Yes, that's right. But you didn't need to ask me that because I just said it.

Honestly, this phrase serves no constructive purpose whatsoever. But people think they'll sound cool if they go around saying it. Probably because Joe Freshman remembers how strange the phrase seemed the first time someone used it on him, and he realized that he could make other people just as confused by saying the phrase himself, and everyone else is doing it so it sounds cool. So Joe Freshman goes around saying "I know" and then asking if he's right and pretty soon everyone's doing it.

It doesn't sound cool.

Please stop.

Please.

Everybody.

Just stop.

The New Face of Computer Applications

2008-11-15T06:56:00.000-08:00

Computer Applications classes at middle and high schools are usually focused on teaching office productivity tools. They usually use the Microsoft Office suite of Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. But desktop applications are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

The World Wide Web has basically turned the software industry upside down. In the olden days, people would go to a physical retail store, buy a box which contained a floppy disc or CD, bring it home, install the software on their computer, and then use it. Technologically savvy users would download the software from the web instead of going to a store.

But the days of buying software and installing it on your computer are almost over. These days, most software is run in a web browser. You go to a website and can access the software from anywhere with a browser and an internet connection. Instead of buying software, the new model is to deliver software as a service. Think of your own computer use. I'll bet that the vast majority of it is spent looking at a web browser.

Things that in the past required you to buy software for can now be done on the web:

Email: Yahoo! Mail, Gmail

Word processing, Spreadsheets, and Presentations: Google Docs

Customer Relationship Management: Web based CRM

Accounting and Finance: Web based accounting

Maps: Google Maps

School Management: SchoolCenter, Infinite Campus

Games: Yahoo Games

Drawing: Draw Anywhere

Sales Force Management: Salesforce.com

The future is clearly not in traditional desktop applications, but in cloud computing. Almost any software that a business needs can now be found on the web. There are several advantages to this:

Web applications are platform independent. They can be used on any operating system and hardware.

Updates are automatic. You don't need to re-install any software when updates are released. Instead, the software company simply updates the code on the server. Anyone who uses that website is always using the latest version of the software.

No more software to install. You don't need to install the software on every computer that needs to use it. A browser and internet connection is all you need.

SAAS is cheaper. Many companies set up their fees on a per-user basis. Software is leased, not sold. You only pay for the time you actually use the software.

Web applications eliminate IT overhead. Since the software is hosted elsewhere, your business does not need to worry about supporting and administering the software.

Web applications are easier to learn. Users do not need to learn a new UI, since they are already familiar with the web.

Businesses are realizing the power of web-delivered software. Schools are too. The districts I've worked at use Infinite Campus and SchoolCenter for student management. Both of these are great examples of web applications.

So, here's the question: with more and more software moving to the web, what are we doing still teaching desktop applications to high school students? Should we really keep teaching them Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, when the future of software is clearly in the web browser?

I say no. I'm gradually changing my Computer Applications class from the desktop world to the web world. There are plenty of Web 2.0 tools that are great resources for students:

Blogs. Blogging is a great way to get students interested in computers. They love creating their own web pages. Some free blogging services are blogger.com and 21classes.com.

Wikipedia. Wikipedia lets students contribute knowledge to the world. They can edit articles and even write their own articles. Businesses use wikis internally for communication about more specific topics.

Google Docs. Students can create documents and spreadsheets online and access them from anywhere.

Google Maps. There are endless possibilities for research here.

Social Networking. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr allow students to connect with others who have similar interests.

Let's not underestimate the power of these web-based tools. After all, they were a central part of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Look what they did for him! I've found that student get really excited about using these tools. In ten years, they'll say, "I remember when we used crusty-old desktop apps in school!"

I'm not saying we should stop teaching office productivity software. Certainly, there is still a place for this. But let's not forget about all of the other computer applications that students will be using in the future.

Don't Worry. Be Happy.

2008-11-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

I assert that high school seniors have too much stress in their lives. One of my classes this term is composed of some very high achieving and intelligent business students. Their ACT scores are all in the 30s, and their GPAs are equally high. They're very involved with extra-curricular activities. On weekdays, they attend school during the day and go to their part-time jobs at night, leaving very little free time.

But the biggest cause of their stress is the enormous decisions that they need to make about their futures. The students in this class are applying to several colleges and trying to decide where to go and what to do once they get there. This is a constant topic of conversation for these students. They know that this one decision can have a major effect on the rest of their lives. This decision is consuming them.

Most of the blame for this stress can be placed on parents and teachers. For their entire lives, we have been harping on them about how important college is and how big this decision is. We're always telling them to achieve more, to do better. We're telling them that they need to be in organizations and take leadership roles in order to have a leg up on the competition. We're telling them that they need the highest grades, the best test scores, the most friends, and the longest resumes, and that if they don't, their futures are ruined. They've been over-scheduled since the time they could walk. We have been watching and criticizing their every move. No wonder they're stressed.

Please, let's take some pressure off of these kids. Let's stop telling them from the time they're in diapers that they have to be the best at everything. Let's tell them the truth about college. The truth is that controlling for other variables, life satisfaction has absolutely no correlation to where you go to college (pdf). It does not matter how prestigious your school is. The truth is that many people end up getting jobs outside of their major areas of study. The truth is that these students will not just have one career in their lifetimes (pdf), but that they're free to change careers when their interests change.

The truth is that human beings are generally not very good at predicting what will make us happy. We greatly overestimate how happy we'll be about good decisions and how disappointed we'll be about bad decisions. In reality, people are very resilient and will be about as happy regardless of which choice they make.

Seniors: Relax. Smile. Take a deep breath. You'll be fine!

Unsolicited Advice

2008-10-31T17:54:00.001-07:00

Normally, giving people unsolicited advice is a social no-no. But isn't this what teachers get paid to do? We give students helpful information because they're too young and inexperienced to know this information themselves. I give students unsolicited advice all the time in my classes: advice on investing, ethics, web site design strategies, increasing productivity, study skills, and even career exploration. This is what I get paid to do. I'm supposed to give students unsolicited advice. I'm supposed to be teaching them things.

How much is too much? Where does one cross the line between advice about academic topics and advice about personal topics? What type of advice is OK to give, and what is better left unsaid? Where's the line between professional opinion and personal opinion?

Last year, one particular student was really interested in a career as a computer programmer, and we chatted quite a bit. We talked a lot about programming, where the jobs are, Monty Python(!), and all kinds of other stuff. He was a senior, and his plan was to go to a two year technical college and get an associate's degree in Computer Science. He said that he didn’t want to spend a bunch of time and money studying liberal arts classes at a four year school, and he wanted to get into the workforce and start building stuff as soon as he could.

I can certainly sympathize with that sentiment. In fact, I very nearly made the same decision when I graduated high school. But I'm so glad I went to a four year school instead. It was a fantastic experience. It also opened up so many more possibilities for me, and I probably wouldn't be teaching today if I made the other choice.

Also, I spent three years in the software industry before becoming a teacher, so I have a good sense of what employers are looking for. In my experience, NO ONE hires programmers straight out of school with only an A.S. degree. A four year degree is a minimum qualification for the job. People with A.S. degrees get stuck doing helpdesk work, not programming.

So what advice should I have given this student? Should I be encouraging and congratulate him on his choice to get an A.S. degree? Should I be positive and supportive? Or should I question his decision and tell him what I know about the value of a four year degree? Is this a personal decision or a professional one? At the least, it's an academic decision, so I do have some jurisdiction to give advice in that area.

But giving unsolicited advice is such a social taboo. Plus, maybe a two year degree is what the student really wanted. Maybe it's better to encourage him instead of second-guessing him. I still wish he would have gone to a four-year school, though.

I did talk a little bit about four year schools as a requirement for programming jobs with this student, but I didn't push the issue too hard, and overall, I was very encouraging to him about his decision. But still, when he gets his helpdesk job with his A.S. degree instead of the programming job he really wanted, will I be kicking myself for not being more candid with him?

What do you think? As a teacher, what type of unsolicited advice should we give students? How much is too much?

Overcoming Homophobia - Follow Up

2008-10-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all of the great comments on the last post. Just to clarify - I'm in no way proud of the way I laughed at what the students did in class that day. GLBT students put up with this type of abuse every day, and they deserve better. My main point was that we should recognize how courageous these students are. I really like some of your suggestions, including using an office environment as an example. Many commenters said that teachers actually can make a difference. I'm beginning to see that, and I think a good place to start is in our own classrooms.

That's So Gay: Overcoming Homophobia

2008-10-23T16:29:00.000-07:00

Warning: Language in this post may be offensive to some.

Sometimes I like to throw random pictures up on the SmartBoard just for fun. For example, I'll put random pictures of ponies in my PowerPoint slides or a picture of Snuffleupagus on the screen when class starts. It seems to lighten the mood, and it's a good conversation piece, and I don't know, for some reason, I think it's kind of funny. One funny picture is this one of what I think looks like a frolicking llama.

I had this on the SmartBoard when the students came in to class, with the words "Frolicking Llama" underneath it. While I wasn't looking, someone crossed out "frolicking llama" and wrote "frolicking faggot" instead. When I saw this, I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it; it was actually really funny. Trust me, you had to be there. Then I remembered that one of the students in that class is a lesbian and thought, "gee, maybe I shouldn't laugh at this." I stopped laughing eventually, totally backpedaled, scorned the students who did it, and bit my tongue to keep myself from laughing for the rest of the hour.

The sad truth is that anti-gay behavior is rampant in public high schools, at least the ones I've been in. My favorite is when people call objects gay, as in, "this computer is gay." It's gay this, gay that, students accusing each other of being gay – and it happens all the time.

What do you do when you see this in your classroom? I usually ignore it. I figure that students hear this type of stuff all the time, and one teacher isn't going to make a difference, and after all, it's really not all that offensive, is it? But I'm starting to change my mind.

In my two years of teaching, I've worked with a number of openly gay students. More than I expected actually. It usually comes up very casually in conversations between students, like this: "when I told my manager about my girlfriend…", or "I'm not going to college there – I'd be the only gay kid." I suspected that some of these students were gay, but with others, I had no idea.

I never considered myself homophobic, but I've started to view these students in a different light recently. Every one of them is a well-adjusted, normal kid with lots of friends. They are all highly respected by their peers. Their peers all know about their homosexuality, and they honestly just don't care about it. The gay students are really not treated any differently by the kids than anyone else. Students are not afraid to talk about it; they can even joke about it; but it's just not a big deal to anyone. To their friends, their homosexuality is NOT a salient characteristic. They are students, not gay students.

Their courage impresses me. The traditional wisdom is that society doesn't like gay people and homosexuals are wierd. These students prove those notions false. They're fully functional and highly respected among their peers. They have the maturity to rise above some of the anti-gay behavior that happens in schools and not let it bother them.

All staff at our school have the option of adding rainbow stickers to their ID badges in order to show their support for GLBT students and faculty. I've decided not to, but I can start creating a better atmosphere by calling out students who make offensive or ill-informed remarks.

How does this issue play out in your classroom? What is your response to it?

I Am Serious. And Don't Call Me Shirley.

2008-10-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

Teachers get to have fun. We're working on a multimedia unit in my Web Site Design class, where students are adding pictures, sounds, and video to their websites. The sound clip I provided was from the movie Airplane!, the best movie ever made:

"Surely you can't be serious. I am serious. And don't call me Shirley."

I showed them how to add this sound clip to their websites. After all of the students did this, I thought it would be interesting to see how it would sound if 35 computers all played this clip at the same time. So we decided that everyone would press PLAY on three. I said, "One, two, three," and 35 computers all said, "Surely you can't be serious. I am serious. And don't call me Shirley," at the same time, except that they were all about a half second off. It was pretty hilarious. Then we did it a second time just in case someone missed it the first time around.

This post was originally written during my first year teaching experience.

Speaking Of Oil

2008-10-12T09:12:00.001-07:00

Since it's impossible to be a good investor without understanding the law of supply and demand, I decided to dedicate the previous week of my Investments class to that topic. After learning the fundamentals of how supply and demand work in the marketplace, I illustrated some real-world examples of this law in action.

First, we talked out the housing market. We also discussed the future of health care with an aging population. We talked about sales of SUVs and Toyota Priuses. Then, we talked about oil

The trend of rising oil prices in the last couple of years and the recent decrease in oil prices can both be explained by the law of supply and demand. First, the class participated in an auction to demonstrate this concept. Some of the students represented oil companies and others represented oil buyers. The buyers and sellers in the classroom negotiated a price, just like what really happens in the oil market. Students came away with the understanding that oil prices are set by market forces, not oil companies alone.

I asked the class if they thought oil would ever hit $6.00 a gallon. They all said yes. I broke the students up into small groups and had them discuss the following question: "What effect would $6.00 a gallon gasoline have on: farmers, grocery stores, families, public schools, transportation companies, and your own investment portfolio." They predicted that the economy would generally slow down if gasoline ever reached that point.

After that, I launched into an explanation of what's been happening with the supply and demand for oil lately. Every student in the class was hooked. I've never seen a class so attentive during a lecture before. They were genuinely interested in this.

I showed charts of US oil production and of global oil production. Oil production in the US peaked in the 1970s and has been in steady decline ever since. Global oil production has generally risen at a rate of 2% per year, but it has remained generally flat in the last two years. We discussed the fact that oil is not an infinite resource, and that eventually, global oil production will start a steady and irreversible decline just as it has in the US. I mentioned that no one knows for sure when that will happen, but I did show the class a chart from the US Energy Information Administration that predicts this peak at around 2037.

The next thing we did was talked about ways we could either increase the supply or reduce the demand for oil. They mentioned drilling in Alaska, carpooling, drilling offshore, and using alternative energy sources. We briefly mentioned the pros and cons of some of the possible solutions. Again, the students were very engaged.

I presented this lesson as objectively as I possibly could. I avoided making any claims or predictions about the future. I ended the class on a positive note, talking about some of the good things that are being done in alternative energy, and talking about solutions instead of focusing on the problem. Still, the mood in the classroom was pretty somber that day. I knew that I had to be careful about presenting this topic for a variety of reasons. Peak oil is still a controversial and political topic.

When I got home, I started questioning whether I should have even brought up the subject. This information really seemed to have an effect on the students, and I was a little concerned about some of the parents' reactions. I've had a few days to contemplate this, and I think my decision to have an honest discussion about oil was a good one. Students need to know about this issue, because it will have a direct impact on them. The topic absolutely belongs in an investments class, because it has a direct impact on investment portfolios. The news about the supply and demand of oil may have been a bit depressing to some of the students, but I'd rather have them know about it than just pretend that the problem doesn't exist. Most Americans don’t have any understanding whatsoever of energy markets, and people should be educated about them.

Don't Write Tests When You're Tired
I put a really bad question on the test for this unit:

"The US continues to demand more oil from the middle east, but these countries are unable to pump oil out of the ground any faster. What will happen to oil prices?"

I wrote this question the day before the test. I was tired and in a hurry. The question is flawed on several levels. Both of the assertions are incorrect. US demand for oil has decreased in recent months, not increased. Also, it's not true that middle east countries are unable to increase their production levels. Oil production actually went up slightly in 2008. The biggest flaw is that the question assumes that the only factors influencing global oil prices are US demand and middle east supply. That's just plain wrong. There are more producers and consumers of oil than just the US and middle east. The global price of oil reflects market players all over the world, not just in these two regions.

So, this test is giving students misinformation. Most students will come away with the idea that US demand will always rise, middle east supplies will never rise, and that oil prices will always rise (this is technically the "correct" answer to the question). None of those things are necessarily true. So I guess the moral of the story is: never write tests when you're tired.

You Know What Happens When You Assume

2008-10-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

One of the many important steps in planning a lesson is to identify the assumptions in your plan. What are you assuming that your students already know? Trying to guess what your students do and don't already know can be tricky work, and if your assumptions are wrong, it can wreak havoc with your lesson in the classroom.

In Career Exploration, we're spending a few days putting together a college budget. We're calculating monthly expenses and determining how much financial aid the students will need for their first year of school. Coming up with the final numbers involves a bit of math, including some very simple algebra, which I assumed the students already knew.

Some calculations in the assignment required two or three steps to complete. Similar to the way accomplished chefs leave out "obvious" (to them) steps from their recipes, I left out some of the "obvious" steps in the calculations. I'd tell the students to "average" the numbers instead of explicitly telling them how to average the numbers.

Well – you know where this is going – assuming that the students had these math skills was a mistake. When I backtracked and explicitly explained how to perform the calculations, some of the students got frustrated and gave up early. This was a big problem because the later calculations depended on the earlier calculations, which some of the students didn't complete.

The obvious solution would be to teach the students the sequence of steps necessary to perform the calculations. However, that would be a huge mistake. The students wouldn't be learning anything at all; they'd just be following a series of detailed instructions. They'd be following all the steps to average numbers without really understanding what they were doing. Anyone could do that. The whole point of teaching is transfer. If students can't complete their own budgets outside of school without depending on a teacher to show them how, what have they really learned?

I think a more effective teaching strategy here would have been whole-part-whole. Next time, I'll start by introducing the (whole) concept of a budget. Then, I'll give them the specific problem (part; like averaging tuition costs), break them into cooperative groups, and ask them to come up with a solution on how to solve it. Then, I'll come back to the budget (whole) and show them how their calculations fit into the bigger idea.

This article was originally written during my first year teaching experience.

Theory Y: Student Empowerment

2008-09-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

Which one of these statements do you believe to be most true?

Students will naturally find the path of least resistance. Students need to be closely supervised, and the teacher's job is to constantly make sure they are on task and doing things the way the teacher wants them done. When behaviorist approaches such as operant conditioning are used, the student's behavior will most closely align with the teacher's goals.

When students are given relevant goals and the opportunity to make decisions on their own without overdue teacher meddling, students tend to be ambitious and self-directed. They gladly accept greater responsibility and get a greater sense of accomplishment and ownership from their work. A teacher's job is to hold students accountable for goals, but not to constantly micromanage the student's work.

If you agree with the first one, you follow Douglas McGregor's Theory X. If you agree with the second one, you follow Theory Y. McGregor's theory posits that both management techniques can be used in different situations. I've had much better results following Theory Y.

Theory Y in Action
I'm the DECA advisor at my school, and I had a huge recruiting challenge. Last year, there were 22 students in the organizations. This fall, the only ones who remained were 13 seniors. When these seniors graduate this year, that would leave no one. Advising DECA is part of my contract, so this was a big deal to me. I have a big stake in making sure this organization continues to be successful; if it doesn't, I don't get paid.

So I had to do a whole bunch of recruiting. With the stakes this high, is this something I could trust the students to do on their own? Should I let them organize a recruiting drive, risking that they'll screw up, or if I want it done right, should I do it myself? Remember, the consequence of failure was losing my job, or at least part of it.

The decision was easy for me. Based my experience in several organizations I've been involved with, most notably Civil Air Patrol, leaders get better results when they use Theory Y to empower their subordinates. I knew that the 13 students would do a better job at organizing a recruiting drive than I could myself. After meeting these students the first week of school and seeing how smart, motivated, and self-directed they were, my decision was solidified.

We started by setting goals for the recruiting drive, delegating each goal to a different person, and setting deadlines for the goals. I provided some guidance in the goal setting, but after that, I essentially checked out and left the students to their own devices.

Management Style
A few deadlines slipped and I helped the students come up with plans for corrective action. I held students accountable for their goals, but I didn't constantly look over their shoulders. They had complete creative license to do this recruiting drive the way they wanted to.

The Results

We held our informational meeting for new members this week. The students kept coming, and coming, and coming, and coming! In all, we increased our membership by 400% from last year! The group's morale is in great shape, and the excitement level of the students is stratospheric. I'm really looking forward to working with this group.

DECA is a student-run organization. The students are the leaders. It's their organization, and they deserve a sense of ownership in it. I have some specific goals for the group and some new ideas; I'll be providing some guidance and oversight, but it's basically their ship to run. With the student president and other officers we have this year, the group is under some very capable leadership.

Is It Really That Easy?
Theory Y is clearly the superior approach to leading an organization, but you can't just let go of the reins completely. You need to keep in mind some basic leadership principles which are completely beyond the scope of what I can write today.

P.S. Don't Stop Now
I'm slightly afraid of the "resting on our laurels" syndrome. Recruiting is not enough; retention is equally important. We need to make this an organization that the members want to stay in and keep coming back to. We'll be putting a lot of work into that in the upcoming weeks and months. Theory Y and student empowerment will be our methods. Stay tuned.

Letting Students Experience Failure

2008-09-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

One of the things that impressed me the most about my flight instructor was his ability to let his students make mistakes. Flying an airplane requires very precise motor control and close coordination. Your feet are on the rudder pedals, your left hand controls the ailerons and elevator, and your right hand controls the throttle, trim, and mixture. In addition to these coordinated motor controls, flight students need to learn how to make good judgments. You need to be able to estimate how high you should be at any moment during an approach to a landing. You need to predict and judge how much the wind will blow you off course. These are just some examples.

It doesn’t work for the instructor to do all of this for the student. The only way the student is able to learn these motor skills and judgments is by making mistakes for him or herself. The thing is, mistakes can be very unforgiving in an airplane. Instructors have the difficult task of letting students make enough mistakes to learn, but not letting students make catastrophic mistakes. Sometimes this can be a very fine line, especially when the student is learning how to land.

Good classroom teachers need to let students make mistakes as well. Just as in an airplane, teachers need to provide guidance. Teachers are sort of like bowling lane bumpers. They should give students plenty of leeway, but steer them back on course when it’s obvious that the student has veered too far off track. Knowing how much leeway to give is a big decision. For flight instructors, this could be a life-or-death decision. The decision isn’t quite as critical for classroom teachers, but it’s still important.

We started our formal debate in Law this week. The resolution is, “marijuana should be legalized in the US”. Tuesday and Wednesday were research days, and the debate started on Thursday. The first speaker for the pro side gave her presentation, during which everyone was very attentive. The cross examination followed, and that’s when all order in the room disappeared.

Instead of asking questions one at a time and actively listening to responses, as they were instructed to do, it was complete chaos. One half of the class was shouting at the other half of the class, and the poor student whose turn it was to present was desperately trying to make sense of it all and respond to at least some of the questions. Of course, no one heard or cared about her responses, because they were all deeply engaged in their shouting matches.

I was deliberately quiet and observant during this whole ordeal. After about two minutes of this, one of the students looked over at me and asked, “aren’t you going to stop this?” My nonchalant reply was, “nope!” After three minutes, the previously agreed-upon time limit for cross exams, I finally broke it up. I debriefed the cross-exam session. The class talked about why it was important to follow the agreed upon rules. We talked about “attack the idea; respect the person” and what that phrase meant. The debriefing was very effective and the subsequent cross-exams went very smoothly.

The students failed miserably at the first cross exam. This failure gave them first-hand knowledge of what happens when we don’t follow the procedures. The students knew what the failure looked like and why it didn’t work. They knew what they had to do to improve next time.

Had I intervened early, as the student suggested, they would not have experienced this failure. Their attitude would have been, “the teacher will intervene if we don’t follow the rules”. This is not what I wanted them to learn. By allowing the students to fail, their attitude became “that certainly didn’t work – now I know what to do next time”.

“Let the students experience failure” is a very powerful heuristic that teachers can use. Just like flight instructors, teachers need to use it carefully and strategically. Many times, though, it’s the most effective way to teach.

Yearbook Yearbook One Two

2008-09-17T16:25:00.001-07:00

Each morning at the middle school, I spend an hour preparing lessons and grading papers before the students arrive. Right after homeroom (brilliantly called "Star" in this school – pun intended), two seventh grade girls come on the intercom and read the announcements. They are read in a predictably juvenile manner (overacting, too much energy, etc). The announcements are going right along, and all of the sudden, I hear two squirrelly preadolescent girls sing in unison as loud and enthusiastically as they can, "YEARBOOK, YEARBOOK, ONE TWO!! YEARBOOK, YEARBOOK, ONE TWO!!" to the tune of Queen's We Will, We Will Rock You. This has been going on for an entire week. They're trying to get students to join yearbook.

When the first hour students come into my classroom, I joke about this a little. The next day, I tell them that I came up with a new assignment called the "Yearbook Yearbook One Two" paper. The requirements are to write "yearbook yearbook one two" over and over again until it fills up a whole page. They laugh. It's funny.

Multitasking

2008-09-14T14:23:00.000-07:00

Teaching requires a tremendous amount of energy. You are always on. You must be completely in the moment every minute of every day, except for the one hour break you get for prep time. You're constantly multi-tasking. These were all of the things going through my head during just the first couple minutes of my Investments class today:

Greet students as they come into the classroom

Decide whether or not to give students hallway passes (these were requested by 2 students at the top of the hour, and I quickly decided not to because of the imminent lockdown drill. Of course, I couldn't tell the students my reason for denying the pass to them).

Get the lesson plans out from my briefcase. Also get out the test, which I wrote and ordered copies of the day before, and yesterday's assignment, which I graded earlier in the day.

The bell rings. I'm still waiting for the computer to boot and organizing my papers. Welcome students to class, tell them the plan for the day (sans lockdown drill), and tell them to quietly spend five minutes studying for the test, please.

Computer boots. Bring up my class website that I'll need later in the period, which I already prepared.

Dan asks what he missed when he was gone yesterday. Politely tell him that I will prepare the materials and give them to him later in the hour.

Lockdown alarm sounds. Lock the doors, cover the windows, inform students of the procedure, turn on the closed circuit TV to await further instructions (everything up to this point has occurred within the first three minutes of class).

Take attendance. Log on to my email system and email the office which students are absent from my class, as per the lockdown procedures.

Lockdown drill ends. Unlock the doors and uncover the windows. Inform students that we will be beginning the quiz.

Announce that students who needed passes earlier may come to my desk so I can sign them out.

Hand out the tests to students. As I do this, make sure that notes are put away and computer monitors are off.

Ask one student to remove his hat. Wearing headgear is against school policy.

One the quizzes are out, look up the schedule of a student from my last class, who still has one of my keys for the school store. Call that teacher. Teacher does not answer the phone. Call the main office to track the student down.

Get the missing assignments ready for Dan and hand them to him after he completes his test.

The two students with hallway passes take longer than normal to return. Judgment call: should I ask them about this? They volunteer that the closest bathroom was still locked from the drill. They return to their seats.

What are we doing after the test again? Oh yeah. We'll be reading an online article and answering some discussion questions, which I already prepared.

Mentally prepare for the pre-reading mini-lecture I'll use to introduce the article to the class.

Hand back the graded assignments from yesterday.

The student with the missing key walks in and I eventually get the key.

Walk up and down the classroom to monitor students as they take the test. A few students are taking a long time. Make a judgment call: give them a cutoff time of two more minutes.

Introduce the reading assignment to the class, using proper questioning techniques to ensure students stay engaged.

After the introduction, stop by Dan's desk and tell them he can work on his makeup assignments instead of reading today's article.

And this was just the first third of the class. Multiply this by seven hours of student contact time per day, and you can see how the job takes energy. Admittedly, the lockdown drill was unusual, but teachers face all kinds of unexpected things throughout the day, all of which must be handled gracefully. A cool head is definitely a requirement for this job.

187 Things I Love About Teaching

2008-09-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

The title pretty much says it all. Gratitude is one of the best tools we have. When you think about it, this job is pretty great. This list is completely stream of consciousness, so there might be some repetition and/or nonsense in it. Enjoy!

1. Building rapport with students
2. Relating to students
3. Providing a safe, comfortable, and encouraging place for "outcast" students to go
4. Public speaking
5. Being "in the moment"
6. Being constantly alert
7. Having situational awareness
8. Extremely high level of autonomy
9. Making important decisions
10. Being supported 100% by peers and administrators
11. Extremely high level of responsibility
12. Getting off at 3:45 in the afternoon
13. Making a difference in a kid's life
14. Putting a smile on a kid's face
15. Making a kid's day a little bit brighter
16. Being someone a student can turn to
17. Challenging people
18. Forcing people outside of their comfort zones
19. Shedding a light on new topics for people
20. Helping people reason logically
21. Continual learning about my content area and pedagogy
22. Being highly respected in the community
23. Working with friendly coworkers
24. Other people put a great deal of trust in me
25. Organizing activities like Business Professionals of America
26. Controlling the direction of my own career
27. Having a voice in school policies
28. Volunteering at student events like athletics and theatre
29. Watching kids succeed at things they love doing
30. Helping kids with their futures
31. Primarily focusing on others instead of myself
32. Being, not doing
33. Shedding all self-consciousness
34. Being a role model
35. Planning lessons
36. Treating students like adults
37. Treating students with respect and courtesy
38. Summers off
39. Lots of vacation time
40. Having a job that I truly enjoy
41. Being a highly educated professional
42. Being an intellectual
43. Being a scholar
44. Keeping abreast of the latest in the world of education
45. Encouraging diversity
46. Encouraging students to challenge social norms
47. Keeping current in technological knowledge
48. Being the resident computer expert
49. Experiencing flow
50. Making many, many quick decisions
51. Being someone people can look up to
52. Preparing students for college
53. Building a positive rapport in the classroom
54. Meeting students in the hall
55. Seeing students do well in athletics
56. Seeing students do well in theatre
57. Exchanging pleasantries
58. Seeing lots of smiles every day (kids smile a lot)
59. Joking around
60. Watching people throw French Silk pies in each others faces
61. Telling jokes
62. Listening to jokes
63. Writing a curriculum
64. Having control over your own program
65. Deciding what you'd like students to learn
66. Seeing that students have actually learned it
67. Journaling and reflecting on teaching
68. Keeping in touch with old friends and colleagues from college
69. Living in and learning about a new community
70. Anticipating the start of a new day
71. Anticipating the start of a new class
72. Being welcoming
73. Perfect mixture of extraversion and introversion required
74. Working with smart coworkers who value lifetime learning
75. Coworkers who see the value of education
76. Students who take the class because they're interested in it and want to learn, not just for a grade
77. Meeting with parents
78. Talking with parents about how their students are doing in class
79. Writing letters to parents
80. Students who want you to show them more advanced things than what we are learning in class
81. Students who stay after class to discuss the days' topic with you
82. Learning about students' lives outside of school
83. Teaching subjects that I'm highly interested in
84. Researching subjects that I'm highly interested in to prepare for lessons
85. Modifying a lesson after trying it once
86. Learning from my mistakes
87. Thinking about how to improve next time
88. Teaching students real, tangible skills
89. Leaving a mark on the universe that extends beyond my own lifetime
90. Being a change agent in the universe
91. Being more than just a consuming rational maximizer of self interest
92. Improving my public speaking skills
93. Laughing with people
94. Meeting new people
95. Being self-confident because the job requires it
96. Working in solitude
97. Maintaining computer hardware and software
98. Creating a large body of work which can be reused
99. Maintaining a comprehensive class website
100. Being part of a learning community with many varied opportunities, including sports, music, business, leadership, scholarship, civic engagement, etc.
101. Making financial contributions to the community
102. Meeting professional educators from other school systems
103. Teaching college level courses in a high school
104. Being part of professional organizations
105. Being a member of Delta Pi Epsilon
106. Being part of and continuing a strong Business Education tradition in this state
107. Planning professional conferences
108. Drawing on the whiteboard
109. Student participation in lessons
110. Guiding a thoughtful student discussion about an interesting topic
111. Sympathizing with students
112. Developing new lessons and assignments
113. Using all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy
114. My talents are being fully utilized (this job is not boring!)
115. Brainstorming ideas for class
116. Doing things that the students are interested in
117. Remembering what it was like to be a teenager
118. Being glad that I'm no longer a teenager
119. Working closely with the IT support people
120. Taking Continuing Education Credits
121. Being supported by other teachers
122. Constantly growing my knowledge and skills
123. Having non-school related conversations with students
124. Being with energetic people
125. Being with funny people
126. Being with happy people
127. Standing in the front of the room
128. Drawing gremlins on the chalkboard
129. Counting the days of school
130. Fully expressing my geekiness
131. Speaking clearly and intelligently
132. Being in a place where intelligence is rewarded
133. Wishing people a happy Wright Brothers Day
134. Telling people about the Wright Brothers
135. Learning for its own sake
136. Sharing knowledge
137. Fully utilizing my skills and abilities
138. Doing something that I have prepared for my whole life
139. Using prior, not directly related experiences, as a strength (anecdotes from other experiences and areas)
140. Having hope for the future
141. Seeing people as PEOPLE, not just strangers, numbers, or faces in a crowd
142. Getting to know people individually
143. Seeing past the stereotypes
144. Working with people of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and abilities
145. Working with people with disabilities
146. Accepting all people exactly how they are
147. Respecting all people
148. Being in a place where a tolerant, accepting, respecting, courteous attitude is the norm
149. Providing a structured learning environment
150. Having high expectations and holding students to them
151. Inspecting what you expect
152. Working at home on my laptop
153. Working in public on my laptop
154. Having personal and professional goals for myself and my students
155. Being a permanent and important part of a person's memory
156. Working in a positive and optimistic environment
157. Being the source of optimism
158. Always staying positive
159. Making fun of myself
160. Following up on things I say I will do
161. Working with integrity
162. Expecting integrity of others
163. Being tactful
164. Being diplomatic
165. Socializing with students
166. Seeing student work
167. Seeing how creative some of the students are
168. Working with students who are smarter than I am
169. Working with ambitious students
170. Working with a wide variety of personality styles
171. I enjoy working with students who are similar to me – and -
172. I highly enjoy working with students who are much different than me
173. Being able to have a positive, productive rapport with students whose personality is very different than mine is extremely rewarding.
174. People can get along even though they're very different.
175. Breaking the ice
176. Getting to know the PERSON
177. Connecting with people
178. Being intellectually challenged
179. Creating environments in which diverse people who might normally be uncomfortable with each other can get along
180. Staying proficient with technology
181. Being part of a community
182. There are lots of smiles
183. Not taking things so seriously
184. Providing a rigorous curriculum
185. Setting boundaries
186. Enforcing boundaries
187. Maintaining and communicating high expectations for each student

Floating

2008-09-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

This year, I'll have a new challenge which I didn't face last year: I'll be floating around to different classrooms throughout the day. In fact, there are SIX separate locations from which I will need to work: the computer lab at the middle school; at the high school: a computer lab, a classroom, the school store, and the staff office; and I'll need to work from home. This has caused some pain already. "Where did I leave that DECA book again? Is it at home or in the school store? And I remember that the Sales syllabus is up in the classroom."

When I'm working, I need access to ALL of my materials. Worse, there are FOUR separate computer systems I need to use: my home computer (laptop; at least it's portable), the middle school Mac network, the high school Mac network, and the high school PC network. None of these systems are connected to each other. If I save a file onto the PC network, I can't open it on the Mac just down the hall. Last year, I had two computer systems that had to be synchronized. They were both PCs, and even that was quite challenging. Now, I have four separate systems, combining Macs and PC. This will be a huge challenge. It already is.

Luckily, the software on all of these systems is the same standard version of Microsoft Office. Files I create on PCs are readable on the Macs, and vice versa. I came up with two possible solutions to this problem. The first solution is to use a Flash drive as my primary storage device and carry it with me at all times. I'll make periodic backup copies of it at school and at home as needed. This is what I'm doing for now. The second solution is to find an online storage service that I can access from anywhere. Microsoft Mesh is one possible emerging technology, but it is not yet Mac friendly. A disadvantage of this solution is that online file systems can be quite slow. But I know that there is some good software which integrates nicely with both Windows and Mac operating systems. The software simply adds another drive letter to your computer, and that drive automatically goes to the online storage. The only drawback to that is that you need to install additional software onto your computer, but it might be worth looking into.

Do you have any organizational tricks for working from more than one location?

Triage in the Classroom

2008-09-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling like a paramedic lately. With the large class sizes that I have, a big part of my job is triage:.

Triage is a process of prioritizing patients based on the severity of their condition so as to treat as many as possible when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately.

When arriving at the scene of a disaster, emergency responders need to quickly assess the condition of each victim and make quick decisions on who should be helped and who should be ignored. Ignoring someone in need is an emotionally difficult thing to do. Emergency responders must put emotions aside and rely on logic when making these decisions.

I'm doing the same thing in my classroom. My Computer Animation class has 35 students in it, and our class periods are only 50 minutes long. I simply do not have the time to answer everyone's questions. In this class, there are about four people in the back of the room with very poor reading comprehension and almost no computer experience. They require a great deal of help from me in order to finish the lessons. I'd say that I spend 50% of the class time helping these four students.

That means that the other 31 students only get 50% of the time for questions. This is problematic for two reasons. First, obviously, it's unfair that I'm spending so much time ignoring them. Many of these 31 students have legitimate questions or are struggling in the class and could really use some attention from the teacher.

The second problem is that even the 50% of the time I'm spending with the four students in the back is really not enough. Even with all of this attention, they're doing poorly in the class.

Triage is a regular part of a teacher's job. When there isn't enough time for us to help all of the students who need it, we must prioritize by evaluating who would benefit the most from the teacher's help. How do you make these decisions?

This article was originally written during my first year teaching experience.

The Students Return

2008-08-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Freshman Orientation at the high school and Meet the Teacher night at the middle school. I really enjoy the energy that the students bring to the building, and I enjoy interacting with them.

At the high school today, I saw a few kids who I had in class from when I was student teaching here two years ago. They were all excited to see me, and it was great seeing them. There is a lot of positive energy at this school. Students are really excited about DECA and the school store.

Don't Chase Perfection
I'm getting to the point where I feel very comfortable as a teacher. "Teacher" is a word that I can internalize and completely identify with. Being a teacher feels totally natural. I have a lot of experience with this; I've really been teaching in some form or other from the time I was 13 years old.

Of course, there is always room to grow. In the past week and a half of workshops, we've been told everything that good teachers are supposed to do. I try my best at all of them. But I'm not, and I can't be, doing all of these best practices 100% all of the time. I'm much better at some areas than others. I'm definitely still learning.

And, what I've realized is that I'll always be learning. There will never, ever be a point in time when I'll know all there is to know and do everything perfectly. There's a great line from The Martian Child by David Gerrold:

"While I was spending my time trying to figure out how to raise an eight year old, the eight year old turned into a ten year old."

Things change; skills can always be improved; your inbox is never empty. Great teaching is a journey. Learning how to be a great teacher is not about trying to hit some target in the future; it's about continually doing the very best you can right now. The only time we really have is the present.

Essentials of Teaching

2008-08-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

Having been out of school for about a month, I’ve had some time to finally digest the massive amount of information that I’ve learned. Teaching can be simplified into a few basic concepts. Here are the pieces of advice that I think are most important to give to a new teacher or someone considering entering the profession.

Respect and courtesy earn courtesy and respect.
If you follow this rule, you’re 90% there already. Students really appreciate this. It means treating them with dignity and not talking down to them. When you treat students with respect and courtesy, they will act the same way.

Be prepared!
You need to know your content, and you need to know it well. Your job is to teach, and you won’t be effective unless you have a strong grasp of the subject you’re teaching. This does not mean staying a week ahead of the class in the textbook; it means having a strong foundation before you even begin planning the curriculum.

You also need to know what you’re doing every day. A well-planned lesson is the best prevention for behavior and discipline problems. Being unprepared is extremely unprofessional. Proper prior planning prevents poor performance.

Maintain high expectations and unconditional positive regard for each student.
If you let thoughts like, “she’ll never get this” or “he just doesn’t care” enter your mind, your actions will follow your beliefs, and you will fail as a teacher. It’s true that not all students have the same ability, and it would be wrong to assume that they do. Maintaining high expectations is simply a belief that each student is capable of great accomplishments. Your job is to show them the way.

You will have students that are challenging. They will test you and, at times, annoy you. Teachers need to look through this behavior and see each student as a human being. Start each day with a clean slate. If a student made you angry yesterday, you should be delighted to see him today!

Teach kids first and content second.
Delivering content is only about 20% of a teacher’s job. When I look through my journal entries, I notice that I didn’t write about my lecturing style or teaching methods or assessments. I wrote about the other 80% of what happens in a classroom. Teenagers are really fun people to work with. But, if you don’t like kids, you won’t like teaching.

This article was originally written shortly after my student teaching experience.

What If We're Still Doing This When We're Fifty?

2008-08-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

The movie Office Space changed my life!

Peter: What if we're still doing this when we're fifty?

Samir: It would be nice to have that kind of job security.

Actually, it wouldn't be fair to give the cult classic all the credit, but the film was a pretty good mirror of my own career at the time. I left college with a degree in Information Systems and got a cubicle job staring at a computer screen. Not a bad job; I just didn't want to still be doing it when I was fifty. :)

Now I'm teaching a career exploration class, and one thing I'll say about careers is that they have to fit the individual. Teaching certainly isn't for everyone. It requires a unique combination of talents. If you don't like kids, you won't like teaching. If you can't multitask, you won't like teaching. If you're indecisive, you'll have trouble teaching. My problem was that I was in a career that didn't really match my talents. Steve Pavlina has developed a simple system for choosing a career. He says that the luckiest people are those who can find a career that they enjoy, are good at, meets their financial needs, and makes a positive impact on society. It's easy to find a job that fills two or three of those criteria, but finding one that fills all four is difficult. For me, it's teaching. It might be the career for you too.

About Me
My home is in the upper Midwest. I did my student teaching at a suburban high school, and my first full time teaching job was at a rural high school. I taught there for one year. You'll read some journal entries that I wrote from both places. This year, I'm returning to the same suburban high school where I did my student teaching.

I've taught quite a variety of classes, including: computer programming, keyboarding, web site design, computer graphics & animation, computer applications, career exploration, workplace skills, investments, sales, marketing, and business law. I enjoy them all, but I'd have to say that the business law class was my favorite so far.

Teaching Technically

2008-08-14T20:11:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, I made a career change and decided to become a high school business teacher. Since then, I've been keeping weekly journals on my experience, some of which I will share on this blog.

My motivation for publishing the journals is to help other beginning teachers and people thinking about becoming a teacher, especially those for whom teaching would be a major career change. Here, you'll find detailed accounts of what actually happens in a modern high school classroom. You'll learn about the students I've worked with and what it takes to motivate them. You'll read about the challenges, frustrations, rewards, and joy that go along with being a teacher. I'll include some thoughts on teaching as a career, as well as contemporary critical issues in education.

Of course, my motivation for writing isn't entirely altruistic. I write for selfish reasons too. I've found that keeping a weekly journal helps me improve my teaching skills, which ultimately helps student achievement. The act of writing about events forces you to think about them. Journaling lets you examine what you did well, what you did poorly, and how you can improve next time. Experience without reflection does not provide the same benefits. The best teachers are reflective teachers who are continually evaluating and improving their classes.

About the Blog
You'll mostly be reading articles that I wrote a couple of years ago. The time delay is primarily intended to protect the identities of the students. I write anonymously for the same reason. Additionally, all references to people and places have been either generalized or changed. Some of my thoughts about teaching have changed since I wrote the original journals. Articles will be posted at least one per week.

Welcome!