Fractions and Other Monsters

So life in Ms. Aoki's class has been a bit chaotic. We are doing fractions, and it is a continuation of what they were supposed to learn last year. Everyone seems to need help (except for a couple of good math students). Everybody needs to use the manipulatives, everybody needs to be directed to find equivalent fractions in order to get common denominators. Many are escape artists and find creative ways to avoid going through the process. They say, "It's hard!" Because I can only help a few at one time, and only very few can be peer tutors, and my adult tutor has been absent, there is a lot of room for shenanigans, pretend work, and attempts to do anything else but fractions. 

So, I am reflecting on my approach. I realize that I can't go on with this approach of self-directed (Montessori-style) discovery learning with manipulatives. I need to entice them into the joy of fractions, so I went shopping looking for a food item that I can use to divide into fractions. Soft chocolate chip cookies? Too small and crumbly. Tortillas for quesadillas? Too much trouble. Bread? Not even on all sides. Red vines? Yes! So I will try red vines, and less independence, and see if I can decrease the frustration for both them and me. 

How about this for a song? (Mulberry Bush) 

This is way we add fractions

With unlike

Denominators.

We need to find equivalent fractions

So that they both have 

Common denominators. 

Find common multiples

And use the 

Least of them.

You can use the Identity property

To multiply

The fraction in question.

Two over two, three over three

Whatever you need

To get common denominators.

Add only the numerators,

The denominator stays the same.

Don't forget simplest form

Divide with common factors

Number over number

How do you know it's simplest form? 

When the greatest common factor 

Is one. 

(A draft)

Can I Just Be Eeyore? Melding Positivity and Awareness

I do believe. I do believe. I do believe in a positive attitude. But I am conflicted because I also believe in knowing the truth about the world, and it can be downright depressing. Do I stop learning about the world? Climate change? Fracking? GMOs? Unending wars? Poverty? Evils of education reform? 

I just read about how Michelle Rhee pays Bangladeshi click farms to"like" her Students First Facebook page. Oh, and don't get me started on the New York charter school tantrums, and Bill Gates' egocentric efforts, and Common Core and the founder's bad attitude, and the inherent profit motives therein. It's just one outrageous thing after another. Does it matter? Does it matter out here in the middle of the Pacific? Is my island state insulated from all this madness? Well ... 

We are a Race to the Top state, which means we had to adopt the Common Core and teacher evaluation tied to student achievement. Our contract talks hinged on a successful negotiation regarding this evaluation. As a member of the board of the union at the time, I had to sell this to members, that this was a good thing, that we negotiated a joint committee to assure that this system would be fair, reliable, based on research.  It's because of an insistence that our evaluation not be solely based on standardized testing, as it is in some states, that we have these multiple measures. The unintended consequence of multiple measures is an increased work load and  stress load. We stress about the Tripod student Survey, we stress about the Danielson observations, we stress about the testing, we stress about Core professionalism.  So, yes, education "reform"  is here too, breaking our backs and our spirits. This is a trial year for the new evaluation system, but it is getting harder and harder to believe that it will be any different next year. Yet, we hope our feedback and survey responses will make a difference. Our energy should be going into the classroom, not into these superfluous matters.

Then there's the classroom. I have a student who has figured out, consciously or not, if he makes enough of a disruption in class, he'll get kicked out, and so he doesn't have to do any work. That's just one of my challenges. There's the challenge of not just teaching students how to solve problems but to explain their reasoning. There are the challenges of emerging hormones, note-passing, spitball-playing, bullying, teasing, arguing and disruption-denying. There's the challenge that the content is pretty darn difficult and though I try, I just can't make it fun and games all the time. Sometimes, you just have to watch me do this division problem using zeroes to extend the dividend! And then you have to do it. Because that's what you learn in fifth grade. 

Positive? I thought celebrating pi day was a positive plan, a diversion from the curriculum. But that's me being a math nerd. My habitual disruptor didn't come to school, so I don't know if this would have passed his test for "not boring." I realized as I was teaching, maybe they don't think it's as cool as I think it is. Oh well. I can only do so much. 

My point?  I believe in quality public education that encourages creativity, compassion, and critical thinking and I I don't believe in the Common Core. Though I believe in accountability, I don't believe in putting teachers under more scrutiny than necessary. Though I believe in knowing where kids are in their educational needs, I don't believe in high stakes standardized testing. Though I believe in engaging kids in order to teach them, I don't believe that I need to entertain kids all the time.  These are some of the conflicting forces that I deal with on a daily basis. 

I keep seeing memes on Facebook that have to do with having a positive attitude in some way or another. Though sometimes, I do feel like woe-is-me Eeyore, I really am the eternal optimist, never do I even entertain the possibility of hopelessness. I don't think I can ever be a Tigger, but I can try to be more even-keeled and balanced, more Pooh-ish maybe. On the other hand, if this quote encapsulates Eeyore, I'm Eeyore and proud.

Why I Don't Get Rah-Rah Over Standardized Testing

Had a conversation with someone who shall remain nameless about motivating students to do better on the HSA (Hawaii State Assesments, which will be replaced next year by the Common Core Smarter Balanced test.)  This person prefaced our conversation by saying that she also hates standardized testing and what its emphasis has done to our schools. Yet she says, but I do make a big deal out of it and I have had 90% of my students, some of whom were special education students, either pass or improve on their HSA. 

Perhaps this correlation can be made - I don't make a big deal of the HSA: My students do not score well on them. (We just took the first round of two). Therefore, If I were to become a cheerleader for the HSA, my students would score better. Why would I do this? Let me play devil's advocate to myself.  If getting a proficiency score on the HSA meant that the student would come away with the experience a better person, a more confident person, believing that if they can get 300, they can do anything, wouldn't I want to gift them with this nugget of self-worth? Wouldn't I sacrifice my own personal beliefs about the fallacies of standardized testing so that students would receive this oh so valuable gift? If I don't, and can't make that sacrifice, am I being selfish, egocentric, disingenuous, a charlatan? 

I guess I have this thing about meaning. I abhor meaninglessness. I don't believe the HSA is meaningful because there is no way for us to know if what we are teaching is really matched to the test. We have to assume. We have to trust, without ability to verify.  In this transition year to the Common Core, we were told that there was a different "Bridge Assessment" and that if we focused on these identified Common Core standards, this is what would be in the bridge. So, like good soldiers, we made these standards the focus of our instruction, and the objectives in our SLOs. (Hawaii teachers know this as the bane of our year). Come to find out, it looks like the same HSA test as before. This was confirmed by a DOE talking head who told us that it would have been better for us to focus on the old standards rather than the Common Core. 

And then we were given, during our duty-free lunch period (never again!), these color copies that are supposed to show student growth over time based on the HSA. Our evaluation is going to be based on how their scores improved or did not from year to year. Oh, the outrage. Generally, what most of us on my grade level see, is a decrease from third to fifth grade. Can this be because we are all terrible teachers? Is that the only variable? We only know that some of the high scores do not reflect the students that we know. But there is no way to validate. When we agreed to the new Educator Evaluation System, we agreed to fair, reliable, valid means of evaluation. This way of showing student growth is totally junk science, and our union had better make this clear to the DOE. Getting rah-rah about something that is so pernicious is like being forced to campaign for someone I don't believe in, is like marrying someone I don't love, like drinking whiskey that I don't like the taste of just because I've been told it's good stuff.  I will keep looking for apt similes. 

I can see getting rah-rah about doing well in school, about paying attention in class, and participating to learn. About learning. About increasing knowledge and skills. About thinking. About communicating. About problem-solving. About getting along with each other. About celebrating and developing your strengths and strengthening your weaknesses. This is what is meaningful to me as a teacher. This is why I teach. But I do not teach to be validated by my students' standardized test scores. 

I am not done with this topic. I have not answered the question posed by my devil's advocate in my second paragraph. To be continued. 

Testing and all the other evaluation stuff is what I thought about when I saw this.