We had a 2 hour delay again and students struggled to focus. Many did not have enough time.
Also, I found out today that in addition to being the school math coach, I am also the School STEM director. I am guess this is a fancy way to require me to go to more meetings. Hopefully I get to learn something.
Sometimes the super awesome project based activities aren’t enough and we just need to practice a few skills over and over. I know this isn’t really cool, and it isn’t even really a project, but it is necessary. I think it is the time of year, or maybe its me. Regardless.they are completing a bunch of problems where they are given 4 coordinates and they have to construct a proof.
We had a 2 hour delay today, but students were able to complete this with very little talking from me!
I had a sub this day, students practiced distance & midpoint. In retrospect, I should have started some quadrilateral classification using distance & midpoint here. Have students apply their learning instead of just reviewing.
A member of our school board came in to observe unexpectedly today & I appeared to know what I was doing! Differentiating, students discussing! Whew.
My favorite part of the intro to Taco Cart is when I asked students what information they needed, I’ll only tell them 2 things, and they debated for about 5 minutes. A few students thought the weather would be a factor. Their peers were furious. They decided the distances are more important. We only got started. Tomorrow they will figure it out. 
I just started teaching a semester long programming class. Since I’m new to it, I had an idea of how I would grade this, but I thought I’d see how students progressed for a week before I committed to anything specific. So, I didn’t mention grades. I established class routines, showed students how to interact with the self paced programming curriculum, and off they went. They work hard all period & I run around the room trying to support students when they didn’t understand something. They all worked. All class period. All week. I didn’t assign homework.
A few of the students came in and asked if they were “allowed” to continue working on programming from home, and they were excited when I told them that they could. I’ve never seen such motivation. I teach at an alternative school, where most students have gotten into trouble at their previous school, many have drug abuse history…they were excited to be allowed to work from home?!?
One of these students came into my room during lunch & I asked them how they would like their grade determined. We talked about setting individual goals, and creating a separate criteria for each student. Then he said this:
“If I had know that before, I wouldn’t have worked as hard.”
Then another student said the same thing in a different conversion.
Later, outside of class, I spoke to a quiet, thoughtful girl about grades. Here’s what she said:
“Grades just make me feel dumb.”
She explained that no matter what, when someone ranks her work she feels hurt that it didn’t get a better score. She is right. I feel that way too. When I get observed as a teacher and my administrator ranks a variety of things on a 1-5 scale, if i’m not a 5, I feel like a crappy teacher.
I like standards based grading. Its an improvement over traditional grading, but it is still applying a number to student effort & creativity. It still creates a ranking. For students who have struggled with school, which is a far greater number then students who have been very successful, grades are a de-motivator. They jump in full force if they are perplexed & curious and just instinctively want to figure something out. When they know its for a grade they hesitate, they get nervous, they over think, panic, sit quietly & wait for someone else to do it.
So now what? I still teach in a traditional system where a specific traditional grade book is required for all teachers to document student progress. I spent years tweaking my standards based grading system to work within a traditional grade book. It is possible. So, my new challenge: how can I document student progress while supporting their creativity, eliminating the constant concern & focus on grades?
Crazy Math Teacher Lady 