Teacher Math #SOLC25 3/31

Word problem:
Having been made aware – repeatedly – that photocopying is consistently the largest line item in the school’s budget, a teacher has nevertheless decided to make photocopies for a grade 9 English class. The activity will require only one day, so students who are absent today will not need a copy. 24 students are enrolled in the class. How many photocopies should the teacher make in order to have enough for all the students without “wasting” money?

Break down using the GRASS method.

GIVEN: Read the question carefully. Figure out what values are given.
24 students are enrolled in the class.

REQUIRED: Figure out what is required.
Enough – but not too many – photocopies for the students who attend class today.

ANALYSIS: Analyze the question and use appropriate math operations.
It’s one week before March Break and one (1) student has already left on vacation. Their parent notified you. Experience tells you that up to two (2) more students may have already left without letting anyone know.

24-1-1 = 22 OR
24-1-2 = 21

It’s the first week of Ramadan and class is at the end of the day. There are at least seven (7) Muslim students in the class. Some of them will be fasting, and some of them may be fasting for the first time in their lives. This is difficult, so some of them may go home before the end of the school day. Still, it’s only Monday, so probably most of them will try to stick it out. Estimate: one (1)

22–0= 22 OR
22–1= 21 OR
21–1= 20

The flu has been going around. Loads of students and teachers were out last week, some for up to five (5) days. Today’s list of absent teachers is long, and during period one, about a third (⅓) of the class was absent. This class was pretty healthy last week. Are they more likely to be sick this week as a result? Check the online attendance to see if anyone has already been called in sick by their parents. One student is marked absent. Estimate: at least one (1) and up to three (3) sick students.

22–1= 21 OR
22–2= 20 OR
22–3= 19 OR
21–1= 20 OR
21–2= 19 OR
21–3 = 18 OR
20–1= 19 OR
20–2= 18 OR
20–3= 17

Last week you sent emails home to several families addressing student behaviours. Of the four (4) families you contacted, two (2) replied. How many of these students will attend class today? Educated guess based on experience: three (3) will attend and one (1) will skip in frustration.

21–1= 20 OR
20–1= 19 OR
19–1= 18 OR
18–1= 17 OR
17–1= 16

Finally, students may not be able to attend due to “Acts of God”: “I missed my bus after lunch” or “I got suspended for fighting in the bathroom” or “My best friend’s boyfriend just posted on IG and another girl was in the picture so I had to stay with her because she was so upset” or “Sorry, Miss, I forgot it was a Day 1 and I went to my Day 2 class and I only realized it wasn’t my class after 25 minutes.” Estimate for today: an optimistic zero (0)

WAIT: don’t forget to add in the extra copy for the student who loses their sheet between the time you hand it out and the time they need to use it. (approximate elapsed time: 8.3 seconds)

20+1= 21 OR
19+1= 20 OR
18+1=19 OR
17+1= 18 OR
16+1= 17

SOLUTION: Solve the question.
Maximum photocopies required: 23
Minimum photocopies required: 17

Repeat these calculations for each of today’s classes.

STATEMENT: State your answer in simple words.
For today’s classes, in order not to waste money, the teacher requires somewhere between 17 and 70 kajillion photocopies.

Realize after all of this that at least three students will be gone for some or all of the class because of a volleyball game. Their coaches posted about this on the email conference three (3) minutes after you finished photocopying.

Good luck!

Anything you can do to a cloud #SOLC25 2/31

Sheri set a timer and did a free write for six minutes because someone else did the same, so here I am, jumping on the bandwagon on day two. And I should know how to do this: I freewrite all the time in my teaching practice because I am forever trying to convince my students that it is OK – even good – to just write. My goal for them by the end of the semester is seven minutes. I have no idea why, but there it is. And truthfully, for grade 9, at this point we’re aiming for five solid minutes of writing.

I need to admit that I have deleted a few times already – but I swear this is mostly free writing and if I were handwriting this, I would have just crossed things out, so that counts.

Why do I free write with them? I honestly think that seeing someone else write, watching their process and their struggles, noticing how they pause and keep going, seeing what they throw away and what they keep, can help students understand that writing isn’t about presenting perfected ideas – in fact, it’s about the opposite of that: writing is about honing ideas, checking them out, looking at them from different angles, dressing them up in words and seeing what they look like, finding the places where the ideas aren’t entirely complete…

That’s a lot of mixed metaphors, but hey, it’s a free write.

So I write in front of my students, near my students, among my students. In class, I tell students that a preposition is anything you can do to a cloud – you can go in front of a cloud, near a cloud, through a cloud, over a cloud – and then we write sentences with prepositions, playing with making very long, very silly sentences.

I started this blog in part to experience for myself some of the things my students experience: writing on a deadline, writing when I don’t feel like it, writing when I don’t have much to say, writing knowing that someone else will read it.

Time is up. Now I’ve done my one-minute post-writing clean-up (another trick I use – so they re-read and make a few changes) so I can post this. Then, tomorrow, when we’re writing, I’ll have proof that freewriting is “real” and even shareable. Maybe this will even help them write more.

Community #SOLC25 1/31

It’s snowing again. What purports to be our front yard is currently a pile of snow so tall that shovelling more snow on top of it causes mini-avalanches either back onto the shoveller or over the top and down the other side. Across from our driveway, a snow pile significantly bigger than our minivan looms ominously. To leave home in the car, I have to do a sort of backwards three-point turn, using the snow mountain as a semi-soft reminder of how far I can go – though our recent thaw-freeze cycle means that the snow is a little more compacted and a whole lot harder than it was a week ago. Our street was due for snow clearing *before* the last big dump, but each major snow storm sees the city scrambling to remove snow from the bigger roads while our little residential street slowly subsides under the white stuff.

As I leave my house to walk to a massage appointment, neighbours are already out clearing their driveways. Glenn pauses to greet me, teasing, “Here I thought you were coming out to shovel, but I suppose you’ve got teenagers for that.”

“Ha! They’re only any good if you can wait until mid-afternoon for the driveway to be cleared.” I laugh. Then I realize that Glenn is shovelling Mario’s driveway – and Mario is maybe snow blowing Glenn’s driveway? Unclear. And a guy from the halfway house – someone I haven’t met yet – is obviously helping Glenn.

“Did you all get confused about who lives where?” Everyone laughs, and we banter for a moment before I head on my way, grinning at the way our neighbourhood functions.

***

The massage therapist has a 7-month old and updates me on all the recent developments – he’s rolling both ways now, and he’ll be crawling any day now. I tell him (the father, not the baby) about my own children, and we marvel at the changes in our lives since I started seeing him a few years ago.

After the appointment, we’re still chatting while I put on my coat and boots, and his next client arrives. “I thought I recognized that voice!” she laughs, and I turn around to see a former colleague. Since I last saw her, she moved away and back, had a baby, turned 40. Social media has let us keep up a little, but here in the little office, we greet each other again.

***

And now I’m home, starting my 8th year of participating in the March Slice of Life Challenge. I have already read a few blog posts from friends (though I’ve never met them in person). I write knowing that some of my friends from as far back as elementary school will read my posts, and we’ll reach out and catch up a little. I’m anticipating a month full of moments where we’re all shovelling each other’s virtual driveways and running into each other in the comments section. Once again, I’m looking forward to this community we create with words.

With many thanks to the team at Two Writing Teachers for growing and preserving this community.

Happily Ever After

I’m on my prep, heading back to the classroom and slowly catching up to the two girls wandering down the hallway ahead of me, deep in conversation. For what must be the millionth time this December alone, I am trying to decide if it’s worth telling students that they really should be in class: my brain is on autopilot. Then I hear one of them say, “it’s happILY ever after.”

“HappILY?” her friend repeats, shaking her head quizzically.

“Yes.” She re-emphasizes the ily and the girls slow even more.

“But why?”

“I don’t know. But it is so.”

“Why not ‘happy forever’?”

“Yes, in Spanish it is ‘happy forever’ but here is it ‘happILY ever after.’”

They have nearly stopped. The questioner continues to shake her head, repeating “happILY” under her breath a few times. And now I have caught up to them.

“I can explain the ‘-ily,’” I say. Two faces turn towards me with such obvious pleasure that I nearly laugh. I explain that happily is an adverb and that it tells how they lived. I liken it to lentamente in Spanish. They nod gravely.

Then, I add, “but I don’t know why it’s ‘ever after.’”

Their interest bubbles over. “Si! In Spanish we say feliz para siempre – happy forever. So easy. Forever.”

Now we are in front of my classroom door. Inside, my student teacher is waiting. And really, the girls should be in class. So I shoo them off, saying, “I’ll look it up! Come back if you want to!” and off they go, hopefully to class, hopefully happILY.

Just 15 minutes

Once again, I forgot it was Tuesday. This is odd because yesterday I knew that today was Tuesday, and, frankly, today I knew it, too. I had planned to write something last night, but then I didn’t because… I can’t remember, but there was a very good reason. This morning I even set aside some writing time, but then the supplies we ordered came in, so I had to check what we received against what we ordered (vaguely similar) and distribute them to various teachers, then I had to set up a new booking system so that we can get the 95ish Chromebooks distributed fairly to the 30ish teachers who want them for various classes (no, the math doesn’t math there). Anyway, one thing led to another and then it was after work and now it’s 8:45 and I haven’t written my Slice of Life.

Recently, when I’ve found myself in this position, I’ve thrown up my hands and decided to put things off until “next week,” but this week my students have essays due, and I have this nagging sense that if they have to write and publish then I should probably write and publish. So here I am.

Part of the reason I lost track of time (and the day of the week – I even missed my knitting group!) is because I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with about 15 minutes of class time tomorrow. The original plan was for the grade 12 students to share their This I Believe essays in a sort of “desk exhibit” – they were going to walk around and read each other’s essays & leave positive comments on post-it notes. BUT… today’s lesson involved a peer feedback protocol that worked so well that quite a few students have some serious edits to make. Given our lack of Chromebooks combined with student jobs and after-school commitments, tomorrow needs to involve a little time to tidy up their writing in class, so the gallery walk will happen on Thursday. They do not, however, need 75 minutes (the length of our classes) to edit, or even 60 minutes (after 15 minutes of daily reading), or even 45 minutes. I figure we need a maximum of 30 minutes of editing time. This means that I need to create a tiny lesson – just 15 minutes – to bridge us from reading and writing narrative arguments to learning about rhetorical analysis and using that with popular culture.

Here is where being a teacher gets weird: I know what we’ve done, and I know where I want us to go; I also know the information I need to share, and I know the students. This lesson should be simple – just, you know, teach. Instead, I’ve spent at least an hour looking at videos and slide shows, thinking about the right way to present the topic so that students are interested and engaged. I need something that intrigues students and is memorable. This will be the first peek at something that we won’t really start until Monday (because essays, PD day, the weekend…) I want this to hook some specific students. I want them to have something to think about. Come Monday, I want them curious.

So do I read them a picture book by Jacqueline Woodson? Do I show them a video about a soccer team in Thailand – one that turns out to be an ad? Or maybe I show a brief interview with Simon Sinek about the power of stories? What stories matter? Why do we care? Who is telling these stories? To whom? For what purpose? Thomas King says, “The truth about stories is that that’s all we are” – I need a fifteen-minute something to start them down the path to believing that.

I bet I can find it if I think about it for just a few more minutes…

Why read?

It’s the second week of classes, and we’re all slowly settling in to the familiar rhythms of school. In grade 12 English, we’re already reading our second short mentor text for our narrative argument unit. (This is a new unit for me; I wanted something a little different from the personal essay, and here we are.) Today we read a This I Believe essay called “The Power of Hello” by Howard White. I didn’t know who White was (former basketball player, VP at Nike) until I read this, but I loved his message “that every single person deserves to be acknowledged, however small or simple the greeting” so his was an easy essay to choose as a mentor text for the class.

Before we got to the text, however, I paused to ask the students why they think we are still teaching reading and writing in an age of AI. Reading was the easier sell. If you google “Why is reading important?” – which I do every semester – there are pages and pages of hits. I like to summarize them by saying, “Reading makes us smarter, kinder, richer and a better date.” (The better date is because reading can improve conversational skills – who knew? Well, I mean, besides me and the internet.) Lots of students nodded their heads and sort of looked like they agreed, and for today that was enough. We’ll come back to this when they need to remember why I’m pushing for a high volume of reading.

Writing, on the other hand, seemed less important to many students. While one student straight out said, “writing is thinking” plenty of students looked less than convinced. And I get it – though I disagree. Words work for me; for others, this is less true. When I try to sketch something, I am often significantly less successful at communicating. If I needed to show my thinking through movement, I would, I suspect, often fail. Too often, students have only ever written for a grade. I can’t fix that, but I can try to help them understand that words have power that they can harness with practice. I’ve got a whole semester to make my case.

Because of this brief class discussion, reading and writing were on my mind when I saw a woman with a stroller stopped on the sidewalk ahead of me. I wasn’t actively thinking about Howard White’s essay and the power of saying hello, but his words must have been somewhere in the back of my mind because I very consciously registered the scene: a young woman with a baby strapped to her front and a toddler between her legs, hanging off the stroller. She was stopped awkwardly in the middle of the sidewalk, and the toddler was twisting and turning just enough that I knew she wasn’t watching him. I said hello.

“Hi. Um, there’s something in my eye,” she said. “A bug flew in there. I can’t really see.”

In fact, her eye was watering. The baby wasn’t just in a carrier, they were nursing, and the toddler was close to tipping the stroller over. The mother looked just a tiny bit frantic.

“I could look at your eye…?” My voice trailed off into a question. It’s an oddly intimate offer – here, stranger, let me look at your eyeball – but she took me up on it immediately.

I didn’t see a bug, and now her eye was watering with tears? irritation from the bug? “I can really feel it. Can you look again?”

And there it was! A tiny black spot. I reached toward her face and swiped the critter to the edge of her eyelid; she did the rest. “Oh, thank God. Thank you. Thank you so much for stopping.”

I told her, of course, that it was nothing – because it was. Just one mom helping another on the sidewalk at the end of the day. Just a tiny interaction between two people who happened to cross paths. She won’t remember it by tomorrow morning; she may be so tired that she has already forgotten.

But I wonder… would I have noticed her if we hadn’t read that essay in class? Maybe White’s belief that everyone deserves to be acknowledged primed me to actually see her. Maybe the fact that he wrote his small story and shared it helped one human reach out to help another. Maybe now that I’m writing this, I will remember to do this again. Maybe you will read this and you, too, will help someone. Maybe this will happen even if you forget that you read this.

This, I believe, is why we write and why we read. I think I’ll share it with my students.

It’s kind of a funny story

Commenting on student work, 2024 edition
Me, to a student who obviously used AI: please use your own words.
Student: what says this isn’t in my own words??
Me: I expect students to write in the doc I provide. I am automatically worried when I see a large chunk of work pasted in.
Student: I wrote it on paper before I pasted it onto the computer. If I find the paper will that help??

Um… that’s not how paper works.

That’s how I shared the story with friends. It’s all true, and dear Heaven, but this generation of kids…

But it’s also not the end.

Today, the last day of school, the student came to class. They finished up some work and, at the end of class, hung back at my request. We both wanted to see if all their missing work had been submitted, and I wanted to talk about that pasted-from-paper document. The student had resubmitted it, this time with a photograph of a handwritten document – the paper they supposedly wrote before they (magically) pasted it into the doc.

It was already hot – today’s high was 32C/ 90F and felt like 43C/ 109F – and the end of school was on everyone’s mind. I know I had to muster up all the calm I could find; I assume the student had to do the same. I opened the assignment. I showed the student how I could see the copy/ paste. I showed them the AI detector and the 100% AI result. I acknowledged that I could see the handwritten document, but shared my concern that the assignment didn’t fit the instructions. Then, as patiently as I could, I said, “I can see that you’re upset. Tell me what happened. I’m listening.”

Then I listened.

And it turned out that I was wrong. They walked me through their work and showed me their thinking. They hadn’t used AI to generate the text, but they had typed it up in Grammarly (because when you’re learning English a good grammar program goes a long way) so some of the words were not quite theirs. And they had followed the instructions, sort of, they just hadn’t organized properly to separate parts. And they were shocked that I could see the copy/ paste and a little hurt that I thought they might have “cheated.”

So we talked about cheating and about getting behind in our work and the shortcuts we sometimes take. We talked about the pressure of finishing all that late work and about talking to teachers rather than hiding. Then I thanked him for talking to me and shooed him off to catch up with his friends. The whole thing probably took three minutes, maybe two.

It’s not as good a story as the one where a student says “I wrote it on paper before I pasted it onto the computer” and the teacher thinks, “Um… that’s not how paper works” but the real part of teaching, I think, is the part after the funny part – the part where we listen – and I wanted to write that, too.

Writing beside him

I’m helping a former student write a personal essay for his Grade 11 English class. We’ve talked it through, and planned a little; his next step is to write it. Reading and writing aren’t his forte – he’d much rather be on a playing field than in any classroom – but this story is important to him, and he wants to get it down on paper. So here we are, sitting in the upstairs lobby – currently one of the coolest places in our very hot school – and he’s writing.

This kid has my heart, as many of them do. Last year, he didn’t do particularly well in our first semester English class, so he agreed to change his timetable in order to be part of a reading class with me during the second. That alone took some courage: not everyone who needed the support was willing to accept it. Once there, he mostly tried, even when the work was repetitive or “not that interesting,” even when he took extra long body breaks or got frustrated by the “simple” books he was reading.

Knowing that history, I’m intrigued by his choice to sit with me in such a public place this afternoon. With only two weeks left in the school year, students are out of classes nearly as much as they are in, and many of them wander aimlessly through the halls. Several have stopped to greet us; pretty much all of them give us at least a passing look as we sit here at a student table and work. There’s no hiding that we’re writing together, no hiding that I’m helping.

Nevertheless, he’s nearly filled a page with his small, neat handwriting – a feat which would have been unfathomable last year – and his focus hasn’t wavered, though he has had to stop a few times to flex his tired hand. Meanwhile, I sit here typing my own story, this story, marveling at this moment of quiet togetherness amidst myriad other students. We are here, the two of us, writing; we are here, the two of us, writers.

This sense of camaraderie has me thinking about what we mean when we say that teachers need to “get to know their students.” How well do I know him? I didn’t spend a lot of time last year asking him about his family, though I did call home when I needed to. I have no idea if he has pets, and am not clear about how many siblings he has. In fact, I don’t know many things about him, but I know enough that I can tell him, honestly, that I believe in him. I never told him he was a strong reader or writer; I did tell him that I thought he could be. I never told him this path would be easy – heck, I was clear that parts would be hard – but I did tell him that I thought it was worth it. Other teachers and coaches told him the same thing, complimenting him when he improved, noticing when he was reading, harrying him back to class when he was in the hallways. When he faltered, he had a team of people to remind him of his long-term goals.

Today, he has a story to tell, and he has found me. He says he needs help, but I think he just needs someone who believes in him to write beside him. What a privilege! I can do that any time.

Again

The assignment was due March 5. Today is April 2. So far, only six students have received grades. Why? Because only six have fulfilled *all* the requirements, and I’m refusing to mark assignments that aren’t complete.

Before you get worried, I don’t think I’m overly demanding. The basic assignment is to write a 100-word memoir. A complete assignment has a title and a story that is exactly 100 words. Students must use a spelling/grammar-check (I’ve recommended LanguageTool, but some use Grammarly) so that no underlined problems remain, and they must label three “craft moves” – or good things in their writing. For the last part, a poster in the classroom lists things we’ve studied and they’ve seen multiple examples.

Some students have only been through one round, but most are on their third or fourth attempt. In years past, I’ve marked what came in, no matter how incomplete. But this semester, something changed. I decided that every single student was capable of following all four steps:

Title
100 words
Spell check
Label

What is different? I wish I knew. The closest I can come to explaining is that I am taking my role as a “warm demander” increasingly seriously. To the very tips of my toes, I believe that every student in my class is capable of completing the assignment. Even more, I believe that they are capable of completing it well. So I keep returning the assignments with plenty of feedback (“I really appreciate how you’ve opened this fun memoir. Next you need to give it a title and run it through LanguageTool.”) and insisting they do it again. This weekend, one student turned in the identical assignment three times. Last night I caved and wrote in all caps, “USE THE FEEDBACK.” Today, they finally asked for the explanation they required to finish their work.

I’m not sure that I’m making the right choice, and I need to be clear that I am consistently upbeat and encouraging as I hand back the assignments (again and again with no mark), but I figure if they learn nothing else this semester besides “follow all the steps” that’s probably a reasonable life skill.

Now, off to write, again, “True compliment about the writing. Next, you need to give your good work a title and run it through LanguageTool.” I’m betting I can get 24 completed assignments by the end of next week because I’m pretty sure I’m more stubborn than they are – at least about getting this right.

The Truth About Stories #SOL24 31/31

In grade 9, we’ve moved from our first unit – Stories of Us – into our second – Stories of Others. We’ve written Where I’m From using not only George Ella Lyon’s wonderful poem but also interpretations by Melanie Poonai, a young writer from England, and Danika Smith, an Indigenous author from British Columbia, as models. We’ve worked as a class and in small groups to create Where We’re From poems that help us understand our class as a whole. Students turned these into posters or short videos – and the school board’s print shop has delivered gorgeous prints that now decorate our room. We’ve written our own 100-word memoirs, too. Now, it’s time to look outside our classroom walls.

It’s also March, which means that I am in the middle of writing and publishing stories every day. I tell the students about this, and they are interested, impressed, curious, bored, and not listening. Some of them want to know where I get the stories from. I laugh and say, “from you.”

For a few days, we listen to StoryCorps interviews and look at Instagram posts from Humans of New York. We practice active listening and asking follow-up questions. Then, I put this quote up in the right-hand corner of the blackboard as one of our daily quotes:

The truth about stories is that that’s all we are.
-Thomas King

After reading time, I draw their attention to King’s words. I ask what they think he means. It takes a minute, but when they arrive at an understanding, a few of them marvel. “It’s really true, isn’t it? Our stories are really important,” says one. “It’s like what we think about what happens is as important as what happens,” says another. I just nod.

I think about the quote all the time. I think about how I am made of the stories I’ve heard, the stories I tell myself. I think of how the way I tell the story affects who I am and how the stories themselves change over time. I think about the value of regularly capturing tiny moments, recognizing the story I’m telling myself as I live it. These stories are everything. As Jess writes, “There is gold in every piece of your story.”

Now, the students are out in the world (mostly in the hallways, to be honest), interviewing other people: family or friends, students or staff. They have to choose a tiny powerful moment from their interview – a story – and pair it with a photo. I post these on our Instagram account, and we marvel at the moments that shape our community. The students must think about what part of their interviewee’s story they chose to tell and what parts they left out. How will that change people’s perceptions? What story are they telling? These students learn to lean in to other people’s stories and consider them deeply.

This year, this part of the unit is closing as March comes to an end. Today marks the end of seven years of this challenge for me. I know that, tired as I am, I will miss this – the writing, the reading, the commenting – tomorrow and in the days to come. And I know it’s because of the stories people share, and the stories I choose to share, too. What a privilege it is to be part of so many stories! What a boon to be allowed so many views of the world!

If Thomas King is right, and I think he is, then I am so much better, so much more because of the stories others have shared this month and in all the months and years past. I am better, too, because of the time you’ve taken to read my stories. Thank you.