Ice-free
During contract discussions last fall, there was a groundswell of opposition. I wandered over to Edwize, where I got my first real introduction to talking to ICE. They were loud, they did not allow reality to temper their criticism, and their complaints often were personal condemnations of individual UFT leaders, but they were against a very bad contract.
I continued to ‘talk’ with them when I opened this blog. They occasionally commented here. I linked to the ICE blog, some of their supporters’ blogs, and other related sites.
It was, I thought, possible to have thoughtful conversations with people who agreed with me on some things, but not on all.
I never lost sight of how strident they were, and how all-or-nothing condemnatory they could be, nor how their idea of fixing the UFT seemed to be ‘vote us in’ with nothing else. Their program of “Hate Unity, Vote for Us, Everything Will be Better” is juvenile. But many of their complaints were on target.
Click for more —–> Read more…
The Swing Room
In my school most rooms ‘belong’ to a department, with the occasional math class showing up in a language room, etc. One room is shared by two departments.
And then there is the “swing” room. The swing room takes the extra class, the class that couldn’t fit. In previous years science classes met there on non-lab days. But now it is truly a hodgepodge, with math, social studies, language, science, health… Only one teacher is ever in there more than once a day, and some classes meet there only once or twice a week.
So we have ownership issues. Not “who gets the desk?” but “does anyone take care of this place?” And we can’t store things along the side walls. Books, workbooks, posters, papers, handouts covered many flat surfaces. Bookcases were full. And the worst of it: these materials and whatever posters were on the wall, all were from classes that no longer met in the room.
Click for more and a sketch —-> Read more…
Deal!
Some days I hate knowing any mathematics at all.
On Deal or No Deal (at this exact moment) with $750,000 and $1,000,000 on the board, offer was $880,000.
When there are a lot of cases expected value calculations might be complicated by lots of arithmetic and risk analysis, etc. Complicated. But tonight Michele had $880,000 in hand. If she continued she could win $120,000 or lose $130,000. Fifty fifty. I grimaced when she said “No deal.”
Doing the wrong thing in class
Me, not the kids.
Earlier this week I more or less ditched my lesson on adding integers. And the next day subtraction was on the calendar.
Once again, it was clear early that my algebra students knew ‘the rules’ for subtraction; quick quiz results were excellent. Once again, most of their knowledge was procedural (not a problem) we discussed some alternate ways to consider subtraction (they added the opposite. With prompting they remembered “take away,” one student mentioned increasing and decreasing a bank account, I offered finding the distance from one numbered street to another.
And then I pulled out a worksheet. My partner, our other algebra teacher, who has been mercifully carrying me as I worked on fixing student schedules, she had prepared a wonderful activity sheet.
Fun activity below ———> Read more…
Adding integers
I don’t know why I did it. Every year the kiddies in algebra roll their eyes when I get ready to teach addition of integers. But this year I decided to test if they really did “already know it.” Gave them an on the spot quiz, 5 mixed questions. All but 2 kids got all 5 right. 1 kid is sloppy. And the last might need some work.
Anyway, instead of teaching from scratch, I presented 2 ‘models’ of addition: a number line model, and a “connected” model: Read more…
The Sum of Some Hats
Warning: this puzzle is hard. I shared it with a drinking Swede, and he recast it with names of Swedish politicians on his blog. I hope I got the details right!
Three prisoners are seated facing each other, with hats on their heads. Each hat has a counting number {1, 2, 3, 4, …} on it, and each prisoner can see the hat of the other two prisoners, but not his own.
The warden says, I will set free the man who can tell me his own number.
They look back at him in silence.
“OK, a hint. One of your numbers is the sum of the two. Alan?”
“I don’t know my number”
“Bert?”
“I don’t know my number”
“Graham?”
“I don’t know my number”
“Alan?”
“I still don’t know my number”
“Bert?”
“My number is 52”
And he went free. What were Alan and Graham’s numbers? (And how did you discover this?)
Some interesting searches
Programming is done, and teaching time is really here. It also means that my sporadic posting will become more regular.
I will be going in a few directions:
1. More contract summary. Some info on other teachers contracts. Other teachers payscales….
2. Discussion about how to make our union (NYC’s United Federation of Teachers) stronger
3. More and math puzzles, easy, hard, and in between
4. Discussion of individual lessons, algebra, geometry, and combinatorics (since those are what I am teaching now).
5. Problems facing newer teachers. (soon on that. this certification stuff is really bad)
6. Travel plans (why not!)
7. Oaxaca (if I can get some good info)
8. And steps. New York City’s outdoor staircases. Stepstreets. Maybe a static page? There are already two. (Here and here). Maybe 10 by the new year? This is going to be a longterm project.
But for now I will answer some of the implied searches from the last week: Read more…
Dead Links
From time to time I notice that some of my links are dead. Perhaps I entered them wrong. Perhaps the URL changed.
I will fix dead links, if I know about them. (Today I fixed a link to the court decision on the Pennsylvania age discrimination case; it had never worked because I misformatted the url.) But I have to know about it to fix it.
If you see a dead link, be a champ and let me know. Thanks.
Teacher and Education Link Updates
I have been adding links since mid-August, but have only highlighted a few so far.
Teachers
Pissed-off Teacher – HS Math in NYC. The Reflective Teacher – Reflective, and Creative. 2nd year. Syntactic Gymnastics – Bright, intellectual, ESL, 2nd year.
Education Blogs
Educational Justice – Bay Area Progressive, mostly education, but issues range. San Francisco Schools – San Francisco schools. Also, in the spirit of Get On the Bus Scott Elliot’s first-rate newspaper education blog out of Dayton (Daily News), I have added School Me from the LA Times and School Zone from the Houston Chronicle
Good Byes
Wockerjabby stopped teaching. Good luck in grad school. I also dropped two links that no longer interested me. (don’t remember their exact names). Chris Correa‘s site seems to have been abandoned. I am waiting to see if a few dormant links become active again: Mr. Babylon, nycpublicschoolblue. I’m keeping them for now. And in a fit of pique I temporarily cut links to ICE (an opposition caucus in the United Federation of Teachers) and most of its supporters who were on my blog roll. If I choose to drop them permanently I will explain more fully. I’ll take about a week to decide.
A Principal’s Blog You Should Read
I don’t know exactly where “G-town” is, but Kimberly Moritz is the principal at their high school, and she blogs. Check out G-Town talks. Now, if you can.
Kimberly started blogging in July. You could browse the whole archive in about 30 – 45 minutes. And if you start, you will want to keep reading.
Look, none of us know if a principal in real life resembles what they write, but this writing looks thoughtful, balanced, and open in a way that too few of our principals are. Looks pro-kid, pro-teacher.
The school, btw, sounds like 1000 kids, about a quarter Seneca with the rural(?) (maybe small town?) problems that sound familiar to big city folks.
I’m not going to track back to each of the 21 posts, but if you click more you can read some excerpts —> Read more…
Far out new names
Last month Pluto, a planet, became a ‘minor planet’. Today it got it’s official minor planet designation: 134340. It’s what you’d expect to happen to Pluto if he came to Sing Sing.
Insult on top of injury: the designation was offered by the Minor Planet Center.
As I understand it the storm was brewing around whether or not 2003UB313 should be counted as a planet. This kuiper belt object was popularly known as Xena (after the warrior princess on, was it Fox?).
But now it has an official name. Seemingly fittingly, for all the trouble it stirred up, it has been named Eris, after the Greek god of strife. Eris’ moon is now called Dysnomia. (It had been Gabrielle, Xena’s sidekick.)
Thanks to JD at Evolution – the next step in Kansas for linking to the Eris thing.
Update: Eris is strife, but I missed what Dysnomia means: lawlessness, an obvious tribute to Lucy Lawless, the star of Xena. Go Warrior Princess!
Thanks to Benjamin Zimmer on Language Log (I need to go back there, lots of good stuff.)
Lost in New York
Tish at Girlfriend’s Getaway Guide writes about losing her hotel in New York. (It was on West Broadway, she was on Broadway).
Join the club, Trish. I have had my share of lost (or mixed-up at least) in NY stories.
Train Station. (didn’t the train to Connecticut leave from Grand Central? Not the Amtrak, now I got it)
Bus Station (But the GW Bridge is a Port Authority Bus Station, too, isn’t it?)
Airport (we won’t ask, ok?)
Museum (was meeting my uncle for a lecture, but he wasn’t there. Asked for the lecture hall. Couldn’t find where it was scheduled. Oh yeah. Met. Not Natural History)
Tower (went to an office to pick up some advertising leaflets I was supposed to distribute. 1WTC. Got to the floor, the layout is wrong, can’t find the office, the guy. I call. Yup, we agree I am on the right floor. But I turned myself around between the PATH plaza and the Citibank, and was in the other tower)
I think I am missing one, but that’s enough of a chuckle for now.
Choice
Mathematics of Choice, that is. 
This is the text I use for my combinatorics elective. More or less. I wander far afield some days, and give them a “Games and Puzzles Day” each Friday. (It’s all math, and the kids know it, but they still think they are getting over by not doing ‘real work.’) We will get through a bit more than half the book in the term (1 term elective.)
So far we haven’t done very much. They struggled to articulate the difference between “do problems 20 through 30, how many problems?” and “read a chapter that begins on page 20, next chapter begins on page 30, how many pages?” But it only took a few minutes for everyone to catch on.
More below —> Read more…
What’s up in Oaxaca?
I figured (wrongly, apparently) that last sping’s massive teacher strike/rebellion in the Mexican city of Oaxaca would have ended with the presidential election. Well, come to think of it, I am not sure that their hotly contested election is over either.
But the strike is still on!
I saw a couple of leaflets at the Labor Day Parade. I just linked to Edjustice out of the Bay Area, and on their blog I found this link to more news. And they mention that a group of anti-War UFTers has more information. I will look. Months ago I added a link to some sort of anarchist, and today I looked and found a brand new Oaxaca post on his site, too.
I also found this summary through google.
But how to sort it out? I will read and search, and write what I find. If anyone has good info or good sources, please share. Thanks.
The McNuggets Puzzle
McNuggets, the object of derision in the “Parts is parts” commercial, the subject of several comedy routines, and the source of much bad stuff in my diet from their 1984 Gold Rush until I gained the common sense not to eat unidentifiable processed deep fried from-somewhere-in-the-chicken stuff…
(McNuggets now come in an all white meat variety. I read that halal McNuggets can be found in Detroit. For today, irrelevant.)
McNuggets are the subject of one of my favorite puzzles for kids, and one that I will use several times over the next few weeks (likely this Friday with one class).
Why march?
Today is Labor Day. (Not really)
Labor Day was last Monday, but the Labor Day weekend has a massive parade (Brooklyn, West Indies) and there is no way a Labor parade could compete.
So, let’s call today Labor Day. This is New York City. Unlike lots of other places in the United States, lots and lots of people belong to unions. Lots of teachers belong to the United Federation of Teachers.
If they all marched it would be a huge festival. But they don’t. This parade is a non-event on most people’s calendars.
This parade is also a sort of barometer. If we, teachers, city workers, electricians, all of us, if we were tough and doing well in our relations with the city and private employers, lots of people would show.
A lousy turnout does not make us weak; a lousy turnout confirms that we are weak.
Programmer, too
In NYC high schools, programming means scheduling students. I am the programmer in my school, which means this week I was consumed by fixing errors in kids’ schedules, balancing class size, and that sort of tedious, detailed, fun stuff.
Sorry for the posting hiatus. I am finishing adjustments this weekend, and will be back.
Question: I have mixed feelings about being Chapter Leader and Program Chair. On the one hand, the latter job puts me in the position sometimes to guarantee fairness. On the other, that job is also semi-administrative, and sometimes my union instincts and my programming instincts differ.
(To the extent possible, I ask my union committee to field program complaints).
What do you think?
How many days do we work?
A real life math puzzle for NYC teachers.
Our contract calls for us to start the Thursday before Labor Day, and to end on the third to last weekday in June.
Questions 1 and 2: Under this contract, what is the earliest possible date that we could start? end?
We get off Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, when they fall on weekdays, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day and the Friday after, a week around Christmas (plus any ‘widow’ Mondays or Fridays). MLK. Presidents Day. A week at midwinter, a week at Easter. Memorial Day.
(if I got something wrong, please tell me)
It looks like we work different numbers of days in any given year. From this information, can you figure out the longest and the shortest possible?
And how in the world did we get a contract that does not specify the number of days we work? Does it go back to Shanker? Earlier?
Forgotten New York
Forgotten New York: Views of a Lost Metropolis
The Ultimate Urban Explorer’s Guide to All Five Boroughs
by Kevin Walsh
You can find the link to the website in the righthand column —>
But now there is a book. At $14 softcover, $19 hardcover, why not get both? Or one.
Ton’s of Gotham history is hidden in plain sight, and Kevin finds it, photographs it, explains and describes it.
He also runs tours. We have been on a few photo-taking walks, but somehow only one tour. One of these days…
What is net neutrality?
Really, what are the politics of this debate? I know, I know, telecoms are bad. But who is good? Is it just a simple David against Goliath? Or do both sides smell like an August sidewalk when the garbage doesn’t get collected?
Or have I just fallen for an internet myth? (Weren’t they going to pass a law taxing e-mail? That got sent to me at least half a dozen times)
In any case, I liked this video.
(Thanks to Off The Broiler for the link)
Question for United Federation of Teachers Members
Do you know your rights regarding schedule? Does everyone in your building know their rights?
Read, Learn, Share the Knowledge
Ask your chapter leader to review rights regarding program during the first Chapter meeting of the year, or if that is not soon enough, to post relevant parts of Article 7.
All of us should help inform newer teachers of their rights.
Speak with newer members to make sure that they know their rights, even if the rights in your school only exist on paper. Don’t assume that even a third or fourth year teacher knows what the contract says. In my first school, senior teachers conspired with administrators to deny information about rotation to newer teachers.
Article 7 of the teachers contract is long. 7A – 7K address your assignment. Read the appropriate section, once, if you have not done so in a long time.
For a bit —-> Read more…
August 31, 2006
All of the normal stuff was there: the hellos, the discussion of summer travel, of who had retired, meeting the new folks.
We should not be in school before Labor Day!
But it’s not Labor Day yet! We should be in our five last days of vacation! Don’t we want our time back?
We had a ‘robust’ breakfast and then the Day 1 faculty meeting, which went mercifully quickly. And we got some set-up work done.
Now, getting the set-up work done was important (and most of tomorrow has been set aside for that purpose in my school) because the new contract said that part of these two days was to be used by teachers for classroom set-up. So at least in my school the letter was being followed. Hooray for us?
Yes, and pity on the teachers whose principals see these days as 10+ hours of faculty conference. I hope your chapter holds your principal to the contract language if he tries to pull this.
For the contract language click —> Read more…
Analysis?
Should I take a course this term? I could use a few credits for the last differential, but I am not in a rush. And I am teaching only half as much in the evening, so theoretically I have the time.
But the new time was supposed to allow me to relax more, to get more of my own stuff done.
But this is a math course, and I like mathematics. It is relaxing.
But this is real analysis, the hardest math course I could take. I took it once, years ago, at a far tougher school, and got a C+. I wanted to quit math (not knowing that my C+ was above average and that analysis was genuinely hard. I thought that I just wasn’t good enough for math at that school.)
For the record, the professor is using Rudin, which I have never heard of. I have Marsden on my shelf, along with a Dover Fomin/Kolmogorov, and a copy of the same Ross that I found a picture of on the Mumbling Monkey blog.
Should a teacher take a hard course for fun?
Open Market Transfers and Older Teachers
…I suspect you will find some discrimination of the older teacher. I hope the union pushes DOE in showing them the statistics.
Age discrimination is a real issue. So it’s hard to disagree, but what would the statistics show us?
Under seniority transfers, we could check seniority. There really wasn’t much wiggle room. Under SBO transfers the job should have gone to the senior qualified applicant (not most senior, not most qualified, but the most senior of the pool of qualified applicants). There was an appeals/review process that members availed themselves of.
But those transfer systems were ended by the last contract.
But under the Open Market Plan (damn, I hate that name. Sounds like a scheme to privatize pensions or sell off the post office) there is no review process. There is no seniority component to the hiring.
I’m over 40 and I apply to your school and I am not hired. Was there discrimination? Of course there is no way to know. I am one person. There is no individual rule broken, there is no pattern.
I apply to six schools and am not hired. Discrimination? We should argue yes, but I think not. The principals do not come together to make their decisions.
What was Wrong With the UFT Questionnaire?
Your questionnaires were due last week. I hope many of your sent them in. And there is a Negotiating Committee meeting tomorrow. The results have probably been tabulated.
Contract Enforcement
There were questions about teacher’s controling their lesson formats. here were questions about adequate supplies and facilities. here were questions about evaluating administrators. There were a host of other quality of life questions.
There were questions about rights we already have, some explicit. We can’t enforce the current contract? Better language is not going to help.
Asking questions about a new contract is, in many ways, a diversion. Who is protecting our members rights today? Do we have adequate supplies? Are classes rotated? With 6-R shot to hell, are administrative assignments being rotated? Do our chapters meet? When the principal steps over the line, is there a chapter to say “No!” ?
But talk is cheap. A survey is cheap. Building chapters, enforcing the contract, protecting members rights, that’s hard. Protecting new members’ rights?
And the most frustrating part? If we had functioning chapters in every school, the DoE and Bloomberg’s Chancellor would know it. They would not laugh at a strike threat (as they did last time round). Our negotiators are as weak or as powerful as the union – at the central, but much more importantly, at the school level.
JD2718 