Exhaustion

Today was the first day of working as an EnCOMPASS fellow in Philadelphia. The Math Forum and Drexel University are our most gracious hosts. Make it a point to meet anyone from The Math Forum at your next math conference. They are such wonderful, interested, caring and giving people.

The Math Forum had us hard at work today as we used Google Hangouts to connect Philly fellows with offsite fellows, looking over PoWs (Problems of the Week) and the EnCompass software. You know when you work with the Math Forum, you're going to get a good helping of them asking us fellows, "What do you notice?" and "What do you wonder?" Since we're working on giving feedback, Annie Fetter gave us another gem: What would you love the software to do?

Another great part about the hangouts and looking over The Math Forum's site, is that I was able to listen to many other teachers share how they used The Math Forum's site and resources. In doing so, it gave me a chance to explore their site and peel back more layers of resources, support, and strategies I didn't know existed. For example, check out these beautiful links:

Our work hours were from about 8am to 4pm with a few breaks and lunch. Every working minute was productively spent engaging in some type of activity: discussions, gallery walks, reflections, exploring, commenting, etc. By the end of the work day, I was mentally exhausted. I've felt this way before. Sometimes at all-day conferences where you talk math all throughout the day and evening with people I've felt this way. I always need some type of break, some type of release or chance to decompress. I can't talk math all day nor want to. I might think or look for math all day, but talking it can be exhausting. Maybe I'm a wimp. So be it. However, I want to talk about more than math with people at conferences or some gathering like today's institute. I find it interesting to listen to people tell stories about non-math topics. So, thank you to everyone for sharing and not making it all about math.

This made me think about the daily mental exhaustion of a student. Let's randomly pick a percentage. How about 60%? I don't know. Let's say students are actively engaged 60% of the time at school? Okay, please disagree with me and pick your own percentage. This is super informal. Whatever you pick, take it and raise it to a percentage you'd like them to be at and don't make it 100%. Be realistic.

I raise my expectation to 85%. I'd like my students to be actively engaged in school 85% of the time, with 95% being my ultimate goal. I felt The Math Forum was able to gather some great things from people today because they broke it up and kept us actively engaged at least 90% of the time. I was exhausted, but it was a good exhausted. It wasn't like sitting in a chair all day at a conference listening to presenter after presenter deliver a one-way PowerPoint. Think of students and either subjecting them to a high level of engagement or subjecting them to teacher after teacher of un-engaging classroom time.

This post is longer than I anticipated. I want to think about this more, so here are questions I will continue to ponder:

• What is constructive engagement and how should I (or we) define it?
• What does constructive engagement look like in my class?
• How do I get my students to be positively exhausted at the end of the day? 
• On average, what percent of the time are students engaged in my class? at school?
• How can I increase this percentage by un-engaging (breaking up the class time) them at times?
• Would homework exist or should my students need a chance to decompress from my class? Did they get their fill for the day?
• Would homework simply be blogging (as reflection), like I'm doing right now?

Exhausted,
1032

Stretch

I am reluctantly pressing "publish" for this post. However, please know that the rawness and honesty in this post is aimed at making each and every one of us better at what we (both individually and collectively) do to support our students.

Kate wrote a great post the other day about some teachers coming out of TMC14 feeling inadequate. I support Kate's attitude and conclusion:

We are all good at some things and suck at other things. One thing we all share is the recognition that we all have work to do, and that we can all get better, and that focusing on that is worth our time.

I believe we need inadequacies and need to feel them at times because they make us better at what we're striving to be: the best teacher for our students. We don't need inadequacies to feel inferior to other teachers or generate some type of MTBoS worth. Here's how I think we all need inadequacies.

I started learning and exploring how to play the guitar in high school. I stunk. My family probably got tired of me playing Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water and Metallica's Enter Sandman all day. The first two riffs (and eventually songs) I learned. However, I practiced. A LOT. When I wasn't playing basketball, I practiced guitar. When I was supposed to be doing homework, I practiced guitar. There were guys at my high school who played guitar and were better. It made me practice more. It made me want to be better at something I loved doing.

When I got into college, my focus on guitar playing was similar. I was a lot better by this time, but still practiced a lot. When I wasn't working or going to class, I practiced guitar. When I was supposed to be studying, I practiced guitar. Then I joined a few bands and we practiced a lot. Not only did I continue practicing by myself, but now I practiced with others. That's awesome. We got better together! I would also jam with other guitarists who were better than me. Sometimes they were better so I learned a lot. Sometimes, I was better so I got to share some things and could relate. Every time I jammed with someone, it was a chance for me to improve at something I loved doing.

I loved going to concerts or watching videos of my favorite guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, or Warren Haynes. I wanted to cut my hands off many times because there was no way I would ever be as good as them. However, it only made me want to learn from them, steal some of their licks (guitar moves/techniques), and be the best I could be with their help and inspiration. I remember meeting James Hetfield from Metallica and was star struck. I thanked him for his inspiration. That's all I could muster up the intelligence to say. If I could jam with him I'd probably mess up A TON! But I'd never turn that opportunity down, because I'd learn a lot and he'd push me to get better.

Once during college, I was in Chicago at Kingston Mines blues bar hanging with my cousin. This blues/funk band, Charlie Love, was up there laying down some great songs. I went up at their break to compliment them and they invited me up to do a funk jam with them. I was completely honored and humbled at the same time. Here is this tall white guy trying to play funk with the Chicago blues/funk band and I did not play as well as I could have. However, I was grateful to meet them, I learned a lot from watching them, and it again made me want to go home and practice until my hands fell off.

For me, this connects so well with where I am as a math teacher. I am grateful for many other math teachers who have inspired me. There are many times I feel inadequate. Maybe I've met some of these math teachers and I feel like my brain shuts down. The best I can utter is some number and ignorantly nod my head in agreement. However, meeting inspiration and hanging out with inspiration has made me want to become a better teacher for my students.

Imagine there was an opening at your school and you could hire your teaching colleague. Would you turn down the chance to work alongside:

• Dan Meyer because of his 3-Act creativity? 
• Steve Leinwand because he's the Tasmanian Math-devil challenging you to be your best? 
• Fawn Nguyen because she cusses and can't afford to not help her students do amazing things. 
• Karim Ani because he looks at the world in interesting ways to tell stories and use math to serve them? 
• Kate Nowak because she's pioneered blogging and has crazy-cool math stuff?
• Matt Vaudrey because he's willing to grow (or wear) a mullet for a ratios lesson? 
• Cathy Yenca or John Stevens because they're integrating 21st century skills in their classrooms? 
• Robert Kaplinsky because he writes detailed and amazingly cool PBLs?
• insert name because they inspire you and make you want to be a better teacher? 

This is a snapshot of the many teachers who have inspired me and continue to raise the bar for me. I wouldn't turn them down because I might have some inadequacies. They would make me a better teacher for my students. Imagine if you were the teacher after receiving students from any teacher who inspires you? Imagine if you're the teacher before sending your students to a teacher who inspires you? Wouldn't you want to be the best teacher for your students? Isn't that healthy? Who wins? I would hope your students. 

I recently offered a keep-your-head-up comment somewhere saying,

"Think of the skills you will acquire when making changes."

My challenge to you (and myself), if you're feeling inadequate or inferior at any time is to:

• take risks
• be brave
• tap into your influences and inspirations to stretch yourself
• be the best teacher for YOUR students, not the MTBoS.

Stretch,
210

San Diego Conversions

I was in San Diego, California the past few days doing the whole San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld thing with the family. We had a great time, but that's not the point of the post. There were definitely a handful of opportunities to capture some math moments, but I've found it more important to contain myself (mathematically) when I'm with family and make the most of our time together. Here are the two things I captured and want to share.

Number 1: 
We were waiting to board the Wild Arctic Ride (virtual helicopter ride) at SeaWorld and watched this video. There were subtitles in Spanish for our spanish-speaking (reading) friends. However, they go along with the helicopter pilot.

Here's Act 1:

When I saw the the number behind the black box, I thought, "Is that right? Is 400 miles per hour really ### kilometers per hour?"
Are they correctly converting for our Spanish speaking friends? It turns out that 400 miles per hour is about 643.7 kilometers per hour.

Here's act 3:

What do you think? Should I keep the black box there? Should I delete it?
I feel this is one of those moments where I don't insert a black box and we simply ask students:
Is 400 miles per hour really 600 kilometers per hour?
I'm curious about students arguing about this one? or would they even care?
What difference would 40 kilometers per hour make?
Where do you stand, on any of it?

Number 2: 
The great thing about San Diego is there are tons of people from many different places of the world. San Diego has an international airport and many places of interest besides SeaWorld and the zoo to contribute to this melting pot. I loved listening to all the different languages being spoken throughout the day. Therefore, it didn't surprise me when I walked into the pool area for the first time on our trip and noticed a few interesting things. I couldn't help but think how wonderful it would be to use these in any math classroom, specifically Math 6. The first thing you see as you enter the pool area is the jacuzzi. I couldn't help but notice the depth:

Okay class, check this conversion. It ends up making sense and I appreciate the use of meters for pretty much everyone outside of the United States. Seriously, I simply have such a hard time understanding why the United States uses inches, feet, yards, miles, etc. I digress.

Here's the (very shallow) pool:

Let's look a little closer at the depth signs around the pool. The deepest part of the pool is 4 feet or 1.2 meters. Okay class, check this conversion. Looks pretty legit, right?

So, if you saw a depth sign with 3.5 feet, what would you put the meters conversion at? How would you order these pictures with your students? Which would you present first? second? third? or would you give them all to your students at the same time? Would you cover up one of the measurements (like feet) and only show them one measurement so they work on finding the conversion. Here's the 3.5 ft depth sign.

Okay, if you do the conversion, 3.5 feet is 1.0668 meters. Obviously, someone was following their rounding rules. A few questions pop into mind here:
Should we round up?
Would it be wiser to round to 1 meter?
How much of a difference does roughly 4 centimeters make?
Could they not use a slightly larger tile and put 1.07 meters?
These questions aren't the only questions, nor the most profound, but I'm still curious.

There's one more crazy thing about this pool I had to capture and share. How did they get away with this? 

Look closely. Inside the pool is a depth of 4 feet (1.1 meters). Outside the pool is a depth of 3.5 feet (1.1 meters). WHAT?!!! Now reflecting, I should have had my wife take a picture of me next to the sign to get the water level and measure how deep it actually is here. I don't know about you, but 6 inches is definitely more significant than the 4 centimeters we discussed earlier.
At what point does an error like this matter significantly enough to change it? 6 inches? 2 inches? 12 inches? and in what direction: shallower or deeper?

How would you use any of these images or video in your class to help facilitate discussions or arguments regarding conversions?

SD conversions,
906