The more I learn about New York’s public education bureaucracy the less sense it makes.
An article in The New York Times says teaching fellows are facing finical difficulties. It’s pretty accurate, but nobody said this would be easy when we signed up! Maybe if they paid all teachers more they wouldn’t need a fellows program to keep the schools staffed.
The more I learn about New York’s public education bureaucracy the less sense it makes. For example, I had a tough time understanding why they switched from the AMSCO math curriculum to Pretence Hall. I find the book cluttered. I tend to think that the best math books say less-this book has photos on every single page. The book tries to use “real world examples” to make math more relevant. I have always thought this approach was doomed to failure since few people use any math beyond basic arithmetic in the real world. Students can see through attempts to convince them that knowing the triangle angle sum theorem (for example) has any application in daily life. Applications are not, after all, the reason students learn mathematics beyond arithmetic.
Learning mathematics trains students to think deductively, to reason logically and solve problems systematically. Mathematical reasoning what students will use in the real world and often it can mean the difference between success and failure. Math is a game-a mental jungle gym that builds these skills. Some may choose to go in to the specialized fields that use math but everyone should have the ability to pick apart a logical fallacy. Furthermore numbers and formulas used in finance should not intimidate a high school graduate. This is the true nature of the “real world” applications of high school math.
The Pretence Hall book uses something called “the work shop model.” The idea is that students should spend most of their time in class exploring and implementing the things they learn rather than taking notes. I am warming up to the workshop model. I think it’s a good thing about the new curriculum. It is, however, a lot of work to prepare a good lesson with the workshop model. I have tried searching the web for activities that go with Pretence Hall “Math A” -but strangely, there doesn’t seem to be any other teacher who has posted this type of stuff yet. It makes me want to get my lesson plans in order and on the web. I started doing it last year, but I got bogged down with the insanity of discipline problems, changes in class schedule and taking too many graduate courses while trying to teach. Such is the fate of many ambitious teaching fellows.
In fact my old web pages aren’t so bad… they just need some updating and indexing:
http://www.futurebird.com/fellows/
http://www.futurebird.com/fellows/levin/9thgrade/
I should get on that.
Another lingering question I have about the public schools relates to the New York Supreme Court ruling on equal school funding. Is it really going to happen? The supreme court of NY said it had to… so when will the change take place?
When I first started teaching I didn’t consider my school to be “under funded” we have all of the supplies we need (for the most part, sometimes it takes a terribly long time for orders to go through) the building is clean and most of the desks projectors etc. are in working order. There are more than enough textbooks and most of them are new.
However, if you look at our staff you’ll find that most of us are first and second year teachers. I was lucky and went to a very good public high school in Ohio called Shaker Heights High School. In four years of classes (9 periods a day) only one of the 36 or so teachers I had was a first year teacher. This is the way it should be. I think that teachers are generally less effective in their first years-and, ideally, students have a mix of new and seasoned teachers throughout their academic career. But, our students have mostly new teachers and this has an impact on their education. If you look at other “high needs” schools you find a similar pattern-or else you find teachers on the verge of retirement who are at times less effective for a number of reasons: perhaps they were not qualified to teach in a “better” school, perhaps they simply jaded. I’m not saying all these teachers who have been in the system for a long time are bad (some are quite remarkable!) it’s just most of the ho-hum-jaded ones seem to be concentrated at the older “high needs” schools.
This staffing issue is directly related to funding. The schools in the richer suburbs pay their teachers more and actively recruit new teachers who have spent their first years learning the ropes in the city. Also, the longer a teacher works the more he or she is paid-- so our school (for example) simply cannot afford to hire teachers with too many years of experience across the board. Equal funding could change this.
But, those who have been in the system are cynical when I suggest these ideas. “Sure we’ll get equal funding…eventually but not a penny of it will go to staffing…”
So, then where will it go? More brightly colored $80 textbooks that teach students about “math in the real world?”
Before this new money is allocated I think the board should consider a “real world” lesson in the economics of school staffing.
The more I learn about New York’s public education bureaucracy the less sense it makes. For example, I had a tough time understanding why they switched from the AMSCO math curriculum to Pretence Hall. I find the book cluttered. I tend to think that the best math books say less-this book has photos on every single page. The book tries to use “real world examples” to make math more relevant. I have always thought this approach was doomed to failure since few people use any math beyond basic arithmetic in the real world. Students can see through attempts to convince them that knowing the triangle angle sum theorem (for example) has any application in daily life. Applications are not, after all, the reason students learn mathematics beyond arithmetic.
Learning mathematics trains students to think deductively, to reason logically and solve problems systematically. Mathematical reasoning what students will use in the real world and often it can mean the difference between success and failure. Math is a game-a mental jungle gym that builds these skills. Some may choose to go in to the specialized fields that use math but everyone should have the ability to pick apart a logical fallacy. Furthermore numbers and formulas used in finance should not intimidate a high school graduate. This is the true nature of the “real world” applications of high school math.
The Pretence Hall book uses something called “the work shop model.” The idea is that students should spend most of their time in class exploring and implementing the things they learn rather than taking notes. I am warming up to the workshop model. I think it’s a good thing about the new curriculum. It is, however, a lot of work to prepare a good lesson with the workshop model. I have tried searching the web for activities that go with Pretence Hall “Math A” -but strangely, there doesn’t seem to be any other teacher who has posted this type of stuff yet. It makes me want to get my lesson plans in order and on the web. I started doing it last year, but I got bogged down with the insanity of discipline problems, changes in class schedule and taking too many graduate courses while trying to teach. Such is the fate of many ambitious teaching fellows.
In fact my old web pages aren’t so bad… they just need some updating and indexing:
http://www.futurebird.com/fellows/
http://www.futurebird.com/fellows/levin/9thgrade/
I should get on that.
Another lingering question I have about the public schools relates to the New York Supreme Court ruling on equal school funding. Is it really going to happen? The supreme court of NY said it had to… so when will the change take place?
When I first started teaching I didn’t consider my school to be “under funded” we have all of the supplies we need (for the most part, sometimes it takes a terribly long time for orders to go through) the building is clean and most of the desks projectors etc. are in working order. There are more than enough textbooks and most of them are new.
However, if you look at our staff you’ll find that most of us are first and second year teachers. I was lucky and went to a very good public high school in Ohio called Shaker Heights High School. In four years of classes (9 periods a day) only one of the 36 or so teachers I had was a first year teacher. This is the way it should be. I think that teachers are generally less effective in their first years-and, ideally, students have a mix of new and seasoned teachers throughout their academic career. But, our students have mostly new teachers and this has an impact on their education. If you look at other “high needs” schools you find a similar pattern-or else you find teachers on the verge of retirement who are at times less effective for a number of reasons: perhaps they were not qualified to teach in a “better” school, perhaps they simply jaded. I’m not saying all these teachers who have been in the system for a long time are bad (some are quite remarkable!) it’s just most of the ho-hum-jaded ones seem to be concentrated at the older “high needs” schools.
This staffing issue is directly related to funding. The schools in the richer suburbs pay their teachers more and actively recruit new teachers who have spent their first years learning the ropes in the city. Also, the longer a teacher works the more he or she is paid-- so our school (for example) simply cannot afford to hire teachers with too many years of experience across the board. Equal funding could change this.
But, those who have been in the system are cynical when I suggest these ideas. “Sure we’ll get equal funding…eventually but not a penny of it will go to staffing…”
So, then where will it go? More brightly colored $80 textbooks that teach students about “math in the real world?”
Before this new money is allocated I think the board should consider a “real world” lesson in the economics of school staffing.