The Serial Thinker Blog

California to require ethnic studies to graduate high school. I have questions.

 

 

School Staffing Shortage in North Texas

 

 

The Story of the Little Red Hen

I don’t think anybody should be allowed to graduate from High School until they’ve read one of the most important literary classics of all time…The Little Red Hen.

In the story, the little red hen finds a grain of wheat and asks the other barnyard animals “Who will help me plant the wheat?” The response “Not I” said the cat, “Not I” said the dog, “Not I” said the pig. So the Little Red Hen said “Then I will plant the seed myself” and she did.

At each later stage (harvest, threshing, milling and baking the flour to make bread) the hen asks the 3 animals for help in the process again, and at each stage the animals reply with the same response “Not I” said the cat, “Not I” said the dog, “Not I” said the pig.

At the final stage, when the hen has finally baked the bread, she asks “Now, who will help me eat the bread?” If you’ve heard the story before you know the end. But, I’m almost positive that they aren’t teaching this story in school anymore. The response? “No, you did not help me plant, nor help me harvest, nor help me mill, nor help me bake the bread” so the Little Red Hen ate the bread and gave it to her chicks.

I grew up with this story. Such a simple lesson on being a responsible individual and helping others. Modern society no longer embraces this kind of thinking it seems. “It doesn’t matter that you did not contribute to any of the work or preparation in making something successful…you still get to eat from the fruit of people’s labor.” This kind of thinking is wrong. It promotes laziness and slothfulness and the ultimate feeling of entitlement that we see in our world today.

So you see, this is why this story should be resurrected and taught to our children at very early ages…like it once was…like it was in the days when people were more responsible and understood “cause and effect” relationships. Yes, let’s revive this “Literary Classic” before it is too late!

“The story of the Little Red Hen has been retold many times. First published in 1874, this folk tale teaches children the value of hard work and self-reliance. In the story, a hen finds a seed of wheat, which she decides to plant in order to make bread. Though she seeks the help of other farm animals, they refuse, and the hen must do all the work herself. When the bread is finally made, the other animals wish to partake—but, because they did not help the hen along the way, they are refused the fruits of her labor. The story has been featured as part of the popular “Little Golden Books” series and as a Walt Disney animated film, The Wise Little Hen (1938).”

2 Thessalonians 3:10

Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: "Those unwilling to work will not get to eat."

Biotic or Abiotic?

When my students attended Outdoor School in grade 5, they learned the word 'Biotic'. This word is made up of the Greek prefix 'Bio' meaning life, and the Greek suffix 'ic' meaning 'of or pertaining to'; so together they combine to mean 'of or pertaining to life'. They are taught that this term applies to things that are alive, were alive, or will be alive.

 

Then they wander around the woods and the shoreline identifying things they see as biotic or abiotic (isn't now, has never been, and will never be alive).

 

Rocks - abiotic

Water - abiotic

The organisms in the water - biotic

Fallen leaves and sticks - biotic

 

I wonder what they would classify fetuses in grade 5.

Then in grade 8.

Then in grade 12.

Then as a new college graduate.

Then at age 30.

You Suck Math

Theorems, postulates, and algorithms? Who Cares?

Who cares about Pythagoras, Isosceles, Quadratic or any of those other dead Greek
dudes?

When am I ever going to need to factor a polynomial, take a derivative, or excuse my
Dear Aunt Sally?

When I think about math I think about misery.
When I think about math my entire brain hurts.
When I think about math my eyes bleed.
When I think about math snot cascades out of my nose.
When I think about math my stomach churns
When I think about math my teeth want to fall from my mouth and run far far away.
Math is the language of pain

Math tastes like a crap sandwich smeared with pickle juice and dunked in sawdust
Math sounds like a Taylor Swift rap song played by a Middle School orchestra
Math feels like vomit in your shoe

Math is a big tub of slugs
That you have to sit in
for 55 minutes

Every single day.

(Written for my students who absolutely despise math)

Thinking Aloud - Saturday Morning

I propose that we take all of the Saudi nationals who were involved in today's terrorist attack, put them inside of a condemned building and implode it on top of them. Besides ridding the Earth of them, it adds a degree of historical continuity that I find satisfying.

++++++++++

This is something I've never thought about before. When you get to your afterlife destination, do you pass through a Central Issuing Facility to get your angel gear? Is it staffed by angels whose garments are slightly gray and tattered, with a surly attitude and no patience for newcomers? Does the facility have a rack full of different wing sizes and styles, iridescent, feathery, gossamer, majestic, etc.? Is there a full blown angel band or are you limited to lyres and harps? Do you have to sign off on a hand receipt for the gear and are you then accountable for it for the rest of eternity?

+++++++++++

A question has surfaced amongst several groups of friends about why kids aren't better critical thinkers. With the perfectly reasonable follow-up question - and why aren't they taught this in school?

We teach critical thinking in school, but not as an explicit subject area. Critical thinking tasks are littered throughout the curriculum, but always in service to something else. For example, "Identify three different conflicts in this piece of literature and comment on the impact that each had in the protagonist's transformation." This question employs several thinking skills: Knowledge (what are literary conflicts); Application (Did they affect the main character?); and Evaluation (What was the affect of each conflict on the character's overall change in the story?). So a valid critical thinking question, but focused solely in the domain of literature.

I think a better approach would be to teach critical thinking as a separate domain and then apply the skills learned there across the academic spectrum. So we teach the students what 'Classification' is and then send them out into the world and have them classify things - creating new and interesting categories of things that they observe in the world.

This approach would load them up with the skills first and then they could use them as necessary throughout the rest of their lives.

I believe the same is true of creative thinking. I teach creative thinking/problem solving as part of an after school program, but not as an academic subject. It should be. We NEED people who are excellent at both creative and critical thinking, but these skills are buried within other subject matter bound learning standards.

+++++++++++++

One of the subjects that I teach is Spanish and I was in a meeting just yesterday morning with the other foreign language teachers about how to address the cultural practices around Christmas in Spanish speaking countries without being overtly religious - because the district where I teach is very aggressively secular. And I really don't know how to do it meaningfully and effectively because it IS a religious holiday.

Sure there are non-religious people who celebrate it, but in Spanish speaking countries particularly, that's not the case. All of the traditions revolve around the Holy Family and the birth of Jesus - not Santa, reindeer, or magical snowmen. The district's stated policy is to focus on winter/snow/the season - not specific holidays. But if we do that in Spanish class the kids learn absolutely nothing about the Spanish speaking cultures that we're studying.

++++++++++++++

Yesterday I was asked, "Do you set academic standards for your own kids or your students at school? For example, you can't earn less than a "B" in any of your classes."

This is my response:

I am a parent and a teacher. My desire for all of my students and my own kids is that they develop a love of learning and a tenacity not to quit when things get hard. These characteristics have nothing to do with a grade earned in a particular class. Why? Because I know that some kids, no matter how hard they try, will never earn an 'A' in one of my classes. That doesn't mean that they can't learn and improve their skills, only that their skills won't be good enough during this marking period to earn a particular score.

If we can develop character, the skills will come.

++++++++++++++

Today's Top 10
The Top 10 Things On My Family's Dinner Rotation

1. Spaghetti
2. Soup and Sandwiches
3. Fajitas
4. Tacos/Taco Salad
5. Teriyaki
6. Shake and Bake Chicken
7. Chili
8. Chicken Noodle Soup
9. Bowtie or Rotini pasta with sausage and peppers
10. Kalbi with rice

++++++++++++++

If It Won't Work in Middle School....

Mayor DeBlasio says, “When I am President we will even up the score. We will tax the hell out of the wealthy to make this a fairer country.”

So as a teacher this means that if I give one student an A and another student an F then I have to reduce the A student's grade to a C and raise the F student's grade to a C to make it a fairer class. I'm sure the hardworking A students and their parents would love that.

A Bit of Wednesday Wisdom

William Walked Unassisted At Promotion Ceremony

Tuesday night was the 8th grade promotion ceremony at the high school. One of my amazing students, William, has a set of cognitive and physical challenges that require him to have a student mentor most of the time. His last name is early in the "A's" so he was among the first group to have their names called to walk across the stage and be recognized. As his row stood up, he stood up with them. He glanced over at his teachers and mentor to see if one of us was going to stand up and escort him down the main aisle and across the stage. None of us got up, but all of us cheered and waved encouragingly for him to follow the line of his classmates toward the stage. He grinned a bit, and turned and walked his awkward walk with the other 8th grade students. One by one, their names were called and William glanced over at us for reassurance - which he got in heaping proportions. Finally, HIS name was called, "William A." and the gym exploded with applause. He is a well-loved young man and the crowd, his fans, let him know that last night. Congratulations William. Welcome to high school. You will be missed here.

State Testing Is Upon Us

 

State testing for all students occurs this week at my school. It is a despised component of the public school experience that yields dubious results at an enormous cost. But what is the alternative? Not testing students? How do we collect data on school performance if we don't? Use locally developed assessments to test students? If we do that how do we compare schools from one district to the next? And how do we know if the locally developed tests are even valid? If we want the information that state testing is supposed to yield then we have to administer state-created assessments to obtain it. We can't rely on districts to build their own assessments and self-report, that notion is an invitation for fraud and abuse. So we must either make peace with state testing or abandon it completely. There is no middle ground.