Mental Health Break

LiveText

By now you have gotten the letter from Dean Kostelnik about LiveText.  Please look it over and let me know if you have any questions.

Great Story About Student Teaching

Matthew Dicks is a legendary storyteller and Moth story slam champion. He tells a great story about why it is important to know the kids.

 

Teachers on the Common Core

Miriam Hall has a nice blog called Schooled. She has been reporting on what teachers think of the Common Core. She has gathered some thoughtful reflections about how they have encountered the Common Core, how it has changed their work (for the better), and the biggest misconceptions.

There is a consistent theme running through their comments: 

There's a conflation of the standards and standardized testing...what they're really pushing back against is an increase in standardized testing, which is not in the Common Core at all. Common Core is a set of standards.

I think that people are confused...It’s a completely different thing than the set of standards.

In its heart it's just trying to elevate the standards across the U.S. I don't think the government's trying to take over our lives and rule who we are through the world of education...That said, I'd be remiss to not talk about the testing. And the testing is the worst thing ever.

Common Core...is based off of the same math principles that have allowed people to be successful at math for a long time. It's just actually expecting students to understand underlying principles.

The Common Core standards are what teachers are required to teach and what students should be able to do independently. The standardized tests are supposed to evaluate the Common Core standards. When people are protesting against standardized tests, I 100 percent support that.

I think the biggest issue that causes the political hullabaloo about the Common Core is that people think that testing mechanisms are the Common Core.

Read more here and here.

Feel bad at math?

Here is one reason why. Chase Felker writes:

It seems that the origin of math phobia is not the content of math itself; it cannot rest solely on someone’s inability to sit through logic puzzles, because people exercise careful abstract reasoning in every other field without the same sort of fear. Instead, I think the form is largely to blame. All of high school math is basically a one-way linear staircase that leads to calculus. If you fall off at any point, you’re doomed.

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