Sara(h) Week Activities (Day 2)

I welcome you to my new blog. Today is my first day as a math teacher at an LA County magnet high school, where I will be teaching mostly Statistics.

I'll begin with a description of today, in "A Day in the Life" format. This is for the special day "my first day of school," even though it's really Day 2 -- I was hired a day late.

8:00 -- First period arrives. This is the first of two general Stats classes.

This is a very small magnet school. In fact, the school hasn't admitted any new students since the start of the pandemic, and so all of the students are juniors and seniors. And the classes are even smaller -- in fact, there is only one student listed on my roster for first period!

One guy, a senior, does show up to class today -- but he's not the girl listed on the roster. He tells me that many students are getting their schedules adjusted this week, and so changes are coming. I hope for his sake that some more kids will transfer into his class, so he won't be so lonely.

He also explains that, unlike other LA County districts that reopened for hybrid last spring, this district didn't bother to reopen for in-person learning at all in 2020-21. Thus for these students, today (well, yesterday) was the very first time they've been on campus since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

8:55 -- First period leaves and second period arrives. This is the first of two Ethnostatistics classes -- and I'll explain what that means later in this post.

Instead, in all of my classes today, I give opening week activities. This is Sara(h) week, when many teachers give activities promoted by two famous teacher-bloggers -- Sara Vanderwerf and Sarah Carter.

First, I begin with Vanderwerf. Her favorite first day activity is called "name tents":

https://www.saravanderwerf.com/week-1-day-1-name-tents-with-feedback/

And then I follow this up with Carter. She writes that she often begins the year with Twos to Nines:

https://mathequalslove.net/twos-to-nines-challenges/

I do this in all of my classes today, including first period -- even with just one student there. (In first period, he works alone on the Sevens challenge.)

In second period, there are a dozen students on the roster, with two students absent. So I divide the ten present students into five pairs and assign each group a number from Twos to Sixes. Due to the pandemic, I haven't decided whether I'll have any groups larger than two this year.

I still give a traditional Warm-Up and Exit Pass -- in a way, at least. The Warm-Up question is the one I ask on the Vanderwerf name tents -- "What do you look forward to this year?" I tell them my answer -- I look forward to having an almost normal school year, and I look forward to reading all of their responses tonight.

The Exit Pass is based on the Carter challenges -- using four twos, make 12. My plan is to let the Exit Passes follow the Rebecca Rapoport rule -- the answer is always the date. Therefore I choose 12 in my exit pass because today's date is the twelfth.

In this class, one guy is a Spanish speaker who knows very little English. I will need to find ways to engage this student.

9:55 -- Second period leaves for nutrition.

10:15 -- Third period arrives. This is the only AP Calculus AB class.

This class has seven students, including one absent student. I repeat the same Sara(h) activities as the previous classes.

11:10 -- Fourth period arrives. This is the second of two Ethnostatistics classes.

This is my largest class of the day -- seventeen students are on the roster, including one absence. Thus there are enough pairs for me to assign all of Twos to Nines to a pair.

12:10 -- Fourth period leaves for lunch.

12:45 -- Fifth period arrives. This is the second of two general Statistics classes.

There are six students in this class, including two absent students. The four present students all finish both Sara(h) activities quickly, giving me extra time to have a conversation with them as well. As it turns out, two of the students (one present, one absent) are enrolled in my second period as well.

1:40 -- Fifth period leaves. Sixth period is my conference period, and so my teaching day ends here.

In all classes, I mention my first two resolutions. The first is "We are good at math. We just need to improve at other things," and the second is "We make sacrifices in order to be successful in math."

On days when I do "A Day in the Life," I'll also add some reflection, and this includes comparing this class to previous classes that I've taught. (On most days when I don't do "A Day in the Life," I wish to avoid any mention of previous schools and focus only on the present.)

The old charter school where I taught five years ago was very small -- and this school appears to be comparable in size. Of course, that school was K-8 while this one is 11-12.

At that school, I had a small Math 8 class with about a dozen or so students, while my Math 6 and 7 classes were each twice as large. Here at my current school, the two largest classes are Ethnostats, each about the same or slightly bigger than that Math 8 class. On the other hand, my two smallest classes, both general Stats, are much smaller than Math 8.

At the old charter school, I did one Carter activity near the start of the year, and no Vanderwerf activity at all (indeed, I'd never heard of her at the time).

Meanwhile, I taught a long-term position at a middle school from September 2020 to January 2021. At this school, the classes were regularly-sized, but often felt much smaller due to the hybrid schedule, with many students online.

At all three schools, my conference period was the last class of the day. At my previous schools this was by design, since all students had PE at the end of the day. But at this school, the only other teacher with sixth period prep is the lone other math teacher. She teaches the lower classes, Precalc and below -- and her classroom is fortunately next to mine, so she can help me a little. For the long-term assignment, the department chair was next-door to my room, and she assisted me with Math 7.

At all three schools, I have three preps. At the charter it was Math 6, 7, 8, at the long-term school it was Math 7, 8, Studies, and here it's Stats, Ethnostats, AP Calc.

Ah yes -- let me discuss that Ethnostats class. The math teacher next door suggested that I could just ignore the "ethno" designation and just treat the two preps as one, until I informed her that two students are enrolled in both courses. Thus I must teach the proper content for both classes.

There has been much discussion in the news regarding "equality" vs. "equity" and the inclusion of racial content in history, and even math classes. I mentioned this briefly a few times on my old blog, but I avoided discussing much of the controversy. But now I must write about the controversy on the blog, since it's directly related to a class that I'm expected to teach.

This district is an early adopter of ethnic studies classes, long before the killing of George Floyd. In fact, the movement to teach ethnic studies here has nothing to do with blacks, but Hispanics. Indeed, Latinos make up almost 100% of the student body here. (Of my own students, only one appears to be non-Hispanic -- a girl of Asian descent, likely Korean.)

Some traditionalists deride any effort to teach ethnic studies by a new term -- "critical race theory." So some parents might accuse me -- as a teacher of Ethnostats -- of teaching "critical race theory." Some irate parents have proposed forcing all teachers to wear body cameras so that they can be aware of what we're telling their children -- intending to pull their kids out of class if they hear anything that they consider to be CRT.

My opinion regarding this issue is simple, and matches what I usually say about the traditionalists. The traditionalists would have us just teach regular Stats, and regular math in middle school, but they assume that just because we teach something, the students will just do it. Some students might leave all math assignments blank, for a variety of reasons. And the reasons that they might feel unmotivated to work can be racial -- they feel that members of their race tend to be unsuccessful in math, so why should they even bother working.

And so I believe the best practices depends on what suits the students the best. If I were still at my previous long-term position -- at an Orange County school with a white majority -- I would definitely be opposed to offering Ethnostats. Some white students and their parents might consider the course to be CRT -- and even if it isn't, the students might still feel uncomfortable (which is counterproductive).

On the other hand, I'm teaching at a school that's almost 100% Hispanic. And so we should teach to what motivates this group -- and if that turns out to be Ethnostats, then so be it. The fact that my Ethnostats classes are more than double the size of my general Stats classes suggests that these students are interested in learning about it. The class will explore the relationship between stats and ethnicity, and seeks to use stats to figure out why different races have different outcomes.

The official position of the district is that this class is not CRT -- but it's irrelevant, since very few, if any, white students attend the school. And so a pro-Hispanic/pro-Mexican curriculum may suit the actual students sitting in the classes.

The partner teacher next door tells me that she'll contact the flagship (non-magnet) high school in the district and ask another Ethnostats teacher to send me material on the course.

Let's get to today's Blaugust topic. By the way, Shelli explains that her husband is the leader of the other active Blaugust challenge (for video gamers), since she's taking this year off.

Since today's the 12th, here's the twelfth topic from Shelli's old 2019 list:

• Self-Care…  how to make it a priority?

I've mentioned on my old blog that I've been struggling with self-care during the pandemic. I used to exercise by running two miles every Saturday, but running often causes me to sneeze the whole weekend -- and I might arrive at school on Monday with symptoms that can be easily mistaken for coronavirus symptoms.

Also, my healthiest meals of the week would be the meals that I'd buy from the school cafeteria. But once the pandemic started, schools switched to a cashless system where students can get meals for free (regardless of family income), but teachers can't get meals at all, no matter how much we pay.

I've solved the running problem by reducing my weekend jog to one mile -- halving the distance means that I'm half as likely to sneeze after the run. But the lunch problem is more difficult -- at my new school, the cashless system continues, and so teachers can't still get meals on-campus. I wouldn't be surprised if the no-teacher-meal rule becomes permanent.

I'm willing to eat two (occasionally three) of my lunches at a fast-food restaurant -- and I might tie it to the block schedule, eating out on the days when I have a long lunch (Wednesdays and Fridays, when lunch leads directly to sixth period conference). But on the other days, I want something healthier. As it happens, today I eat some bagels left over in the lounge from a Day 1 welcome back party, but I can't do it regularly. Once again, I notice what other teachers are eating during lunch -- salads. That's the healthiest thing I can eat during these days when we can't get cafeteria meals.

I'll end this post here. I haven't decided yet which stat class (ethno or general) will be the official class of the blog and hence will determine my posting schedule. But since the first block day isn't until Day 5, I'm posting tomorrow no matter what.