Chapter 5: Stories Quantitative Data Tell (Day 28)

I'll begin with a description of today, in "A Day in the Life" format. This is my monthly posting day -- my school has a minimum day on one Monday per month. By the way, the dates of these monthly minimum days aren't announced in advance (so it isn't something simple like "the third Monday of each month," even though today is indeed the third Monday of September).

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

As of now, this class has just one student -- and as of now, this class still exists. As I mentioned last week, there's a possibility that this class will disappear, with the one guy moving to fifth period.

I tell this guy that in last week's quiz, he'd earned the highest grade of all four general Stats students. He scored 70 out of 75 -- but arguably, it should have been 69 out of 75. It has to do with a quirk of how the Illuminate website works. Even though I'm able to weight the constructed response questions so that they can be worth as many points as I wish (such as five or ten), Illuminate only allows me to give a four-point scale for these. Thus on a ten-point question, I can only give scores of 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4, which Illuminate then weights as 0/10, 2.5/10, 5/10, 7.5/10, or 10/10.

But one of my ten-pointers really has ten parts -- it's matching vocabulary terms. My first period student got nine of these correct, but Illuminate won't let me give him nine out of ten -- instead, I can give him either 7.5/10 or 10/10 (unless I coded them in as ten one-point questions, which takes too long). So in the end I give him 10/10 and tell him today which one he got wrong.

Then today we begin Chapter 5 of the Stats text, on "Stories Quantitative Data Tell." I cover the first three pages of the chapter -- pages 83-85, on boxplots (that is, box-and-whisker plots). I have my student take notes on what a boxplot is, draw a boxplot using a marker and whiteboard, and do the first two parts of the first homework question as an Exit Pass. After all, the first step to making a boxplot is to find the IQR, or interquartile range, of the data -- and it just so happened that the IQR of the data in the book is 20, matching today's date. Even with a short minimum day class, I have time to do all of this because he's my only student, and he's a quick worker.

8:40 -- First period leaves and second period arrives. This is the first of two Ethnostats classes.

I have two sources of course material for Ethnostats. One is the folder on Google drive that the teacher from two years ago sent me. But the other source is her old class website, which still appears when I make a Google search. The old website provides me with a plethora of lessons during Chapters 5-6 of the text.

Apparently, the Ethnostats topic from two years ago was global warming. This was around the time that Greta Thunberg -- a Swedish environmental activist around the same age as our students -- make her impassioned speech to the United Nations. She was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year. The class went on a field trip that year, although I don't know where -- and wherever it was, I seriously doubt that we'd be allowed to go there again this year.

At this point, let me make a political comment here. Certainly environmentalism is associated with the left wing -- but then again, Ethnostats itself has a left-wing perspective. Some right-wingers might complain that just because a class is left-wing on one topic -- race and ethnicity -- that doesn't mean that it needs to follow the left on every topic -- including the environment. (This was a complaint with the LAUSD teachers union -- several critics wondered what, say, the Green New Deal had to do with their teaching conditions.)

Once again, I'm going to make it clear to the readers -- I'm going to teach the class that I've been hired by the district to teach, and I'm going to take cues from my predecessors. While I'll focus more on the general Stats course on the blog, I will bring up Ethnostats from time to time. Blog readers who disagree with the Ethnostats curriculum can just skip those parts of the blog when I discuss them.

But the environment has nothing to do with today's post. I decide that I'd rather introduce global warning on the long block days, not today's fast-moving minimum day. And so today's Ethnostats class is all about boxplots, just like today's general Stats class.

Once again, I begin with a Warm-Up focusing on a quiz question that many students got wrong -- for this class, I choose a question on skew left and right (which many students confuse). One of the four students in this class earned a perfect 75/75 score on the quiz.

I move on the boxplot lesson -- the students again take notes, and then draw boxplots. But several students get confused with quartiles and outliers -- and the class ends before all of them have figured it out, and before I could give the Exit Pass. I end up stamping blank Exit Pass sheets, since I want to keep the Warm-Up/Exit Pass sheet worth six points. It also means that this class misses out on getting extra help on the homework, since today's question relates to the HW.

9:20 -- Second period leaves and third period arrives. This is the AP Calculus AB class.

The top student in this class earned a score of 70/75 on the DeltaMath quiz. I was able to grant partial credit to most of the students, and so their scores do improve from what they earned on Thursday.

Five out of six students in this class took the quiz -- one girl was absent last Thursday. I'll let her review at lunch tomorrow and then she can make up the quiz this Thursday. I also give the guy with the lowest score -- 21/75 -- a chance to retake the quiz, since I'll be setting up the DeltaMath quiz for the absent girl anyway. This leads to several students asking for retakes. Even the girl who earned the second highest score -- 64/75, a solid B -- wants to retake the quiz this week. The Warm-Up question is, again, one that the students struggled with on the quiz, on finding the slope of a secant line.

Today's lesson is Section 2.5, on limits to infinity. But this class is just as rushed as the boxplot lesson the previous period. I spend too much time on giving definitions of limits involving infinity and not enough time with specific examples. This is even after I give the students try some of the limit problems with markers and whiteboards, and even after I use the glass "whiteboard" on the side wall (which is closer to where the Calculus students are sitting and hence easier for them to see).

I do give an Exit Pass on finding a limit to infinity algebraically, but it might have confused them. As for the homework, I tell them that if they need help, they should begin by graphing the function.

10:00 -- Third period leaves and fourth period arrives. This is the second of two Ethnostats classes.

By this time, I decide to change up the lesson. After the Warm-Up and announcing that two students in this class have earned a perfect score on the quiz, I go straight to marker and whiteboard. By now, I've realized the problem with the earlier lessons in Ethnostats and Calculus -- I spend over twenty minutes on the Warm-Up and the notes on the definitions of boxplot and infinite limit. This is sound practice on a block day, but not on a minimum day. Instead, I want to get into actual visual examples quickly -- show the students what boxplots and asymptotes look like first. Then I go back to the theory and connect what they see to the formal definitions.

As I reflect on second and third period, I realize what ends up happening -- after spending so much time on Warm-Up and theory, I pass out the markers and notice that there's only a few minutes left before the time I want to start the Exit Pass. The students are confused by the formal definitions which make the ideas sound so complicated. Then I get so nervous that I make mistakes when trying to explaining the concept, leaving the students to confirm their fears that this is a complicated idea that they have little hope of understanding.

10:40 -- Fourth period leaves and fifth period arrives. This is the second of two general Stats classes.

I teach the boxplots the same way in fifth period as I did in fourth period. The students appear to understand boxplots much better than they did in second period.

The top student in this class earned a grade of 67/75 on the quiz. In reality, Illuminate shows a score of 67.5/75, but this includes getting 7 out of 10 vocabulary words which I enter as 3/4 (that is, 7.5/10). But this time, it's easier to explain why I'm rounding down a half point than a full point, which is why I enter 67.5/75 as 67/75, but keep 70/75 (in first period) rather than change it to 69/75.

The lowest score belongs to the special ed student. His score is 37.5/75, which rounds to 37/75 -- not because he got 7/10 on the vocabulary, but because he scored only 2/10 (with 35/65 on the rest). We are still trying to find ways to help him out.

11:20 -- Fifth period leaves. Sixth period is conference period -- but as it turns out, I have to cover another class this period, as I had to do so often last year as a sub.

In case you haven't heard any education news lately, there's an acute shortage of subs all over, but especially in this district. Recall that this district was in distance learning for the entire year -- the first time the students set foot on campus since the the onset of the pandemic was August 2021. So it's easy to see why disillusioned subs would just leave the district to seek employment elsewhere (and recall from my old blog that I was considering doing the same at this time last year). Then once the schools finally reopened, there were very few subs still employed by the district.

Moreover, priority for the very few subs in our district must go to elementary schools -- after all, we teachers can cover the missing classes here in high schools, but they can't do that in elementary schools since they don't have conference periods. In other words, there must be a surplus of subs in order for high schools to get any at all, but we're definitely in a shortage, not a surplus.

I've already had to cover several classes during previous conference periods, but this is the first time I've had to cover on a day when I'm blogging "A Day in the Life." Today's class is a senior Economics class -- taught by the ASB teacher, who's attending a district meeting to discuss ASB. I recognize many of the students in this class from my own math classes.

Sometimes I wonder, if you could choose any period of the day to be your conference period, which would you choose? I've heard that it's best to avoid first period, because then you never get a break -- you always have to cover for late-arriving teachers and subs. During ordinary times, sixth period is less problematic than first, but these aren't ordinary times.

Indeed, we know that most teachers call for subs on Mondays and Fridays. Of these two days, Fridays are more likely, since teachers who get sick on Thursday don't want to return on Friday, so they call in sick a second day (in addition to the teachers who are really sick on Friday). So if I could choose any period to be my conference, I'd want to avoid even periods, in order to get my conference period away from Friday, when so many teachers are out.

If my two Stats classes are combined, then I might gain an extra conference period, first period. Having a second prep period makes up for losing it so often to cover other classes. And indeed, I shouldn't have to worry as much about having to cover late arrivals first period, since our school usually begins with Advisory, not period 1. But Mondays, with no Advisory might still be problematic for first period. (Oh, and note that another factor to consider in choosing the ideal conference period is lunch -- now that cafeterias can no longer sell lunch to teachers, it's nice to choose a period adjacent to lunch so that you get extra time to go off-campus for lunch.)

12:00 -- Sixth period leaves, thus completing my teaching day.

1:15 -- The teachers' meeting begins. There are several topics discussed today, including what the ASB teacher learned at his morning meeting. (The district has implemented strict coronavirus procedures -- all activities must be pre-approved by the district for safety -- and the approval process can take as long as a month.) We also learn about the GoGuardian website and how it can be used to curb cheating. And finally, the principal tells us that we will each be getting $200 stipends for materials. I haven't decided what to purchase, but one of the other AP teachers is buying extra study guides, so I might consider doing the same for Calculus.

Oh, and speaking of Calculus, I have just signed up for an online seminar for AP teachers. It will start a week from tomorrow and conclude the following Tuesday. I hope that it will be helpful, since I want to become a better Calculus teacher -- especially after seeing how today's class goes today. Then again, I don't need an online seminar to implement common-sense ideas, such as diving into the hands-on lessons faster on minimum days.

Indeed, so many students want to retake the test on Thursday that perhaps I should already treat that day like a minimum day. The scheduled lesson is Section 2.7, "The Derivative as a Function." Fortunately, most of the introduction to the derivative is in Section 2.6, scheduled for tomorrow (which also explains why I rushed 2.5 today -- I want the entire block for 2.6 tomorrow). So I can use the aforementioned minimum day strategy to compress 2.7, which would allow time for the test retake.

Oh, and the day of the Calculus seminar might also compress fifth period a week from tomorrow. While the seminar starts at 4 PM Pacific time, I might need to leave early and rush home so I can use my home computer to Zoom into the seminar. Fortunately, Chapter 5 of the Stats text is shorter than Chapter 4, so I should be able to get most of the chapter completed by Monday, leaving only a little bit for Tuesday.

Another thing on my mind is grading. Originally, I heard that each semester would be divided into thirds, with progress reports given one-third and two-thirds of the way into the semester. There are 84 days of school before winter break and today is Day 28 (that is, 84/3), so I was expecting it to be time for the first progress report to be around now. But now I'm getting conflicting information.

First I hear that there are still two weeks left in the first term. Then I hear that this first term progress report only applies to the main high school, not to our magnet -- instead, we don't give report cards until the second term ends in November (which our school is calling the first "quarter," a mathematical misnomer since it's more than a third of the way into the year).

EDIT: I posted some confusing information about the date of final exams here. I've since received corrected information, and so I have edited out the incorrect date.

3:00 -- The meeting ends, thus concluding my day.

This is my opportunity to make comparisons to my previous schools. Once again, I'm thinking in terms of my schedule and conference periods. The old charter school didn't have prep periods -- there were only three of us teaching middle school, and each one of us had one of the three middle school grades at all times. The long-term middle school had five periods, and so everyone's conference period became sixth period (independent study PE). At least this meant that we never had to cover for another teacher, as we were all off at the same time.

Also, I can't help but think about what songs I would have been singing, if only I were still allowed to perform in class. For starters, mode, median, and mean all appeared in Chapter 4, so it's possible that I would have sung "Measures of Center" during the last two weeks, maybe last Tuesday/Wednesday.

There's also an "Infinity" song from Square One TV -- known to be the first song performed on the first episode of the show. At one point, I was considering nodding to this song's status by making it the first one I performed on Day 5. Instead, once I knew I'd be teaching Calculus, I wanted to save it for the infinity lesson in Calc -- which turned out to be today. (But I wouldn't have sung it on a Monday.) Then on whichever days I didn't sing "Measures of Center" or "Infinity," that leaves room for some original songs about Stats.

Oh, and it's likely that I would have sung some random songs in the Econ class I covered in sixth period today, especially considering that the regular teacher doesn't leave a specific assignment (that is, he said that it's just a study hall). Last year as a sub, I regularly sang songs in that situation -- and often let the students choose songs from my songbook.