Damage Control (Days 106-107)

Well, fortunately the best case scenario occurred -- I received a negative COVID-19 test on Monday, and so I was allowed to return to school yesterday. I waited until today to post, since Wednesday is the day when Ethnostats classes meet. Tuesday isn't my regular posting day this semester.

And as I mentioned in my last post, I will count this as my monthly posting day. I use "A Day in the Life" to discuss my first two days back after what turned out to be a three-day absence. I call it "Damage Control" -- that is, I seek to control the damage to my plans caused by missing these days.

8:00 -- Zero period arrives. This is my morning Advisory class.

I don't write about my Advisory class much on the blog. My focus on this blog is math in general and Stats in particular, and even when I do "A Day in the Life," I usually write about minimum days or Mondays when Advisory doesn't meet. So let's finally take a look at what's happening in Advisory.

My Advisory class has eleven seniors -- this is one more than I had first semester, since two students rejoined after taking a fall community college course, and one moved to the continuation school.

Just before the new semester began, the other two Senior Advisory teachers and I agreed to start a unit on the job application process, culminating in a short mock interview of each student. But these teachers (one of whom is the other math teacher, my partner teacher) both dropped Advisory second semester, with two others taking over their classes, leaving me as the only teacher with Senior Advisory both semesters. We agreed to continue the old teachers' plans with the job application unit.

According to the original pacing plan, mock interviews should have taken place today. But of course that doesn't happen -- the students needed to sign up for them and understand that they should come to school dressed for an interview, and I didn't want a sub to explain that to them. Instead, I have the students sign up for interviews to take place next week.

Even though today is the second day I've seen my Advisory students since my absence, yesterday was the Senior Panoramic Photo, which took place during zero period. Thus my first real day with this class, my damage control day, is today. And that damage control consists of making sure that all students have completed the previous parts of the project so that they're ready for the interview.

During the last few minutes of class, our counselor arrives. She reminds the students that financial aid applications are due March 2nd, and that there will be another workshop next week in case any of them needs additional help.

9:00 -- Zero period leaves for nutrition.

9:20 -- Second period arrives. This is the first of two Ethnostats classes.

Let me start by describing what is going on in this class, going all the way back to last Wednesday when I received the fateful COVID test. My original plan had been to start the first project of the semester (in lieu of a chapter test). It's another project that goes back to my Ethnostats predecessors -- the students were to read the New York Times interactive article "Money, Race, and Success." They would enter the name of our district and several other districts around the nation, and observe the correlation between percentage of students who are white and number of grade levels they are behind.

But unfortunately, although I was able to access the article on my computer, the students hit a paywall when they tried to read it. So instead, I changed the assignment to answering the review questions at the end of Chapter 12 -- which they'd normally do before a quiz or test. I eventually figured out that if I type in the name of the article in a Google search, then I can see the article. But if I create a link to the New York Times in Google classroom, that's when the paywall appears.

So on Friday, the day of the sub, I finally assigned the project. The students kept track of their data in their Stats Scrapbooks (interactive notebooks). As it turns out, the sub that day has a math background as he's working on his credential. It's always lucky when a math teacher gets a math sub (though there weren't much calculation in the assignment -- it's just recording and interpreting data).

But on Monday, the minimum day, there was no sub. Presumably, the sub was pulled so he could cover at an elementary school. Thus other teachers at our school had to cover my classes.

For Monday, I continued the tradition established by my partner teacher -- just assign Edpuzzles to all of the classes. And I stumbled onto a lucky Edpuzzle video -- the presenter was performing a simulation that clearly comes from Chapter 12 of our textbook, on a college dormitory lottery and the likelihood that all three winners of the most comfortable room turn out to be athletes.

That brings us to today. I assign another one of those current event assignments, where the students must find an article about Stats. Why do I assign it today? One reason is that it's Assignment #10. Last semester, I had trouble remembering which assignments were the current events -- and that's significant as I had to keep going back to check that one student isn't submitting the same article to fulfill multiple current event assignments. Thus choosing Assignments #10, 20, 30, and so on for current events makes it easier for me -- and besides, these assignment numbers line up with the ends of chapters, right after a project is complete. (Indeed, looking ahead, Assignment #20 will be between Chapters 14 and 15.)

10:00 -- The class is called in to take our weekly COVID test.

I admit I was a little worried here -- my test last week was positive, and even though I had a negative on Monday, I feared that today might slip back to positive again and I'd be forced to go home. Fortunately, today's test was also negative.

Let me jump back to my Advisory class for a moment. One of my Advisory students is absent from my class --because he's more than two hours late to school. Thus he misses the weekly COVID test -- and he's immediately sent home, forbidden to return to school until he takes a COVID test on his own.

(As is typical, too many students are tardy to Advisory. I keep reminding these students, leading up to the mock interviews, that employers expect workers to show up on time. I hope this guy doesn't arrive two hours late on the day of the mock interview.)

11:00 -- Second period leaves and fourth period arrives. This is the second Ethnostats class.

Two students have dropped this class from first semester, leaving me with eleven students -- thus this class and Advisory are tied as my largest class.

And fourth period always seems to be a little behind second period. The four guys in second period usually work hard, while fourth period has more slackers. Many students are absent in this class for both COVID and non-COVID illnesses. And of course, there's my own COVID illness -- it didn't help that my positive COVID test last week was at 10:00, so that I never made it to fourth period that day.

This is another reason that I assign only the current event today. It's a built-in day to allow fourth period in particular to catch up in their Stats Scrapbooks.

Technically, my quarantine spans ten days, from February 2nd (Day 0) to the 12th (Day 10). But due to LA County relaxing the rules, the five days after my negative test count as a soft quarantine, when, among other things, I'm allowed to go to work.

During this soft quarantine, I'll try to avoid getting close to students as much as possible. In particular, I won't stamp Warm-Up or Exit Passes, and I temporarily move all students sitting in the front row.

12:50 -- Fourth period leaves for lunch. Sixth period is my conference -- and fortunately, I don't need to cover any other class, so my teaching day ends here.

Today is Fiveday on the Eleven Calendar:

Resolution #5: We stay focused and on task.

I typically enforce rule on certain days when phones and distracting websites are forbidden. Coming up in Ethnostats is a documentary on YouTube that I will play on the Promethean board. At certain key points in the film, I will turn off the lights -- when the lights are off, all phones must be away. (Notice that this is an extension of  Resolution #5 from my old blog.)

I tell this rule to my students today since it's Fiveday, but I don't reveal what documentary I'm showing them until the day I do so, Friday. (Oh, and I'll wait to tell you, the readers, what documentary it is until Friday as well.)

Yesterday, my first day back on campus, was Fourday. Let's look at the fourth resolution, as well as what yesterday's classes looked like:

Resolution #4: We remember how to use a calculator like riding a bike.

In Calculus class, last Thursday was supposed to be the Chapter 4 Test. Recall how I kept trying to schedule the assessments for this chapter around the monthly minimum day. That minimum day was two days ago on Monday, so the test was supposed to be the previous Thursday. At one point I was considering making the test part on DeltaMath and part on paper -- but once the positive COVID test came down, I obviously changed it to all DeltaMath so it would be easier on the sub.

But unfortunately, the students were unable to access the test. Recall that back in December, the students had trouble accessing the Wi-Fi to take the final exam online. The tech guy was called in, and he reported that my Chromebooks were old, so a new cart was delivered to my classroom. But the old cart was never removed -- and without my being there to tell the students to use the new Chromebooks, they kept trying to use the old ones. Only one guy was able to access DeltaMath, albeit slowly -- he was able to start the test, but his computer failed before he could finish it.

Of course, now this all really looks bad. Recall that the reason for testing on the Thursday before a minimum day was so that the short day could be used for test corrections. I kept scheduling quizzes and cancelling them when the minimum day was delayed. Then when the modified day finally comes, first I test positive for COVID, and then the students can't take the test on that Thursday. In other words, I kept delaying the assessment just so that the students can do corrections on a certain Monday -- and then when that Monday arrives, the students can't do corrections (because they didn't take the test)!

So what did the Calculus students do on Monday, if not test corrections? Well, I assigned them an Edpuzzle, just like the other classes. I've noticed that this class tends to struggle on questions involving graphs, and so this Edpuzzle requires students to analyze the graph of a function.

Then again, the Wi-Fi was still a problem, but the students could do the Edpuzzle (as opposed to the test) for homework if the Wi-Fi failed. If they had nothing else to do, at least the class period was short.

Yesterday, before Calculus arrived, I removed the old Chromebook cart from the classroom so that kids won't be tempted to use the wrong computers (which is what I should have done in December). Then after a quick review (on VNPS, for the second time in this class), I finally give the Chapter 4 Test.

But during this review, I decide to fulfill the fourth resolution and have the students do a practice problem on the graphing calculator. This is tricky -- I want to have the students enter in a graph with lots of twists and turns, so that they can find the critical values on the graph. While higher-degree polynomials would work, they increase quickly and students must spend time adjusting the window. So just before class, I found a suitable function and window:

y = 1 + 3sin(.4pi x) + 2sin(.6pi x), window [-4, 6] by [-4, 6]

The critical values are at odd x. But the students had trouble entering it onto their calculators (partly because I had trouble communicating what the correct function and window are), and so I drop it because it was only wasting time before the test.

While DeltaMath does grade the tests automatically, I'll add in the partial credit later tonight. So far, a common error I've seen is on the graphing questions. Sometimes the test displays a function f and asks a question that requires f ' -- for example, a certain question asks students to find the horizontal tangents of a function. These are at the critical values of f -- that is, where f ' = 0. But some students found the values where f = 0 -- the zeros -- instead.

Another question does the exact opposite -- it displays the graph of f ', then asks a question about f. In particular, one student was asked to find the critical values of f, but the graph of f ' was given. The student then found the extrema of f ', instead of the zeros of f '. This type of question appears frequently on the AP, and so the students need to know how to do it.

So this leads to the question, should I allow the students to do test corrections now? The minimum day has long passed. But on the board, I'd written an upcoming schedule for this week that mentions test corrections -- and I'd already messed with the students with the false quiz announcements all during the month of January.

And thus I will allow the students to do test corrections tomorrow, before starting Chapter 5. But this now pushes the Chapter 5 Quiz back to the 24th -- and the minimum day happened this month. So there definitely won't be any quiz corrections. The Chapter 5 Test is still scheduled for just before the March minimum day (which will be on Pi Day), so test corrections are possible for that test.

That leaves only the Trig class to discuss. I'd posted the Chapter 1 Test on Illuminate (the website that this same class used during first semester Stats). Once again, the Wi-Fi failed -- but this time, one guy not only accessed the test, but printed copies of it as well. Thus the Chapter 1 Test occurred on Thursday as scheduled (even though my intent was for Calculus and Trig to test on the same days). As usual, the two guys passed the test, but the lone girl in the class struggled.

Since the Chapter 1 Test is complete, I was able to start Chapter 2 today. Section 2.1 is on the second definition of the trig functions -- the right triangle definition. Even though it was Fourday, I didn't use calculators, which aren't introduced in the text until Section 2.2.

This is, of course, when the mnemonic SOH-CAH-TOA usually appears. The Edpuzzle that the class watched on Monday briefly mentioned this mnemonic. However, earlier this school year, a teacher from right here in Southern California was accused for pronouncing this using Native American stereotypes:

https://www.today.com/news/california-teacher-accused-mocking-native-americans-placed-leave-t235477

I tell my students that since I'm also the Ethnostats teacher, I want to avoid negative stereotypes of any ethnic group. Thus I'll try not to pronounce all three syllables together -- I'll say just "SOH," "CAH," or "TOA," so as not to mock indigenous people or their languages.

Oh, and speaking of other cultures, China is in the news lately. Last week was Chinese New Year, followed a few days by the Olympics. Chinese New Year is also known as the Spring Festival -- which might lead some to wonder, why is the Spring Festival followed by the start of the Winter Olympics?

As a calendar expert, I like thinking about questions like these. Actually, the answer is explained during the countdown the opening ceremony. To the Chinese, the first day of spring isn't at the equinox, but is halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox. This day is known as lichun in Chinese, and as "Imbolc" or "Groundhog Day" in the West.

It's related to the fact that the coldest day of the year, the winter thermistice, is several weeks after the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice. (I mentioned this on the old blog right around the time of the summer solstice when explaining school calendars.) Thus it's the Spring Festival because the winter solstice has long past, but it's the Winter Olympics because it's the winter thermistice, when it's cold enough to play winter sports. (During winter break, I also mentioned a calendar that divided the year into "octants." Thus two of the octants start on solstices and end on thermistices.)

Notice that the 2008 Olympics in Beijing started on the first day of autumn according to the Chinese Calendar -- but it was the Summer Games since it was the summer thermistice. (It was also 8/8/08, and eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture.)

OK, that's enough about calendars and the Olympics. My damage control is complete, and now I hope it will be smooth sailing for the rest of the school year.