Dead Week: Stats in Review (Day 177)

The dead week at my school continues. There's another graduation practice during zero period Advisory, followed by the distribution of yearbooks and honors regalia (cowls, special tassels). The students spend all of second period outside while these items are passed out. Thus the only real class I have today is fourth period Ethnostats -- and even then, it's still dead week and the seniors are done.

In fourth period, I show one of my favorite movies for this time of year -- Akeelah and the Bee. Yes, last night was the Scripps National Spelling Bee -- the first held in DC since the pandemic began. And as I've mentioned on my old blog each year, race/ethnicity is a major theme in this film -- making it the perfect movie to show in an Ethnostats course.

Unfortunately, the cord connecting my desktop to the projector system is broken -- and this late in the game, it's not worth asking for another cord from the office. So instead, I must use my laptop -- and since it doesn't have a DVD slot, I'm forced to pay $3.99 to rent it from YouTube. And you can easily question the wisdom of paying money to show the movie to my students on the day of the year when they are most distracted -- yearbook distribution day. (Recall last year, when I struggled to get middle school kids to stay on task on yearbook day.)

Fortunately, I do get a few students to watch Akeelah and the Bee with me. Yesterday, I played the film in Calculus (to get my money's worth) -- the lone junior in the class said that she enjoyed it. She also told me that she's taking the SAT this upcoming weekend, when knowledge of Latin and Greek roots (such as mentioned in the film) will help her on the verbal/reading section.

To me, just playing the movie for her is worth the price. I also showed parts of it to one guy in Trig (who's also in second period Ethnostats), as well as one guy in fourth period today. He's one of the two juniors in this class (the other is making up some of her missing work rather than watching the movie).

He also happens to be Indian-American. So of course I tell him that, while Akeelah is a black girl who's in the national bee and last year's champ Zaila Avant-garde is also black, most winners are South Asian like him -- including last night's winner, Harini Logan. (While "Logan" might not sound South Asian, the name "Harini" is definitely from Sanskrit -- it means "angel.") When he sees Dylan's father in the movie, he comments that his own dad is sometimes just as tough on him. Thus it might have been more accurate for the filmmakers to choose a South Asian foil for Akeelah, not an East Asian like Dylan.

Spoiler alert: Akeelah and Dylan are declared co-champs at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. That wouldn't have happened this year -- instead there would have been a spell-off. Yes, that's exactly what happened last night -- Harini and her opponent, Vikram Raju, missed several words in a row, so the judges declared a spell-off. Each student had 90 seconds to spell as many words as possible. As I watched it, it was obvious that Harini was spelling much faster than Vikram, so the only suspense was whether the she had more correct words than the boy. As it turns out, she won easily, 22-15. Harini thus became the second straight eighth grade girl to win the Bee (following Zaila last year).

Last year's winning word was "Murraya," a type of plant. This year, it's more difficult to identify a winning word during the spell-off. The bee tweeted that we can consider Harini's 16th word (that is, enough to pass Vikram) to be the winning word -- "moorhen," a type of bird. Notice that, with all of the Latin- and Greek-derived words prevalent at the Bee, the word "moorhen" is from Old English. I believe this is the first Anglish word to be the winning word at the Bee since "brethren," back during the competition's first decade (in 1934).

Also, notice that Harini almost never made it to the spell-off. During the word meaning round (first introduced last year), Harini gave a wrong answer, but she challenged it and was reinstated. After she won the Bee, I watched the second airing (on ION) to identify the controversial word, "pullulation." It means "teeming" or "swarming," so the intended answer was "the swarming of bees." But Harini instead chose "nesting of mating birds" -- and birds in a nest are arguably "teeming." Thus she won her challenge and continued. (I admit that while watching the second airing, it was weird to hear Harini's consolation speech from the judge knowing that she'd go on to win the whole thing.)

Last year, no one was eliminated in the word meaning round. This year, eight spellers entered the round and only four (almost three) survived. As a Californian, I always cheer for spellers from my state -- but sadly, no Californians made the final. Texas (home to some spelling clubs) was well-represented as usual -- indeed, the champ Harini is from San Antonio. Runner-up Vikram is a Coloradan.

Watching along with the Bee, I only get one word right -- "martinete," a bird which was said to derive from a French/Spanish name. So I just spelled out the name Martin and got lucky on the ending. Oh, and I also got "Mercator" right. I'm already familiar with Mercator map projection and the racial controversy surrounding it.

Five years ago, I wanted to show Akeelah and the Bee at the old charter school (which was located in an LA neighborhood not that far from where the title character was said to live). It would have been at the time of the annual Bee (and thus eighth grade graduation as well) -- but unfortunately, I never made it to the end of the year.

Today is Sevenday on the Eleven Calendar:

Resolution #7: We earn our grades through hard work and determination.

Well, the junior girl in Ethnostats works hard to raise her grade today by doing her late assignments -- other than that, there's not much to say about grades in today's class.

But it is time to continue reflecting on the classes I taught this year. Today we move on to Stats -- and that includes both the year-long Ethnostats class and the first-semester general Stats class (that we've nearly forgotten about by now).

Coming into this year, I wasn't sure what to teach in Ethnostats. The other math teacher at my school (my partner teacher) sent me some documents about the course. I was assuming that the one of the documents was an official course description written by the district -- but instead, it was really a syllabus written by a predecessor. So I kept treating the document as gospel, believing that I was required to cover all of the material (including other books and articles) listed there.

Despite this, I was able to make this class my own. While I've never seen the documentary 13th before (showing it only because my predecessors did), the movies McFarland USA, Hidden Figures, and of course today's Akeelah and the Bee were all my idea to play. Once again, these are all movies that I watch every year anyway -- and they all are inspirational films with an ethnic component.

The one movie that I watch annually but didn't show to my class is Jackie Robinson. This is because I have several versions -- Jackie Robinson Story (with the baseball star playing himself), 42, and the Ken Burns documentary -- and I never decided which one to play in class. It's noted that 42 contains some harsh language, including the N-word -- but then again, so does 13th. The Burns documentary is four hours long -- so unless I plan to spend an entire week on it, I should only show certain parts. (Part 1 overlaps the feature films, but Part 2 focuses on his life beyond his first year in the big leagues.)

This year, I make it up to Chapter 18, but I skip over much of 17 to get to 18. Also, recall that in the first semester, I also skip over much of Chapter 9 to get to 10. While the decision to favor 18 over 17 was because 18 (on null and alternative hypotheses) is easier to tie to race/ethnicity, the similar reason to favor 10 over 9 was due to the general Stats course in first semester.

Recall that no one told me that Stats was a one-semester course until November. So at the time, I thought that I had the entire year to cover the book, just like Ethnostats. Only after finishing Chapter 8 did I find out that I had only a few more weeks with Stats before switching to Trig. I wanted the Stats students to see Chapter 10 (in Part 3, on samples) before the semester ended, which is why I mostly glossed over Chapter 9 (on fitting data to curves). And while I could have stayed in Chapter 9 for Ethnostats, I'd already developed the habit of teaching the same chapter in both classes and didn't want to change it up that late in the semester, and so I moved up to 10 in Ethnostats as well.

For homework, some assignments were worth three points and others worth six. This was mainly to line up with Calculus -- on Mondays when I give one Calculus assignment, the Stats HW is worth three points, and on block days with two Calculus HW's, I give a six-point HW in Stats. If I'd instead used a simpler system with 50 Calculus HW's worth four points each, I could do the same in Stats. And I wouldn't even need to force the points to line up -- I could be on Assignment #33 in Calculus, #35 in Ethnic Stats, and #37 in general Stats all on the same day. As long as they all end up at #50 by the end of the semester, the points would work out in the end.

Despite this simpler four-point HW system, there's actually a way I could take advantage of the three- and six-point system in my Ethnostats and general Stats class. Here's how it works -- in general Stats, I give one assignment each Monday and two assignments each block day, just like Calculus (and the assignments would line up exactly with Calculus). The plan would be to cover a chapter per week -- there are 18 weeks in the first semester which would get us to Chapter 18, but deducting Opening Week and Finals Week would take the general class to Chapter 16 by the end of the term.

Then in Ethnostats, I give only one assignment per class period -- the exact same assignments in the same order as the general class. But I move more slowly since there are fewer assignments per week -- so the 67 HW's that take a semester for general to finish take Ethnostats the entire year. And we end up in the same chapter in the book as well.

With few assignments, most of them are now worth six points. And then I convert a three-point HW into a six-pointer by adding some ethnic questions (for example, answer the questions in the book and then tie what you learned to 13th or 42 or whatever we're watching). One of my students was in both general and Ethnostats. I would let him know in advance my plans for the HW, so he should hold on to his old HW's and be prepared to add an ethnic component to them.

Of course, this is all dependent on someone telling me that Stats was only one semester. In some ways, I'm glad I moved slowly in general Stats if only for the sake of the special ed student who might have struggled in a faster class (and ended up dropping second semester Trig).

I like the idea of a Stats scrapbook in Ethnostats. Still, if I teach math next year, I'll probably just have usual interactive notebooks that students can take home. I was reluctant to have interactive notebooks this year due to the pandemic, but after seeing my partner teacher use them in her own classes this year (along with at least one of the science teachers), I might as well do the same next year.

By the way, the valedictorian and salutatorian for my class have been announced -- and both of them are in my Ethnostats classes. The salutatorian is the guy who's in both Ethnostats and Stats/Trig -- I gave him an A in both classes, while a Calculus student who was in the running got an A- (which might have cost him salutatorian). The valedictorian earned an A in fourth period Ethnostats -- last week he also participated in the graduation at the community college, having completed two AA degrees. He plans on staying there one more year (and earning another AA degree) before transferring to one of the campuses in the UC system.

Next week is Days 178-180, so it ought to be finals week, at least for the juniors. But even the usual three minimum days for finals fall victim to the missing minutes from January. Instead, only 179-180 are minimum days, with Day 178 being a usual all-classes day Monday.

On each of the two finals days, three classes will meet for 75 minutes each. They could have made it odd periods on Tuesday and even periods on Wednesday, but that would be too logical. Instead, it's periods 1-3 on Tuesday and 4-6 on Wednesday. With this schedule, I'm not sure whether even the two juniors will show up to fourth period on Wednesday since I've already given finals to all students, seniors and juniors. Had it been the usual 2-4-6 then the junior pair would be at school between their second and sixth period finals, but since it's 4-5-6, they might not arrive at school until just before their fifth period final.