Evaluation

Though it may be mere formality at this point in my career, I am still a bit anxious when I am evaluated formally as a teacher. I've been fortunate to have had very positive evaluations from administrators all along. This year, I have a new evaluator and he, too, gave me a positive evaluation today. The process of teacher evaluation is a hot topic recently. While there may not be a perfect evaluation system, I'm still glad to know that my quality of work is acknowledged by the administration.

Dice Collection (part 6)

A 20-sided die. Icosahedron.

The Cost of Education

UC Regents approve 8% tuition increase. This increase will take place Fall 2011.

See LA Times article.

Dice Collection (part 5)

A 10-sided die. (Pentagonal trapezohedron or decaheldron).

Teach Math w/ Computers

A powerful and inspiring talk.

Dice Collection (part 4)

My favorites: 30-sided dice. (Rhombic triacontahedron).

IGNITE Presentation

During the math conference, I attended an IGNITE session. This format allows each presenter exactly five minutes, 20-slides, with each auto-advancing every 15-seconds. The first presentation, "Disneyland, Buses, and Wine", was my favorite. The speaker Cheng spoke of the need to be creative (Disneyland) in the classroom. He is a professor at Cal State Fullerton but had driven school buses for 14 years. He believed that collaboration is the best way to improve education, but collaboration should be done with coaches (Buses). Lastly, like fine wine, great lessons need time to develop. A very concise, simple talk that was very powerful and creative.

Dice Collection (part 3)

A creative idea: Rock/Paper/Scissors dice on dodecahedrons. Using these dice would eliminate strategies and skills in this chance game.

Reading

An awesome English teacher and I sat together to watch our football team played on Friday night. Inevitably, we talked about teaching, but also about our recent favorite books. Ironically, one of her favorite ones was a book about statistics and human irrationalities. I shared with her one of my recent favorites about communication using the structure of story telling. We both agreed that reading is a lost art. I rarely get to talk to teachers who don't teach math. I enjoyed our brief conversation.

Dice Collection (part 2)

A ten-sided die in Spanish. (Pentagonal trapezohedron or decaheldron).

- from the math conference.

Monty Hall Problem

I tried the Monty Hall Problem with my AP Stats class on Tuesday. It worked out well. Some teachers suggested the use of cups and coin, I chose to use playing cards, with a face card as the winner. It was a neat experience for the kids to do something hands on. It encouraged me to make future attempts to doing more activities.

Dice Collection (part 1)

Two 12-sided dice. (Dodecahedron) I purchased some special dice from the math conference. Today, I passed it around the classroom. The students enjoyed playing with them.

Palm Springs 2010

I attended a "AP Stats for Newbies" session at 8:30 am, a very good session by a veteran teacher. She shared a lot of practical activities that I will try this year. The second session at 10:30 am was by a professor at Cal State Fullerton, he demonstrated linking geometry and statistics. It was a good presentation, but I didn't particularly like the activity much. The session at 1:15 pm was by a retired statistics professor. He shared many fun probability problems which I found very interesting. I will definitely use them this year in my class. Lastly, I attend a large session called IGNITE. The format is as follows: each presenter has 5-minutes and 20-slides. The slides auto advance and the speakers get to make their points. Of the eight speakers, the good ones were great, and the bad ones were still bad. I sat with two other teachers. At the end, we continued to interact and discuss our passion for the profession. We shall continue to have the conversation in the future. In all, I found this year's conference to be very valuable. I even bought some dice, including a few 30-sided ones.

More Time Please

Today's professional development was better than the ones before. We had several isolated meetings throughout the day after a strong opening session. At the end, however, I am not sure if I have gained any major new skills or have simply learned more about our current education system. I'm still amazed when I look around the meeting and see so many talented and passionate teachers. Then, it hits me that we are often wasting our time and energy in some of these meetings. It'd be so cool if we can just have time to collaborate and be creative - to come up with lesson plans with teachers from other disciplines, to share ideas and techniques that work. I hear Google gives its employees time to create freely, and often the best work/ideas come from those hours. I think it can work at the school level as well.

(image from thinkgeek.com)