5.1. Journal: April 16, 2002

"You can have any combination of features the Air Ministry desires, so long as you do not also require that the resulting airplane fly."--Willy Messerschmitdt (preeminent WWII German aircraft designer)

NOTE: You may want to refresh your memory on April 16's lesson plan.

My voice is starting to die since a bronchitis-mimic hit me on Monday. Fortunately, my voice lasted through class. We lost some 5 minutes to PA announcements at the beginning. I'm beginning to reconsider my negative impressions of homeroom as a school institutions. (I always used Mrs. Kearney's homeroom as an excuse to nip off and read Shakespeare, of which she had an abundance as an English/drama teacher. I almost finished Act 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream in those purlioned moments over the course of the year.)

We started with announcements. V.S. pointed out the whiteboard agenda to L.G., which amused me. Volunteers handed out past work as well. Collecting papers is another issue. Perhaps next year I'll be able to implement administrative asssistants, Gary Tsuruda-style, in full. Right now I'm reluctant since I suspect someone's been making off with M.H.'s work. She's not too "popular" in the class, and it's just too much of a coincidence that her papers are the only ones that go missing. I talked with my CT about it yesterday.

The PREVIEW (GIF scan) turned into conversation-time as most folks hadn't seen the majority of the material on it. Win some, lose some. It'll be useful for before/after comparisons. The ones who couldn't (or chose not to?) manage the Cartesian point-plotting worry me.

I gave an overview of the unit with two questions: "How does math describe the world?" (coordinate systems and vectors) and "What is a number?" (vectors). I was a little startled that students weren't familiar with "Cartesian coordinates" terminology-wise, though once I drew the x- and y- axes they knew what I was talking about. Vocabulary item, anyone?

I let the class talk me into letting them choose groups. I feel very ambivalent about this. I wonder if I'll ever be able to get them into random groups again. Perhaps a rotation schedule is in order, except that attendance is sporadic enough with a large enough percentage that this would be derailed very quickly. (Somehow I don't think attendance issues, which run rampant through the school, are just a result of whatever tortuous and ineffective teaching methods I'm using.) Perhaps an every-other-time deal? I should ask them what they'd do in the workplace: "work groups" vs. "play groups." Perhaps have them interview adults they know--there's an idea.

L.V. decided to observe two groups and took detailed notes, as well as a wonderfully long letter in which she noted that many groups were off-task some of the time (I knew that already), one pair was quite diligent, and reaffirming her dislike for groupwork. That's fine. She suggested that I try more pairs and individual work at the least to see if it works better. As per her suggestion I hope to mix it up more. Again, not everything lends itself well to groupwork, and I'm still figuring out how to deal with the mix of personalities when I belong in the socially-inept category myself.

M.H., the other person who objected strongly to groupwork, decided not to do the observations alternative since she was working with C.A. and L.F. The possibility of racism bothers me too. My CT and I discussed reasons why M.H. might not get along with the class. She's very self-confident, which is great, and comes across as dismissive of others, which is not. Part of it may be unconscious--e.g. her habit of wrinkling her nose at people, which could be construed negatively when summed up with her other mannerisms--but it can still be addressed.

Her comment today was of especial interest: "Your directions suck," to which R.S. responded, "Well, yours do too," to which someone else pointed out that their group's directions had "worked." (I have it all on video segment, though the thing is eating my hard drive like mad. I'll review it later, when something resembling "time" prances my way.)

I intervened, which resulted in her rather sulky "I was just joking." (Must remember Rogers: ignore the secondary behavior!) Sure it happens, but it didn't sound like it was being taken as a joke. The video also captured her later mocking "Be polite" or somesuch to her group, but I certainly don't expect her to be happy about the reprimand.

But the fact remains that the two rules that I've explicitly set up for this class since the beginning of this semester are:

• Be polite.
  
• Be constructive.
  

There's a third implicit one:

• Be relevant (to math, to the task at hand, etc. ad infinitum.)
  

This is something I've emphasized time and again (I hope), and many times it's not an issue. I've said I undrstand that between friends, certain "jokes" (or language) are okay, but keep 'em out of the classroom.

Other students, when asked to rephrase more politely, will laugh nervously but go along; they don't seem to take the rebuke personally. I try, I swear I try, not to make them lose face. This is pretty much the first time in this class that a student has openly shown resentment of the rebuke. I don't entirely believe her when she said, "I was just joking," as it sounded more like an "I'm saying this to get you off my back" statement. (Hey, I've been a student too.) I tried again to let her save face: "Sometimes other people don't understand it's a joke, so you have to be careful."

I know, I know, secondary behavior can be overlooked. But as my CT pointed out, letting her "get away with it" sends the wrong message to other students. It's the attitude of which the behavior is symptomatic that is nagging me right now.

I should note that I'd like to speak with R.S. too in some private moment. R.S. worries me less because a) I haven't observed this pattern from him in class and b) his words were a reaction, not an instigation. I don't think I'll see more than the occasional lapse from him. I hope.

Also to be noted: I spoke with M.H. at some length during lunch on the previous Friday. She had some criticisms of groupwork that I wanted to pursue. I don't expect every student to be gung-ho about groupwork (though Friday's consensus-gram showed that over 2/3 of those present felt okay to great about groupwork). It sure isn't implemented in anything near an ideal form in my classroom, and there are times when it's frankly not the panacea of panaceas.

However, M.H.'s assertion that the last few people she worked with "really don't know anything" and "don't want to work" are warning signs. Based on my perspective, she's worked with a couple who do have a pretty good idea of what's what (relative to the rest of the class) and a couple who are struggling. They've also worked decently in other groups. My CT said that "that decided not to work with her [in particular], and she needs to realize what she's doing that's causing this."

I don't hold the other students guiltless. (Was it Gibran, in The Prophet, who posited that there is no "innocent" in any action?) Obviously, I have only an extremely limited window into these students' evolving relationships and the school as a social ecology, since I'm not from these parts. I'd like to keep an eye on M.H.'s groups in the future to see what else I can do about this.

Perhaps it's partly a cultural clash. M.H.'s self-presentation would get her squashed in South Korea. I don't know that she'd get much further in Hispanic culture. I wonder if she's aware of differences in such cultural norms beyond pallid stereotypes. I doubt it. God knows, despite my own painful experiences with Korean-American culture clashes, I remain naive in many other domains.

Now, math-wise, I'm grateful that my sister--in many ways a guiding compass with her "student's-eye view" of things--talked me out of hanging yarn from the ceiling and obliging the students to really work in three dimensions, as originally planned. She said it was going to be hard enough for high schoolers to give accurate directions as it was, and she was right (as evidenced by various encounters including the altercation discussed at length above).

Students were quite ingenious, too: some counted off paces (and had to deal with differing strides), some used a ruler, some tried to take note of where I'd stuck all the dots (with limited success), some drew diagrams or maps. In the presentations at the end of class a number of them acknowledged that "in real life you have to be real precise, like when you're giving car directions, you can't just say 'go to the store over there somewhere' or whatever." They started thinking about maps, and whether they realized it or not, how the same underlying space can have differing but (mostly) equivalent descriptions. That's something that I hope the rest of the unit will develop.

Meanwhile, as a spontaneous homework addendum, I asked students to ask three people each the question: "What is a number?" They looked at me strangely, but after the unit on data analysis they're used to "surveying" people informally.

Copyright © 2002 Yoon Ha Lee <requiescat@cityofveils.com>
Last updated on 18 May 2002