Polling a Couple Hundred Teachers on Twitter about Pandemic Teaching

I’m not really sure what it says about me that I enjoy designing and analyzing survey data. Other people exercise or write poetry. I tweet polls. Honestly, I’m starting to think that I might be a bit of a nerd. Going to want to keep an eye on that.

Back in July, when things weren’t necessarily better but were somewhat different, schools were still coming up with plans for the fall. Would it be live, in-person? Would some students be live while others learned online? These options were hotly debated, and I asked teachers on Twitter what they thought of the options.

Here were the responses:

Image

Elementary teachers seemed split between all-live and all-remote, whereas middle and high school teachers showed a distinct preference for all-remote.

What does this mean? Teachers have three things to worry about this year: safety, working conditions for teachers and conditions for students.

Elementary teachers may or may not have been aware of research suggesting that younger children get the virus less often — probably their innate immune systems do a better job fighting it off. As an elementary teacher myself, I can attest that learning conditions are far, far worse for younger children who are logged into online learning. They seem confused by and frustrated with technology. So student conditions are worse. And as I hear from friends and see in my child’s own school, being a non-specialist classroom teacher is really really really hard this year for K-5. Teachers are often getting fewer breaks and responsible for making sure kids go to the bathroom in the right way and wash their hands and wear their masks and so on and so on — working conditions are worse.

This all could explain why elementary teachers showed a preference for all-live versus hybrid or all-remote.

In middle and high school, teachers seemed fairly enthusiastic about remote learning. That might have been primarily about safety concerns. Still, I’d heard from many people that, from the perspective of learning conditions, all-remote would be better for learning than hybrid. And it would be better for working conditions as well — wouldn’t you like to work from home? Wouldn’t you prefer to just focus on making remote learning work well, rather than dealing with yet another confusing new teaching mode?

That could explain why middle and high school teachers showed a preference for all-remote teaching.

A few months into this thing, how is it going? Here are a pair of polls to think about.

Poll #1 (those are percentages):

Poll #2 (also percentages):

So, what do we make of this?

Fully remote teaching, at the end of the day, are worse working conditions for teachers. It’s isolating, and you don’t get to see your students or colleagues. From the perspective of optimizing student learning it may very well be true that purely remote learning is more effective. But it’s less meaningful for teachers and for most kids too in every other sense.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that teachers have changed their minds from that first survey. Maybe safety considerations override other concerns, and teachers still prefer to work fully remotely even if it’s not working any better.

Or maybe teachers were overly optimistic about what they could accomplish through remote learning this autumn. Maybe the relationships have really suffered. Conversely, maybe the relationships and social life inside a school has been better than teachers expected in their hybrid situations.

From conversations online and in person, I know that there are a lot of ways for schools to mess this up. Lots of teachers are having a hard time at work this year. I certainly spend a lot of time at my wits end.

Still, it’s a real privilege to get to go back to school and do the thing that I know how to do. My school has been hybrid and, so far, it’s been good.

Make a collection of worked examples for your classes

I’m filing away worked examples for my classes into a Google Slides presentation that I update daily. I’ve posted the presentation at the top of my Google Classroom page, the idea being this is a direct way for students to find examples. I don’t know if the kids will actually refer back to it, but I like collecting the examples now that my teaching leans so heavily on digital resources.

Here some of the examples I’m fond of:

A Perfect Problem: Difference of Squares

This is a long post. The first half was written by Benjamin Dickman, who shared the problem with me. The second half was written by me, Michael Pershan. Enjoy these two different maps of the same mathematical terrain.

Part One: Benjamin’s Writeup

Part Two: Michael’s Writeup

[BD]

Let us use the word ‘problem’ to refer to a question for which the method of solution is unknown at the outset. Problems can be viewed on a continuum that ranges from “trivial” to “intractable,” but locating a problem is a function of the individual or group trying to solve it and the resources to which they have access. There is, of course, no single perfect problem for all; but, here is a proposal for one of many perfect problems for some.

There is a wonderful problem for secondary school students looking to be stretched that asks which numbers can be written as the difference of two squares; here, we are roughly in the area of mathematics referred to as “number theory,” and are speaking of numbers that are non-negative integers. It is deeply unfortunate that number theory is not an area of mathematics taught more in our secondary schools across the world; as a result, there are many examples of number theoretical problems that can be effectively posed for students, but for which the techniques or strategies involved are not yet familiar.

Here is a proposed method – in other words, a spoiler – for characterizing the numbers that can be written as a difference of squares: Observe a2 – b2 = (a-b)(a+b); if a and b have the same parity, then the factors a-b and a+b are both even, which means their product is a multiple of 4. If a and b are of different parity, then the factors a-b and a+b are both odd, which means their product is odd. So, a necessary criterion for a number to be expressed as the difference of squares is that it is either a multiple of 4 or odd; it turns out that this is a sufficient criterion, too, as established by the following two identities:

4n = (n+1)2 – (n-1)2 and 2n+1 = (n+1)2 – n2

Uncovering this result is already an opportunity for exciting mathematical exploration with students; their thinking is sure to proceed in a manner much less linear than the description above.

Whenever a problem is solved, there are several options around how to move forward. Here are three such possibilities:

  1. Abandon the problem and move on to an unrelated one;
  2. Try to derive the solution in a new way; or
  3. Try to solve a related problem that is a bit more difficult.

Rich mathematics may (or may not) be uncovered through any of the aforementioned choices, but we will focus here on the third option. (There are slightly different ways of deriving the solution above that will be almost certainly unfamiliar to students; for example, we can observe that a number squared is always 0 or 1 modulo 4; so, the difference of two squares is necessarily odd or a multiple of 4, and this sort of phrasing allows one to bring in topics that are otherwise unseen in K-12 school mathematics: modular arithmetic, quadratic residues, and so forth.)

Our related problem is as follows: Given a nonnegative integer n, in how many ways can it be written as a difference of squares?

This can be viewed as a direct generalization of the earlier problem: if we know how to tell when the answer is “zero ways,” then we know which numbers cannot be written as a difference of squares.

One of the classical strategies for mathematical problem posing is to start with small cases; however, it is often presumed that “small” refers to magnitude (absolute value) and that the ordering from smaller to bigger proceeds additively. That is, one might try looking at 0, then 1, then 2, then 3, etc. But, for a problem whose underlying structure is multiplicative – for example, a problem that might be more easily expressed in the language of factors or factorizations – this additive procession can obfuscate important patterns.

For our problem, we know that the only numbers that can be expressed as a difference of squares are odd numbers and multiples of 4; so, let us begin by investigating the former and see where it leads.

If we have an odd number expressed as a2 – b2, then we also have a factor pair for that number: a-b and a+b. Indeed, any factor pair for an odd number can be written in this manner, for two factors of an odd number must both be odd, and this will mean that their average is a whole number, from which we can adjust up and down by the same amount to recover a representation in the a-b and a+b form. Specifically, we use a as the factor pair’s average and adjust by b. This all becomes more clear by way of example.

Consider the odd number 15, which has factor pairs (1, 15) and (3, 5). For the first factor pair, we find the average of 1 and 15 to be 8, and note that 1 = 8-7 and 15 = 8+7. As a result, we can express 15 as 1(15) = (8-7)(8+7) = 82 – 72. Similarly, we can look to the second factor pair and find the average of 3 and 5 to be 4, and note that 3 = 4-1 and 5 = 4+1. As a result, we can express 15 as 3(5) = (4-1)(4+1) = 42 – 12.

We have now established a matching between two representations of 15: the first representation is as a specific difference of squares, and the second representation is as a specific factor pair. The number of factor pairs is usually equal to half the number of factors; the only exception is if the number of factors is odd, which occurs precisely when we are dealing with a perfect square. As we deal with nonnegative (rather than positive) integers, let us establish in that setting that we will continue to use the number of factor pairs as the number of ways to express our number as a difference of squares; so, we will take the total number of factors, add 1, then divide by 2 for our result. Again, let us clarify by way of example.

Consider the odd square 9, which has factor pairs (1, 9) and (3, 3). As in the example with 15, we use these factor pairs to produce the following representations of 9 as a difference of squares: 9 = (5-4)(5+4) = 52 – 42 and 9 = (3-0)(3+0) = 32 – 02. Note that, if we were to adhere to positive integers only, we would not be able to use zero in our latter representation. The result of this is still that the number of representations, 2, is equal to our number of factor pairs; but, the number of factors is 3, so it is not quite right to say we have 3/2 representations. Instead, we add 1 to the number of factors, thereby double-counting the factor 3, which gives us 4 total factors (counted with multiplicity among factor pairs) and halving this gives us the desired result: 2 ways to represent the odd square 9 as a difference of squares.

As we segue to multiples of 4, we find that matters are slightly more complicated. For an illustrative example, consider that of 8: its factor pairs are (1, 8) and (2, 4). The latter factor pair generates a difference of squares: 2(4) = (3-1)(3+1) = 32 – 12. Unfortunately, matters go somewhat awry with the former factor pair: the average of 1 and 8 is 4.5; it is true, numerically, that 1(8) = (4.5-3.5)(4.5+3.5) = 4.52 – 3.52; however, we have decided only to use nonnegative integers, which means that this difference of squares is inadmissible for our present purpose.

The issue at hand for the above-described example is that 1 and 8 have different parity; as a result, their average is a non-integer. To resolve this, we need to ensure that every factor pair for the multiples of 4 has two factors with the same parity. As the product is even, this means, in particular, that each of the factors needs to be even; so, we propose the following resolution: Given a number n = 4m, factor out the 4, which is equal to 22, and consider all of the factor pairs for m. Next, we modify every factor pair by multiplying each factor by 2; as we double each of the factors, we end up with 4m as the product, which is equal to our starting number of n. Let us illustrate matters again by way of example.

Consider 60, which is an even multiple of 4. Let us now factor out a 4, which leaves us with the number 15 to consider. We saw earlier that 15 has factor pairs (1, 15) and (3, 5). We can now modify these pairs by doubling the factors in each to yield (2, 30) and (6, 10); these now give us all of the factor pairs with the same parity for 60, which means we can express 60 as a difference of squares using them: 2 and 30 have an average of 16, which leads to the representation 2(30) = (16-14)(16+14) = 162 – 142; similarly, 6 and 10 have an average of 8, which leads to the representation 6(10) = (8-2)(8+2) = 82 – 22.

The result of this line of thinking is that when n is a multiple of 4, the number of representations of n as a difference of squares is the number of factor pairs for n/4; as was the case for the odds, the number of factor pairs is usually half the number of factors, but in the case of a perfect square we would need to add 1 to the number of factors to count them with multiplicity among the various factor pairs. One more example should do the trick in clarifying this matter.

Consider 36, which is an even multiple of 4 and a perfect square. We can divide it by 4 to get 9, which we saw earlier yields the factor pairs (1, 9) and (3, 3). Multiplying each factor by 2, we arrive at (2, 18) and (6, 6). Respectively, these yield 102 – 82 and 62 – 02 as the two ways in which 36 can be represented as a difference of squares. Just as occurred with our odd square case examined above, we are using the number of factor pairs (here, for 36/4), but this is slightly different from the number of factors: there are only three factors across the relevant factor pairs, but we count one of them (the 6) with multiplicity as it appears twice in the pair (6, 6). As a result, we end up with 36/4 = 9, which has 3 factors; adding 1, we get 4 factors; dividing 4 by 2, we get our answer: there are two ways to represent 36 as a difference of squares.

If we decide to summarize the above thinking succinctly, then we can use the ceiling function (rounding, if necessary, to the nearest integer greater than or equal to its input) for our final result. Defining d(n) to be the number of divisors, or factors, of the natural number n, and S(n) to be the number of ways in which n can be represented as a difference of nonnegative squares, we have the following:

If n is odd, then S(n) = ceil(d(n)/2);

If n is even but not a multiple of 4, then S(n) = 0;

If n is even and a multiple of 4, then S(n) = ceil(d(n/4)/2)

Finally, we recall that the number of factors can be computed if we know a natural number’s prime factorization. In particular, if we write n as a product of the primes pk raised to the respective powers of ak, then the number of factors is the product of (ak + 1) across all k. We close out with one more example.

The number 180 is an even multiple of 4; so, S(180) = ceil(d(180/4)/2). But, what is d(180/4)? Since 180/4 = 45, and 45 has prime factorization 3251, we have that its number of factors is equal to (2+1)(1+1) = 3(2) = 6; so, we find d(180/4)/2 = 6/2 = 3, and ceil(3) = 3. This tells us that the number of representations of 180 as a difference of squares is 3. Indeed, we can verify this by listing them out exhaustively:

180 = 2(90) = (46-44)(46+44) = 462 – 442;

180 = 6(30) = (18-12)(18+12) = 182 – 122; and

180 = 10(18) = (14-4)(14+4) = 142 – 42

Q. E. D.

[MP]

Here is a table that is worth spending some time mulling over. 

Here’s what it’s all about: differences of squares. 

Given a number, can you tell whether it’s possible to write that number as a difference of squares? Is it possible to characterize all the numbers that are possible to write as a difference of squares? And is there a systematic way to tell how many ways a given number can be written as a difference of squares? An algorithm? A formula?

Let’s tackle these questions in two parts:

  • Given a number, can you tell whether it’s possible to write it as a difference of squares, at all?
  • If a number can be written as a difference of squares, how many different ways are there to do it? 

I. 

To start the first question, let’s note that every odd number can be written as a difference of squares. This is due to a wonderful property of squares — they can be decomposed into a sum of odd numbers. Every odd number can be seen as the difference between a large square and some inner, removed square. 

That’s not really an explanation as much as restating the statement…ah, well. Here’s a picture:

So, let’s start checking out the small even numbers. Can they be written as a difference of squares?

Starting with the smallest, 2 can definitely not be written as a difference of squares. The smallest difference of squares is 22 – 12 = 3, so 2 is a no-go. 

How about 4? That’s a no. (32 – 22 = 5.) How about 6? Also a no-go. 

But, wait! 8 works: 32 – 12 = 8. 

So…why is that? Why can some even numbers be written as a difference of squares, while others cannot?

Any difference of squares can be written as the product of two numbers: a2 – b2 = (a-b)(a+b). This factoring move can help explain what’s going wrong with so many of these even numbers.

If 6 were to have a representation, then 6 = a2 – b2 = (a-b)(a + b). But there are only so many ways to write 6 as the product of two factors. To make matters worse, the only ways to factor 6 involve one even and one odd factor. To see why this is a problem, note that while 6 = 3 x 2, this couldn’t produce a difference of squares:

a + b = 3

a – b = 2

2a = 5

a = 2.5

b = 0.5

And while it is true that 2.52 – 0.52 = 6, we were only looking for whole numbers. 

The issue, then, is that some even numbers can be factored only into pairs of numbers where one is even and the other odd, i.e. of different parity. This explains why 8 works: 2 x 4 = 8, and setting a + b = 4 and a – b = 2 results in (3 + 1)(3 – 1) = 32 – 12 = 8. 

As long as the prime factorization of an even number N has just one factor of 2 (as in e.g. 6, 14, 42, 30) then it can only ever be factored into an even and odd factor. That will never work. 

As long as your even number is at least divisible by 4, it will always be possible to find at least one solution:

2n(2m + 1)

2(2nm + 2n-1)

a + b = 2nm + 2n-1

a – b = 2 

2a = 2nm +  2n-1+ 2

a = 2n-1m +  2n-2+ 1

b = 2n-1m +  2n-2– 1

Both a and b are integers.

There is one other issue to worry about, and that’s 4 itself. 4 = 2 x 2 = (a + b)(a – b) demands that a = 2 and b = 0. Should we count that? It is true that 22 – 02 = 4. It’s not so interesting, which argues in favor of tossing it out of consideration. But sometimes these sort of uninteresting cases can help simplify formulas and generalizations. 

Let’s keep an open mind, for now, as to whether we’d rather deal with differences of positive squares or might expand our focus (slightly) to include non-negative squares.

II.

Let’s start with odd numbers. Every odd number can be represented as a difference of squares. But how many representations are there for each odd number?

Consider numbers that are the products of primes, like 15 and 21. They can be all represented in two different ways as differences of squares. 

E.g. 15 = (8 + 7)(8 – 7) = (4 + 1)(4 – 1)

E.g. 21 = (11 + 10)(11 – 10) = (5 + 2)(5 – 2)

Then again, this comes as no surprise. If N = pq for p and q both prime, the only factor pairs are 1 x pq and p x q. All the factors are odd, so there are no parity problems — they all produce OK differences of squares.

Not much different for numbers like 147 or 75, which are a product of a prime and a square of a prime: 

E.g. 147 = (74 + 73)(74 – 73) = (26 + 23)(26 – 23) = (14 + 7)(14 – 7)

E.g. 75 = (38 + 37)(38 – 37) = (15 + 10)(15 – 10) = (10 + 5)(10 – 5)

All of this still makes sense — 147 and 75 have 6 factors, all odd. That leads to 3 factor pairs, all which work for differences of squares. 

In other words, all we’re doing is counting factor pairs, i.e. counting factors and dividing by 2.

E.g. 225 = 32 * 52= (113 + 112)(113 – 112) = (39 +36)(39 – 36) = (25 + 20)(25 – 20) 

= (17 + 8)(17 – 8) = (15 + 0)(15 – 0)

This makes sense for 225, which has 9 factors but (including its square root) 5 factor pairs; 9/2 = 4.5, round that up and you get 5.

There is a much better-known number theory function that counts divisors, and it’s multiplicative:

If m and n are relatively prime, divisors(mn) = divisors(m)divisors(n)

So, if you have the prime factorization of a number and its odd, no big deal, you can find out how many ways it can be represented as a difference of squares, no trouble:

E.g. p2 * q8 * r3 has 3 * 9 * 4 = 108 divisors, and can therefore be represented in 54 different ways as a difference of squares.

As a formula, for odd N, N can be described as a difference of squares in ceil[divisors(N)/2] ways.

III.

Even numbers

Now, how do we deal with even numbers? Meaning, those that are divisible by 4. (If they’re not divisible by 4, then they can never be expressed as differences of squares.)

When you have any even number, there are always parity problems you have when it comes to making a difference of squares:

E.g. for 24 = 23 * 3

1 x 24

2 x 12

3 x 8

4 x 6

E.g. for 80 = 24 * 5

1 x 80

2 x 40

4 x 20

5 x 16

8 x 10

E.g. for 84 = 22 * 3 * 7

1 x 84

2 x 42

3 x 28

4 x 21

6 x 14

7 x 12

Compare, in particular, the results for 21 and 84:

1 x 213 x 71 x 842 x 423 x 284 x 216 x 147 x 12

There are three times as many factor pairs you get from multiplying 21 by 22. But, of course, 4 of them result in mismatched parity.

Consider one other case, before we head towards a formula: 22 * 32 * 5 * 7. Let’s reason:

  • 32 * 5 * 7 should have 3*2*2 = 12 factors and 6 factor pairs, all of which work for differences of squares
  • 22 times 32 * 5 * 7 should therefore have 3*12 factors and 18 factor pairs
  • Some of these will have mismatched parity, though. We’ll have to toss out all the pairs with an odd factor; as we’ve said, there are 12 odd factors. 
  • That means 18 – 12 = 6 factor pairs, and we are left with what we started with. 

Generalizing, this means that for 2a * N, where N is odd:

  • N will have divisors(N) factors (all odd) determined by its prime factorization, and ceil[divisors(N)/2] factor pairs
  • 2a N should therefore have ceil[(a+1)divisors(N)/2] factor pairs
  • But you have to throw out divisors(N) of those factor pairs, since they contain an odd factor.

That leaves as the number of ways to represent this even number as a difference of squares:

ds(2aN) =  ceil[(a+1)divisors(N)/2] – divisors(N)

This formula is certainly ugly, but it works for the cases above, plus a few more:

Nds(N)
80 = 24 * 5ceil[5 x 1] – 2  = 3
24 = 23 * 3ceil[4 x 1] – 2  = 2
84 = 22 * 3 * 7ceil[3 x 2] – 4  = 2
180 = 22 * 32 * 5ceil[3 x 3] – 6  = 3
36 = 22 * 32ceil[3 x 1.5] – 3 = 2
60 = 22 x 3 x 5ceil[3 x 2] – 4 = 2 

IV.

Can we extend this formula in a meaningful way to even numbers that aren’t divisible by 4? 

42 = 2 x 3 x 7, ceil[2 x 2] = 4 = 0.

30 = 2 x 3 x 5, ceil[2 x 2] – 4 = 0

18 = 2 x 32, ceil[2 x 1.5] – 3 = 0

 Yes, I think so! 

For 21N, ceil[2 x divisors(N)/2] – divisors(N) = ceil[divisors(N)] – divisors(N)  = 0

Can we extend this formula to odd numbers, that aren’t even divisible by 2? Well, not really:

For 20N, ceil[1 x divisors(N)/2] – divisors(N)

But we can patch it up. Rather than subtracting divisors(N), let’s subtract badDivisors(N), which are the divisors of N that wouldn’t work for difference of squares tally. Of course, for odd numbers there are no bad divisors, so badDivisors(N) = 0 for ever odd.

Here is our ur-formula, then:

For 2aN, the number of difference of squares representations are:
ceil[(a+1)divisors(N)/2] – badDivisors(N)

For odd N badDivisors(N) = 0 so the formula simplifies to:

ceil[(0+1)divisors(N)/2] – 0 = ceil[divisors(N)/2]

For 21N, this simplifies to:

ceil[2  x divisors(N)/2] – divisors(N) = 0

Note that for the ceiling function, ceil[x + n] = ceil[x] + n where n is an integer. We can use this to prove something for another special case.

For 22N, our formula simplifies to:

ceil[3 x divisors(N)/2] – divisors(N) 

= ceil[divisors(N)/2 + divisors(N)] – divisors(N)

=ceil[divisors(N)/2] + divisors(N) – divisors(N)

= ceil[divisors(N)/2]

So multiplying an odd number by 4 does not alter the number of ways it can be represented as a difference of squares.

More generally, for 22mN:

ceil[(2m + 1) x divisors(N)/2] – divisors(N) =

= ceil[(divisors(N)/2 + 2m x divisors(N)/2] – divisors(N) 

=ceil(divisors(N)/2) + (m – 1)divisors(N)

Though maybe it makes more sense to consider the patterns of growth in two separate cases — the case of square and non-square odd Ns.

Nds(N)
21 = 3 x 7ceil[1 x 2] – 0  = 2
42 = 2^1 x 3 x 7ceil[2 x 2] – 4  = 0
84 = 2^2 x 3 x 7ceil[3 x 2] – 4  = 2
168 = 2^3 x 3 x 7ceil[4 x 2] – 4  = 4
336 = 2^4 x 3 x 7ceil[5 x 2] – 4 = 6
672 = 2^5 x 3 x 7ceil[6 x 2] – 4 = 8
Nds(N)
25 = 52ceil[1 x 1.5] – 0  = 2
50 = 2152ceil[2 x 1.5] – 3  = 0
100 = 2252ceil[3 x 1.5] – 3  = 2
200 = 2352ceil[4 x 1.5] – 3  = 3
400 = 2452ceil[5 x 1.5] – 3  = 5
800 = 2552ceil[6 x 1.5] – 3  = 6

Geometry Journal #4

Back at it again, #16:

At first, I just drew the diagram and stared at it for a while. I tried to mark congruent sides and angles. I didn’t really get anywhere.

Then, I thought that it would be a good idea to play with parallels. This was largely because of two things:

  • I knew those midpoints were in there, and midpoints sometimes create parallel lines
  • Because of the previous problem I worked on, I was thinking about how lines that are perpendicular to a line are also perpendicular to all of its parallels. I thought that would be good to play with again.

You can see my first sketch, where I was mostly staring at the diagram and playing with angles. Then I added another line, thinking that it would probably create congruent triangles.

It did!

This happens to be the solution the book names as well:

This really is connected to the previous problem I worked on. It pulled off the exact same “add a parallel and get yourself a free right angle” move. It was immensely satisfying to be able to see the connection between these two very different problems.

These connections are so important for learning, and so difficult to notice on your own. This is one reason why it is important to look back on solutions and compare them when self-studying — while working on the problem for the first time, even if you get the solution, you won’t necessarily see what links the solutions of different problems together.

I like using my blog as a journal, but it seems like it would be so much fun to find a way to dynamically link these solutions as I see them. A wiki? A static website that I edit over time? I don’t know, but it’s still fun to try problems and see the connections.

I’m also feeling motivated to review some of the solutions from problems I have already studied. Maybe I’ll make flashcards in Anki for them? It would be cool to be able to really think about the connections, and it’s hard to do that without a bunch of solutions in mind. If I were taking a class, at some point the teacher might ask us to study for an exam — that’s the sort of thing I’m thinking would be a useful addition to my learning mix.

The most interesting parts of “Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin”

There is an endless number of great soul singers who marched through the Franklin household. Smokey Robinson was a friend of Aretha’s brother, Cecil:

“Cecil and I were kids when we met,” he told me. “We grew up on the same love of music — not just gospel, but jazz. The first great voice that influenced me was Sarah Vaughan. I don’t think Cecil and I were ten when we started digging progressive jazz.”

Aretha’s father, C.L. Franklin, was a famous preacher at the New Bethel Baptist Church at 4210 Hastings Street, in Detroit. His most famous sermon was “As The Eagle Stirreth,” a bestselling sermon recording:

“Hastings Street is ground zero for the Aretha Franklin story. Her father’s New Bethel Baptist Chruch was at 4210 Hastings, steps from the heart of the black entertainment district. It was the point where Saturday night merged into Sunday morning and sin met salvation at the crossroads of African American musical culture … Was it the grinding grooves of the club that got into the church, or was it the sensuous beat of the church that got into the club? Did C.L. Franklin get his blues cry from Muddy Waters the same way Bobby Bland borrowed his blues cry from C.L.?”

When I first visited Detroit from Chicago,” said Buddy Guy, “it was later in the fifties. I had to see two people. The first was Reverend C.L. Franklin, ’cause B.B. had told me he could preach better than Howlin’ Wolf could sing. B. was right. … Gospel music made folks happy. Blues made folks lose their blues. I didn’t see that much difference between the two, even if preachers did claim it was the difference between Jesus and the devil. B.B. King loved C.L. Franklin because he didn’t say that. He didn’t pit one against the other. He said all good music came from God.”

Reverend James Cleveland was one of my favorite coming into this book. His piano playing is so heavy. The author asks him “which came first — the spirituals or the blues?”

“Aretha’s father would laugh at that question,” said Reverand Cleveland, “because he knew there was no answer. It’s a riddle that can’t be solved. You could say that the spirituals came first, but if you broke it down further you could also say that the field shouts came before the spirituals. How do we know whether someone out there was picking cotton didn’t first start moaning about how tired he was, or about how much he wanted a woman? Then maybe a God-fearing woman heard that song and switched it up to where she was praying for God to save her. The fleshy needs and the godly needs are very close. We’re likely to use music to call out both those needs because they’re both so basic. Which comes first? You tell me.

Aretha’s first husband took control of her career and beat her violently. Aretha’s peers call him a “gentleman pimp.”

“You can’t understand the music culture of Detroit in the early sixties,” said R&B singer Bettye LaVette, who emerged from that culture, “without understanding the role of the pimp. Pimps and producers were often the same people. The sensibility was the same — get women working for you; get women to make you money. We demonize pimps now, but back then they were looked up to by men and sought out by women. They had power. They knew how to survive the ghetto and go beyond the ghetto. Some of my best men friends were pimps. Some of the women I admired most were working for them — classy, sophisticated, beautifully dressed women. I didn’t have what it took to be a high-class prostitute of the kind that the best pimps like to parade, but as a singer, I was certainly pimped by certain producers — and glad to be.”

“Back then, women were powerless. If we wanted to get ahead in show business, we had to operate in the system. The greatest example of that system was probably Motown, where Berry Gordy’s first wife, Raynoma Singleton, claimed that Berry himself had pimped women. He wasn’t good with whores, but he was great with singers. The parallel is strong.”

Aretha got her first recording contract with Columbia, where she released a series of eclectic, well-reviewed albums that didn’t yield any hits. She showed an acute desire to record showtunes and various standards.

“Al Jolson had sung “Rock-a-Bye with a Dixie Melody” in blackface in the twenties. Later it was recorded by Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland and Jerry Lewis. Though an essential American song, it seemed a strange choice for Aretha, especially at the start of the civil rights movement. Cecil [her brother and longtime manager] explained to me C. L. Franklin’s love of Al Jolson and his reason for urging Aretha to include the tune.”

“My father told me how Jolson harbored great affection for black people,” said Cecil. “His entire blackface act was a way of paying tribute to our musical genius. Dad knew the history of American entertainment and had read how Jolson had hired black writers and helped bolster the career of Cab Calloway. We forget now, but back in the day, Al Jolson and black people had a mutual-admiration society.”

“In spite of Cecil’s spirited defense of Aretha’s inclusion of the song, it’s difficult for me to listen to her version without cringing. Although her vocal is enthusiastic, the strings feel anemic, the horn chart cheesy, and the rock-’em-sock’em finale forced and false.”

Aretha had difficulty reaching widespread fame while recording jazz and standards for Columbia.

“While working with Etta [James] on her book, I asked her why she thought her string-heavy jazzy standard turned into a smash while, in that same year, Aretha couldn’t hit with a bluesy standard like “That Lucky Old Sun”

“The answer’s easy,” said Etta. “Aretha sang the shit outta those standards — just as good if not better than me. But Columbia didn’t know how to reach black listeners, and my company, Chess, did. Leonard Chess had a genius for feeling out the black community. Jerry Wexler was the same. They were white Jews who would never use the word [n-word], but they us [] better than we knew ourselves. Columbia didn’t have no one like that. They had John Hammon, but he was like a college professor up there in the ivory tower. He wasn’t street like Chess or Wexler.”

Not really sure what this was about. Apparently Jerry Wexler was almost … killed?

“I’d just come back from a music-industry convention in Miami, where I was to accept an award on Aretha’s behalf,” Wexler remembered. “In Floriday, what I thought would be a pleasure turned into a nightmare. Gangster elements had taken over the industry’s black-power movement. During the banquet, King Curtis came up to me and said, ‘We’re getting you outta here. You’ve been marked,’ King escorted me out to safety. Later I was hung in effigy. Phil Walden, Otis’s white manager, received death threats. Marshall Sehorn, a white promo man, was pistol-whipped. It was some scary shit.”

By the way, King Curtis seems like a great guy. He’s certainly a great musician.

Apparently Aretha’s live performances were hit or miss. But there are some really special performances. Here she is with her childhood friend Smokey:

By the way, is there anything more devastating in popular culture than the list of soul and R&B singers who died far, far too young under tragic circumstances? Donny Hathaway, Sam Cooke, Sam Cooke’s brother, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Billy Holliday, Nat King Cole. Aretha was personal friends with nearly all these people, childhood friends with half of them. Her mother died when she was a child.

Two of my favorite piano players, Richard Tee and Billy Preston, also died too young. Here are Aretha and Billy playing together:

I haven’t quoted at length any of the emotional drama from the book, which I found sad and also tedious. The short story is that Aretha was a difficult person, prone to depression and delusion. She was a teen mother twice over, and largely left her children back in Detroit while pursuing her career in New York City. She canceled gigs on whim, had extravagant tastes, and created relationships for the press out of whole cloth. She comes across as a brilliant artist who was committed to staying relevant and having hits, even into her sixties. Those around her frequently express regret that she didn’t age more gracefully as an artist — all except Ray Charles, who completely identifies with her desire to stay on the charts.

What I’ll remember from this book is the picture of Detroit as a place that was just overflowing with musical innovation in every direction. It was the epicenter of something amazing happening in popular music, and it all seemed to be connected to Aretha’s father’s church. Everyone seemed to know Aretha.

There was another passage that struck me, though I can’t find it now. There was a bit where someone mentioned that a lot of the folk and rock music on the radio featured more cryptic lyrics, whereas soul and R&B tended to have more straightforward story songs. Country is like that too, and so was early Rock and Roll. I don’t know what to make of that, but it’s interesting.

Geometry Journal #3

Problem 1-14 from Challenging Problems in Geometry:

This took me a while to understand, but once I had a sketch it didn’t take me very long to use isosceles triangles to show that there were a bunch of congruent triangles in the diagram. I did this on paper, but thought it would be nice to put this into Geogebra.

The most satisfying diagram came when I started with a square, ala Challenge 1:

Image

From attempting this problem and then studying the solution I didn’t feel as if I learned any new techniques. But this result is really awesome, and it’s one that I want to remember. It reminds me of midpoint quadrilaterals — the quadrilaterals formed by connecting the midpoints of a 4-gon. It’s pretty.

Ooh! Just looking at this now, it occurs to me that I should be asking “what is the ratio of areas between the original square and the trisector-square?”

I just tried to calculate it … I got \frac{2 - \sqrt{3}}{3}, or about 8%. Seems to check out.

After the last few problems took a lot of energy, it was nice to feel this one come a bit easily.

***

The next problem wasn’t an immense struggle either, mostly because I didn’t have paper around so I just skipped to the hint.

Like I said, I didn’t have paper and I wasn’t sure what to do, so I skipped to the hint.

It’s a nice hint:

These theorems say:

  • If a line is perpendicular to another line m, it’s also perpendicular to any lines m is parallel to.
  • Side splitter: connect two midpoints of a triangle and you get a line parallel to the other base

I very much enjoyed taking those hints and figuring out how to use them, even though it didn’t take too long.

The result isn’t so interesting to me, but I think there is a problem-solving takeaway:

Takeaway(s): If a diagram has a lot of midpoints, there’s also a lot of parallel lines.

If you’re trying to prove that an angle is 90 degrees, try to start with all the other 90 degree angles in the diagram. See if they lead to other right angles.

***

I’ve been reading a lot about self-explanation lately. This is a notion emerging from cognitive science research that suggests an important part of learning is explaining things for yourself — making inferences beyond what is explicitly there. This is often seen as crucial for learning from worked examples, i.e. solutions. This is something I am doing as part of this geometry project.

In one of his papers (let me know if you want the reference) Renkl distinguishes between different types of self-explanation. One that he thinks is particularly relevant for learning math is principled explanations. In other words, connecting specific examples to general principles. It makes sense that this would be useful — it means you can use this specific example to help with other problems!

The thing that I’m realizing while studying geometry is that without a teacher’s help, I’m basically guessing as to what the general principles are. I think my “takeaways” above could be useful for tackling other problems, but I don’t really know for sure. This is relatively new to me! I won’t know for sure until I find a chance to use the techniques in another problem.

I guess this is just another way that learning from a teacher is easier than learning on one’s own.

Geometry Journal, #2

The problem:

My process:

I put a rectangle into Geogebra. It actually took me a few tries to really nail down what the problem was saying, but once I did I started dragging the points around. I noticed that the angle made by the two perpendiculars was constant also. Cool! After noodling around with the diagram I understand why:

I started drawing a lot of lines. This is another one of those diagrams that has a bajillion similar triangles. I was playing with this while my kids were going to sleep, so it was about 30 minutes of lazy drawing and redrawing. I found a lot of congruent triangles, some I was pretty sure would help me, but I couldn’t make them work. Here was my favorite congruent triangle pair:

After skipping to the solution of the previous problem (and seeing Benjamin Leis’ solution) I was feeling motivated to find a solution to this one before checking the solution.

I grew frustrated with the computer and (following my takeaway from the previous post, actually!) I took out some paper and started writing equations. I was thinking about how I would get an expression for EF + EG (the two perpendiculars) and I had the idea that you could do that using similar triangles.

I took the two triangles above and set them similar to each other. Awful quality I know, sorry:

Here is that picture, cleaned up a bit:

The point is that if those triangles are similar, then those perpendiculars are in ratio also. Some fiddling tells us that if that’s so, the sum of the perpendiculars is equal to:

\frac{EF*l}{x}

Is EF a function of x, so that the x’s cancel out? If so, we would be done. Call that yellow angle in the top right corner theta.

\Large \sin{\theta} = \frac{EF}{x}

\Large x \dot \sin{\theta} = EF

And that works. The sum of perpendiculars is equal to l \dot \sin{\theta}.

***

Here is the book’s solution:

Here’s the point:

It’s a nice solution. When I was looking for a constant I was trying to do something like this — slide a segment over using a rectangle. The problem was I couldn’t get the right structure when I was trying this, I always ended up stuck with a trapezoid.

The big strategy here is “when you’re looking to prove something is constant, you can try to construct the thing out of both pieces.” I did try that first, but ended up stumped so I moved to a different approach.

Otherwise, I’m not sure what else to take away from this solution. The move of using an isosceles triangle to prove both sides are congruent is sweet.

Geometry Journal, #1

The problem:

I spent about 15 minutes noodling around. I tried adding different lines. I tried writing ratios, because there are so many similar triangles here. I had trouble using the digital annotation tools I was using, which made it harder to mark congruent angles. Eventually I started thinking about how I would get EF + DG as an expression at all, so I started thinking about making rectangles. Maybe their perimeter would somehow be useful?

I was feeling ready for a hint, so I turned to the back of the book for this hint:

“Draw CD, CE, and the altitude from C to AB; then prove triangles congruent.”

I quickly saw how this would be useful. I had already tried drawing these lines, but I hadn’t seen how it would be useful. Now I saw that if I could prove these triangles congruent, I would immediately have DE = EF + DG. I don’t know how I missed it earlier:

I didn’t have the angles yet. I was confident I would need to use the isosceles triangles that BD = BC and AE = AC created. Still, I was having trouble, and was feeling impatient. I decided to look at the solution.

The solution:

Commentary:

That’s pretty much what I was expecting, though it’s a bit annoying that I didn’t get it easily. Was I just lazy? I was definitely a bit lazy. But I think there’s something else here worth remembering, which is that when the angles are all bunched up like this it can be useful to write the actual equations using the angles out. I think it would have been easier to see the relationships that way, as I had a hard time seeing all the relationships in the image. (I struggled to annotate the diagram in a way that contained this info after reading the solution.)

A very brief note: I tried to use a tablet to draw on the image, which sped up the process in some ways. It also makes me more reluctant to write out equations in a way that would have been helpful here. I used Google Jamboard for this problem, but I’d like to find something better.

Takeaways: don’t forget to write equations for angles; maybe do that on paper or find a better way to do geometry on the tablet.

We can’t agree on schools because they are compromise institutions

Coca Cola is a cola-producing, money-making enterprise. Hospitals are in the business of keeping people alive and healthy. Congress is in charge of making laws. Planned Parenthood supports reproductive health for women. Unions protect the interests of their members. And so on, and so on. All of this is relatively clear and straightforward.

Schools are different. Nobody can tell you exactly what it is that schools do.

(Update: my friend Chavi is a high-risk pregnancy doctor and author of a fantastic book that you should buy. She tells me, “You’ve got hospitals ALL WRONG. We are a TOTAL compromise. Social safety net, economically compromised model, plus restaurant and God knows what else. I like to point out that a really good hospital is also a really mediocre hotel.”)

Schools are in charge of teaching kids the things they need to get good jobs. That’s a matter of social justice. Or it’s about national security — you’ve got to keep up with the USSR Chinese.

Don’t forget about childcare, to support more people going into the workforce. That’s an important part of what schools do, their most basic function.

Actually — no! Schooling isn’t about jobs, national security or the economy. It’s about democracy. We need to create the next generation of informed citizens, prepared to vote and run for office and such. They need to know history, sure, but they also need to be schooled in democratic values. Kids need to learn that you can always improve by working hard. They also need to learn to respect their classmates, no matter if they come from a different place, worship differently, or have a different culture.

Really, though, school is about socialization. Kids need to be around other kids to be happy. They need to be part of a community where they get to make friends and find themselves. Schools give kids the chance to find themselves in passions like sports or music or art.

The point is that schools are all these things at the same time. Not everybody cares about all these things at the same time, but each purpose of schooling has its own cheering section in American society. We all care about schooling, but for different reasons.

David Labaree wrote a well-known essay describing this dynamic. In “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals” he lists three big categories for how Americans think about the purposes of schooling:

  • social efficiency (think, jobs and economics)
  • social mobility (think, meritocracy)
  • democratic equality (think, values of democracy)

This is the fundamental fact about schools: they are compromise institutions. They simply do not have a main purpose. They aren’t in the business of helping everybody learn the most that they can. Schools aren’t organized around giving everybody the same opportunities. They aren’t built to give meaningful experiences to children. They do all these things, but in a compromised way. Because they are compromise institutions.

A lot of “innovative” schools produce their innovations by going all-in on one of these goals while caring less about the others. You can certainly organize a school that produces learning gains — as long as you spend less time worrying about whether kids get more choices and chances to collaborate. And you can definitely organize a school that is completely untracked and gives everyone the same learning opportunities, but you’re going to have to give up a bit on some students’ individual achievements. You can get a Success Academy for a while, but eventually gravity will drag it down into the weird, tangled matrix of compromise that most schools have to grapple with.

I’m not saying that schools are compromise institutions and that this is a bad thing. Schools are weird. Public schooling isn’t that old — it’s a complex project that meets a lot of different people’s needs. It has evolved to do a reasonably good job keeping a majority of people happy, but that has involved a bit of layering and duct tape. Ah ok, the nation needs this? We’ll start teaching Biology. We’ll offer college classes. We’ll have music. We’ll do anti-drug talks.

There is nothing natural about schooling. When push comes to shove, and we have to rethink schooling with limited resources, don’t be surprised that we can’t easily come to agreement. Imagine you ran a local drug store and suddenly had to cut your inventory in half. Do you stop selling food? Keep the first-aid supplies but ditch the mouthwash? Your store has a lot of random stuff in it, because your store is a catchall for a lot of random needs that people have. You aren’t a grocer; you sell a lot of unrelated stuff. That’s what schools are like.

Many teachers have argued that in the autumn of 2020 schools should be entirely remote. After all, hybrid learning is going to be a pedagogical disaster, probably worse than remote learning. (It’s just remote learning but more confusing.) Why not go remote? That makes a lot of sense, if all you think about is learning.

A lot of professionals have argued that school should go back full-time, especially for the youngest students. These parents need childcare! How is the economy (and everything else) supposed to function when people are suddenly at home with their children. This is absolutely true. That this is the job of schools is a totally legitimate view.

Really, though, everybody should go back. (Safely, of course.) Kids need to be in a social environment, not miserable and locked up at home staring at a screen. It’s not good for kids. It’s not about childcare, it’s about thriving in a meaningful environment. (This is the view my own school has taken, I believe, and all grades are currently expected back in September.)

My point is not about who is right. Honestly, I don’t know! The point is that to understand why there is so much disagreement you need to understand that it’s not that people don’t value the economy, childcare, the social lives of children or anything else. It’s that schools are weird. They exist in a strange space and occupy a weird set of roles. They aren’t simply institutions; they are settings where a variety of institutions and forces play tug-of-war and compete.

That means that if you want schools to come back (or to go hybrid, or to go fully remote) you have to make a really complicated case that satisfies a lot of different desires. We don’t agree on what is the most important for children. We don’t agree on what schools are for.

This is why it’s difficult to figure out what to do with schools right now. We don’t have the resources to do all the weird things that schools used to do. (Smaller class sizes + staff with legit medical exemptions – painful state budgets – meaningful federal support = funding disaster.)

Schools are already weird compromise institutions. We should all expect it to take another weird compromise to make this next school year work.

Building Relationships in Online Math Camp

At some point last spring, with the ambulance sirens still constantly blaring but with my job more or less under control, it occurred to me how lucky we were that online teaching started late in the year. How much harder will it be at the start of the year, when we don’t have relationships with the kids yet?

This summer I’ve been teaching again at BEAM, an amazing organization that runs a network of math camps. The kids are all entering 7th Grade and are choosing to spend their summer learning math, programming, genetics, circuitry, statistics — my point is that camp is not quite the same gig as teaching during the school year. Still, the program is entirely online and I’d never met the students before. I now feel as if I have a bit more insight into the “how will it work with a new group of students” question.

In this post I’ll give the rundown as to what I’ve done in camp so far.

(I should note here that online teaching is a thing that many teachers do year in and year out. That’s not quite the same thing as camp or pandemic teaching, but it should keep up from saying things like “this whole project is impossible.” This parenthetical note is brought to you by StuckInTheMiddle, an online teacher currently writing a book about full-time online teaching for John Catt Edu, who has made this very point many times herself.)

OK: how do you build relationships with a new group of students while teaching online?

Here are my answers:

  • “How do I build relationships with students” is the wrong question.
  • What I’ve found much more pressing is whether the students trust and enjoy each other. Otherwise they can’t collaborate, don’t feel comfortable turning their cameras on, won’t ask questions, won’t discuss things in small groups, won’t do fun community-building stuff, and so on.
  • Looking back, the first few classes were designed to get kids participating and interacting with me. I don’t know if I regret the decision to start there, but it’s not enough.
  • Things got much better once I started thinking about how I could get kids talking to each other. Again, maybe that’s only possible after I did the earlier stuff, which I’ll detail in a second.
  • By the way, there are still a few students I’m worried that I’m not reaching at all. That happens at in-person camp too, but it’s hard to see what the problem is when we’re all online.

Here’s the rundown of how this went, day by day.

Day 1: I was worried about participation, but I had my plan. My plan was something we might call an “acclimation theory” of participation and trust. Students just have to get used to sharing their thinking and talking to me. I designed class to be all about participation.

I started with an algebraic number trick (via the late Don Steward). I asked everybody to type their result into the chat at the same time for a dramatic reveal.

This was fun and the chat was full of students being low-key blown away. We may be online, but fundamentally this is still a camp full of young math nerds. You can count on a lot of the math to just work.

After this tease (I always like to start with math right away) I described some course expectations.

Well, as the next few weeks would make clear, no dice on video on for every kid. I have basically given up on that and am focusing on measuring engagement in other ways.

On to the “mic check.” Kids were active on the chat, but this would be their chance to get used to sharing their voices on Zoom.

I’m conflicted about this mic check. On the one hand, it took a loooooong time. On the other hand, it did more or less guarantee that I had a conversation with every student, and they got to share some of the things they were into. And they got a chance to piggyback on each other’s enthusiasms — a lot of them love anime, video games, and YouTube. It’s also helpful to me, to hear everybody say their name once and to feel like I’m teaching children rather than usernames.

But it takes a LONG time.

After that, it was into math. I stuck to Zoom, figuring it would be a bit much to introduce a new tool on the first day. I presented a worked example and asked students to type explanations.

More Zoom math:

That was it for Day 1.

Day 2: With one of my groups, I did another mic check. But it just takes too long to ask everyone to unmute themselves and share their answer. It just really dragged on. So for the other group I made a video check-in, which was more successful. Again, I was operating under acclimation theory: just get used to it, and then you’ll feel comfortable. Here was my “turn on your video” prompt:

I should note that even as things are going well in my classes now, students don’t love having their video on. I am able to get most of the class to turn their video on for a minute or two to vote on something with their hands or thumbs, but that’s it. Probably not a battle worth waging, is my current thought.

Did another number trick, made another little example. This one tried to expose the structure of these tricks for the students:

Then I sent students to work on a Classkick assignment (link), our first.

Classkick is a very important tool in my online teaching, because it lets me see what students are working on as they are working on it. It’s absolutely critical to my teaching at the moment. It’s actually a pretty awesome tool in most ways.

I had a bit of dilemma though. It’s Day 2. Students still don’t know each other. If I send them to breakout rooms, it would just be entirely silent. Plus, that would be our first time using breakout rooms while they’re also trying to figure out a new tool. What do I do?

Well, I just assigned the Classkick problem set and kept everybody in the main room. Students would chat every once in a while, but overall it was very sleepy and slow. It felt OK, but not like we were really firing on all cylinders yet.

So much for Day 2.

Day 3: This was when I started to realize that something needed to change.

I ran Day 3 as I did Day 2. Worked examples that I asked students to discuss via chat:

Then, I assigned students to work on Classkick problems in Breakout rooms. And, as predicted, it was deathly silent.

***

This is where my “acclimation theory” started to run out of steam. Students were getting used to talking with their mics (because I was asking them to). They were chatting (some were talking to each other in chat but not much). They were working on problems. But why was the energy so … muted? It felt off.

That’s when I sat back and realized that it wasn’t about me: they weren’t acting like people stuck in a room full of strangers. That’s because, mostly, they were.

In my defense, the problem doesn’t really happen during my school life. By the time I meet students, they typically know each other much better than they know me. And though I’ve been teaching at camp for a while, the camp environment usually helps kids get to know each other real fast.

OK, so new theory: I need to be pushing students to talk to each other a lot more. Then they’ll feel more comfortable participating publicly.

Day 4: To be fair, I had fully intended to launch camp with something fun and game-like. I just couldn’t think of a way to tie it into my course, which is all about equations and solutions.

Now, though, I just needed a way to get kids talking to each other about something we’re all in on together.

Every teacher eventually gathers a few “break in case of emergency” activities. One of my favorites is the game Mastermind. There’s a totally fine online version that I like to play with my classes. It’s only related to my class indirectly, but I figured that was enough.

OK: it was a hit! And kids were talking to each other, because they wanted to get the code right at the end. I told them they could stay in my Zoom room for the after-class math time (it’s scheduled daily) and play Mastermind. Many did — it worked, as I should have known it would. The “break in case of emergency” stuff never lets you down.

With my new framework, I decided to start the Classkick problem (link) set right away after Mastermind. This time, I really thought about how to make breakout rooms work — I mean, how to get kids talking to each other in them.

Here was the first slide in the assignment:

What I did was:

  • There was something (the dumb tomato question) they had to talk about together.
  • Someone had to share their screen (to make it easier to talk about the same stuff)
  • I asked the counselors (who are teaching assistants) to more actively get kids talking about the math in their breakout rooms.

It went well! In the sense of, kids were talking and it felt more active and vibrant than class had felt up to that point.

Day 5: I reached back into the emergency kit and pulled out “Minesweeper.” Plus I imposed a coordinate grid on it so they could practice saying things like “there’s a bomb in (10, 6)” or whatever. Plus, it lets us talk about logical certainty in a way that mirrors “is this equation true for all values.” I used the Google Minesweeper game, which is nice and colorful.

I haven’t really given my students a chance to try a bunch of problems on their own. I figured today was a good day to take that leap. I assigned the Classkick problems (link) and asked my counselors to log-in to “teacher view” also, so we could keep an eye on what everyone was doing. (By the way, there is a co-teacher workaround with Classkick. Works like a charm.)

Here was the first slide:

It went well. Kids asked lots of questions — I told them to, and I was grateful that they did. Here was Slide 2:

***

Here are two other little things I had forgotten to mention:

  • To have some fun while students are trickling in, I’ve started awarding First, Second, Third place prizes to the funniest virtual backgrounds. (Then, I ask everyone to turn them back to normal so it doesn’t become a huge distraction in class.) I don’t think I would do this during school, because the virtual backgrounds are a huge pain in the ass, but for camp it’s been fun.
  • I start class with an extremely corny joke. I post the setup and ask kids to try to guess the punchline. “What do you call a factory that is only OK, not great, at making stuff?” I did do this during the school year, and it was kinda fun so I started doing it again during camp. It’s nice to have a little bit of inside humor.

(A “satisfactory.”)

***

I’m not sure that this will be as big a deal for my classes in the fall if we turn out to be fully online. Most students at my school have been in my school for a few years already. But I think I do have something like an answer to the relationship-building question:

  • Get kids learning and doing things and interacting with you, the teacher, yes.
  • Get kids interacting with each other and trusting each other. Participation isn’t just about getting used to a new environment, it’s about trusting and liking the other students in the room.
  • Some whole-group collaborative puzzles or games are good ways to start that. Getting kids talking to each other in smaller collaborative groups worked well for me to.
  • Then you can reinvest those relationships into more individual learning, and kids will be more willing to ask questions and share ideas.

That’s my thinking at the moment, anyway! There’s a lot more camp to go. And then the Fall of 2020. Then a vaccine.

Then, the vaccine fails. Then, Spring of 2021. Then, COVID-20 emerges. Then, the elephant flu. Then, COVID-FLU, a hybrid virus.

Then online teaching with kids at home and locked in your bedroom forever and ever and ever and ever.