We need more options.

In yet another fun rant about education in Victoria, I'd like to vent my spleen about how difficult it is to get rid of "problem children" in schools.

Politically incorrect though it may be, the simple fact is that some kids really are a problem. There are some students who are rude, nasty, and a bad influence on their peers. I have students who are generalliy nice and reasonably well-behaved. While their friend, the Problem Child, is away. As soon as that child turns up, the kid you were finally making some progress with forgets all that good behaviour and all those rewards and falls under this influence. You are back to square zero.

These Problem Children are the ones with no respect for authority, and not just that of the teacher. I've seen them lash out at co-ordinators and nothing short of calling the parents in is enough to make them behave, because they know that there isn't much we can do.

We can give lunch-time detentions, but they don't really care because once that's over, it's over. Back to normal.


We can give after-school detentions, but parents have to be given 24hrs notice. This is done by giving the student a letter to take home. I've found more of these letters ripped up and in the bin than I can count. I'm also quite used to the phenomenon of the student mysteriously being ill on the day that their detention is scheduled for. So this is not a credible threat, and not one which works well past about year 7.

We can suspend them, but the grounds have to be extreme. Students are well aware of how difficult it is. They can swear at teachers, be as rude as they like, say things that would get them questioned by police if they did it out on the street, and yet they get away with it in schools. So that threat doesn't work past about year 8.

Expelling students is nearly impossible. They cannot be expelled unless they can go to another school, and I've had a student say "What are you going to do! You can't expell me! No other school will take me!", and he was right.

We can't ask students to leave, because they can't leave unless they are at least 16 and have a trade or apprenticeship to go into.

You can't get them moved into a different class because classes are so damned full that there is no room for movement. So threatening to remove them from their friends doesn't work either.

The simple fact is that, if you have students who are not only poorly behaved but also savvy, you're pretty much stuffed and so are the students who could do so much better if they weren't being disrupted by these Problem Children.

We need more options. We need more consequences. We need to be able to actually send them off for intensive behavioural therapy, and have it be on-going.

The bottom line is that we need more support, because when you've had that kid shout at you, at other teachers, at school leaders, and then still have them show up in your class the next day, you start to lose hope. It's crushing to think that they can get away with abusing people in that way, and yet they do.

This needs to change.

No more kids, please.

In this next enstallment of what appears to be a series of rants about the education system here in Victoria, I'm going to get angry about the day before the Melbourne Cup.

We spend Cup Eve (first Monday of every November) babysitting because less than half the students show up. Those that haven't shown up are usually away on family holidays in anticipation of Cup Eve, but some students have parents who insist that they come to school.

You see, the parents send them to school because it's a school day. And it's a school day because parents send their kids to school. Or something.

But the bottom line is that, on this day every year, we have had to keep our massively reduced classes occupied from 9am until 3:30pm. We can't continue lessons as normal because our grouping systems are disrupted and we'd have to re-do anything we taught that day in the next lesson anyway. We can't book science pracs, plan tests, or anything of the sort. We can't even invent new groupings specifically for that day because we have no idea which students will be there and which won't.

So instead of being able to do something useful, like marking or planning or report-writing, we're sitting there keeping kids well-behaved and on task, whether that task is a worksheet or a video or a game. Instead of doing Professional Development (a requirement of teacher registration) or catching up on things we need to get done, we are looking after students who don't want to be there any more than we want them to be there.

I have, thankfully, had it confirmed by my local MP that this will be changing next year and going back to school councils deciding when the pupil-free days will be. What I'm left wondering is why, given that teachers were against having three of the four in term 1 to begin with, did they not just listen to us in the first place?

Still, at least it's been fixed.

Reinventing the Wheel

"Reinvenging the wheel" is a very common phrase in teaching, and it's one that has now most definitely come up again in my school.

It appears that textbooks are being phased out, which is of concern for a number of reasons. The key two are that:
1) We have no guarantee that the new laptop system (which is being implemented next year; all students in some year levels will have their own laptop) will actually work, so removing textbooks removes a valuable backup plan
2) Textbooks are an incredibly useful tool for educating students and for keeping teachers from having to invent curriculum that is already there.

The key reason that was given for this change is this perceived notion of teachers exclusively teaching from the textbook, telling the students to read a section and then answer the questions.

Bollocks. Sheer, utter, bollocks. For one thing, the Science textbook we use is utter, usless crap. Half of it is badly explained and the other half is factually incorrect. It mostly ignores physics and what physics is in it is utterly dreadful because all the authors were primarily biology teachers.

So the book is only a vague guide on what we will be covering in the topic. It helps keep us on track and give us a visual guide as to where in the topic we are, the questions in it are often very useful for topic revision, and often they are excellent for getting students to actually read and interpret information. For them to learn to find useful bits of info and synthesise, rather than just regurgitating facts (the number of times I've had them complain about the answer not being directly in the text is staggering; I had to point out that hey do actually need to think about what they're reading and writing).

So yes, we use the book and we often get the students to answer the questions from it so it is great because we don't have to invent the questions ourselves. But it is also useful as far as practicals go (we only need to point the lab techs to the page in the book rather than having to write up all the materials ourselves).

Now, this is a useful kick in the pants because it is forcing the faculty to look at its resources and how to pool them, rather than having scattered unit plans and things all over the school and the staff network drive but it in no way makes up for the loss of this valuable resource.

Furthermore, I am insulted by the view of the leadership that we are doing nothing but textbook work. I don't know wich teachers they've been observing, but it sure as hell wasn't anyone I've worked with. This will now mean a lot of extra work over the next few months and a lot of stress, especially if there are technological failures of the kind we've had over the past two years.

I'm sorry guys, but you need a backup plan whenever you implement something new and untested, like this laptops-for-everyone scheme. I see no evidence of a backup plan for when hundreds of students try to all log on to a network at the same time - something that hasn't actually been tested yet.

Ultranet Training Day, anyone?

In Soviet Russia...

Here's how it's supposed to go:

- Teacher assigns task
- Student completes task
- Student gets rewarded

OR

- Teacher assigns task
- Student doesn't complete task
- Student suffers consequences

Somewhere along the line, a few of my students got the idea that this is not how it works. You see, they somehow think that if I let them do whatever they like, they will reward me by doing work. Yes, that's right. Them working is now a reward for the teacher.

After a student asked me if they could go sit in a different part of the learning space and was denied this request, he actually said "Fine then, I won't do any work!" and it's not the first time something like this has happened with students in this particular group.

How on earth did they get this idea? How many teachers would have had a cajoling attitude which gave students the impression that they can get away with this? How on earth are their parents bringing them up?

I find this quite alarming.

Grr.

If your minimum standards for the behaviour of children don't include:

- Following basic laboratory safety rules
- Not talking while the teacher is talking
- Not talking during a video
- Following the SCHOOL RULES like not chewing gum

and if you don't follow through with consequences once you've threatened them, then you shouldn't be a teacher!!!!!!!

Nerdville

We're watching a video about scientific discoveries in Astronomy.

I LOVE PHYSICS SO MUCH. So much coolness!

Um. Oops.

So, my bike went in for servicing last week. I brought it in to have my front wheel aligned properly, and it ended up in hospital.

I'd somehow managed to bend both wheels (not visibly, but enough that that it was a problem) and all the bolts needed tightening as well. Apparently it was a bit wobbly...

As it turned out, the reason the back wheel was so bent was that I'd broken a spoke. I have no idea how I managed that, but there it is. I really ought to be more careful :-p

So, this has me wondering: Aanyone who cycles and reads and wants to comment, how often do you find your bike needs to have things tightened and checked and generally fixed up?

Racism

As a teacher, you need to be able to think on your feet.

This has become a rather common exchange for me:

Anyone who's been in the business knows that this kind of accusation isn't limited to skin colour, and actually doesn't depend on the child's skin colour at all. A kid could be paler than I am and still claim racism because they're black! I'm not kidding, it has happened (though not to me, personally).

The only thing you can do under these circumstances is have a retort handy. Like this one*, which actually got me high-fives from a few of the boys:

*Name changed to protect the guilty

Interpreting your child's report

With reports on their way within the next week, I thought I'd give parents a helpful guide to what their report might actually mean.

For most students, the reports are broken down into Achievements and Areas for Future Improvement.  This makes the report a bit tricky because what they achieved is often not to the best of their ability, so you may find the same thing mentioned in both sections.

I'll just run through some key phrases which parents may discover when reading through the Science comments. These prhases will be taken from both comment sections of the reports.

Billy has used references from a range of different sources
Billy used both Wikipedia AND Yahoo Answers.

Worked effectively with others
Billy did the entire project for his group.



Billy used appropriate language in his report
Billy didn't use a single swear word!

Billy has demonstrated some organisational skills
Billy always brought something to class. Occasionally it was his pet hamster.

Billy works effectively with detailed instructions from the teacher
I had to sit next to Billy for the duration of every lesson to keep him from climbing out the window.

Billy has developed a basic understanding of the concepts covered.
Billy can now say that he's heard of electricity and the word "particle".



Billy needs to ensure that all criteria have been met before submitting an assignment.
Billy needs to read the goddamned instructions or ask the flipping teacher for help if he's not sure. Getting the teacher to actually look over a draft of the assignment before it's due would be amazing.



Billy can describe concept x when given help.
Billy has a memory like a sieve.

Billy has shown a variety of interests
Billy has discovered girls.

Billy is a unique and remarkable individual
Billy is in serious need of psychiatric assessment.

I hope this helps :-)

Statistics: You're Doing it Wrong.

A lot of people don't really understand statistics, and it leads to all sorts of trouble. I get very tired of people quoting numbers and percentages that they've read in the paper while clearly not having a clue as to what they're actually talking about. Papers won't actually explain things properly either because that would make the story a whole lot less dramatic.  I'm hoping to clear some of that up here with a couple of examples of commonly misunderstood statistical talk.

1) Taking drug x increases your risk of cancer by 80%

Hearing this, a lot of people will immediately stop taking drug x, thinking that their chances of getting cancer from this stuff is now hugely amplified.

The actual fact is that it might not be. Lets assume that your probability of getting cancer at some point in your life is 1%.

80% of 1% is 0.8%. So, an increase of 80% means your probability of getting cancer is now 1.8%. Proportionally, this is significant. If your probability is already high, then you're in strife. But in real terms, if you are not already in a high risk group, you don't have all that much to worry about.

It's also why I assume some people use the term "percentage points", so that if probability has gone from 20% to 30%, it has gone up by 10 percentage points. It has also gone up by 50%.

2) How "averages" work in general

The "mean" is the biggest problem where these are concerned, and is the one most people take as what is normal. It is calculated by adding up each bit of data and then dividing your answer by how many bits there are.

When it comes to averages, it is unwise to only look at this one average. For example:

10 people are in a room. 9 of them will earn a salary of $40k this year. The 10th person is a CEO who will earn $4million. The average salary of the room is $436k per year, which is more than 10 times what most of the people in the room earn.

The data is skewed, and therefore not an accurate representation. This is why it is important to note the median (middle value) and mode (most frequent value), and to also look at your minimum and maximum data points so that you have a better idea of how the data is actually spread out.

The useful thing about the median is that it divides the population into two equal halves. So if you had people getting scores ranging from 0 to 100 and your median was 10, this means that half the people got less than 10 as their score. That's not very good...

There are also things called "quartiles". So they show you the quarters of your data. So if the lower quartile for the above info was 7, it means that a quarter of your people scored less than 7 and a quarter scored between 7 and 10. If your upper quartile is 95, then a quarter of your test subjects scored 95 or more (which is actually pretty good) and a quarter got between 10 an 95 (which is a heck of a range).

Medians and quartiles are a really good way of showing how data is spread out.

As far as simple representations go, I really like box and whisker plots. As far as representing data goes, I find them extremely useful: When you line up all the scores in order from smallest to largest, they show you the highest value, the lowest value, the middle value, and two values in between.

Snooty McSmugbox. The Box with Whsikers!

For example, let's say I have test scores for a class of 31:

Highest score: 90%

Lowest score: 10%

6 kids got exactly 30%

3 kids got exactly 34%

7 kids got 62%

13 kids got 74%

Here is the BW plot:

 Each section represents a quarter of my class. Half my kids got 62% or more, which is pretty good. More than half my kids got 50% or over (remember that the median splits the class into two equal halves), which is also not bad.

I think that they're pretty cool :-)

Old-School views

One thing that I’ve noticed in some schools is how coveted the teaching of the higher streams of maths is. It is a special post, reserved for the most experienced teachers; the ones who have worked hard and earned this particular group of young geniuses.

The rookies are the ones who get the junior students and the lower streams of senior maths. They get to struggle with teaching the kids who struggle at maths, and as such “earn their stripes”, hoping to one day prove that they, too, are worthy of teaching "the cream of the crop".

There are some problems with this:

1. New teachers are more likely to be competent mathematicians (fresh out of a maths degree; high-level calculus flowing through their synapses)
2. New teachers are less likely to be as competent teachers as their more experienced counterparts
3. The more capable students are less likely to need a competent teacher (they tend to grasp things quickly), but more more likely to need a competent mathematician (someone who can explore deeper concepts and extend their knowledge)
4. The lower streams will be more likely to need a competent teacher (someone who can interest them and explain things in a variety of ways; someone who can be creative in their methods when teaching the basics) rather than a teacher who can perform partial derivation and multivariable calculus

Having taught a lower stream as a first-year-out graduate teacher and having taught high-level mathematics as a student teacher, I think that schools have that ethic backwards. New teachers, who are already having to deal with the new world of a full-time job plus planning and marking, are then also given the classes which have behavioural problems. This raises stress levels by an order of magnitude.

On the other hand, getting through to the struggling students and having a rapport with them; getting them on-side and having them interested and happy to have you; all this is unbelievably rewarding. It’s just that not many inexperienced teachers are good enough at classroom management to be able to develop this.

Teaching the higher streams should not be seen as the “reward” for competent teaching, as competent teaching isn't necessarily a requirement for these self-motivated groups who would do well if you had a brick with a smilie face drawn on it instructing the class. 

Try improving the motivation of a child who has no academic support at home and whose parents are to busy working to afford food to help with homework, or teaching the kid who's in year 8 and only had a couple of years' worth of eductation in a language school, thus lacking all the basics the rest of your class would have. Or managing a group of kids who all hate each other and are a bunch of little Entitlement Bitches who think they're smarter than they actually are, or that they're so smart they don't need to do the work. Now that requires competent teaching and good classroom management. Particularly if half your class is made up of children like this.


Sticking a new teacher into a group like one of these, on their own with 25 difficult kids and without adequate support or regular check-ins by teachers in authority is a baptism of fire and you are just asking for trouble.


There needs to be more balance and they need to be eased into it, because teaching rounds and university are just not adequate preparation.

Why supervising teachers should also get reports on THEIR progress.

Apparently, Australia has a shortage of teachers. So much so that my university offered all my maths subjects free of any charge or debt if I did them as part of a science/teaching double degree.

Wages for beginning teachers have been increased over the past couple of years and a program called “Teach For Australia” is being introduced, which fast-tracks people who are doing well at their university degrees but are not taking a teaching degree so that they might be tempted into the profession to boost numbers.

There has never been a better time to become a teacher.

Given this “crisis”, one would think that experienced teachers who take on students teachers would want to do everything in their power to ensure that said students have the best possible experience and advice, kind of like your own personal Yoda for several weeks, guiding you and teaching you the Secret Ways of the Teacher. It creates images which are all very heartwarming and Zen. Unfortunately, this is not always so.

I know a few people who, in recent years, have had bad enough experiences with their supervising teachers to put them off teaching for a long time (if not altogether) and even I, amazing and wonderful and charming as I am, was not immune to poor treatment which resulted in a considerable drop in confidence. 

During this teaching round, I was at a reasonably well-to-do government school (that’s a big part of your problem right there; the well-to-do ones are even more prone to snobbery than a lot of private schools) in Melbourne, with reasonably good academic results (even more prone to snobbery again; I had some bad experiences in snobby government schools, can you tell?).

Many thanks to Oolon Colluphid for this one!

I had two supervising teachers, one who was getting close to retirement and another who was probably at least a decade older than he appeared. The first problem I had at this school was the issue of how many lessons to teach. The discrepancy went as follows:

University guideline: 1 lesson per day
Assumed lesson length: 50min

School lesson length: 78min
School insisted that I:  still teach 1 lesson per day


The result was that instead of teaching 500min ( or 8hrs and 20min) in total, I ended up teaching 750min (or 12hrs, 30min). This is a huge difference.

I did call the university to get their permission to teach fewer classes given the length of the period, but this had no effect on my supervisors, who also actually said they "didn't care" about the fact that I still had Science subjects running at uni which I needed to work on. It was at this point that I really should have called the university again.

Priorities. You don't can haz.

I ended up being at the school for 10 whole days, plus dropping in on an extra four (so that’s 14 days out of the 15 I had a choice in) in order to teach as many periods as my supervisors wanted me to. When I was talking to them to arrange this, I had my main supervisor (the older woman) tell me “That’s not acceptable; you’re not going to get much of a feel for the school if you’re just swanning in and out!”

Even after I counted out the 10 whole days I’d be there, she still wrote in my report that she didn’t feel I was “dedicated” to my teaching round, because I insisted on actually helping with the field research required for a group project in a university subject.

This is my Incredulous Face.

My other supervising teacher. Hmm. Ok. Reasons to be away during your student teacher's round:

1. Death of a parent
2. Death of a sibling
3. Severe illness
4. Moderate but highly contageous illness
5. Severe injury
6. Imprisonment, lawful or otherwise
7. Suprise Conscription into Military Service

Reasons not to be away during your student teacher's round:

1. You changed your mind and don't feel like it any more
2. You arranged to take your Long Service Leave across that time period
3. You arranged to be on a school camp that same week 
4. Pretty much any reason that isn't covered under the first list

This guy was first away because his mother died (fair enough), THEN away because he decided to go on camp (NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!) He saw me teach exactly three of his classes. The last class he saw me teach had to be a fortnight later, because there was just no friggin' way I could get all those lessons done in the 3 weeks.

I contacted him a week in advance, and I emailed him twice asking him to send me information on what his class would be doing so that I could prepare. He did not tell me until the morning of the class I was meant to teach. He then wrote in my report that I was disorganised. This despite the fact that I managed to do 14 days of rounds AND a whole research project... He may as well have just written my report by writing about what the weather was like AT CAMP, that's how relevant it was.

I wasn’t failed, but the mark they gave me was close. The university called me up to speak to me about this, and upon hearing about my experience they had nothing to say except that I should contact them sooner if I have this kind of trouble again.

So, student teachers out there: Do not sit back and put up with horrible treatment from your supervisors. We need you, and your university will help you if you’re being treated unfairly!

Don’t let bitter people who either have an axe to grind or just have no clue destroy your confidence, and do not let them deter you from such an important job. They don’t have the right to treat you unfairly, and you have every right to complain if they do.

Sprains, strains, and stress injuries.

As teachers, there are some things you really don’t want to discuss with your students, as there can be uncomfortable repercussions if they take this information home to their parents. These things (in my case) include:

• Alcohol
• My ADHD and the medication I take for it
• Why I’m an atheist
• How their parents should be bringing them up
• Their sex lives
• My sex life

That last one can be brought up by relatively innocent circumstances. Like a sprained wrist. The result I dread looks something like this:

What actually happened was that I twisted my hand while dropping my bag in a very unco-ordinated way.

Teachers have, in recent history, been fired for giving a “sex ed” class when they are not qualified to (the teacher in question simply answered her students when they wanted to know who the woman giving her a ride to school was; the teacher told them it was her partner). This is alarming, so one tends to want to avoid topics which are even remotely controversial.

Not every school is like this, but enough are. Ideally, the response would look kind of like this like this:

Survivor: Secondary School-Style

Field trips are fascinating things. Not just because of all the cool stuff you get to learn, but also because there is always an adventure when it comes to the students themselves. I remember an excursion to a set of botanical gardens in the city where I live, with a group of year 11 students while I was still a student teacher. It was perilous.

When we weren’t trekking along dirt paths with no sign of fresh water in sight and only our own supplies to rely on for the extent of the journey, we were trying to avoid being eaten by the BIGGEST mosquitos I’d ever seen (“Big as your arm and twice as hungry!” - as a friend of mine put it after I texted him about the situation), or rescuing Damsels from the evils of the Dreaded Bandicoot , as they scurried almost invisibly through the bushes, showing themselves only to steal chips which were carelessly dropped onto the ground.

If the students are not prone to injury and death from the local wildlife, they still have each other to be afraid of. There is only so long that an adolescent can be out in the Wild before their survival instincts kick in, and it is “Every (Wo)man for Him(her)self!”

On a trip to a historical tourist site, this came in to play during the final leg of the trip, just after the most dangerous and chaotic pass through the terrain: The Gift Shop. A female was mistaken for a giant insect (possibly the mosquitos found at the other site) and had an insect trap (involving something akin to superglue) thrown at her. I never found out whether her hair had to be amputated at the site of impact.

This instinct can also still come to the fore when the end of the journey is well and truly in sight and the students are on their way back to their campus of origin, and improvised weapons made from things like plastic bottles are occasionally fashioned. The injuries caused are minor, but the bus drivers still don’t appreciate blood on their upholstery.

Despite the best intentions of the teachers at school and no matter how structured an activity may be, one cannot compete with these basic instincts that humans have for survival. It is inevitable and should be embraced. Teachers should only attend these things when armed to the teeth.