In which I am not helpful

On December 11, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, TeachingLeave a comment

Just had a student from last year text me asking if I could help him with trigonometry, which doesn’t make any Goddamn sense to me because freshmen who just took Algebra 1 shouldn’t be looking at trig yet, and also because holy shit have I forgotten everything I ever knew about trigonometry. I have a hazy memory of the sohcahtoa mnemonic but only the vaguest idea of what it actually means, and I absolutely cannot give you even the sloppiest description of what is going on in that graph above.

The interesting thing about me ending up as a math teacher is that I took literally no math at all in college– my SAT scores exempted me from the classes everyone had to take and then none of my majors required any additional math– and I was not, despite those test scores, especially good at math in high school either. I tell my Algebra kids every year that when I was in high school I got a D in the class that I’m teaching them now. I could probably muddle my way through teaching Geometry or (maybe) Algebra II by staying a couple of weeks ahead of the kids; I enjoyed Geometry in high school quite a lot and I figure if I can handle teaching Algebra I, I can handle teaching Algebra II. But trig is gone, and calculus was never there to begin with; the second I had a college acceptance letter in my hand I dropped the class and never looked back.

Or, at least, didn’t look back for years. I am currently sorta looking back, and have actually spent some time over the last few days musing over the idea of taking a couple of college math classes to try and regain trig and calculus so that I can get licensure to teach high school. I don’t really know if I actually want high school licensure after 20 years of teaching middle school, but I’ve been thinking about it. One thing for sure, though; I sure as hell can’t do it now.

In which I remember your life better than you do

On May 2, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching5 Comments

I haven’t done an education post in a good long while; let’s see if I’ve still got the chops. Seen this lately? It’s making the rounds on DevilBook:

I succumbed to my baser urges and replied to it on one person’s page, and let me make it clear that I’m not holding her responsible for this, as the notion “Americans should be better educated” is one that I’m gonna hold to and agree with pretty much no matter what the circumstances. However, what I’m not gonna be okay with is the idea that most of these concepts (and others like them; there are several variants of this little meme picture) aren’t taught in school.

They are. In damn near every high school in America and most of the middle schools too. I have personally taught about at least half of these things. You just didn’t pay attention, because you were a dumbass kid and this was adult stuff and it was boring. The problem is no one ever writes a meme post about “Shit I should have paid better attention to in school.” It’s always the teachers’ fault.

You took an econ class in high school, right? It’s mandatory in Indiana. That class covered accounting, money management, taxes, and credit all by its damn self. I covered all of those things, excepting only “good credit,” with my middle school classes in a required class you might be familiar with; it was called math.

Nutrition? I bet you took a Health class at some point. Required in Indiana in both middle and high school. Job and careers? I actually taught a class called Careers to middle school kids. Pretty sure something similar exists in high school too. Self-defense, okay, I’ll give you that one, but the rest of them? Give me a damn break. If you weren’t paying attention, I don’t even blame you, because expecting little kids to be intimately curious about shit that won’t affect their lives for ten or fifteen years is a little unreasonable, but the idea that the subjects were never covered is nonsense. They were mandatory. You just blew them off. And that’s on you.

A moment, then, on the last part, about being “forced” to be “fluent” in at least one other language. I am actually pro-foreign language education. I just think that goddamn near everyone in America should be taking Spanish. A solid majority of American citizens, especially anyone who works in a job facing the public, could do with, if not fluency, at least a passable working knowledge of Spanish, enough to get through a basic conversation. I’ve had some furniture sales that were conducted damn near entirely in Spanish and I’m not remotely fluent. But I can get by if I need to. That level.

The notion that Americans, as a whole, require something called “fluency” in any language other than English is fucking ridiculous, though. Is it good? Sure. Is it necessary? Crazy talk. Go ahead, bring up Europe. Europe has 300 languages because when Europe was growing up you were going to be born, live, and die within fifteen miles or so of the same goddamn spot and it’s easy for languages to bifurcate and split during a couple of millennia of that type of social evolution. Africa, Asia, same thing.

America? America used to have lots of languages until the white folk moved in and killed everybody who spoke them. Now? English, party of 350 million. If I’m in Germany, I can get in my car and drive for eight hours and I’ll for damn sure be somewhere where people speak a language other than German. If I’m in America and drive for eight hours I may not even be out of my state. Are there localized pockets of people who speak other languages than English and Spanish? Sure, tons of ’em, there’s lots of Poles and Pennsylvania Dutch around here, for example. Are there jobs where knowing another language is useful? Sure. Does every American need to “be fluent” in a foreign language? Come the hell on.

Apropos of nothing, I just looked up and saw this from the window next to my desk:

The walls aren’t that yellow, but I haven’t altered the color balance in this picture at all. In the last ten minutes the temperature has dropped from ninety to sixty, rain has started, and apparently outdoors is in black and white now.

Weird.

In which I am ignorant: also, blogwanking

On December 29, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Politics, Teaching7 Comments

As of today I’m halfway through Winter Break. Thus far I’m not– at least as far as I know– making myself or anyone else crazy, which is a good thing, because I’m bad at vacations. On the other hand, other than the big renovation project, you may have noticed that I’m kiiiinda starting to run low on viable interesting blog topics since all I’m doing with my life lately is lazing about my house with a book in my hand and occasionally whacking something with a hammer or a saw. I went to work yesterday; it was the first time I’d left the house for longer than two minutes since Christmas.

So, uh, let’s talk about… geography? Sure.

I am, as I’ve already discussed this week, a data nerd. I’m a math teacher in the real world, remember, and apparently I come by that shit honestly. One of the unexpected fun bonuses of running a blog is that it provides me with a never-ending sea of data to play with: how many hits did I get today? Followers? Likes? What’s the ratio of unique visitors to page views today? Have I set any records lately? I posted a comment on that site, it brought me over a dozen visitors!

Stuff, in other words, that is entirely meaningless in any real-world fashion but is fun for me to play with in my head. While I wouldn’t mind more detail, WordPress does a decent job of giving me my site statistics in a nicely visual, manipulable way and I spend more time than I probably should each day staring at my stats.

Way more time, if I’m being honest. Way, way more time.

I said I was a nerd; shuddup.

That said, looky here:

Anybody with a WordPress blog reading this has seen this map already; it’s how WordPress shows you where your traffic is coming from. I’m fascinated by this, and days where I get a new country (six hits from Guernsey today! Finally picked up Thailand yesterday!) never fail to give me a little thrill in my jibbly parts. WordPress is kinda weird about how they determine what is a country or not. For example, I have no hits from China, which does not surprise me given China’s policy on censoring the internet. I do, however, have a number of hits from Taiwan and Hong Kong, which are both part of China, so apparently WordPress is distinguishing the mainland from former territories, or something; I’m not sure. Similarly, to use today’s example, from looking at Wikipedia I get the impression that no one from Guernsey would assert that Guernsey is its own country– yet there it is in my “countries” list.

Some interesting (to me) facts about my traffic:

The biggest countries are entirely unsurprising: the United States, followed by the other three English-speaking democracies: the UK, Canada, and Australia. Fourth and fifth place are Norway and Switzerland.
I have no traffic whatsoever from anywhere in Central America. Not one damn country.
Most of Europe is represented except for some bits of Eastern Europe, mostly former Soviet republics and, annoyingly, Finland. I don’t know why not having a hit from Finland annoys me except for the fact that Sweden and Norway are so well represented. I know Finland was Soviet-dominated to a degree that Norway and Sweden never were, and all of the rest of the European countries I’m missing are former Soviet Union or at least Soviet bloc countries; that might have something to do with it but I’m not sure what.
Way more African countries are represented than I might have expected: Sudan, for instance, which is probably the single most surprising country I’ve gotten traffic from. Ethiopia, also.
Macedonia shows up as “Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic.” Its official name according to the UN is “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.” I’m sure that there’s some history behind that that I’m currently ignorant of (mental note: research) but it seems rrrreeeallly weird. That said I may start a movement to rename the US as The Former British and French and Spanish Colony and Before That Indigenous Peoples-Occupied Land of the United States of America. Sounds more fun that way.
I really want someone from Greenland to visit my blog, because Greenland is so damn big. 🙂

One thing that all this has brought to mind is that my geography isn’t what it used to be. I had a teacher in seventh grade who insisted that every kid who passed his class memorize the globe. Which I did, happily. The problem is that that means my geography froze in about 1988– and the Soviet Union didn’t fall apart until 1991. My Eastern Europe and Asia geography is therefore not nearly as good as I want it to be.

Don’t get me wrong: the classical stereotype of Americans ignorant about geography is that they “can’t find XXX on a map.” So long as we’re talking about countries, at least, there’s no place on Earth I can’t find on a map within a few seconds, and I suspect I’d do pretty damn well with capitals and major cities even if I hadn’t heard of them beforehand; I know enough about what languages sound like to be able to pin most places down to a region quickly and after that it won’t take long. What I’m talking about is handing me a blank map and asking me to fill it in. I’m not as good at that as I want to be, and I’ve been reminded of it enough lately (Slovenia! Latvia! Which ones are those, again?) that I need to fix it.

That’ll give me something to do over the next week or so while I’m not pounding on things, right?