Tag: teaching math

Burn the whole technology to the ground

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching2 Comments

It’s been a few days since I’ve given you any kind of proper post, so let’s see what I can scrape out of my brain tonight.

This’ll do: I wanted something a little different from usual for today’s lesson, as we’ve been working on solving equations for weeks and I’m tired of Google forms and worksheets and their textbook is still pitching too high for them to hit. I found an assignment I liked in my partner teacher’s class and imported it over to mine; basically a Who Wants to be a Millionaire? type game centered around the right kind of math. I played through about half of it to make sure it fit what I needed it to do and called it good.

I tell my first hour they’re my guinea pigs a lot of the time; they’re my brightest of my non-Algebra groups and they’ll both notice and let me know (neither of these things are guaranteed) if something is wrong with an assignment. And kids quickly start coming to me with bewildered looks on their faces. “Isn’t the answer to this a decimal?” and other similar questions.

Shit. Naturally none of the mistakes in the assignment were in the part I looked at. They’re all in the back half. And it turns out that three of the questions out of, like, fifteen have wrong answers. And this game is multiple choice and it makes you start over if you’re wrong. I find myself writing things like THE ANSWER TO THE $32,000 QUESTION IS D, JUST TRUST ME on the board.

Give yourself a pat on the back if you have already figured out that I eventually determined that all of the questions on the assignment were created by AI, which apparently can’t even do eighth grade math right. It took a few minutes but I was able to figure out how the assignment was created and pulled together a new one, and four of the questions on that were initially wrong, but this time I knew to look for it and could edit them. I managed to get everything fixed before my next class started, but I won’t be using this service again.

There was a disclaimer that “questions should be reviewed for accuracy” at the bottom of the screen, of course.

Absolutely Goddamned ridiculous that these people would rather rely on AI that they know is fucking up than create a bloody question bank. Idiots.

Day 26

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Guess what my 8th graders are doing in Math tomorrow?

This hasn’t been a bad week, all told– although there was Some Shit going on today that I’m probably going to have to talk about eventually– but, man, there was a palpable loss of enthusiasm from the kids, which you can really see in the last five assignments. Today’s assignment was on paper and I haven’t entered it yet– I think most of them turned it in, but who knows.

Anyway, tomorrow is gonna have to be the first come-to-Jesus meeting of the year. I’m so looking forward to it.

EDIT: Just for the hell of it, I emailed all my parents the above image. Tomorrow’s gonna be a blast.

It’s gonna be fine it’s gonna be fine it’s gonna be fine it’s

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching4 Comments

State math testing tomorrow and Wednesday, and then I’m … well, it’s middle school, so never, ever stress-free, but at least a lot less stressed than I am right now. I sat down during our team meeting with the other 8th grade Math teacher and once we went through everything we knew we had to do already for the rest of the year I realized I only really have like eight more assignments to plan.

I told them today that I was going to keep things super simple in class for the next couple of days, and that tomorrow’s assignment in particular was going to be extremely short. Like, five problems short. I have entertained myself by making those five problems insanely complicated,(*) and I’m going to put the answers on the board and not mention it to anyone. We’ll see how many of them notice! I’m going to guess roughly a quarter do not.

(*) Insanely complicated and yet within the skill set of anyone who has been actually paying attention. So, f’rex:

I may throw some extra credit at anyone who actually solves them instead of just circling the right answers. We’ll see.

Not a good sign

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

January 2025 has been a long year, and I am way too tired for Sunday night right now, especially given that I was literally in bed by 8:00 last night and made it eleven hours before I even woke up to pee. I didn’t actually get out of bed until 9:30 or so, and other than taking the Christmas tree down, doing some reading– I am going to finish Wind & Truth tomorrow– and writing an assignment for tomorrow, I really haven’t done much. This image is prominent in tomorrow’s assignment:

This is going to be one of those annoying assignments that conceptually isn’t actually that difficult– you have two numbers in your coordinates, and you have to manipulate them in one of three ways to get your second set of coordinates, and those manipulations only involve making them their opposites or possibly putting them in reverse order– but it’s gonna break some brains anyway, because the sensible way to do this is to write down the coordinates of a point, look at the rule, then rewrite the new point, but my kids don’t want to write anything at all ever, and they’re going to try to remember the coordinates instead, and that’s … not gonna work.

Then I’m gonna get a chorus of “this is too hard!” and have to resist the urge to reply with “no, you’re just too lazy to do it right,” which is true, but … unhelpful. Also, if I’m tired, I’m gonna start making mistakes myself. So yay.

I hate teaching this unit. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that or not? But I hate transformations. I really do. I think Pythagoras is next, and that’s a little bit more fun.

Maybe I’ll go to bed early again tonight.