Category: Failure

  • Additional Plot.ly v. JMP comparisons

    My learners have been using Plot.ly for a week, and have asked me a ton of questions on how to do certain things with their data. I wanted to add details to my last post on Plot.ly v. JMP and tell you the decision I made regarding the issue. All of the questions I have below…

  • Culture & Status in class Part 2

    Oh what a difference a class period makes. So earlier today on my prep I posted about the steps I was making in changing / modifying the culture of my classroom. And let’s be honest, I was proud of the conscious efforts I was making in changing the hearts and minds of the learners. And…

  • One good reason to stop grading homework

    Homework has been in discussion for a while in my circles. Is it useful? Why do we assign it? Etc. I came across one strong reason why we should really stop grading homework and start grading other activities that demonstrate learning. That reason? It is Chegg.com. I used to think Chegg was just a place…

  • This is how democracy ends–My thoughts & resolution

    I started out to write a post about my frustrations and fears last week, and deleted it over and over again. I just couldn’t get what I wanted to say correctly on the screen, nor could I collect the facts and links that led me to the conclusions I was making. I had previously said,…

  • Can’t, Won’t, Failures and Recovery

    I have been thinking and struggling with these ideas for a week now. I read Dave’s post summarizing the study about repeating Algebra 1 and the lack of success in CA, and I really felt I needed to dive deeper in this topic. So I read many link and downloaded almost every article that was…

  • CCSS and failure to communicate

    In which the CCSS website makes changes to the notation of the standards without really communicating it. So today I am working on the Exeter Project, aligning questions to the CCSS, and one of the persons I am working with is using this notation for the standards that confuses me greatly. After some research, I…

  • A tale of two cousins

    It was the best of conversations, it was the worst of conversations, but in the end, it was an educational conversation for my cousins and I. Okay, enough with the Dickens reference. During the summer I take a little motorcycle trip. Okay, not so little. I do around 2500 miles from Nevada to Montana and…

  • Doonesbury blew my mind yesterday

    I admit it, I read the funny pages first thing on Sunday morning. Okay, maybe I should first admit that I have a daily subscription to the newspaper and read it cover to cover every day. But, on Sundays, I read the comics first. Yesterday’s Doonesbury was an instant classic in my mind, worthy of…

  • When did teachers become the enemy?

    I was having a conversation the other day with a recent graduate of my high school. This person was shocked at how bad education is, because they are in college and doing well. All the things they hear in the media was creating a huge cloud over their head because they had a great high…

  • A year off–Why and what I learned

    What a difference a year makes. Or not. No, it did make a difference. A year ago, I was in the middle of my 3rd year of teaching. Do you remember your third year? If it sucked, because you felt like an utter failure at every single lesson, every single exam, and everything else you…