But sometimes you see something that simply must be shared…

The project on which I’m currently working took me to the website of a private educational company called “Joy of Learning.”  This is the photo collage from their main page.  If that middle picture doesn’t scream “joy of learning” then I don’t know what does! 

If this is joy, I don't want to see despair!

You can view and/or join the discussion here:

 http://messageboard.rainsberger.ca/topic/162696/

While the university system isn’t perfect, it needs to be protected from the influence of the secondary school system, if only because the secondary school’s concerns are not the university’s concerns.

University students, for the most part, have reached the age of majority. Even those that have not have at least surpassed the requirements for compulsory attendance in school. As different as a Gr. 12 math class is from a Gr.9 math class, where students are still compelled to attend, the difference between a Gr. 12 math class and a university math class is greater still. The classes are held with different expectations: nothing short of an A is acceptable to a university applicant, but once in university, Bs and even Cs can look pretty good.

The primary career activity of most professors is research, not teaching. The landscape is changing somewhat with the increase in part-time or contract faculty who must sometimes scramble to pick up classes to earn a living, but for the most part, past achievement and future innovation in one’s field are characteristics of university professors, not high school teachers.

Elementary and secondary school attendance are locally based whereas one has their choice of any university. This may sound like a trivial distinction, but I know a thing or two about lazy computer programmers. Tell me that your local high school does NOT auto-fill the province field with “Ontario” in their database of student addresses. I don’t want to think about the added cost to update student records with a country field.

OK, so I’ve given some sound and one “I just plain don’t trust them” reasons for keeping the two entities separate. But, in all seriousness, the goals of the institutions are just too different to be effectively melded together. One hinges on tight provincial control of curriculum, attendance and pedagogy, attempting to provide (whether they want it or not) the same thing to students who are in no position to refuse. The other prides itself (at least historically) on academic freedom and discovery while offering a variety of paths (some would claim too many paths) ranging from academic to professional, general to hyperspecialized.

I just can’t see much common ground between the two sets of teachers, and yet, the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation (union) has been finding its way into the university system.

Now, those much more cynical than I would argue that all unions do today anyway is demand salary increases. So, why wouldn’t university staff want to hitch its wagon to a large, provincial union?

But, if we go with the assumption that being part of a union means having the same interests at heart, then why on earth would university staff want to join a high school union? So they can be forced to strike when the next provincial government makes radical changes to the high school education system again? So that they can get caught up in issues that don’t concern them, forced to feign interest in topics surrounding P.D. (or P.A.) days, teacher licensing, and the Gr. 10 literacy test?

That’s why I was shocked to read a short blurb stating that the University of Waterloo had voted at the end of the month on this very issue. As far as I can tell, the results are not yet in. Apparently, there are disputes over whether the OSSTF had enough consent of the membership to even hold the vote. Furthermore, several votes were “segregated” at the polling station because there was a question as to whether certain voters fell into the appropriate job categories to vote.

As shocked as I was to discover that this vote had been held, when I dug around for more information, I was even more surprised to learn that “upwards of 1,400 or 2.3 per cent of their total membership belongs to the university community with members from the universities of Brock, Ottawa and Algoma.”

I just don’t get it. I’m thinking that my first rule of thumb would likely be, “If the organization name doesn’t represent me, maybe the organization is not for me.”

But then again, for how many years was I a member of the “Ontario Federation of Teaching Parents” when, as I’ve made very clear in the past, I’m not a parent? But in that case, I had a specific goal in mind that only the homeschooling community was actively working towards: breaking down the barriers of university entrance for students without a high school diploma.

At the time, every seedy tutoring company located over a bakery in a strip mall was applying for government accreditation so they could issue high school credits and cash in on the “credit shopping” craze. I wanted to go in the other direction. If students didn’t need a high school diploma for university entrance, then they didn’t have to fall victim to the whims of educational and pedagogical fads nor get sucked into the grade inflation race caused by easy access of marks for sale. They could “radically” choose a their own path (which ironically, was often more traditional than the school system itself!) and prepare themselves for university however they saw fit. This was my vision, and if I had to align myself with “strange bedfellows” to realize it, then so be it!

So, if we go with the assumption that the university staff is getting something out of the deal, or that some goal is being achieved . . . what is it? Are the universities concerned about the underprepared first year class and want to become more involved in what goes on at the secondary level? Do the universities want to show support for their secondary school counterparts, whom they think have a “tougher” job than they do? Do university profs want easier access to high school teaching jobs as an option, and think this might be a way around teacher certification?

I honestly don’t know what the arguments in favour of this alliance are. (In a cursory reading of a few websites, I’ve heard only the opposition speak.) If people vote in favour of it, there must be something in it for them. I’m all for people improving their own situation, I just hope this isn’t the beginning of the end of the separation of secondary and post-secondary.

I was a graduating senior during the York strike of ’97 where classes were pretty much canceled in February and never resumed. I was sympathetic to my professors, who could clearly articulate and stood behind the reasons for the strike. Fortunately I didn’t lose any credits, nor was I asked to “come back next year” to write any final exams (on my own dime) as happened to several others.

If my graduating year had been disrupted because my prof’s hands were forced by a striking OSSTF, I’m not sure I would have been so sympathetic.

I came home to a small backlog of local newspapers, and have just finished writing a letter to the editor I thought I’d share with you.

The “offending” article concerned a local school who had discovered, a few days into hiring a new replacement teacher over the semester break, that the teacher had given a false certification number and was not in fact registered as a certified teacher.

Fine. I understand laws, regulations and such. And, contrary to most people’s opinions, I’m actually a pretty big stickler for them. (I simply believe in having as few as possible.)

But, the principal’s statement to the paper really irked me:

“So, it was kind of comical, but it’s serious all at the same time, because this person was in no way, shape or form, any kind of a teacher.”

I was going to add emphasis, but I don’t think my readership requires me to point out why I’m so disturbed.

Not that I expect this to be published in my local little paper, since I’m sure it’s not a community hot button issue, but this is what I was compelled to write:

re: Uncertified teacher discovered working at Ebb and Flow School

While I appreciate the unfortunate situation Principal Paul Monchka found himself in when he realized he’d hired a teacher under false pretenses, his statement, “. . . this person was in no way shape or form any kind of a teacher, ” clearly displays one of the serious flaws of our education system.

I suspect the tutors, piano teachers and driving instructors of this country (just to name a few) might take issue with that statement, not to mention the homeschooling community.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fraudulent to claim certifications you clearly don’t have. Unfortunately, our school systems fail to recognize that our community has many “teachers” and reinforces the misguided notion that failing schools are the only sources of a meaningful education. We view “drop outs” as problems, instead of recognizing that some students simply need a different environment in which to thrive and develop their potential.

It is worth noting that in Ontario, teachers need not be certified in order to teach in private schools. This allows alternative options to flourish and attempts to meet a wider set of student needs.

Before moving to Dauphin this summer, I had 18 years of experience as mostly a high school/university math tutor (and owner of a successful tutoring business) in Toronto, but also as the co-founder/director of a private high school, as a guidance counselor and as a classroom teacher. I have no certification, but if you ask the thousands of students and families whose lives I touched, I’m pretty sure they will say I am in SOME “way shape or form” a “kind of a teacher.”

The latest brainchild to come out of post-secondary education circles (in the US) is a regulation that would limit the number of university courses a student is allowed to drop during their degree.

Let’s put aside for a moment my aversion to anyone telling you what you can or cannot choose to study, especially when you’ve already paid for it in the first place.

As the article points out, this becomes a logistical nightmare: there’s suddenly a whack of more information to keep track of, and they expect that this information will follow you from school to school.

Dropping courses has been the staple of academic advising for as long as I can remember. Not sure whether you can handle a full 5 courses? Sign up for them, and after the first month if it’s too much, drop one and pick it up over the summer. Lost a few weeks due to personal circumstances? Write off the semester (if you have to) and start fresh next term.

There are already deterrents in place for dropping courses like they’re going out of style, your transcript, for one. Academic probation is another.

Anyone who makes a career out of dropping classes isn’t going to be “scared straight” by this new regulation. But, the policy may just mess up the academic lives of those in need of flexibility.

Original article from the Dallas News: College officials say law capping dropped classes may hurt students

So many people didn’t know that below zero, larger numbers are lower and thus colder, that the lottery had to withdraw the game!

To quote one of the “victims”:

On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn’t.

I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher – not lower – than -8 but I’m not having it.

Of course, much of the dispute was over the use of the word “lower” and one would hope that using the word “colder” wouldn’t have caused such a problem. This just shows that even when our minds know the application of a mathematical concept, for example that -10 degrees is colder than -8 degrees, we may still get the math wrong. This is why so many people think “word problems” are difficult: because sometimes the math we instinctively use in everyday life doesn’t register in our brains as being math.

Other applications of integers you can work into your math teaching at home:

• ALTITUDE: above/below sea level; going up vs. going down
• MONEY: balancing a chequebook; making a profit vs. losing money
• SPORTS: hockey players’ plus/minus ratings

Here’s a cute website with some online integer games and challenges. And, my booklet explaining operations with integers is freely available from my Teachers Pay Teachers website.

A few students have checked in with me about how their school years have started. It’s stories like these that make me grateful that I no longer have a vested interest in how teachers are teaching (or not teaching, as the case may be) my students:

Sarah, would you like to know how to mke the inverse of a parabola?? We take our paper, flip it over, turn it around and trace it! I turned to my friend and was like is this a sick joke? (Actual MSN transcript, edited only to make it a single paragraph.)

Now, some of you will have a mini-heart attack, although likely only if you’re a math tutor. The rest of you probably won’t get what’s going on here, so let me attempt to summarize in a non-mathy way. (You’re lucky, my first instinct was to explain the math. You can thank me later.)

Non-math summary: This student is in Gr. 12. This student is learning one of those things that most people only use when “building bridges.” This student is learning barebones tricks based on pattern recognition for putting something on the page that a teacher can mark as being correct without needing to understand any of the math behind it. And we’re wondering why bridges are collapsing all over the place?

To compare, I can teach you “calculus” in the same way right now, in about 12 seconds. Ready?

The derivative of 8x is 8. The derivative of 24x is 24. The derivative of -123x is -123. The derivative of 67x is 67. So, what’s the derivative of 17x? Not a trick question. It is in fact 17. Congratulations. I just taught you calculus. I can give you a test right now to prove that you know calculus and to prove to the Ministry of Education that I’ve taught calculus. You may think I’m kidding, but this is what passes for teaching in more classrooms than anyone wants to admit.

This is just another reason why we live here now.