(Opening up way too many files is one of the behaviors I may be attempting to correct in the New Year. see: Book Club)
My point is: I am supposed to be writing a chapter on pigs.
Which means my Next Action is finding all my stuff about pigs, and that means my First Next Action is drilling down through the open documents on my computer screen to find all my stuff on pigs.
That's what I was doing when I found this passage in a 2006 Brookings report:
Although the 2006 edition of the CWI [Child and Youth Well-Being Index] indicates that overall well-being increased somewhat in 2005, once again children’s performance in the education domain was flat. This outcome for 2005 continues a trend that has now lasted for three decades. The lack of significant improvement in educational achievement is especially remarkable because national, state, and local policy has focused on improved educational performance almost continuously since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The nation has been alerted to achievement problems by a host of national reports, and per-pupil spending has more than doubled since 1970. Moreover, schools have undergone wave after wave of educational reform. Yet the student achievement flatline persists. To make matters worse, the gap in performance between poor and minority students on the one hand and middle class students on the other, has narrowed only slightly and is still very large.
Sauve qui peut.
i He was sleeping on the floor because the room was too small to hold a desk and a bed at the same time.
ii An example of the difficulty of "breaking set." It took months for us to figure out that C. should keep the large-ish bedroom the two of them had shared, Andrew should move into my tiny office (I think -- don't know -- autistic kids sometimes fair better in smaller spaces), and I should set up shop downstairs in the dining room. Of course once we'd made the cognitive shift from "dining room" to "home office," the solution seemed obvious.
Every man for himself, indeed.
ReplyDeleteThat is stunningly sobering.
*Now, get back to those pigs!
I've flailed around with several solutions. What is working for me currently is an info-managment system called DevonThink. It's Mac-specific, but it has really helped me tame the piles, and find pdfs I had a vague memory of reading.
ReplyDeleteIn 2008, let us start a conversation about k-2 indicators of future achievement.
5-6th grade is too late.
High school is way too late.
I've flailed around with several solutions. What is working for me currently is an info-managment system called DevonThink. It's Mac-specific, but it has really helped me tame the piles, and find pdfs I had a vague memory of reading.
ReplyDeleteI'll look that up --
Hey, Liz -- why don't you join the blog and write posts - or cross-post from your blog? (I'll see if I have your email.)
palisdesk - if you're around - do you want to join the blog & write posts??
ReplyDeleteAlso pissed off teacher & Allison
I think I can probably find p-o-t's email, but I don't have Allison's.
Anyone else??
In 2008, let us start a conversation about k-2 indicators of future achievement.
ReplyDeletegreat idea
concerned
ReplyDeleteI know!
I love that paragraph!
It's almost a parody of itself....it's the kind of thing that, if I wrote it, I'd have to say to myself: time to get into another line of work.
(just kidding)
palisdesk - if you're around - do you want to join the blog & write posts??
ReplyDeleteI did join (I think! Blogger doesn't want me signing in to leave replies) but am more adept with the witty riposte than with generating anything of substance to begin with. Have never used Blogger and am wary of HTML (figured out how to embed links, though! Hah!)..
More to the point, I am not a real Math Person. I looked at some of those videos you suggested (cute young man, doing a very clear explication of how to write an equation to find the percent of a number). Now I see why we have to teach this to students but all I could think was, Who would do it that way? I always use a cheater's short-cut (in everyday life anyhow). Let's say I have to figure 16% of 171.55. I figure, 1% is 1.72, so 10 % is 17.2, and 6% would be 10.2, added to 17 is 27.4. Can do that in head before cashier gets calculator out (I'm not good at mental math but numbers up to four digits are OK).
I know I never learned that in school. I think my brother showed me. I've taught students how to do it though. Great for calculating sales tax plus tip.
I did whip up something on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation subsequent to your post on Don't Shoot The Dog. I have no particular behavioral credentials though so am not sure it's worth sharing.
Whoever mentioned school choice, I say hear hear -- I would love to have the choice to teach somewhere I didn't have to be an undercover instructor. Have to be very "creative" to report and submit plans etc. with the appropriate fuzzy lingo when I am actually using DI or other explicit instructional techniques. Would jump at the chance to go to a school where one didn't have to hide this.
La lutte continue.
50 documents? Maybe we're kindred spirits. I reached my record yesterday -- I had 83 Firefox tabs out in one window. And that's not counting the other windows.
ReplyDeletepalisdesk - you have to reply to an invitation in order to write posts.
ReplyDeletelrg - you, too! (I can probably get an email for you from your blog - right?
Off the top of my head I need email addresses for:
* Allison
* pissed off teacher (can probably find on her blog, but haven't looked)
* palisdesk
* Liz D (probably on her blog)
* lrg
You can just send me an email if you like; then I can send a Google invitation.
cijohn@verizon.net
I did whip up something on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation subsequent to your post on Don't Shoot The Dog. I have no particular behavioral credentials though so am not sure it's worth sharing.
ReplyDeleteI believe I speak for all when I say we are DESPERATE to read this.
I know the blog is called "Kitchen Table Math," but we've expanded.
We should probably be calling it Kitchen Table Remediate Your Local Public School at this point.
I would love to have the choice to teach somewhere I didn't have to be an undercover instructor.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
You know these teachers are everywhere, all of them undercover at this point.
I continually fantasize my district setting up an "alternative school" using direct instruction and/or precision teaching.
You wouldn't force this on the teachers; you'd ask for volunteers -- and you'd get them (I believe - unless the hiring process, which is now controlled by the superintendent not by building principals).
The authoritarianism of ed-school constructivists drives me nuts.
ReplyDeleteI'm not too crazy about the implicit authoritarianism of most of our policy wonks, either.
Maybe we're kindred spirits.
ReplyDeleteThat goes without saying.
Sauve qui peut -- I didn't know that is typically translated as "Every man for himself" when I used it (Ed told me; then Concerned translated).
ReplyDeleteI read the words for the first time in Heinlein's Stargate Troopers the other night; I translated it more literally as "Save yourselves, those who can" -- and that's the sense in which I used it here.
I was going for a much more pathetic, the Battle Is Lost and Death is Near kind of thing.
Let's say I have to figure 16% of 171.55. I figure, 1% is 1.72, so 10 % is 17.2, and 6% would be 10.2, added to 17 is 27.4.
ReplyDeleteMY OPINION IS: it's essential that kids be taught to do this.
I'm pretty sure there's some decent research on mental math being important to teaching arithmetic (Barry would probably know)...and both Saxon & Singapore make extensive use of mental math.
Ed and I are now taking every opportunity to point out this kind of mental shortcut to C.
I assume it develops "number sense," but I still don't really know what number sense is.
ReplyDeleteWriting the chapter on cattle I learned that cowboys have "cow sense." That's what they call it.
ReplyDeleteAlso: a cowboy can have cow sense yet not be a good stockperson (i.e. not be good at managing or herding cattle).
In practice this means that the cowboy knows cattle well enough to anticipate what bad behavior the herd is going to exhibit next, but he doesn't know what to do about it.
I wonder if this kind of thing leads to downward spirals in schools?
Our middle school is run like a prison, and my sense of this is that it's grown worse over time. I suspect that a behavior analyst would identify a downward spiral or perhaps more than one downward spiral.
I'd bet money there's been a downward spiral sparked by all the group punishments. Group punish the kids; kids feel unjustly attacked; kids react; more group punishment ensues; etc.
(news flash: C. was group-punished last week for a group crime committed when he was not at school. This new group punishment was an extra-hard pop quiz given as a punishment for the class misbehaving with a sub. C. thinks he probably failed it. So: not only has he been group-punished for something he couldn't possibly have done, this will become part of his Permanent Record. Better still, the grade for this course will be recorded on his high school transcript. yay!!! this is what we pay the big bucks for!!)
This is another brand-new, newly tenured teacher, btw.
Back on topic: the middle school is run like a prison -- or, rather, like an urban school that is run like a prison. The principal came here from an urban school and has systematically imported all of the no doubt highly effective techniques he used to control disadvantaged children to the advantaged youth of Irvington. The school now has guards (who are not called guards but "support staff") posted at doors refusing entry to students who need extra help but forgot their pass -- and they have this because the Westchester Bomb Squad has advised them to "limit entry" to the school. Yes, we're spending $22,000 per student and the Westchester Bomb Squad is setting school policy on extra help.
At times they've posted 2 guards at the cafeteria door to keep students from leaving during the lunch hour. (Those people aren't called guards, either. At the middle school, a spade is never a spade.)
I happened to be in the building on the last day of classes before Christmas break. When the bell rang all hell broke loose & one of the counselors said, "Prison break!"
Perhaps the staff has "middle-school sense" without the sound middle school management skills they'd need to head off the next stampede.
You're right.
ReplyDeleteThe spirit of Sauve qui peut is not perfectly captured in the equivalent English idiom. There is an element of helplessness implied in the French that is clearly missing in English.
The Spanish equivalent is dead on:
Sálvese quien pueda
In contrast, "Every man for himself" implies that every man has hope if he/she takes some type of action.
A more fitting, albeit much longer translation than the English idiom would be "If you have the means to save yourself, you really should do so."
This implies, of course, that some may NOT have the means to save themselves.
As it applies to our schools, this is probably most accurate.
"If you have the means to save yourself, you really should do so."
ReplyDeleteI love it!
Heinlein's use of Sauve qui peut is quite shocking.
The fighting takes place on another planet & the soldiers are "dropped" in small coffin-like capsules to the surface. Their space ships can't hover over the surface loading and unloading personnel.
To return to their ship the soldiers must rendezvous within a brief and precise time frame. If you miss it you can't board.
In the scene in which "Sauve qui peut" is used, the reader (and the soldier who receives the message) knows that the battle has been lost but does not know how badly. (The soldiers are widely separated from each other thanks to their "bounce" suits.) "Sauve qui peut" tells the soldiers that they must rendezvous now, but it also tells them that their unit has suffered a terrible defeat, that many or most of their mates are dead or dying. The mission is no longer to defeat the enemy but to get out alive if they can.
Of course, I don't know whether Heinlein assumed that the reader would make the correct interpretation (i.e. the colloquial "Every man for himself" interpretation.) In that case the scene reads differently.
In any case, the character's response is to try to bring his wounded commander with him and the man has been decapitated, he leaves the body behind.
So....this is what I had in mind....
Not the idea of every man for himself, but the idea that there will be few survivors. There's no one left to rescue.
(!)
.............
Why is Sauve qui peut always translated as "Every man for himself"? Do you know?
Ed instantly translated it that way but couldn't remember the origin.
and, btw, I DID mean it as a joke!
ReplyDeleteinteresting
ReplyDeleteI just found this:
sauve qui peut
'(let him) save (himself) who can'; every man for himself; rout.
The scene is a rout.
In the novel, "sauve qui peut" tells the soldiers that they are in a rout.
This is funny:
ReplyDeletesauve qui peut