Category: Block 3/4

Exploring Resilience, get a collapsible umbrella.

If you think “I won’t need it” then you might be making a terrible mistake.

In my Block 4 we had a field trip to the Exploration Place which was nice even though there was a worse surprise in store for me.

The different exhibits that were there were wonderful as always. The sturgeon were still there, having been in that same spot for a large chunk of my life since I’ve seen them.

At the end we had a talking circle in the only place that had the reasonable space, outside. We got 1/3 of the way through everyone but unfortunately the rain that was in the forecast ended up arriving. Lightly, barely a kiss of mist. We decided to continue on. After all, how bad could it get. The answer is Yes.

The rain got much heavier by the time we were 4/5ths through so when we finished most of us were soaked. I rued the fact that I parked on the other side of the park, more so that my umbrella was wonderfully dry in the back seat.

I ended up noisily sick for the next four days. This was a big reminder that I should engage in self-care. If you do all your work in half the week and get sick for the other half it is comparable to more generally work with the others. Burning the candle at both ends and burning out is functional for a time, but probably doesn’t work on the medium to long term.

We are hoping to experience the teaching life for the rest of our working lives, or adjacent positions. Because of it we need some balance, so I will try to understand how to

Have some fun while doing what you need to:

If you have fun working you won’t work a day in your life. False. Work will remain work even if you enjoy it, but finding things that you don’t hate to involve in your classroom will certainly help. More structure in doing things for myself would also help this.

I also took some fun pictures at the Exploration place. They are not unique, but having fun is supposed to be good for you, so I’ll do it when possible.

Be prepared for issues to arise:

An ounce of preparation is a pound of cure

Being prepared when possible helps. Have something in mind and be ready for pivots. If you lose a day or two being sick your preparation should be resilient enough to not stress if things start going wrong. I would want to at least half do more things than fully do one thing at a time. Having something to work off would be less stressful for me, I just have to practice the thing.

The critical element is to remember to care for yourself. And to do so in productive ways. Treat yourself sometimes like you would treat someone you care about, because you should care about yourself.

6 August 2024

Barkerville

The Barkerville trip was a nice return to a place I have had many experiences with.

As a child I often went to Barkerville with my family over the summertime but I had a wonderful time before even arriving at the location. Wells had gotten a walking path through their wetland since I had been at Barkerville last. The walk was wonderful and a small community space was past a bridge on the creek. The area was technically accessible before, but the walk was significantly longer or much moister.

At the historic site I had somehow ended up in the King house and sleeping in a historic building is unique in Canada (or so the advertisement said).

Talking with the people I remember at the different stores I was glad to have gone this summer since the wonderful person I experienced McMahon’s Confectionery with was retiring at the end of the summer. The only change to the confectionery was that the popcorn maker was incorporated by the till so the ground squirrels wouldn’t get to nibble on the floor kernels.

The Bakery had put more of a focus on artisan pastries beside the sour dough, though I mourn the passing of the Cornish Pasty, a wonderful lunch meal for the working stiff. They still had the Miner’s lunch at C. Strouss so not everything was ruinously different.

Going with the program felt like the midpoint between going with my family and working there. There was some things to do and it felt a bit more rushed, but only being ‘in’ for a day compared to at least 3 would make the difference there.

Going with a large group also felt different since like bumping into people you work with while on a lunch break you people you know are going by through all the different experiences.

The only thing I miss was the Waterwheel tour, though that would have made the return far later than would have been reasonable.

All in all it was wonderful to experience a place I have a lot of experience with new eyes. Some things were changed that I was not so fond of, but everything changes all the time, but it is nice to have some experiences where it builds up instead of reducing.

I suppose this ties in with teaching, since things will always fall apart we need to show people that building and supporting is a better form of preservation, because if you don’t raise up yourself as the landscape builds from various refuse you will sink underneath, like the meters it takes for you to dig to the historic Barkerville road.

5 August 2024

Spiral of Inquiry

My Inquiry question was: How can student motivation be increased in terms of Math?

My research was primarily through personal experiences of games that involved math. Some games I played in the past have a focus on probability and math which reinforced my base level knowledge in the area with specific actions.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/268922/30s

For a dice game “30” helped my thinking. The game is as follows:

You have 6 six sided dice and 30 “points” that you want to keep.

You roll the dice and need to remove and record at least 1 dice from the dice pool.

Reroll and repeat until there are no dice.

If the final total is below 30, you lose points equal to the difference and your turn ends.

If it equals 30 then nothing happens and your turn ends.

If it is more than 30 you reroll the dice again, keeping every die that is equal to the difference between your total result and 30. When a roll doesn’t have that number you remove the total that you collected from the next person (If you got 35 and rolled 3 5’s the next person would lose 15 points).

When you hit 0 points you are out of the round.

To follow intuitively you want as many 6’s as possible and grab as many of those that are available. getting 5’s results in a break even and less than that needs a 6 to balance it out. Getting a result of 1 needs 4 6’s to balance out. The conclusion I was led to after playing it several times is that if you have multiple 5’s in a roll only grab 1 of them since the more rolls make up for the result.

Practicum 1:

Dice off. In my class for the practicum 1 I had a game where my students made a die and put together a paper dice with the results written on them. They had to have the same average roll (adding each dice number together and dividing by the number of possible sides). Students were quickly able to determine the best option, have one result be as low as possible and maximize the other results. Because of the interfacing with each other’s dice it makes the most sense, though

If it is presented like a game then students will have higher investment in the game. Some students were less invested in making the dice, though whether that was the game or my presentation is uncertain.

Practicum 2:

In my second Practicum I had a few different games. I had students roll a 10 sided dice and colour in the results up to 100. Some student’s understanding of the 1s and 10s place meant that they had more difficulties with the concept. Those who had a better grasp of the concept enjoyed it significantly.

I also had a game involving making 10 with cards which was more enjoyed though most students had an understanding of which 2 numbers added together made 10.

My conclusion is that the games are better to reinforce the learning rather than be at the forefront of it. It would be better to start with some direct instruction about the topic so students have a better understanding of the concept before they start. Some students if they don’t get the direct instruction can learn from the game and vice versa. The game improves motivation since students enjoy games and if there is a trust that the direct instruction will be connected to the game then there should be more attention on the direct instruction.

Games as learning can be more effective if there’s immediate feedback, though allowing students to play video games might not go over well with the other staff, so that should be done after the particular games show their efficacy.

If a student has something they can do with what they are learning they will be more likely to be interested in the learning. Making the connection is the difficult part.

5 August 2024

Standard 9

Educators respect and value the history of First Nations, Inuit and Métis in Canada and the impact of the past on the present and the future. Educators foster a deeper understanding of ways of knowing and being, histories, and cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Métis.

At the Early Learning Conference I was lucky enough to receive a door prize which I chose because of this cool little puppet.

The book that goes with it is Orca Chief and when I began my first practicum I was hesitant about using it in the class then. In my second practicum I was a bit more courageous and ended up using the book with them. They were fascinated with the book though the hook of having orcas in places where orcas were present in the images as roofs, hats, and eventually made note of every orca that was noticed.

What I also shared after the story that had some impact on the students is that the location of this ancient story, like a fairy tale, described an actual place in BC and if you wanted to drive for several hours and ride a ferry you could get where “it actually happened”. Including Indigenous content is an excellent manner to show the tie between the modern world and the deep history that seems more apparent in the ‘old’ world. Here the history might technically not go as far, but if it goes multiple tens of thousands of years any extra time seems meaningless in comparison.

The indigenous methods of living and knowing also have some ways they can help us examine where we should go. The Western history has had thousands of years to get to terms with agriculture, hundreds to understand industrialism, and now our information revolution means that how we live is precarious and entirely different from the past.

The indigenous communities have also been significantly impacted by all these revolutions, but they have uniqueness from the western hyper-efficient ways of living that fill you up with everything but things that mean anything. We are, or are becoming, people who can live anywhere but are anchored nowhere. We tried to unteather the indigenous peoples from their land and have mostly lost, thankfully. If we can learn to live with and respect the indigenous communities that we tried to erase we might learn some of how to live as people and not cogs in a machine that is information bathed industrialism.

“Now how does that connect to teaching children?”

How does it not? People think of getting a career, working for 1/3rd of 3/4 of their life and wonder “Is this all there is?”. People speedrun the hedonic treadmill and burn their lives away. Students demand meaning and some decide to give up if they can’t find it. Bringing First Nations, Inuit and Métis content to the classroom is one method we have of trying to reintroduce meaning to students. Give them something to help them chart a path out of the woods we have been left in, since the breadcrumbs have disappeared. We could continue doing as we have and after we failed cry “I’ve tried nothing and it’s not working!” or should we try. We might fail. Then again, there’s a chance we don’t.

1 August 2024

Standard 6

Educators demonstrate a broad knowledge base and an understanding of areas they teach.

Something I heard experienced in high school profs that I (thankfully) didn’t have was this tendency that when someone was confused and asked a question about an element of the contents of a lesson was either repeating the book definition or “look it up on the internet”. Now autodidact-ism is something that should be supported where students show a desire and capability but it shouldn’t be a requirement for learning. It would be much better to have someone who is particularly educated in the subject to be able to explain and help the learning along, that’s why we have teachers.

So the teachers need to know about the things they teach. Obviously.

Unfortunately learning is not equivalent to downloading a file off the internet, it takes patience and time. There are some few university teachers I have encountered who were scarily intelligent and loved learning enough that they were able to spend a month learning an unknown subject to the point they could teach it the next semester.

We new teachers are not those people.

Fortunately a broad knowledge base can be supplemented by humility and research, though the skills that you develop can seem like they are less than they actually are.

I have never thought that I was particularly knowledgeable about computers until I joined the BEd program. When I look at what I can do I think I am average, almost like a reverse Dunning-Kruger effect.

https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/dunning-kruger-effect

I know some Computers, some Math, some English, etc. but I also know something else. I know that there are many people who can outclass me in understanding of any one field and, to be completely honest, in more or all of the different fields. What this standard asks for is a broad understanding and not necessarily the deepest one. I don’t need a deep understanding of Field theory like a physics major to understand that graphing has purposes in jobs and everyday life that makes it something that grade 6/7 students should probably at least dip their toes in. If they get the exposure to it then when they see a job they like that needs it they can get the deeper knowledge then. But without the broad knowledge that a teacher has students are less likely to trust the “I know people use it but I can’t think of an example”. This example was from a class that I happened to observe, and I was able to chime in about its use in gaming, forestry, and the general understanding of how spacial awareness works.

The particular knowledge builds rapport with students. If they trust that you know things they will be more willing (not guaranteed) to listen to the things you say.

A broad knowledge base also helps you sift through the torrent of available resources. Unlike the past there are near infinite resources available and some of them are not obviously useless until they are tried. You need the discernment to find these things and without it your work will be less effective and take more time. Sometimes you can get away with that extra time, but then the time needs to be made up in other subject areas, so you at least need to start with knowing something or else your learning process will be at the cost of at least one class of student’s learning.

1 August 2024

The internet is forever unless you want it to be

https://help.rockcontent.com/en/how-to-solve-404-error

The statement that “the internet is forever” is a pithy description of how someone should interact with the internet. Be cautious when sharing because something you share can spread exponentially, “going Viral” and then it becomes the defining moment of you on the internet. But when people use this saying that means that they don’t put in the effort to save and protect the things that exist.

Unlike the real world, internet spaces can disappear without any noticeable catastrophe. Because of this a large chunk of the early internet vanished under our noses. Particularly 38% of websites that existed in 2013 don’t today and those that were made between 2013 and now 25% of them are gone forever [https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/]. This tendency will probably continue into the future so there will be websites that were used and beloved that fall and lose everything they remember.

Of course there are technologies that can remember websites for posterity or nostalgia. “The Wayback Machine” can save websites as they were so even when gone it is remembered.

https://web.archive.org/

The problem of actually using this and other methods to remember is two fold, that it currently exists so why should we bother and someone else has probably already done it.

The first concern makes sense since if 38% of websites that existed in 2013 don’t now, that means that 62% are still there. It is hard to conceive of the vulnerability of websites. Even if it is far less comfortable to think of the internet as vulnerable of disappearing at any moment, that is far more true than a perpetual unchanging space. Even real life spaces need maintenance to ensure they are safe and continue to follow their purpose. Some small effort from people who enjoy their websites to make sure that they can be remembered is an effort, like a backup of a critical document, will only be remembered and thanked when things go wrong.

“But why do I have to do it”

You don’t, but because of the bystander effect, the tendency of everyone to expect someone else to ‘do something’ many terrible things occur that should not. People don’t call to report a wildfire because “someone’s obviously already done it”. The loss of websites is hardly as important as ‘real world’ concerns, but even for the little it matters it still matters.

This brings me to Digital Citizenship and what I believe to be a critical part of this idea is that you should be responsible to save the things that you believe to truly matter. Citizenship contains both rights and responsibilities and since the internet doesn’t have its own space that can be forgotten. The right to access the things you like is directly connected to the responsibility to save and ensure that these things continue to exist.

You certainly can decide to ignore this, and it will probably be fine, but If no one saves it and If it vanishes from its original place then it can disappear as certainly as a burned painting in the real world.

Only you can make your corner of the internet forever.

1 August 2024

Standard 1: Listening is Key

Educators value the success of all students and act in their best interests.

This standard means that every student needs and deserves to be treated fairly and have their voice heard. It would be convenient for a teacher to play favourites and make the experience of most of the students more convenient at the cost of a minority of them, but it would not be good. I have an instance where I saw this standard in practice and participated in ensuring all students had their voices heard.

Vanway had an incident while I was supervising after school on Friday which showed a perfect situation where I could display an understanding of Standard 1. The incident as I saw it was as follows. There was a group of students and another one ran past a group, shouting something. Because of that the other students started to chase the lone runner. One of the chasers threw a rock. Then my CT who worked for a time in Harlem got to work. She was extremely efficient and immediately got all the students to stop so she was able to stop the incident and make sure that the students were aware that the behaviour was entirely unacceptable and the target of the group was safe.

This was stressful to one of the students who walked and then ran away from the group. I followed the student and ended up on the other side of the fence of them. I asked them to return since it would be better for them if they were able to advocate for themselves. They did not want to so I asked them for their side of the story.

This student had lost a water bottle today and wanted to find it. The target of the incident ran past the group and said that they had stolen the bottle, which was a lie. The bottle-less student did not throw the rock and afraid that they would be scapegoated as the ‘ringleader’ since they and the target had some history of conflicts. They consistently got pestered by the “not bottle thief” and consequences were doled out only when there was a response to the pestering.

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/why-do-people-bully

In the end I was unable to convince them to return by the time the friends who were involved got him and left. I brought back their story to be included in the incident report. Conferring with the other teachers who saw or were involved in the incident I brought the student’s perspective to the group. The teachers were obviously not going to scapegoat the student so even if I had not been there that afternoon I am sure it would have been fine, though the perspective was conveyed to the student’s teacher and helped give some insight.

If you don’t know how a student feels, which is particularly easy if the student has a preconceived idea of your response and chooses not to ask because of it. So a teacher should be particularly open to the perspectives of coworkers and other outsiders since they can show the perspective of a student who has grown to show a defeatist mindset, since all students deserve to be heard even if they are unwilling to speak.

1 August 2024