Education, Math, and More with Mr. Allison

Some may think the (and students) means I consider student needs secondary behind teachers' needs. Not true. I wrote it like that because most students don't really understand what they NEED most, and what they need most isn't necessarily what they want out of school.  The classroom is different today than it was five years ago. When we sent kids home in 2020 and told them to hide under the covers and we'd give them an A...for doing absolutely nothing...for learning absolutely nothing...for nothing...nothing, when that happened, a shift in expectations occurred. And it hasn't shifted back yet, at least not everywhere. Teachers (and students) need that to shift back, and they need it now! Kids got used to having great grades for doing almost no work. Kids got used to having a high GPA without learning. To make things worse, when they came back in the fall of 2020, we sent them home for two weeks at a time when they heard the word Covid in the hallways. Over and over ...

 The Land of Opportunity. That's what I always considered our country. I was taught that I could be anything I wanted if I was willing to work hard enough. I've made a good living as a blue collar worker--driving a truck and as a chicken farmer. I've also made decent as a teacher in the white collar world.  As a kid, I never really saw myself going to college. I never thought I'd need it, that I could do whatever I wanted without spending the time and money for school. I went for a year right after high school because a lot of people expected me to, but I only lasted a year. I didn't flunk out, but I spent all my money and as a student I was less-than-stellar enough to lose my tuition scholarship.  So I went back to what I knew best, hard work. And I was good at it. After 17 years bouncing around from the Marine Corps to driving a truck to raising chickens and cattle, God made clear to me that He was calling me to teach. I tried to convince Him He was wrong, but fai...

 If you're a teacher, you've heard it. "When am I ever going to use this?" Or, "I am never going to use this!" The older the kids you teach, the more I think you hear it. I teach mostly 11th and 12th graders and I know I hear it plenty.  The truth is very few kids think they're ever going to need to know that Washington crossed the Delaware, the difference between an indirect and a direct object, the acceleration constant due to gravity, or the Pythagorean Theorem. Not all complain, but many do. Every time you try to teach them something! I'm sure I was probably just like them at their age, convinced that nothing I was learning in school would be useful after graduation. Boy was I wrong! When we built our chicken house, I staked out the 650 foot long pad on my own. When the dozer guy came out he couldn't believe how accurate it was. That was the geometry I learned in high school, because I hadn't been to college at the time. Figuring material...