Education, Math, and More with Mr. Allison

Regarding who should and shouldn't be allowed to take AP courses, or even advanced courses in high school. Here's my take. I don't tell any kid they can't take an advanced course. I've had kids take AP Calculus concurrently with Pre-Cal, but let them know they're going to have to learn some things outside of class before their Pre-Cal class is going to get to them. I've taken kids who failed my College Algebra or Pre-Calculus courses. One year I had a kid who failed my College Algebra class as a junior take my Pre-Calculus, AP Statistics, and AP Calculus classes all at the same time. He passed Pre-Cal with a C or a D, failed both AP Stat and AP Cal, but scored 2s on both AP Exams. He had the ability to do so much better, but just would not do any work at all. Everything he learned, he learned in class. It would have been easy to keep that kid out of my AP classes, maybe even out of my Pre-Cal class too, based on his grade in College Algebra. But I chose t...

 I saw a Facebook post this week where a parent stated, "Grades are not a measure of knowledge, but a measure of compliance." Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of truth to that in our culture today. My goal with grades is the opposite, though. Grades should be representative of what a kid knows. Years ago, the math department where I work established test scores as 75% of a student's grade. I cannot speak for other teachers, but this has worked well to help kids LEARN the material, instead of counting on lots of completion-graded homework and classwork points to keep their grades high, even when their knowledge is lacking.  Take a class with 1000 points possible in a grading period, where students take three 100-point tests. If a teacher grades everything but tests for completion, a student could turn in every paper with every answer wrong and "earn" 70% of all the possible points. In most schools today, 70/100 is a C. Even if this student scored a zero on e...

 Spoke with a friend of mine this weekend who works in another school in another part of the state. He told me his principal told him that we used to prepare these kids for college, but that's the past. Now we're preparing them for trades. Let me start by saying I have absolutely nothing against people working in the trades. I have very successful family members and friends who do just that. I have absolutely NOTHING against people working in trades! I have nothing against kids not going to college if they don't want to, as long as they find another way to earn a living.  But to say our job in education is not to prepare these kids for success in college is idiotic and just plain wrong! Our job is to educate kids and educated kids will be ready for college! That doesn't mean they have to go to college. It means they have the opportunity to go to college if that's what they choose! I did not want to go to college after high school. I didn't think I needed it. I w...

 This week was hot. Really hot. I remember hotter (summer of 1980), but I was just a kid then and could take the heat a lot better. Now, as an old fat man, it's a lot harder to take. It's easy to feel sorry for ourselves and complain when it's like this. But this week, even in the incredible heat, I was reminded how blessed I am that I can usually find refuge. I am extremely thankful that most of my day is now spent in the air conditioning. As I type this, a crew is putting a new roof on the house next door. They don't enjoy my luxury. Even still, I do spend some of my work day in the heat. I'm a teacher, but I'm also a school bus driver. Most school buses, mine included, don't have air conditioning. That big yellow steel box sits on a lot all day under the blazing sun and temperatures inside are at or near 120 when you get on it for an afternoon route. Then you fill it with kids and all that body heat makes it worse. I got on my bus this afternoon at 2:45 p...

Today was the first day of school for us. All-in-all, it was a great day for me. I love my family and I love my coworkers, but I always look forward to the first day back with kids. Today began my 18th year teaching and I realized a long time ago, this is my calling. It's what I'm supposed to do. There were a lot of great things to say about today, but I'm going to focus on one -- what I learned from our social contracts. What is a social contract you might ask? To some it sounds crazy. To others silly. Some think it's stupid. But a few...a few of them took it serious and used it for its intended purpose -- to give kids a voice in the standard operating procedures of the classroom.  Kids were supposed to brainstorm and come up with suggestions for rules, policies, and procedures framed around four essential questions How do you want to be treated by the teacher? How do you want to be treated by others? How do you think the teacher wants to be treated? How do we want to ...

Thursday's coming. First day of school for us of the 2023-2024 school year. This will be my 18th year. There are a lot of teachers with more time than that and a lot with less. But in my 18 years I think I've picked up a little bit of wisdom that's worth offering to those who might be a little nervous about the year to come. First, there's too much to do it all. Today we just finished our pre-start professional development. It ended with all the stuff that gets saved for last because it's what everybody hates. Basically a list of everything expected of you that's longer than the Mississippi River. Duty. Roll. Forms. Detention. Discipline. Lesson plans. Unit plans. Parent contact logs. Parent contact procedures. IEPs. 504s. Documentation. Documentation. Documentation.  And somehow with all that you're also tasked with getting to know the kids, giving them input on classroom procedures and rules, dealing with classroom interruptions, schedule changes, new kids...

It makes a difference! Today was the first day of my 18th year as a teacher. At lunch with the rest of the district, another teacher from a different school walked up to me and said, "[Former student] still talks about you all the time, and how much of an impact you had on her." I taught her daughter more than 10 years ago and she was always a great kid. But it meant a lot to hear that today. Times change in everything, including education. One year things are great and the next may be completely different. We have good years and bad years, plenty of ups and downs as classroom teachers. It can be a tough class, an issue in your personal life, a change in administration, or a treasured colleague moving to greener pastures. Lots of things can make a year tough, and sometimes they string together, one after another.  Even when there's a still a lot of good around you, sometimes the bad things outweigh all the good. That's why a comment like I received today is so importa...