If metal balls are tipped down a big board filled with vertically-divided rows, they fall into a bell curve. At least that is what my granddaughter and I caused to happen when we participated in a discovery day at the University of Wisconsin. The effect reminded me of the statistics professor who brought our graduate class a large bowl of colored marbles and a scoop that had indentations we each filled with five marbles and then averaged the number of green marbles to demonstrate how sampling works.
At a middle school, a remedial math teacher brought in a Makey Makey circuit board, sewing kit, and 3Doodler pen. Students grouped themselves by interest to use each device. When students in a regular math class saw what the remedial math students were doing they voluntarily signed up to attend the math support class twice a week.
What were the remedial math students doing? They played a song on six bananas wired together and to the circuit board. Some students began seeing how they could make a circle in a football team's logo by embroidering an arrangement of the squares made by cross-stitch Xs, the same way pixels do on a computer screen. By using the 3Doodler pen to draw the same 2-dimensional design over and over again on top of each other, students learned how 3D printing is making a wide variety of products, including homes.
Finally, students in the regular math class saw how the remedial students purchased additional circuit boards and supplies for the sewing basket and 3Doodler pens by perfectly pricing and selling pencils.
Students everywhere in the world have creative juices. Invite them to illustrate the books they read, figure out how to move heavy rocks, use as little cushioning as possible to prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from different heights, dissect an old watch, not only a frog.
Showing posts with label teachers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teachers. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
Ode to a Normal Boy's Life
Males are being asked to adjust to a new worldview. Working wives and mothers expect them to help with cooking and childcare, not just take out the garbage. Athletes still have to hide their sexual preferences in locker rooms and frat houses. And, as Marvel comic hero, Luke Cage, observed, young black men have guns and no fathers.
After Keanon Lowe, the football and track coach at Portland's Parkrose High School, wrestled a legally-purchased shotgun out of a male student's hand and hugged him, TIME magazine (Dec. 23-30, 2019) recognized Mr. Lowe as one of 2019's heroes. Lowe told the 19-year-old who he hugged that he cared about him. "You do?" he responded. Prosecutors learned the shotgun had only one round. It had failed to fire, when the young man attempted to commit suicide outside a bathroom. Mental health treatment was part of his three-year sentence to probation.
A boy's surprise that someone cared for him and the term, "toxic masculinity," suggest a need to nurture males differently. Between the ages of four and six, research finds boys begin to match their behavior to the expectations of others who tell them not to cry, show fear, or make mistakes. When they develop a strong bond with someone, that relationship has a major influence on how they see themselves. Boys are close observers of the way teachers relate to them, for example. Instead of positive encouragement, if boys have trouble with a subject, negative reactions undercut their confidence. To avoid the vulnerability of looking stupid and to maintain the sense of male superiority someone close to him expects, boys probably act out and get suspended.
Maybe female students are more willing to try to resolve conflicts with women teachers, but it seems boys are naturally inclined not to try. Faced with a problem involving a teacher, parent, police officer, or other authority figure, boys have a natural tendency to quit and run away. Adults need to listen to boys, understand their problems, and brain storm ways to cope. My mother loved teenagers. When she taught remedial math to high school students in Chicago, she used to come home and tell us how she had found out about the strange, incorrect ways her students had decided to add a column of numbers. She also allowed no laughing at others in her classes.
Boys looking for good relationships and listeners are susceptible to the approaches of predatory priests, coaches, boy scout leaders, and girl friends. When these relationships betray them, even making them victims of sexual abuse, the results are as devastating to boys who opened themselves to those they trusted as is the effect of a total lack of relationships on other boys . Such boys conclude no one cares about them. They might as well use a gun to show they don't care about anyone, including themselves.
Equally troubling is the tendency the educational system has of assuming poverty, broken homes, and other traumas justify grouping all boys with such backgrounds in remedial classes rather than making an effort to separate out those who are gifted, nurtured in stable homes, or blessed with the genes and spiritual fortitude to overcome a less than perfect upbringing.
What it comes down to is: boys want a relationship with someone who wants them to be themselves.
After Keanon Lowe, the football and track coach at Portland's Parkrose High School, wrestled a legally-purchased shotgun out of a male student's hand and hugged him, TIME magazine (Dec. 23-30, 2019) recognized Mr. Lowe as one of 2019's heroes. Lowe told the 19-year-old who he hugged that he cared about him. "You do?" he responded. Prosecutors learned the shotgun had only one round. It had failed to fire, when the young man attempted to commit suicide outside a bathroom. Mental health treatment was part of his three-year sentence to probation.
A boy's surprise that someone cared for him and the term, "toxic masculinity," suggest a need to nurture males differently. Between the ages of four and six, research finds boys begin to match their behavior to the expectations of others who tell them not to cry, show fear, or make mistakes. When they develop a strong bond with someone, that relationship has a major influence on how they see themselves. Boys are close observers of the way teachers relate to them, for example. Instead of positive encouragement, if boys have trouble with a subject, negative reactions undercut their confidence. To avoid the vulnerability of looking stupid and to maintain the sense of male superiority someone close to him expects, boys probably act out and get suspended.
Maybe female students are more willing to try to resolve conflicts with women teachers, but it seems boys are naturally inclined not to try. Faced with a problem involving a teacher, parent, police officer, or other authority figure, boys have a natural tendency to quit and run away. Adults need to listen to boys, understand their problems, and brain storm ways to cope. My mother loved teenagers. When she taught remedial math to high school students in Chicago, she used to come home and tell us how she had found out about the strange, incorrect ways her students had decided to add a column of numbers. She also allowed no laughing at others in her classes.
Boys looking for good relationships and listeners are susceptible to the approaches of predatory priests, coaches, boy scout leaders, and girl friends. When these relationships betray them, even making them victims of sexual abuse, the results are as devastating to boys who opened themselves to those they trusted as is the effect of a total lack of relationships on other boys . Such boys conclude no one cares about them. They might as well use a gun to show they don't care about anyone, including themselves.
Equally troubling is the tendency the educational system has of assuming poverty, broken homes, and other traumas justify grouping all boys with such backgrounds in remedial classes rather than making an effort to separate out those who are gifted, nurtured in stable homes, or blessed with the genes and spiritual fortitude to overcome a less than perfect upbringing.
What it comes down to is: boys want a relationship with someone who wants them to be themselves.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Must Someone Look Just Like You?
I heard a woman telling a friend she didn't know much about those running for school board positions in the coming election. In response, the friend said, "Just vote for the women." Such advice rings sort of hollow at a time when DNA research finds, unless DNA shows someone is an intergalactic alien with six arms, less than one percent of a person's DNA makes him or her different from everyone else. We might as well vote for anyone.
Nkechi Okoro Carroll, a black female TV writer and showrunner at the CW network, reminded TV studios they cannot expect one African American to convey the perspective of all blacks. She herself grew up in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast and attended an English boarding school. She knows nothing about the hood.
When I was growing up in Chicago, I asked my mother why there were no black sales clerks at Marshall Fields. She said the store didn't think white customers would buy anything from people who didn't look like them. For a long time, the same thinking, or lack thereof, prevented older, white managers from hiring young, professional women to sell the advertising, copiers, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and everything else they sell today.
The point is, you can't tell a book by its cover and you can't tell those who have something valuable to share by the color of their skin. Stereotypes make it easy to assume we have nothing in common with teachers, characters in books, police officers, politicians, and anyone else who doesn't look like us and we have everything in common with those who look the same as us. Reality suggests more careful discernment pays off when it comes to human relationships.
Nkechi Okoro Carroll, a black female TV writer and showrunner at the CW network, reminded TV studios they cannot expect one African American to convey the perspective of all blacks. She herself grew up in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast and attended an English boarding school. She knows nothing about the hood.
When I was growing up in Chicago, I asked my mother why there were no black sales clerks at Marshall Fields. She said the store didn't think white customers would buy anything from people who didn't look like them. For a long time, the same thinking, or lack thereof, prevented older, white managers from hiring young, professional women to sell the advertising, copiers, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and everything else they sell today.
The point is, you can't tell a book by its cover and you can't tell those who have something valuable to share by the color of their skin. Stereotypes make it easy to assume we have nothing in common with teachers, characters in books, police officers, politicians, and anyone else who doesn't look like us and we have everything in common with those who look the same as us. Reality suggests more careful discernment pays off when it comes to human relationships.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Why Kids Need Positive Relationships with Adults
Adult-child bonding achieves results. "Skin," the live action short film that won an Academy Award last month, featured a father proudly training his son to master a gun and hate black people. Through a plot twist and a bit of Hollywood magic, the father's skin turns black. His son shoots and kills him.
Research by the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child also found a lack of adult-child bonding in abusive environments and those with uncaring adults leads to kids with no motivation to learn, to explore, or to try new things. In a negative situation, kids can become fixated on fear, avoiding punishment, and the immediate danger of failure.
When children lack positive experiences with adults, they are apt to resist pressure to do things in a particular way, such as form cursive letters according to a prescribed method. Even guiding some children through mindfulness by requiring them to close eyes, sit up straight, and conform to other unnecessary procedures can undermine the positive benefits of mindfulness.
Teachers need to realize not all kids come into a room with a background of adult-child relationships that make them ready to answer an adult's question, volunteer an opinion, or ask for more information. A teacher needs to find ways to help students succeed, to feel a task is not impossible. It helps to lead into discussions with phrases like "I notice" and "I wonder." In other words, teachers need to give the impression all ideas are welcome and all subjects are worth exploring.
My mother was a math teacher who always tried to figure out what students were doing when they arrived at the wrong answer. She learned there were lots of things you could do with a column of numbers. "That's interesting," she would say, "I never thought of that." No matter how "crazy" a student's manipulation of numbers was, she'd caution other students not to laugh before they listened to and understood a classmate's reasoning.
Not every student is going to be good or poor at the same subject. Unless all kids begin to develop positive face-to-face interactions with adults, they may shut down and stop learning before they hit their strides. This goes for gifted and talented kids also. When an eight-year-old British boy, with Egyptian parents, perfect pitch, a knack for coding, and a sense of humor, told an international education conference, "(G)etting a few spelling words or facts wrong is not the end of the world," teachers needed to avoid taking offense. He also felt free to suggest learning to type on a keyboard saved trees and was more important in the digital age than learning cursive.
Research by the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child also found a lack of adult-child bonding in abusive environments and those with uncaring adults leads to kids with no motivation to learn, to explore, or to try new things. In a negative situation, kids can become fixated on fear, avoiding punishment, and the immediate danger of failure.
When children lack positive experiences with adults, they are apt to resist pressure to do things in a particular way, such as form cursive letters according to a prescribed method. Even guiding some children through mindfulness by requiring them to close eyes, sit up straight, and conform to other unnecessary procedures can undermine the positive benefits of mindfulness.
Teachers need to realize not all kids come into a room with a background of adult-child relationships that make them ready to answer an adult's question, volunteer an opinion, or ask for more information. A teacher needs to find ways to help students succeed, to feel a task is not impossible. It helps to lead into discussions with phrases like "I notice" and "I wonder." In other words, teachers need to give the impression all ideas are welcome and all subjects are worth exploring.
My mother was a math teacher who always tried to figure out what students were doing when they arrived at the wrong answer. She learned there were lots of things you could do with a column of numbers. "That's interesting," she would say, "I never thought of that." No matter how "crazy" a student's manipulation of numbers was, she'd caution other students not to laugh before they listened to and understood a classmate's reasoning.
Not every student is going to be good or poor at the same subject. Unless all kids begin to develop positive face-to-face interactions with adults, they may shut down and stop learning before they hit their strides. This goes for gifted and talented kids also. When an eight-year-old British boy, with Egyptian parents, perfect pitch, a knack for coding, and a sense of humor, told an international education conference, "(G)etting a few spelling words or facts wrong is not the end of the world," teachers needed to avoid taking offense. He also felt free to suggest learning to type on a keyboard saved trees and was more important in the digital age than learning cursive.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
You Have To Be Carefully Taught
If a child has never met a blind student from Peru, a Muslim actor, or a rich Chinese businessman, how will he or she feel about these people? In the musical, South Pacific, the U.S. soldier who begins to fall in love with an island girl he meets during World War II sings "You have to be carefully taught."
Lucky children like Meghan Markle might have a black and a white parent, and a young President Obama even had a mother from the United States and a father from Kenya, got to spend early years in Indonesia, and grew to a young man in the diverse cultures of Hawaii. Lucky kids might get to know Hispanic, black, and white kids while playing basketball together on a neighborhood court. Korean and Italian kids could meet singing together in a church choir. And before a teen in a wheelchair and the school's aspiring ballerina publish their first comic book, they might have worked together on the school's newspaper.
All sorts of robotic, marketing, math, trivia, and forensic competitions bring together kids with different backgrounds and genders. Yet, news events constantly show the danger of relying on luck to form children into adults who acknowledge the similarities and respect the differences of others. The fact is, children have adult mentors who influence them to think about people in ways that help or harm the world.
In the United States, children are about to honor their Mothers on Mother's Day this weekend and their Fathers on Father's Day next month. Around the world, mothers and fathers should be honored, because they are in a powerful position. They can pass on their prejudices or open young minds.
When trendwatching.com reports the Mexican startup company Sign'n, uses software to employ artificial intelligence that translates speech into Mexican sign language, we suspect someone nurtured a young inventor's concern for those marginalized because of their hearing disability. Likewise, visually-impaired Brazilians employed to use their enhanced smell and taste senses as beer sommeliers have someone to thank for helping a young person learn to consider and remedy the needs of others.
A Muslim friend recently introduced me to a book, Crescent Moons and Pointed Minarets, that uses rhymes and English translations of Arabic to present various shapes and to convey Islamic traditions and terms. At the end of the book, a Glossary provides definitions of the Arabic words used and a phonetic guide to their pronunciations.
As an example of the way the book's author, Hena Khan, and artist, Mehrdokht Amini, combine words and art, picture how, under an arch embellished with complex borders and patterns of flowers and vines that resemble those in Persian rugs. readers learn:
Lucky children like Meghan Markle might have a black and a white parent, and a young President Obama even had a mother from the United States and a father from Kenya, got to spend early years in Indonesia, and grew to a young man in the diverse cultures of Hawaii. Lucky kids might get to know Hispanic, black, and white kids while playing basketball together on a neighborhood court. Korean and Italian kids could meet singing together in a church choir. And before a teen in a wheelchair and the school's aspiring ballerina publish their first comic book, they might have worked together on the school's newspaper.
All sorts of robotic, marketing, math, trivia, and forensic competitions bring together kids with different backgrounds and genders. Yet, news events constantly show the danger of relying on luck to form children into adults who acknowledge the similarities and respect the differences of others. The fact is, children have adult mentors who influence them to think about people in ways that help or harm the world.
In the United States, children are about to honor their Mothers on Mother's Day this weekend and their Fathers on Father's Day next month. Around the world, mothers and fathers should be honored, because they are in a powerful position. They can pass on their prejudices or open young minds.
When trendwatching.com reports the Mexican startup company Sign'n, uses software to employ artificial intelligence that translates speech into Mexican sign language, we suspect someone nurtured a young inventor's concern for those marginalized because of their hearing disability. Likewise, visually-impaired Brazilians employed to use their enhanced smell and taste senses as beer sommeliers have someone to thank for helping a young person learn to consider and remedy the needs of others.
A Muslim friend recently introduced me to a book, Crescent Moons and Pointed Minarets, that uses rhymes and English translations of Arabic to present various shapes and to convey Islamic traditions and terms. At the end of the book, a Glossary provides definitions of the Arabic words used and a phonetic guide to their pronunciations.
As an example of the way the book's author, Hena Khan, and artist, Mehrdokht Amini, combine words and art, picture how, under an arch embellished with complex borders and patterns of flowers and vines that resemble those in Persian rugs. readers learn:
Arch is the mihrab
that guides our way.
We stand and face it
each time we pray.
In contrast to picturing Muslims as over a billion religious people known for the early contributions of their mathematicians and astronomers, today's news reports Boko Haram added to its Nigerian terrorist kidnappings and killings by bombing a mosque and market. And Islamic fighters in Iraq commit genocide and sell Yazidi women and girls into slavery or hold them as sex slaves. Somehow these Muslims have not been carefully taught right from wrong.
Regimes, like those in Iran, China, and Russia, seem oppressive because they censure the broadcast and social media they allow their populations to see. But aren't we doing much the same thing, when algorithms select the books we read, the films we watch, and the news and ads we see, or when we self-censure by only watching the cable news stations that agree with us? Teaching ourselves and our children to keep open minds takes work, work both needed and worth doing...very carefully.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
What Can Unemployed People Do?
Concern about technological unemployment from AI, robots, sensors, and the like has led to dire observations. In the factory of the future, there only will be two non-machines, a person and a dog, and it will be the dog's task to keep the person away from the machines. In other words, let's prepare for the future by making a list of what unemployed people around the world can do.
1. Do nothing.
Although unemployed, most people still have their physical abilities.
2. Improve athletic abilities by practicing to become a professional athlete
3. Take whatever risky, possibly illegal, demeaning, poor paying job is available
4. Make and repair things from found objects
5. Sell or demand ransom for what they take by force from those who have something of value
Use brain power to study the economic environment and prepare to join it.
6. Learn to develop software
7. Learn how the stock market works and invest
8. Become a supplier to those who are making money: Manufacture robots, identify global exporters and become one of their suppliers, grow produce, operate a food truck, provide leisure entertainment by arranging tours, design websites, teach, invent, provide promotional/marketing expertise, write a story/song/play, provide spiritual guidance--------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Do nothing.
Although unemployed, most people still have their physical abilities.
2. Improve athletic abilities by practicing to become a professional athlete
3. Take whatever risky, possibly illegal, demeaning, poor paying job is available
4. Make and repair things from found objects
5. Sell or demand ransom for what they take by force from those who have something of value
Use brain power to study the economic environment and prepare to join it.
6. Learn to develop software
7. Learn how the stock market works and invest
8. Become a supplier to those who are making money: Manufacture robots, identify global exporters and become one of their suppliers, grow produce, operate a food truck, provide leisure entertainment by arranging tours, design websites, teach, invent, provide promotional/marketing expertise, write a story/song/play, provide spiritual guidance--------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, November 30, 2012
Getting to Know You
Until these real time computerized translations or face-to-face meetings can occur, the next best thing is to exchange letters or e-mails with children who live in other countries. An episode on the PBS show, "Arthur," showed how correspondence with a child in Turkey dispelled the notion that children there lived in tents and rode to school on camels. There are a variety of ways to find foreign pals, but, until a real one is located, items in a kit from littlepassports.com help children learn about one country each month, and they can pretend to write letters from foreign countries they have studied. From Russia, a young make-believe correspondent might write:
Do you like to draw? I do. Yesterday our class visited the Hermitage Museum, where
we saw a painting of Napoleon. He looked very heroic, but we are learning that his
army tried unsuccessfully to defeat Russia in winter. Our winters are very cold, and we
get a lot of snow.
If a Russian pen pal is found, it would be fun for a child to compare a real letter with this pretend one.
Foreign students are in a good position to help children who are searching for a real pen pal. Classmates could have cousins and other relatives who would like to correspond with someone in the United States. Neighborhood families may be hosting foreign students who are eager to maintain U.S. ties after they return home. Then too, a local college or university is a good source of babysitters. Those from foreign countries may develop a lasting relationship that they want to maintain.
Aside from relying on personal contacts to find an international pen pal, organizations often have established structures that either can or do facilitate person to person correspondence across borders. Some agencies, such as Pearl S. Buck International (psbi.org), encourage benefactors to write to the children they sponsor. Through translators, the children send return messages to those who support them. Members of international organizations, such as Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, are in a good position to ask their leaders to find counterparts in other countries. Children also should urge cities and churches with sister cities and parishes to help them contact foreign students. The Peace Corps maintains a website, peacecorps.gov/wws/educators, that enables teachers to locate members willing to correspond with their classes. And ePals.com also helps facilitate joint projects between U.S. teachers and teachers in foreign countries.
In some areas, children may not have to go far to visit a neighborhood where foreign immigrants maintain much of their culture. A walk through Chinatown of Little Italy is an easy way to visit shops, meet people from foreign countries, and sample native foods. While traveling near and far through the United States, there are many opportunities to seek out communities that have preserved a distinctive foreign lifestyle. In Door County, Wisconsin, for example, children will find descendants of Norwegians and Swedes who settled there in the 19th century. Surrounded by brightly painted Dala horses, they can pour lingonberry syrup on their pancakes and watch goats nibble grass from the roofs of nearby log cabins.
No doubt, these foreign contacts will lead children to want to visit foreign countries. For some ideas about foreign travel, go to the earlier blog post, "See the World." Also see the blog post, "How Do You Say?"
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