A Year-End Review
May. 14th, 2004 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaToday was my yearly evaluation. Mrs. G, the coordinating principal, is my evaluator this year. I can't tell you how frightened that originally made me (I would much, much rather have had Ms. HR, my API, evaluate me, but this was a luck-of-the-draw kind of thing). After the e-mail in February, I've been pretty much convinced that she doesn't like me in particular, and after the team leader meeting a couple of weeks ago, I've been largely sure that she's trying to "clean house" - to get all of the people who are not happy with her managerial style or this group of administrators to leave (mathematics her having to do anything about it). Since I'm a gadfly in any organizational matrix I find myself embedded in, I was pretty sure I was on her shit list.
As it turned out, she talked down to me for much of the meeting but she never said anything particularly negative. She even upgraded my self-evaluation in one spot - I had just barely met my goals, so I had given myself a 3 out of 5 for "meets expectations" in that area. She upgraded me to a 4, on the grounds that they had been fairly ambitious goals to begin with. She was also impressed with the amount of outside training I had been to this year. Overall, I got 20 points for the year (the max anyone can get is 23, since we could only get a 25 if the school was rated "exemplary"), which becomes a PDAS evaluation of "exceeds expectations," so I was happy, even if I had to listen to her give me "motherly advice" for 30 minutes. I left her office thoroughly exhausted. I'd also been a combination of anxious, sad, and angry throughout the whole thing, rather than frightened.
On Monday, I get to do something similar with the district's secondary mathematics coordinator, who also scares me to death usually. I'm going to be asking her for extra resources for AP Stats (about which more in a minute), and talking about what preparation the Pre-AP kids are getting below our building. Ten years ago, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics suggested, in their guidelines for secondary math, that teachers de-emphasize mechanical processes like using "the box" for factoring, and instead try and instill a conceptual understanding of the processes (like showing a geometric interpretation of factoring and completing the square). Fair enough; I prefer conceptual understanding to plug-and-chug approaches, myself. However, our district appears to have interpreted that (along with the TEKS not specifically mentioning factoring except as part of one skill-package) as "don't teach factoring." Even if they went along with that in the on-level classes (which I think is still dangerous), that's disastrous in the Pre-AP curriculum. Factoring shows up in Algebra II when you find find zeroes of polynomials, again when you discover asymptotes of rational functions, again in Precal when you're using the trig identities to simplify expressions, and then again in late Precal when you're finding limits of functions with holes and other discontinuities. If the Algebra I teachers - especially the ones who teach Algebra I in the 9th grade - are still not teaching factoring because the district dropped it seven years ago, then we've got to patch that hole. Similar things seem to be happening throughout the curriculum.
We got to look at some preliminary class numbers yesterday at the Precal team meeting. It looks like we're going to have 3 classes of Pre-AP Precalculus, and 2 classes of AP Statistics. If Bearville is sending me at least 6 students for Stats next year, that makes 3 (smallish) classes of Stats, and that's my schedule. Otherwise, I'm going to get an extra class - no idea of what, but I'd really rather not have three full preps, so I'm hoping for on-level Precal. (On the other hand, I could also handle another class of Pre-AP Algebra II, although I'd kind of rather not be on the Algebra II team again.) I just hope the Bearville counselors remembered that I exist this year.
As it turned out, she talked down to me for much of the meeting but she never said anything particularly negative. She even upgraded my self-evaluation in one spot - I had just barely met my goals, so I had given myself a 3 out of 5 for "meets expectations" in that area. She upgraded me to a 4, on the grounds that they had been fairly ambitious goals to begin with. She was also impressed with the amount of outside training I had been to this year. Overall, I got 20 points for the year (the max anyone can get is 23, since we could only get a 25 if the school was rated "exemplary"), which becomes a PDAS evaluation of "exceeds expectations," so I was happy, even if I had to listen to her give me "motherly advice" for 30 minutes. I left her office thoroughly exhausted. I'd also been a combination of anxious, sad, and angry throughout the whole thing, rather than frightened.
On Monday, I get to do something similar with the district's secondary mathematics coordinator, who also scares me to death usually. I'm going to be asking her for extra resources for AP Stats (about which more in a minute), and talking about what preparation the Pre-AP kids are getting below our building. Ten years ago, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics suggested, in their guidelines for secondary math, that teachers de-emphasize mechanical processes like using "the box" for factoring, and instead try and instill a conceptual understanding of the processes (like showing a geometric interpretation of factoring and completing the square). Fair enough; I prefer conceptual understanding to plug-and-chug approaches, myself. However, our district appears to have interpreted that (along with the TEKS not specifically mentioning factoring except as part of one skill-package) as "don't teach factoring." Even if they went along with that in the on-level classes (which I think is still dangerous), that's disastrous in the Pre-AP curriculum. Factoring shows up in Algebra II when you find find zeroes of polynomials, again when you discover asymptotes of rational functions, again in Precal when you're using the trig identities to simplify expressions, and then again in late Precal when you're finding limits of functions with holes and other discontinuities. If the Algebra I teachers - especially the ones who teach Algebra I in the 9th grade - are still not teaching factoring because the district dropped it seven years ago, then we've got to patch that hole. Similar things seem to be happening throughout the curriculum.
We got to look at some preliminary class numbers yesterday at the Precal team meeting. It looks like we're going to have 3 classes of Pre-AP Precalculus, and 2 classes of AP Statistics. If Bearville is sending me at least 6 students for Stats next year, that makes 3 (smallish) classes of Stats, and that's my schedule. Otherwise, I'm going to get an extra class - no idea of what, but I'd really rather not have three full preps, so I'm hoping for on-level Precal. (On the other hand, I could also handle another class of Pre-AP Algebra II, although I'd kind of rather not be on the Algebra II team again.) I just hope the Bearville counselors remembered that I exist this year.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 06:44 am (UTC)FACTORING?! THEY'RE NOT TEACHING FACTORING?!
I hope you're talking about stuff like x^2-6x+9 = (x-3)^2, and not 2x+4x^2=2x(1+2x). The latter shows up on damn near every calculus/diff eq/engineering problem I see.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 01:03 pm (UTC)The first is what they're not teaching at all. In particular, the Pre-AP Algebra II kids don't recognize differences of squares, can't do anything like 2x^2-5x-3=(2x+1)(x-3), and can only manage things like x^2+x-12=(x+4)(x-3) by laborious mechanical methods. Of course, mine are better now, but it took two years of working with them to get them at what I would consider acceptable competence levels for Pre-AP Algebra I. Thus, rational functions of any degree higher than 1 are a major pain in the tokhis. Since the last unit in Pre-AP Precalculus is limits, we've been doing a lot of rational functions.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 02:01 pm (UTC)Not that this is really any different from when you and I went through, but for those of us with a certain frame of mind, either (a) the concepts come easy in the first place (I always had far more problems with the mechanics than with the concepts - I would build the quadratic formula from scratch rather than memorize it) or (b) once we practice enough, the concepts piece themselves together (this is essentially the basis for the Saxon method, and it is my experience that this only works for a specific type of student). Now, they're so busy getting in all the topics that Algebra I is required to teach, and they have to teach it to every 9th grader, there's not enough time to sit down and practice each skill in isolation and in concert with all the previously learned skills.
I understand the catch-22 the Algebra I teachers are in. I sort of wish the state of Texas would institute a Pre-Algebra class for those 9th graders whose mathematical development is not up to Algebra I. But I also wish the Pre-AP kids who are ready for it were getting a stronger background in what end up being prerequisite skills for almost all the higher-level stuff instead of spending ages on mechanical solving using the four arithmetic functions and the basics of graphing. Graphing isn't really that hard, especially with, y'know, graphing calculators - once the kids understand the process, they really don't need that much practice just graphing lines . . .
msms
Date: 2004-05-16 12:51 pm (UTC)Re: msms
Date: 2004-05-16 05:56 pm (UTC)I'm guessing from your LJ posts that you're there and about to graduate?