Well, it happened. My working in VC and second year of teaching drew me away for some time but I've been back it for the past couple months. Tearing through the Java Development Kit right now. Updates soon.

The Teacher-Innovator Model

Spend some time in front of a classroom and you will quickly recognize the main flaw with most educational technology products: they aren't made by teachers. Teaching is a remarkably distinct skill set. In a typical high school classroom a teacher's classroom tasks include but are not limited to simultaneously taking attendance, watching hallways, monitoring behavior, executing lessons, managing student actions, verifying student learning, differentiating student instruction, and providing students with feedback on their day's work. A teacher is responsible for these tasks and other for up to 7 50 minutes classes a day and as many as 200 students. There is a categorical difference in understanding these challenges via secondhand and firsthand accounts; there is simply no substitute for being in the classroom. It is this gap between knowing and truly understanding what a teacher goes through on a day to day basis that has allowed for the development of many ed-tech products that simply fail to fully address the needs of teachers.

Take for example the TI Nspire Navigator system. While clearly the product of extensive research into education, integrating proven tactics like interactive problems and system allowing instantaneous feedback from students, holes exist in the usability. The process of "beginning" a class, which allows students to "log in" and begin interacting, requires a button press. "Sending a file" requires a right click, a button press, and then two more redundant button presses within an unnecessary popup window. "Collecting a file" requires the same procedure, and grading the file and receive feedback requires a right click, a button press, and then navigating to an entirely different screen. The basic workflow is terribly inefficient and while button clicks may seem relatively easy these processes can add up to 5 minutes of work which is a precious amount of time in a 45 minute class period. Factor in older, slower computers that sometimes leg between button presses, and having to repeat all of these processes in every class period, and the clunky interface for what is otherwise a feature-rich and potentially useful platform makes the entire system practically inefficient to use. TI did it's research and hit all of the right features, so what went wrong? The answer is that the development process for the system was driven by engineers, not the teachers who would use the software on a day-to-day basis.

The solution to this problem is the Teacher-Innovator Model. Organizations like Teach for America, along with many other alternative certification and educational preparation program at colleges and universities, are creating a new generation of tech-savvy educators who use technology to improve their lives at every level and see the potential technology offers. Teacher-Innovators are those who have some experience with technology, perhaps an engineering background, and work with product development teams to build technologies that address the pain points that they experience daily in the classroom. By deploying beta technologies in their classrooms and those of their peers teaching similar subjects, Teacher-Innovators will be best positioned to develop the impactful, high value ed-tech solutions that will define tomorrow's classrooms. The best education technology products start in the classroom, and I am excited to be a part of this movement towards ground-up innovation.

The Magic is in the Data...Structures

I really wish I had started studying computer science earlier in my life. As someone who can be a little ADD at times I always found basic programming to be a little, er, dull at times. While I love building things and programming with a purpose (a proper end in mind), when I was 12 and had nothing more interesting to code than custom configurations for my hacked router firmware (there is a limit to how strong you can make your wireless router signal strength - like -10 dB or so) sitting in front of a computer screen and playing around with aimless code lost its appeal quickly. Besides, Bill Gates and his people had already programmed everything useful and productivity-enhancing, right? (Hint: wrong....this was before Apple's resurgence, facebook, Google becoming not just a search engine, etc.). That terrible lapse in judgment aside, I am now starting to see firsthand the real beauty and potential of our modern methods for organizing data and information.

I took a short break from this project to study for the LSAT yesterday (always a good way to keep your mind fresh) and noted the parallels between the LSAT's logical reasoning and the programming structures that I have been teaching myself. I recently wrapped my head around the linguistic conundrum of the syntax of "UNLESS" and was amused to see a discussion of PowerScores trademarked "Unless Equation." Between these various endeavors I was struck by a thought: I need to use data not just to automate redundant tasks in the lesson planning process, but also to leverage technology and data to enhance the culture of lesson planning.

As I began thinking about how to organize the data behind lessons in a structured and efficient way that melds with my new world of strings, hashes, and arrays, I realized that the data structures that any computer program forces information to conform could have a tremendous positive impact on the way that lessons are planned, organized, indexed, and shared. Oftentimes in education the process of planning a lesson can be a murky endeavor which yields two maladies that stand out to me: firstly, it can take new teachers a long time to master the art of lesson planning without grasping the science of planning and secondly, and most critically,  it can be very difficult for teachers to collaborate and share elements in their lesson plans due to the stylistic difference amongst individuals.

Over the last few days I have been trying to distill lesson plans down to their most fundamental elements to fit within the parameters required by the databases that my project will rely on. By forcing myself to think in the realm of data structures, I feel like I now have a stronger grasp than I ever have before of how to plan and breakdown a lesson. Moreover I am very excited about seeing what I can do with that data - right now the possibilities seem limitless. I am having a lot of fun applying my basic coding skills and developing rudimentary algorithms for working with data (I might just be sorting now but it's a start...). I still have much to learn but I am developing the Didactic system from the ground up with data in mind - I think that is where the real magic will happen.

Hooked on Codecademy

So, while beginning to work through the Rails tutorial I realized that it would be of benefit to me to learn some programming languages from the ground up. I've always been able to work through most types of code by guessing, checking, and googling; but, I figured that building up my programming knowledge from the ground up (i.e. via some online course) might be more a tenable path for building up the requisite skills for my project than my usual ad-hoc method of learning through experimentation with discrete functions.

So, what started off as as some casual online refresher courses turned into a sort of Codecademy addiction. There really is something to the "gamey" aspect of the site which involves earning points for each completed activity and badges for achieving various landmarks such as completing a section of earning a certain number of points (or, as I recently discovered, earning a certain number of points in a day). I have found myself vying to stay focused and awake long enough to earn just one more badge before finally passing out for the night.*

Proof of my Codecademy achievements as of 10 minutes ago (I've earned two more points since I started this blog post and took this screenshot).

*note to self: "gameyness" in education works.

Quick Update

Posting has been slow as I've been juggling a few things but have no fear - progress is being made.

More updates to come soon...

Scores Are In

Well, the scores are in and my students did reasonably well. Overall nearly 80% of my students passed their Texas Geometry STAAR (State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness) test. Two of my students got Advanced (roughly correlates to more than 90% correct). I am proud of them.

Thanks to Nancy Yang for teaching me the basics of lesson planning. Soon, I hope that I will also be able to help new teachers effectively lesson plan - it really make a difference in the classroom.

Wearing Disappointment on Your Sleeve

Since not a lot has been happening on the tech side (I'm still running through codecademy tutorials every night but I have 5 more days of school before the summer and am trying to make the best of them before going into full development mode), I figured now would be a good time to reflect on a subject that is very pertinent to my life at present: how to motivate students. I suppose this is an essay of sorts.

A fly on the wall of a teacher lounge would hear discussion on a variety of subjects: work, life, stress, administration, unions, politics, and, of course, students. Of those the latter is invariably the most common; interactions with students in one way or another, the good, bad, ugly, and wonderful, are the principal elements of our occupation. In a socioeconomically disadvantaged setting in particular, much talk surrounds the questions of why and how; why do our students struggle and how can we help them? Sometimes this pair of questions is most easily answered in reverse order.

By witnessing how our actions positively impact our students, we gain insights into why our students are the way they are. The other day, as I was eating lunch, one of my teaching colleagues made a comment that struck me in response to my minor lamentations about a small group of students who had collectively failed to meet our class goals and seemed trapped in a cycle of apathy towards not only school, but their also their futures. Specifically, I mentioned a student I had who had demonstrated a clear aptitude for math and ability to succeed but simply refused to try on a day to day basis despite my constant motivation, parental involvement, and other attempts at support. Over the course of the year I had developed a strong relationship with said student but was never able to fully leverage it to keep him consistently driven to work. On this particular day, I traded my usual positive affirmation and words of encouragement, a seeming broken record at that particular moment, for a curt "do you even care?" Those words triggered a look on that student that I could best characterize as bewilderment. In turn, I was myself bewildered - perhaps even annoyed - after that we, not him, we, had been through over the year, how could he give me such a look?

My experienced colleague immediately understood what I could not. I may be paraphrasing a bit, as it was not until after the words had set in that I was struck by their significance, but my fellow teacher basically said, "look, sometimes you are the only person in these kids' lives to express disappointment in them. They need that." My words to that student were precisely the product of that sentiment: disappointment. To be clear, my past interactions with this student had encompassed a wide array of emotions ranging from pride, that one time he got the highest grade on an assignment excelling beyond his peers, to anger, after he would occasionally act up in class. My anger always elicited the common student response of initial obstinance followed by eventual apology and forgiveness; that was a scenario that I was accustomed to dealing with. This situation, however, was fundamentally different as I had faltered from the traditional teaching paradigm of infinite encouragement and positivity. My misstep was illuminating.

After realizing that what I had conveyed to that student was genuine disappointment, I began to suspect that my colleague was perhaps correct in identifying the value of disappointment. The bewilderment I saw was a sure sign that disappointment of that sort was an emotion my student was not comfortable facing. I don't mean to suggest definitively that nobody has ever properly cared for this student (since disappointment is a product of caring for someone - think about it, you can't be disappointed if you're ambivalent). Indeed, contrary to popular belief, many of my students are strongly cared by their parents, teachers, and communities alike. At the very least, however, this student did not expect disappointment from me as I had set no precedent for it. And disappointment, I would learn soon, can be a powerful motivational force.

Thinking back to my own life, emotionally tangible instances of the disappointment of others in me are amongst my most vivid memories. I will never the look on my father's face the day that I failed my first driving test or the painful silence of the drive back home with my father, rather than myself, at the wheel. Nor will I forget the tone of Mr. Ball's voice when he caught me using the band room computer when I wasn't supposed to be, or the way that Coach Ehrenhaft walked away from me after realizing that I had skipped cross country camp. While minor failings by objective estimation, I was consumed by that feeling of having failed another and will accordingly never forget those moments. We all fail ourselves at one point or another and learn to manage that feeling ourselves, but my experience suggests that failing someone else is almost categorically different.

The day after my incident with said student, he came to me during lunch to chat. His words were straightforward: "I'm sorry I haven't been doing my work, I will try to try harder next time." My response was simply, "You won't try to try - you will try and you will succeed and I know that you can, so do it." Only time will tell whether this student will find success, but I see a minor victory in having forced that student to think about his actions, whether on his own behalf or for others. The how - the motivating force - was disappointment. This conflicts with the notion of always being a positive force as disappointment is inherently negative. Still, had I given this student my usual pat on the back with words about how could do better and should work harder to prove himself, I'm sure that my words would not have a spurred a second thought. So we know the how; what about the why?

All teachers know that it is important to set high standards for students. The reality is that this is difficult when all of our students are performing at an objectively low level and we must positively affirm whatever successes that we see. I have heard that studies have found that A students at low performing schools actually perform, when data is normalized, at about the level of C students at average schools. While I know that there is no easy fix to this conundrum, I do believe that my students lack have an insufficient number of people who are disappointed in them. More significantly, students often fail to be disappointed in themselves. This now unique to low income areas and not even unique to students; for most people the path of least resistance is to accept ourselves as is rather than change who we are whether we are talking about America's most commonly failed New Year's Resolution of going to the gym regularly or my own personal failure to keep my desk clean. It is when others hold us accountable and vest their interests with us that we succeed in such endeavors. Accountability is a key to this; there should be rewards for exceeding expectations and disincentives for failing to meet them.

Nobody likes it when somebody is disappointed in them. While varying in significance depending on your relationship with whoever is disappointed in you, disappointing someone is universally bad and something that one would like to avoid. While positivity is a proven driver of student performance, we must step back at times and question accepting barely passing classes and tests as the standard bimodal measure of success. For all the times that we encourage our students, we perhaps need not avoid wearing our disappointment on our sleeves at the times when our students have not only failed ourselves, but failed us. Intrinsic motivation is ideal but if we as teachers must carry the emotional weight of concern for these students and use guilt to jump start their motivation, then the end does justify the means and disappointment can, and perhaps ought, to be a part of a truly productive student-teacher relationship.