Category: Teaching, Learning, and Education

Back to School Repost Post

As our school and college students prepare to head back to school, I thought I’d go ahead and round up some things I’ve said over the years (mostly, with a couple new links too) for your entertainment:

Have a great school year.

In closing: I think this BlogHer post might have been talking about this one!

Voucher Detente

So, recently the State of Nevada passed a law allowing vouchers for parents to send their Special Snowflakes to private school on the public’s money. I have long been opposed to school vouchers for several reasons and if you’re curious, you can read about them here and here.

But it turns out that the Nevada law has a catch: to get the money, the child must be enrolled in a public or charter school for at least 100 days. Does anybody happen to remember how long a typical school year is? It averages 180 days.

So yeah, if you honestly give it an shot and the local public school isn’t working for your kid, the State of Nevada will help you out, but they’re not going to subsidize sending your Precious Darling to Las Vegas Day School or Bishop Gorman. You want the State’s money? You play by the State’s rules.

That is detente, Comrade.

In Closing: When a traffic citation can mean a death sentence, we all have a problem regardless of gender or color; Last Words; Waaah, Uber doesn’t like following rules!; hidden near Vegas; Votesmart; skewed; no surprise.

Things I Learned in Nursing School: Semester 1

Hello everyone. The semester is over, all my classes are past as well as passed, and it’s time to share some insights on what I learned.

On Scrubs: Scrubs are at their most basic “sweats you can wear at the hospital.” Someone wearing scrubs will find him/herself doing quite a bit of low to moderate intensity physical activity; I found that on clinical days, I routinely put on 10,000 steps before lunchtime. Keep this in mind when selecting a size for scrubs (take the slightly larger size). Wicking workout shirts are a good choice under scrubs, as are sports bras for the ladies. Oh, and more pockets are always better than less.

Another Random Observation on Apparel: Ever notice that on CSI, they wear black undershirts? Yeah, there’s a reason for that. Also, if you’re allowed to wear black shoes instead of white ones to the hospital, do. Select shoes that wipe down easily — not canvas — and remember that Lysol kills germs you may have stepped in.

On Marines: Ever hear the saying “You can take the Marine out of the Corps, but you can’t take the Corps out of the Marine”? There is something to that, in a good way. Marines notice details, particularly about cars. There is no sneaking up behind a Marine. Marines don’t slack. In short, I will gladly work a shift with one.

On Pharmacology: Here’s the thing: there are many medications that harmlessly turn your pee a different color; there are many other medications that if your pee changes color you need emergency medical treatment. This was my hard class. Sure, most of what you need to know is in books, and some of those books are designed to fit in your pocket. When you’ve got a new patient, do you think you’re going to have time to look up the 5 meds they’re on and the 5 new ones the doctor wants them taking? Remember: You can’t just mindlessly give somebody their hypertension drugs when it turns out their blood pressure is running low.

On Process: There is such a thing as a “nursing diagnosis.” It is fundamentally different from a medical diagnosis. The nursing diagnosis may well be related to a medical problem. Doctors treat medical diagnoses; nurses formulate and implement plans to deal with nursing diagnoses.

“If we were to do things by the book…”: There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t go according to the textbook. You’ve got to adapt to the current circumstance.

Reality is Stranger than Fiction: Aphasia can be more, um, interesting (and surely more frustrating) than Doonesbury makes it out to be.

On Teamwork and Politics: There is some truth to “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Good luck doing certain nursing tasks without assistance! There is a time to work together as a team, and a time to work alone. Choose wisely.

On Caring: Caring is enough to make you a nursing assistant. It is not enough to get you through even the first semester of nursing school. More on that another day, I promise.

It’s time for Things I Learned This Semester!

That’s right, another semester is over! If you’re curious about things I’ve learned in the past, please enjoy some links to other posts. So let’s get going with the latest revelations:

General:

  • Eventually, the staff in charge of cleaning bathrooms will notice the graffiti on the back of the bathroom stall door.
  • The kind of high school student who takes college classes is motivated to succeed.
  • An alarming number of undergraduates don’t even know there’s a difference between viruses and bacteria. Come on people, take the whole run of antibiotics and never take somebody else’s meds.
  • Parking on campus gets easier after midterms.

Child Psych:

  • Because of a quirk of how children learn language, most children can relate to Ramona Beasley or Amelia Bedelia misunderstanding what they are told.
  • We adults might not like to think about it, but children are aware of sexual issues much earlier than puberty. Put CCSD’s issues in context.
  • The most messed up thing I have ever read for a class — any class — is the story of David Reimer.

Nutrition:

  • I knew that “You can’t out-train a bad diet”. I didn’t know this was mathematically provable. Go ahead and plug some numbers into a calorie calculator and an activity calculator. You can eat a lot more calories than you can possibly burn in a day!
  • The Food Pyramid is gone, and good riddance. Fill half your plate with fruits and veggies, and don’t worry too much about grains.
  • You don’t have to pay Carl Daikeler to put together a workout and diet plan for you, but it’s better than what many people would put together for themselves.
  • A lot of people apparently take Nutrition as an easy class.

Spanish:

  • In a college Spanish class, there are likely to be one or two people who speak Spanish ok but want to learn better grammar and spelling.
  • A Spanish professor from Spain and a Spanish professor from Central America have some fundamentally different ways of doing things.
  • Public speaking is more difficult in a foreign language.
  • Spanish doesn’t actually have a “past tense.” Instead, they have a “preterite” that serves the same function.
  • Don’t be afraid of the Hispanic grocery store. Odds are very good that the employees you’re likely to encounter are bilingual.

Chemistry:

  • Fun and danger in a chemistry lab often go together. It’s important to have a good lab partner and follow directions.
  • The chemical reactions that let antacids work often create gas. If you know how to do the math, you can figure out exactly how much acid you’re neutralizing and exactly how much gas you’ve burped.
  • Some guy actually built a periodic table.
  • Even though the pH scale familiar to swimming pool owners goes from 0 to 14, a pH of less than 0 is possible. This guy won a Nobel Prize for it.

That’s it for today. I’m skipping the closing bits. Have a great weekend!

Shooting oneself in the foot

You’ll notice that I didn’t do anything to commemorate excuse to slide into a dystopian police state day oops sorry I meant 9/11. Insert quote about safety and liberty here.

Moving on then!

Today’s news brought me this item about a teacher accidentally shooting herself in the leg. Last week a college professor shot himself in the foot.

Now just to review. I support the right of responsible people to own guns. I think most “gun control” laws rest on the faulty premise that someone who intends to break one law will inexplicably follow another law. I realize this puts me in in the minority among liberals. I think we perhaps need better enforcement of the laws we already have on the books. I think reasonable measures should be taken to make sure that guns aren’t legally in the hands of crazy people and known criminals, but I know that’s harder than it sounds.

Another bit of review, I’ve stated several times that things in a school should as a general thing be safe and educational, with a bunch of latitude given where needed. I can’t imagine how a reasonable person could possibly disagree with the basic principle.

So then, I’ve been trying pretty hard to think of a way it is possible for a teacher/professor to carry a weapon such that it is both secure to prevent possible injury to students and available for use in an emergency situation. Hip carry? Too much chance a student could get hold of it. Concealed carry? Well, you see what has already happened twice this school year and it’s not even the third week of September. Locked in the desk? Yeah, just ask the Bad Guy to wait while you unlock that desk, professor, great plan. Perhaps some of the more firearm literate readers can think of a way to secure the weapon such that nobody gets accidentally shot but Bad Guys can be intentionally shot.

So yeah, I think gun-toting teachers are a really bad idea.

In Closing: walk it off; I still think Zero Tolerance is a bad idea with unintended consequences; test results; even crazy people get sick; “man” up, but not too damn much; preach on, Comrade; and this is a problem why?

Music Monday: Same As It Ever Was

 

Once upon a time there was a math teacher in Japan named Toru Kumon. Back in 1954, his son did badly on a math test in grade school. A conversation with Mrs. Kumon ensued that boiled down to “Well, what are you going to do about this?” So he opened up the son’s textbook. Dismayed by what he found, he decided that the best solution was a step by step approach that should fill in missing skills, solidify the basics, and eventually prepare his son (and other students) for the sort of math he was teaching in high school. He emphasized speed and accuracy. It worked so well that parents are willing to pay for his method to this very day.

A decade later, an American teacher named Seigfried Englemann — Zig for short — landed a position working with Head Start. He found that the best solution for teaching kids basic academic skills was a step by step approach that makes sure there are no missing skills, the basics are solid, grouping by ability, and speed. He was convinced that a failing classroom was caused by bad curriculum (or bad implementation of curriculum), not bad kids. Here’s video of kindergarteners doing math (and basic algebra!). Notice that the children are minorities, the caption says they are “at risk” students as well. Notice too that this video was filmed just a year after Lehrer sang “New Math.”

It seems like every decade some group of educators decide there’s a better way to teach math (and reading) and some other educator re-discovers that you can’t teach complicated things unless students understand the simpler things underneath them. The latest reform math movement has resulted in hilarious problems being posted online and lampooned on television. And that brings me to the latest salvo in the math education pissing contest, nicely summarized by Joanne Jacobs: one educator says reform math doesn’t work here in the states because teachers are poorly trained, and the proof is that Japanese kids are doing fine; some other educator points out that Japanese kids are learning actual math skills in classes outside of school (including using the methods of Kumon-Sensei).

A common criticism of the Old Ways That Worked is that “drill and kill bores kids.” Do the kids in Zig’s video look bored? No, I didn’t think so either. Maybe they mean “drill and kill bores teachers.”

In Closing: Another place where they’re changing the rules just about the time you think you understand them; mission creep; unintended consequences; on mostly not getting by in America these days; Amen; on American politics; the Middle East; Reality; on privacy, the Internet, and the hilarious new thing the NSA wants; and Cat Tricks.

More for the College Bound Crowd

This time of year, I usually link back to my 2007 post on campus drinking. And hey, it’s still unfortunately relevant.

Today I’d like to remind you that  hand in hand with college drinking is the problem of sexual assault on campus. No victim blaming is intended here, but if you are headed off to college — especially if you are female — here are some things you need to remember:

  • Sexual assault is a crime and should be reported to police, not campus officials. It should be prosecuted in a real court and not a campus disciplinary panel designed to deal with such infringements as scholastic dishonesty.
  • Your campus may have a vested interest in making sure few serious crimes — including sexual assault — are reported. After all, they want to look parents of prospective students in the eye and talk about their low crime rate.
  • Victims of a crime have the right to have their complaint taken seriously, even if the alleged perpetrator is a campus hero.
  • More protections might be coming, but they of course must be balanced against the rights of the accused (who are still “innocent until proven guilty”, and yes some are unjustly accused — another argument for involving the real police and real courts early).
  • Just like with most crimes, it is always a good idea to be a little proactive about not becoming a victim. Use common sense. Use the “buddy system” when you go out and keep an eye out for one another. Watch your consumption of booze and other intoxicants. Be aware that not-nice people exist. These tips are useful for preventing theft and the more mundane sort of assault too.

Look, I sincerely hope you never ever have to call the cops to report a crime on campus. Likewise, I hope you won’t hesitate if the need arises.

In Closing: More on privacy, watchlists, and “reform“, with a bonus blast from the past; dude, highway deaths are so down in Colorado; in the Navy; co-signing is a bad idea; mountain lions don’t like opera; airport playground.

A Few Random Education Items

Sorry if this feels like a tab dump. I stored up a bunch of things I’d hoped to say more about, but it’s clearly not happening. From the top, please!

So, let’s start by talking about online college courses. First up is this nice little infographic. One little detail left out is that some schools have moved entire courses to “online only” as far as I can tell. It makes scheduling a whole lot easier, both for classes that many students must take (say, history 101) and for classes with limited interest (“seminar in 20th century politics”). I’ve taken multiple online classes, with satisfactory results. Here’s some perspective on online classes from a guy who actually understands higher ed.

Of course, not everybody makes it through college. Many drop out because they have trouble with the work, and many others drop out because they have trouble with money. Federal policies may make the latter worse. You know what might also be making things worse? Wall Street.

So, before you can get into college and start amassing student loan debt, you have to actually get into college, right? So is anybody at all surprised that upper class kids do better on the SAT?

Back to the beginning now. It turns out that all the calculators, manipulatives, and fun songs do less to teach kids math than good old fashioned “drilling the basics.” I’m not sure why it is that every few years we get away from the old-fashioned way of teaching math that actually works. I suspect it’s because the teachers get bored with the basics.

And finally, the silliness that is a super-hard kindergarten admissions exam. It seems to me that when I was 5, all they wanted to know was “does she know letters, numbers, and colors?”

Winning, Duh.

Believe it or not, the downhill slide towards graduation is underway for college seniors. On the flipside, high school students are finalizing their plans for college and some college students are setting up for graduate school. In the midst of this, NPR ran this item last week on a law school that is boosting its rate of employed graduates by simply employing them. Feel free to spend 5 minutes listening to the whole thing:

These students get a stipend from the school to work for nonprofits or in public service. That stipend can come out of the school’s budget or sometimes alumni donations. And when a school hires its own students, it can bump up its ranking. William and Mary Law School, for example, jumped nine spots this year. It employs 20 percent of its students on a fellowship program.

The school’s dean says the program helps students succeed by showing potential employers what they’re capable of.

Needless to say, critics call the program self serving. I see it as a win-win-win situation.

Of course the college wins! They do better on the metric of what percentage of students are employed after graduation, and can boast about it on marketing materials. Further, they can point out that these students are employed in their profession at decent wages that can pay their student loan debt, not minimum wage burger flipping jobs. The college gets a further win in the business community because employers will know exactly what the can expect out of new graduates. This sort of information improves the school’s reputation.

Students win too: they get a job! Even better, they get a job that will jump start their resume and give them references for future job searches. Student loans get paid, they don’t have to live with mom and dad, lower stress, and so much more in an environment where there’s a tough job market. Some of these one year temporary positions even end with an offer of full time work in a similar position.

The overlooked third win is the nonprofit or public service organization that takes on these new grads. Many of these organizations do great work in their communities on a shoestring budget. This program means work gets done that might not be done at all if they had to hire an established professional at prevailing wages.

You’d have to be a real cynic to avoid seeing that the benefit is more than a jump in school ranking. If you really value the work ethic and honestly think that education is the key to success, then you really have to like this program.

In Closing: a couple Vegas items; save this for next year; a school tries doing something sensible; the importance of microbiota; privacy, surveillance, NSA, fake reforms, terrorism, yadda yadda yadda; petty Putin; exercise is good for you; on the minimum wage and poverty and the real center. Have a great weekend, folks.