Lance Bledsoe

Teaching and boxing

bledsoe — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:48:37 +0000

My wife's a boxer. She's been doing it a few years and has gotten good enough at it that she now helps with the training of some of the newer boxers who come to her gym. The newbies are young and old, male and female, large and small. Many of them begin with the idea that they don't want to actually get in the ring with anyone, they just want to take advantage of the fitness classes, learn how to hit the heavy bag or the mitts, get in shape, etc., and that's fine. But sometimes they decide they want to learn to box against an actual opponent. And most of them discover pretty quickly that there's a big difference between being good at a boxing workout and being good at boxing. In fact, there are two completely different skill sets you have to develop.

The first skill set is pretty straightforward and almost entirely physical; you have to learn how to correctly throw different punches, you have to build up strength and endurance, etc. You learn these things mostly by practice and brute force repetition. The second skill set is not at all straightforward; it's some strange combination of physical and mental, and to learn it you have to get in the ring with someone and trade punches.

The thing that makes a lot of people reluctant to go from engaging in boxing workouts to actually boxing is this simple truth: if you're going to box, you're going to get hit. Not only that, but since you're new at it you're not going to be very good at it, so you're going to get hit a lot and maybe even get knocked down and get your nose bloodied a couple of times. And not only is that going to be physically painful, it's also going to be emotionally painful because there are going to be a lot of people standing around ringside watching you get your butt kicked.

When I first went into teaching several years ago, I remember how frustrating it was. It was really difficult, much more difficult than I had expected, and all of the problem-solving skills I had developed, both as a student and in my previous career as an engineer, weren't helping. My students wouldn't listen, they wouldn't do their homework, they wouldn't pay attention, they weren't interested in what I was trying to teach, I had to figure out how to deal with parents and grading and attendance; I had all these really difficult teaching problems I was trying to solve, and I couldn't solve them. It was like I didn't know anything at all about how to be a good teacher.

And of course, I didn't. Because even though I had been a really good student and I knew my subject matter inside and out, being a teacher involves a completely different skill set and I hadn't developed it yet. If you're new to teaching, you're not going to have those skills yet either, but you'll develop those skills from your experiences in the classroom, and here are a few things to keep in mind while you're doing that:

Most of the problems you have as a first year teacher are perfectly ordinary. Every first year teacher struggles with the same kinds of problems: classroom management issues, authority issues, discipline issues, planning issues, organizational issues. Yes, they're difficult problems, and yes, they're frustrating, but every new teacher struggles with the exact same problems. You're perfectly normal.
Being a good teacher requires learning a completely different skill set from being a good student, and to learn it, you're going to have to get in the ring and trade some punches. Don't get me wrong, in order to be a good teacher you also need to have a solid mastery of your subject matter, just like a boxer needs to be in good physical condition, but that's just a foundation on which you're going to build your teaching skills.
You need a good coach. Even better, you need a bunch of good coaches. Your coaches are going to be the teachers and administrators at your school who have been doing this a while. Talk to them. Ask them questions. Tell them about problems you're having and ask for their suggestions. Believe me, they've experienced all of the same problems and more.
Try not to obsess about it when you get knocked down. Believe me, you're going to have plenty of classes that don't go well, plenty of students that you don't reach, and plenty of situations that you just plain screw up. Try to learn from them, plan to do better next time, then let it go.

Teaching isn't something you learn by studying really hard or passing a bunch of classes, any more than boxing is something you learn by spending hours punching the heavy bag and working on your cardio. You learn to box by getting in a ring with another boxer and boxing, and you learn to teach by getting in a class with a bunch of students and teaching. And your first few times you're not going to be very good at it. You're going to take a bunch of shots to the head and body, and you're going to get your breath knocked out of you, and you may get knocked down a time or two. Sometimes you may be a little embarrassed at what a poor job you're doing, especially with so many people watching.

But take heart. This is how you become a boxer teacher. You prepare yourself as best you can, then you go into your classroom and do the best you can, and when you get knocked down you get up and go right back in. And after a while you'll discover that through all those experiences in the classroom you are learning things about teaching that you can't learn from a book. And pretty soon you'll be helping out the newbies, too.

The class from hell

bledsoe — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:13:40 +0000

A while back I was discussing one of my classes with Mr. A, another teacher at my high school, and asking his advice on some classroom management issues, and he began telling me about the worst class he'd ever had.

This was a few years ago, he said, and he'd been teaching about 5 years. He had just moved to a different school, and he started in the middle of the semester, teaching social studies to classes of 9th-and 10th-graders. Two of his three classes were going pretty well, but one was just horrible. The kids were unruly, they wouldn't listen, they talked constantly, they skipped class; several students in the class had apparently already failed this same class at least once, and seemed to be perfectly content to fail it again.

He said he tried everything he could think of. He tried being calm and cool, he tried yelling and screaming, he tried sending kids to detention, he got help from the principal and assistant principals, he called parents; he even arranged with his mentor teacher for the two of them to team teach the class, so the class had two teachers instead of one. Nothing worked. If kids were sent to detention, they'd behave exactly the same when they returned. If kids were suspended (and some were suspended multiple times), they'd behave exactly the same when they returned. Parents were either unable or unwilling to help. At the end of the semester, he said five kids (out of 30) passed the class, and those five had to work really hard given the atmosphere they were working in.

Not only was his story fascinating in itself (and you better believe it made me re-evaluate the "problems" I thought I was having with my classes), but I was amazed at his ability to tell it so matter-of-factly. I said the whole situation must have been exhausting and depressing for him, and he said something like, "Yeah, but that's just part of the job. Sometimes, for whatever reasons, you get a class that just really difficult. You do what you can, and you try to get as much help from as many people as you can, but sometimes nothing works. You just do the best you can and keep going."

The great thing about Mr. A's story was that it gave me some perspective. Before I heard this story, I thought one of my classes was horrible. After I heard it, I realized my class was pretty ordinary. And while I hope I never get a class like Mr. A's class from hell, if I do I hope I deal with it with as much grace and professionalism as he did.

Dr. Rob’s classroom culture

bledsoe — Mon, 31 May 2010 11:18:20 +0000

When I was in grad school for my teaching degree I took a math course called Modern Geometries (aka Non-Euclidean Geometries) and I enjoyed it a lot. The subject matter was fascinating (e.g., situations where the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line, triangles whose interior angles don't add up to 180 degrees, etc.) plus the teacher, Dr. Robinson, was really good. He was smart and funny and we always had a lot of really interesting lectures and class discussions.

One day I was talking with another student who had Dr. Robinson for another class and she mentioned how boring the class was. I was shocked. Dr. Rob boring? I couldn't imagine how this could be possible. I tried to get some more information from her but she just said that they never did anything interesting, it was just boring lectures, she didn't think he was a very good teacher, etc.

I had never before really given much thought to the "culture" of a particular classroom. I knew that I had taken classes that were really good, and I had taken classes that were really bad, but I pretty much assumed that the good classes were good because the teacher was good and the bad classes were bad because the teacher was bad.

I mentioned this to Dr. Rob and told him I was confused how my friend could find his class so boring when I found his class so interesting. He actually confirmed that yes, the other class was kind of boring, and when I asked him why he said, "It's just a different mix of students. In your class, for example, there are a lot of students who will actively participate in class discussions, while in the other class there aren't. So it's hard to do much besides just lecture to them."

This was the first time I'd ever considered the fact that the particular mix of students in a class might have some influence on the class atmosphere or culture. Since then, of course, I've learned that there are a whole ton of things that contribute to the tone or culture of a particular class, and while the teacher certainly has a great deal of influence on it, so do a lot of other things. I suspect that really good teachers can mitigate the influence of a lot of these other factors and create a good class even in challenging situations, but I've also heard plenty of stories from really good teachers in which they found themselves in a class with really difficult students, or unsupportive administrators or parents, or just bad mojo, and nothing they did seemed to make it better.

I'm continually fascinated by this idea of a classroom culture, and what kinds of things can and can't be done to create or improve on it. In particular, how much influence does the teacher have in creating a classroom culture that's conducive to effective learning, and what things are beyond his or her control?

The 5 best things about my first week (back) in the classroom

bledsoe — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:30:29 +0000

Last week I started a new job teaching high school math after several years being out of the classroom. The first week went pretty well. Here are the five best things about it (in no particular order).

Meeting Jimi Hendrix - No lie, James Hendrix works at my school. He goes by Jimi. (Wouldn't you?)
The congratulatory gift basket the guys in my band sent me - Actually I'm pretty sure just one guy did it and put everyone else's name on the card, but still this was way cool.
My oldest son is a student at my school - And he doesn't seem at all bothered by the fact that his dad works there. He almost seems to think it's cool. Before I started, I told him that I'd be really busy for the first few days and that I didn't want him coming by bothering me, and of course he ignored me. On my first day, he and a couple of his friends came by my room to say hi and it made me feel really good.
The other teachers in the math department - Even though they all have their own stuff to do, every time I've needed something they've been happy to help. One even loaned me a huge binder full of course notes, tests, etc., that she put together over the 10 or so years that she's been teaching the same course I'm teaching. Score!
The social studies department office - they have the best copier (no smudges!) and the best snacks, which someone brings regularly and puts on the table. Of course, I wouldn't eat any of them, since I'm not in the social studies department, but if I was going to eat some, those cookies from last week would have been really good.

How to turn off WordPress smart quotes

bledsoe — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:43:02 +0000

Smart quotes (aka curly quotes) are what most word processor programs insert into your document when you type the quote marks key. They're pretty to look at, but they cause problems if you use them in a text document that contains code intended to be read by a computer. That's normally not a problem since text editors don't create smart quotes when you type the quote key, but if you happen to find a cool chunk of code on a blog somewhere and you cut and paste it into a text file, if the blog you're copying the code from uses curly quotes, then you have a problem.

The bad news is, WordPress automatically converts all quote symbols to smart quotes, so if you post code snippets to your blog and they have quote marks in them, anyone who attempts to copy and paste that code into their own text file is going to have problems running the code. The good news is, you can turn this feature off.

There are actually a few different ways to do this, including modifying the functions.php file in your theme folder, or modifying the default-filters.php file in your wp-includes folder. But I like creating a separate php file and making it into a WordPress plugin, as described in this post by Katja Stokley. Create a text file called TurnOffSmartQuotes.php and put this in it:

/*
Plugin Name: TurnOffSmartQuotes
Plugin URI:
Description: Stops WordPress from converting your quote symbols into smartquotes. The three lines below stop the smartquote conversion in 1) your post content, 2) your comments, and 3) your post excerpts.
Version: 0.1
Author: Katja Stokley
Author URI:
*/
remove_filter('the_content', 'wptexturize');
remove_filter('comment_text', 'wptexturize');
remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wptexturize');
?>

Then just upload this file to your wp-content/plugins folder, login to your WordPress dashboard, select "Plugins," and activate your new plugin. You've just turned off smart quotes on your WordPress blog.

Dilbert notes a problem with the survey methodology

bledsoe — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:49:35 +0000

Famous people commissioning surveys: The Dilbert Guy

How to align your custom header with your navbar

bledsoe — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:31:09 +0000

If you use the Thesis theme for your WordPress blog, you might have created your own custom header image for your site (kind of like mine, above). If so, you may have noticed that your header image doesn't seem to align correctly with your navbar. To get your header image and your navbar aligned, you'll need to add a few lines of code to your Thesis custom.css file. It's a simple fix, and here's how you do it.

Click on the Thesis Custom Styling option under the Appearance menu in your dashboard sidebar. This allows you to make changes to your Thesis custom.css file. At the bottom of this file, insert the following lines of code.

/* The following lines control the alignment of your header image with your navbar. As long as these are all set to zero, your header image will be aligned with your navbar on the right and left, with no whitespace between the header image and the navbar.
*/
.custom #header {
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-top: 0;
padding-left: 0;
border-bottom: 0;
}

Save your changes, reload your blog page, and your header image and navbar will be aligned.

Removing the whitespace at the top of your Thesis blog

bledsoe — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:38:51 +0000

If you use the Thesis theme for your WordPress blog, you might have created your own custom header image for your site (kind of like mine, above). If so, you may have noticed that there's a little bit of whitespace between the top of your browser window and the top of your header image (kind of like mine, above). If you want to get rid of that whitespace, you'll need to add a few lines of code to your Thesis custom.css file. It's a simple fix, and here's how you do it.

/* The following lines control the whitespace at the very top of the page (i.e., above the header image). If you set the padding-top property value to 0 (zero), your header image will be flush with the top of the page.
*/
.custom #page {
padding-top: 0;
}

You can also set the padding-top property value to something else if you actually want some amount of space between the top of the browser window and the top of your header image.

Save your changes, reload your blog page, and the whitespace will be gone.

Fox News mangles stats, denies error

bledsoe — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:14:30 +0000

A recent series of events at Fox News involved not only a mistake in reporting survey data, but a subsequent refusal to acknowledge the mistake, even after it was pointed out. The timeline of events is as follows:

On November 23, 2009, after a "series of [on-screen] mistakes," Fox News implemented a zero-tolerance policy for on-screen errors.
On December 1-2, 2009, Rasmussen Reports, a well-known public opinion polling firm, conducted a national survey to determine the views of Americans on the issue of global climate change. Survey question #3 asked, "In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?" Rasmussen reported the responses to this question as follows:

35% Very likely
24% Somewhat likely
21% Not very likely
5% Not at all likely
15% Not sure
On December 3, 2009, Rasmussen Reports published a summary of the results of the survey in which they noted, among other things, that:

"Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data."

(This was in fact an accurate summary of the survey data from survey question #3.)
On December 4, 2009, Fox News broadcast a 1-minute segment in which a graphic (created by Fox News) was displayed which incorrectly summarized the data from survey question #3, and three commentators briefly discussed and interpreted these (incorrect) data.

On December 8, Media Matters for America, a non-profit media watchdog group, sent an open letter to Fox News pointing out the error in the Fox News graphic, and suggested that this might be a case that merited a reprimand under Fox's new zero-tolerance policy. Fox News responded that there was no error in the graphic, and thus no need for any reprimand.

If you look at the graphic, it seems pretty clear what happened: whoever created the graphic only read the Rasmussen summary of the survey data, and not the breakdown of the actual percentages for this question. This person no doubt assumed the three percentages quoted in the summary paragraph represented all of the answer choices for the survey question, when in fact the 59% number combined the responses for Very Likely and Somewhat Likely into a larger category of "at least somewhat likely." (This combining of response categories is done all the time when reporting on survey data.) The Fox News graphic implies that the Very Likely group is separate from the 59% "combined" category, when in fact it's a subset of it. As pointed out by a number of observers, reporting the percentages as Fox did clearly distorts the survey data, even making it appear that the total number of survey responses exceeded 100%.

While many people may disagree about the degree to which Fox News or Rasmussen Reports display a conservative bias, or the degree to which Media matters displays a liberal bias, or the appropriateness of some sort of reprimand under the Fox News zero tolerance policy, the one thing that is undeniable is that Fox News made a mistake when creating the graphic. Yet, when the error was pointed out, Fox News simply claimed that while "the presentation wasn't perfect," there was no error in the graphic.

While this wasn't perhaps the worst mistake ever made, it was a mistake, and while there's no shame in making a mistake, there is shame in attempting to cover it up. For a major news organization to refuse to acknowledge such a clear error in reporting simple facts is unconscionable.

Math conversations: The Maker explores division

bledsoe — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:32:57 +0000

In the car the other day, the Maker, currently in 4th grade, asked me what 100 divided by 3 is. (Sometimes when he asks me arithmetic questions, I'll just toss it back to him and ask him to tell me the answer, but I knew he'd been working on understanding division so I told him it was 33 and 1/3.) "And what's 100 divided by 4?" he asked. "Twenty-five," I said.

When it appeared that he wasn't going to ask anything else, I said, "And what's 100 divided by 5?"

That slowed him down for a minute. He suggested the answer was 30, but I pointed out that 5 times 30 was 150, so that wouldn't work. Then he suggested 29, then 28, and so on down to 26, each time adding up five of the number (in his head), attempting to find one that would add up to 100.

When he got to 26 and that one didn't work, he declared that the answer must be a fraction between 25 and 26.

I asked him how he knew the answer wouldn't be a number below 25, and after thinking about it for a minute, he started trying the "add the number to itself" approach with 24, then 23, and so on until he got to 20, at which point he declared this to be the answer.

Later, I asked him why he initially thought the answer had to be greater than 25, and he got a piece of paper to show me. He explained that he had gotten division confused with multiplication. If you have two multiplication problems, and one answer (i.e., the product) is greater than the other, yet one of the multiplicands is the same in both problems, then you know the other multiplicand must be greater than the corresponding multiplicand in the first problem. In division, it's kind of the reverse, since, as The Maker explained, multiplication and division are opposites. In other words, as the divisor gets larger, your answer (i.e., the quotient), gets smaller.

In this case, The Maker's reasoning was perfectly sound; he understood that there was a pattern in the division problems we were talking about, and he was systematically following the pattern to find the correct answer. The problem was that he was using the pattern for multiplication rather than the pattern for division. Once he worked his way to the correct answer for the problem he was working on, he realized his mistake.

A professor at Swarthmore College, Heinrich Brinkmann, is said to have been well-known for being able to find something right in what every student said. No matter how outrageous a student's contribution or question, he could respond, 'Oh, I see what you are thinking. You're looking at it as if...'" (See the book, Math Power: How to Help Your Child Love Math, Even If You Don't.)

What a wonderful trait for a teacher (or parent) to have. As Jo Baeler notes in her book What's Math Got To Do With It?, "unless a child has taken a wild guess, there will be some sense in what they are thinking - the role of the teacher is to find out what it is that makes sense and build from there."