Facebook makes the world smaller

My son tagged me in Facebook asking me who a certain person was, we'll call her Amy. I explained that Amy was a cousin who is associated with Big Name University. And I asked why her name came up. Well, Amy's name showed up as a recommended FB contact on his page and the contacts listed was one of his classmates at Tech - and 3 family members.

So, someone he is related to is a contact with a friend of his - six degrees of separation......

Wasted week

I have a large contingent of students who will need to pass a high stakes test at the end of March in order to graduate. Most have asked me to write a letter begging the state for a waiver, which will not happen before graduation the end of May. And I have told the students that.

So, we left school at noon Tuesday. Depending on your distance from the school and your mode of transportation, they got home sometime on Tuesday. We have not had school again this week.

They were expecting to be in school 8 hours a day in the next 3 days, so they wouldn't have planned on working (theorizing). Most of the teachers didn't expect to be out this long so didn't assign massive amounts of work.

So, don't you think at least one of these kids could have some some work on passing the high stakes test? I can see if they have been working. And they haven't.

I guess it is better to blame the state when it doesn't grant the waiver.

Six Word Saturday

Long break. Hard to get started.


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We had a day and a half of school this week because of snow and ice.

So, the planning for next week is basically done. But getting them started Monday should be interesting.

Cross multiply

When I think about the problems kids these days have with math, it can be summed up with "cross multiply."

When I teach this concept (with proportions)I stress that it is two fractions with an equal sign in the middle.

Somehow, the importance of that equal sign is never learned. If you have 2 fractions with a + in the middle - or a- or a *-doesn't matter. Two fractions means cross multiply.

Sigh.

Kids still at school

The kids from our county are home thanks to the sheriff's department. Some counties were not so lucky. The last I heard, there were still 50 kids on school buses.

It snowed here *updated

Those of you up north are probably laughing at those of down here in the snow. Wow, 2 inches of snow and the world ends. Well, ponder this.

1) we do not have much equipment to deal with this because we get a bad snow storm (at most) twice a decade.

2) so we also have no practice driving in this.

3) this area is in the piedmont - lots of hills and curves, lots with narrow roads and ditches on both sides. (and no sand or salt).

4) coming home yesterday only about 4 of the hills I go over had sand on them, And only on my side of the road. The other side was slippy slidey.

5) several school systems down here decided to hang out until 11:00 in order to count it as a full day - then (by law) had to feed the students. We have thousands of kids who never made it home and spent the night in school - or were picked up by their parents late.

6) stuff like this brings out the best and the worst in people. Some people went out of their way to use 4 wheel drive to get folks home - and some folks were ignoring traffic laws.

And this makes it sound even better.

We are being told to stay off the roads - so no school tomorrow.

Texas is dropping Algebra 2 as a requirement

Texas is moving away from everyone taking Algebra 2 to graduate. This will have ramifications for the rest of us - when people figure out that the beneficiaries of Common Core are big businesses not kids. Oy, vey - how long until we swing back to a better way of learning?