That Sunday School teacher from Finland

 Preface: This is a letter I wrote to my kids on 7 February, 2011, about a Sunday School teacher I had when I was a youth. I don't want to lose this story, so here it is.

Hi kids,

Here's the story I promised you, about my favorite Sunday School teacher ever.

For my last two years in high school (from mid-sophomore year to mid-senior year), we lived in Hawkesbury, Ontario and went to church in Pointe Claire (Montreal), Quebec.  It seemed like our Sunday School class couldn't keep a teacher for more than three weeks.  I don't recall doing anything specific to drive them out, but apparently we did something to make them go away.

Ironically, the Sunday School teacher that lasted the longest was the one that was the least prepared and the least effective.  Every Sunday, he would fold the lesson manual back on itself, breaking the spine of the book, bury his nose in the page, and start reading. The. Lesson. Word. By. Word.  The only time he looked up was to pick someone to address a question to -- again, a question from the book.  Where the manual said "Ask:  What did ...?" he would look up, say "Andrew?" and then bury his nose in the book and ask the question:  "What. Did. ...?"  Andrew would answer something -- anything! -- and the guy would say, "Correct." -- and then read the answer out of the book!  Out loud!

I didn't learn anything Gospel-related from that teacher, except how NEVER to teach.

The Sunday School teacher I remember the most was this one little lady, an immigrant from Finland, who didn't speak English very well.  I think that she was very poor.  I also think that she put hours into preparing every lesson.  How do I know?  Well, it's a simple thing, and it may make my tender-hearted Mountain Woman tear up just a bit.

Nabisco Shredded Wheat, not the spoon-size stuff but the big stuff, was packaged three biscuits at a time in a wax-paper wrapper.  The wrappers were stacked in the cereal box with pasteboard spacers between them, so the biscuits wouldn't crumble.  I was very familiar with those spacers because Shredded Wheat was cheap and our family ate a lot of it. 

Every Sunday, this Finnish lady would pull her lesson plan out of her bag, written in pencil on several of those Shredded Wheat spacers.  The spacers were about four inches wide and ten inches long.  She would hold them like a hand of oversized playing cards, and constantly shuffle through them as she taught her lesson.

One Sunday, she handed out triple combinations for us to use to look up something.  (This was back in the days before President Spencer W. Kimball, and before his counsel that parents should obtain all the scriptures for all their children.)  I ended up with one that didn't look quite right.  She had us turn to a section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which was easy to find because all the sections are numbered, right?  So are the verses!  But the words in my book were all gibberish.  She had intentionally snuck a Finnish D&C in with the books she was handing out! 

She was illustrating a point that she was trying to make, by giving one of us a book that we could not read or understand.  Today we call that an "object lesson."  And you can believe that all of us in that class caught the object lesson that Sunday.

She never said "I love you kids," probably because that didn't come into style for a few years after.  Maybe she did love us; I don't know.  But she was a model of devotion and of preparation that I have followed ever since -- and of humility! creativity! and so much more of what makes a great teacher out of anybody.

--

Love

Dad

The Parable of the Good Samaritan: A Fresh Look

 All of you are familiar with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It's found in the Bible, in Luke chapter 10, verses 25-37. The lesson in the parable is a powerful lesson, one that can apply to anyone, of any religious (or irreligious) stripe.

The Good Samaritan. Source: iStockPhoto

I'm not going to rehash the parable. You all know it — and if you don't know it, then grab a Bible and read it. If you don't have a Bible, go read it in Wikipedia. But I am going to tell you a modern story about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It's ... well, you'll see.

I was once a Seminary teacher, and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the "Mormon" church), high school students start their day by attending a religious-studies class before school. It's called Seminary. It lasts from 6:00 to 6:50 a.m. Over four years, they study all the books that the Church considers holy scripture. It is hoped that, sometime during those four years, they are able to discover for themselves the reality of a resurrected and living Jesus Christ, the power that he has in their lives, and the future that he and his Father have in store for them.

(We can talk more about that some other time.)

Being a Seminary teacher is therefore a heavy responsibility. We're expected to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and in such a way that each student will hear or feel that Spirit inside themselves and gain their own witness of the truth, through a prayerful exercise of their own free will.

(We can talk more about that some other time, too.)

So one day, I was prepared to teach the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I had spent several days preparing this lesson, praying and pondering so that I could get it exactly right. In all of my teaching, I wanted the students to reach inside themselves and discover what these stories and these lessons meant for them in their lives. I didn't lecture, and I didn't rely solely on videos, either. I asked pointed questions and encouraged thoughtful discussion. For this lesson, I had planned to review the story in some detail, and afterwards to ask the students: "Therefore, what? What difference does this make in your life?"

(Wow. Most of the preceding paragraphs were background. Exposition. Setup. My story isn't as long as the setup.)

We lived about 1.5 miles from the church. I liked to get there around 5:30 to set up the classroom, do my final preparations, and greet the kids as they arrived. This morning I was behind schedule, and in a hurry to get there before 6:00.

Halfway there, I saw a minivan parked on the side of the road, with its four-way hazard lights flashing.

Yeah.

God wasn't even being subtle.

I looked up through the roof of the car, and cried out: "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! THIS ISN'T FAIR!" I didn't have time to stop. I had to get to the church building to get things ready. And according to Colorado state law, when you encounter a vehicle with its four-ways blinking, you're supposed to move one lane over, just like the priest and the Levite did in the parable, to give the disabled vehicle a safety margin.

But of course, I couldn't do that. I had to get to the church building, yes, but even more than that, I had to stop.

So I pulled over and parked in front of the minivan, walked over to the driver's door, and knocked on the window. The driver rolled down the window. It was a young mother and two young children. I asked, "Hi, are you in trouble? Is there a problem with your car? Is there something I can do to help you?"

She smiled, and said, "No, that's okay. I just called my husband and he'll be here in about five minutes."

I wished her good luck and, as I turned to go back to my car, I heard a sound like a pencil making a checkmark on paper, and a still, small voice saying, "You passed." I went to the church and taught my seminary lesson. At the end of the lesson I told my kids what had happened on the way to seminary that morning.

I have pondered repeatedly on this incident. It has become increasingly clear to me over the years that I could not have taught that parable with power and the Spirit, and delivered its lessons into my students' hearts, if I had not proven to my God and myself, and my students, that those lessons were deeply engraved in my own heart.

Apotropaic marks and whiteboards

Before I became a 7th-grade math teacher, I had an opportunity to test the waters of public education, by helping to teach an oversized 9th-grade math class. It was a great experience.

If I recall correctly, this class had three girls, not related to each other, named Aylee, Hailey, and Kaylee. I performed additional duties by tutoring one of them after hours. It might have been Aylee, but I can't remember any more.

This girl had a touch of either ADD or OCD, which made it hard for her to concentrate if there were any distractions. That's why she needed one-on-one tutoring. During our tutoring sessions, I would often stand at a whiteboard, marker in hand, explaining mathematical concepts. I had to erase the whiteboard regularly.

The first few times I erased the board, I would commence teaching the next concept, to be interrupted by the sounds of distressed grunting, almost squealing, from Aylee.

I would stop, look at her, and ask, "What?"

She would point to the board and splutter, "That mark! That mark!"

I would look at the board, see a tiny spot that I'd missed, and ask, "What about it?"

"Erase it! Make it go away!"

She could not do anything until the board was completely, perfectly, erased and clean.

So I learned to wipe the board and make it perfectly clean, because naturally I wanted to create an environment in which she could learn better. That's the kind of teacher I am. Was. Whatever.

But after a few sessions, I would wipe the board and make it perfectly clean, then pick up a marker and make a little, tiny, tick mark on the board, before saying "Now, then, ..." just to needle her. It worked every time.

I'm such a meany.

Yep. Just like this.

More about Common Core, Number Lines and the "Frustrated Parent" Bullshit

Well, the Independent Journal Review has resurrected the story of the Frustrated Parent and the Common Core math problem. The writer, Caroline Schaeffer, writes the story as if this were new news, ignoring the fact that the story is already seven months old.

The IJReview has an axe to grind with Common Core, as this Google search illustrates. The problem is that all of the examples they cite are NOT examples from Common Core. They are straw men. We've been through this argument before: Common Core is not a curriculum; it's only a set of standards. The IJReview, like so many other CC opponents, ignores this fact. They build up their own straw men, knock them down, and say "See? Common Core is bad."

If the writers (and the editors) at the IJReview would read the real Common Core stuff at the official CC website, they would understand. A little research with an open mind can dispel an awful lot of ignorance.

But enough of that. Right now, I want you to remember way, way back to your grade-school and middle-school days. You were pretty good at learning all of that addition and subtraction stuff. Do you remember the kids in class who weren't all that good? They were labeled "dumb" or "slow." They ended up sitting in the back of the room. When they got frustrated and acted out, they were labeled "problems."

Education research has come a long way since you were that young. Since then, researchers have discovered that different children learn in different ways, which they call learning styles.  Students with a strong logical or mathematical learning style pick up the vertical method of subtraction (the way you do it) very easily. Students who are weak in this area, but who have a strong visual or spatial learning style, such as artists, or who have a strong physical or kinesthetic learning style, like dancers and athletes, may not understand the vertical method at first.

These visual and kinesthetic learners, however, will understand the number line immediately. They can use it as a crutch, or as training wheels on a bicycle, until they get the idea well enough to move on to the vertical method.

Or would you rather that teachers did NOT use all the tools at their disposal to help their students learn? Should we abandon this number-line method, as Frustrated Parent and all of  his fans loudly proclaim? Would you rather go back to the days when the dumb kids and the slow kids were relegated to the back of the room, where they could be safely ignored? God forbid we should allow our teachers to use the tools that might make them successful!

I recently had lunch with one of my former students, now 20 years old and a junior at college. Before she came into my 7th grade math class, she didn't like math. She was one of the "slow" and "dumb" ones. In my class, we used a number line and a marching Gummy Bear to learn about addition and subtraction — of both positive and negative numbers. She tells me that she remembers that lesson  (even though she no longer uses a number line). It was a turning point for her, and the confidence she gained from that one exercise changed her life. She ended up taking advanced math classes in high school, and she will be graduating from college with a minor in mathematics.

Her major is education. She wants to be a teacher.

One final note. If you think that it's simple and easy to teach the vertical method of subtraction to children, including the very difficult concept of borrowing, then you probably also think it's simple and easy to teach the vertical method of multiplication (also known as "long multiplication"), don't you? I know you do. I've seen some comments in the anti-Common-Core articles decrying the "box method" and other modern methods of teaching multiplication, and demanding that teachers teach it "the way we learned it."

So let's watch the Animaniacs demonstrate the simple and easy vertical method of multiplication — the way you learned it. Click here.

Common Core: the backlash against "Frustrated Parent"

Well, I'm not the only person who stood up in defense of Common Core, or who put "Frustrated Parent" in his place. The Huffington Post, which has admirably refused to jump on the anti-Common Core bandwagon,
published an article that I missed - way back around April 1 - quoting many of CC's defenders and calling out "Frustrated Father" for his lack of ... common sense? understanding? ability to follow directions? comprehension? The article also pointed out very clearly - yet again - the difference between Common Core and all the stuff being passed along by CC opponents and the popular media as "Common Core."

Actually, considering that my blog postings about "Frustrated Parent" and Common Core were published on March 26, and the HuffPo article was posted on March 28, it could be that they used my blog as uncredited source material. This is even more probable considering that the article says at the bottom, "This article has been updated."

I sort of jumped the gun (like, two months after the fact) and posted a comment to the article today without having read it completely. Shame on me. It's still a good article. I recommend it to you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/viral-common-core-homework_n_5049829.html

Common Core: It's Not Really as Hard as You're Making It

I'm afraid that, in this Common Core debate, the voices of reason (and the voices of the teachers, bless 'em) are getting drowned out by all the yelling and screaming. Adjectives like "shrill" and "irrational" to describe some of CC's vocal opponents come immediately to mind, followed closely by "stupid" and "morons," and then devolving into words not suitable for a G-rated blog.

Here's another attempt to inject some calm and rational input into the debate. A commenter to an article on Yahoo! Shine, an actual teacher, has this to say about Common Core:

Common Core is a set of standards, not a curriculum. I teach common core without a specific textbook or program. I look at the standard such as 7th grade geometry: 7/G.A.1 Solve problems involving scale drawings of geometric figures, including computing actual lengths and areas from a scale drawing and reproducing a scale drawing at a different scale. I find examples of the problem and worksheets to support practice. Then I assess as needed that the student has mastered the skill. The worksheets people refer to are from a private publishing company that has sold the school a new program. If you don't like the program your school purchased, let them know. Common Core hasn't changed the way I teach, it's just a different standard.

Unfortunately, her words will not be heard. They make too much sense, they do not convey an extreme emotion, nor do they convey an extreme viewpoint. In the long run, the bullies and the reactionaries will take down Common Core, just like they're doing with the rest of society's useful institutions. In the end, the Common Core standards will be subscribed to by a small group of exceptional schools who quietly turn out exceptional scholars, while the rest of society wrings their hands about the decay in public education, never realizing that they have brought it upon themselves.

Note: This posting is a follow-on to my previous posting  on the topic. Click here to read it.

Common Core: Getting past the bullshit and the myths

(Please forgive me. I don't use profanity very much. But this time it was truly needed.)

I'm getting fed up with all the attacks on the Common Core State Standards Initiative (abbreviated herein as "Common Core," or "CC"). It seems like the anti-CC folks, and the anti-CC arguments, come from people who have no idea what they're talking about.

Some people misunderstand one piece of CC, draw an erroneous conclusion, and trumpet their conclusion as proof that CC is bad. An example of this is the myth that "CC will let a student say that 3x4=11 and get away with it, if his reasoning is good enough." I dare any of you to find the text in official CC documents that supports that statement. There isn't any. It's a myth - or, to put it more baldly, IT'S A LIE. It gains credibility through retelling, but it's still false.

Some people hear an anecdote about a bad experience somebody had with CC, and they repeat the anecdote. They tweet it; they put it on Facebook; they put it on their blogs and again, through repetition, the anecdote acquires enough credibility to be a powerful (but bogus) argument against CC. These bad experiences are usually based on a misunderstanding. One example of this is the recent story of Jeff Severt, the "Frustrated Parent" who couldn't understand his child's CC math worksheet and got his 15 minutes of fame by crafting a snotty response to the question on the worksheet. As I have shown in a previous post, the guy proved that, even with an engineering degree, he couldn't grasp an elementary mathematical concept and couldn't read or follow directions.

MOREOVER (and I added this on April 7 and put it in italics), a lot of people's complaints are not about the CC standards, but about curricula (that's a fancy word for "lesson plans") developed by textbook companies and sold to school districts, curricula which claim to be compliant with CC. If you don't like the curriculum, then complain about the curriculum, not the standards. Despite what you may think, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

Some of you may take the lazy way out and say, "But the curriculum is written to comply with the standards; therefore the standards must dictate the way the curriculum is laid out." That's some kind of logical fallacy. I don't know how to label it, but only intellectually lazy people would believe something like that.

My question to my readers is this: with all the resources available from the CC initiative itself, why are you relying on distorted opinions and anecdotes about stupid people, to form and to reinforce your negative opinions about Common Core? Why don't you bypass all the bullshit and go directly to the source?

And Now, A History Lesson:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was started in 2009. It was a collaborative effort between state governors, school administrators, teachers and yes, those nasty old teachers' unions. The federal government was not a part of it back then - and the federal government is still not a part of it. Okay, I can hear you sputtering with exasperation back there. Hold onto your horses, okay? We'll talk about the feds in a minute.

Before CC came about, departments in individual schools tried to come up with a common set of goals or standards, to ensure that all the students in their school learned the same stuff. It was a collaborative effort, driven by teachers.

Then teachers at many different schools in the district realized they were all working on the same thing, so they collaborated to create district-wide standards. Their efforts were usually coordinated by a curriculum chair at the district level. This was not a bad thing. Don't get your shorts in a bunch.

With the advent of No Child Left Behind, state boards of education were responsible for coming up with a set of common statewide standards, against which all students could be evaluated. Whether you like NCLB or not (I don't), it doesn't matter. NCLB led to the creation of state standards, and the districts hustled to conform, because statewide standardized testing was next. The state BOEs (well, the smart ones) relied on the work that had already been done by the teachers in the school districts in their states.

In the field of mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recognized the major effort that these teachers were making, and so NCTM surveyed the teachers and developed a uniform nationwide set of standards for mathematics in all grades. I imagine that similar movements were happening in other subjects.

So in 2009, a bunch of governors and school district administrators had the bright idea to codify these efforts, and define a core of knowledge, the bare minimum standards that American students should learn. This core would be the same in all participating states or districts; hence it would be known as the Common Core, and the standards as the Common Core State Standards.

NOW, ALL YOU ANTI-COMMON-CORE LOUDMOUTHS: Notice that the CC standards were driven by the teachers - the ones doing the teaching - and fostered by the governors of some of the states in the Union. Not all of them.

Like all good things, the federal government got wind of CC, and they messed with it. They screwed it up. They didn't change the content of CC, but they took what should have been a teaching tool, to be handled delicately by skilled practitioners, and turned it into a club, to be wielded by clumsy politicians and inept bureaucrats. They made threats like, "If you don't adopt CC in your school, or district, or state, we will withhold federal education funding." You can blame it on the Obama administration if you want to. You won't be very far off. I wouldn't say it was Obama's doing, but the few times I've heard him speak about Common Core, it was obvious that he didn't understand CC any better than the anti-CC forces did.

A Special Message for You Mormons

The Mormon church has had to endure a lot of bad press in its 180-plus years of existence. It seems like the same lies, half-truths, and innuendo keep getting repeated over and over, in spite of the church's (and its adherents') attempts at rebuttal. In addition, it seems like everybody knows a friend of a friend who has a scare story about a Mormon, illustrating just how evil, terrible and bad the Mormons are.

Now, all of you Mormons know that the lies are just lies. You know that the anecdotal Mormons are either extreme fabrications or aberrations. Don't you wish that people would find out the truth about the Mormons by talking to a Mormon? or by reading the official Mormon website or something? Doesn't it really frost your cookies when people try to find out about the Mormons from somebody other than a Mormon, and they end up getting it all wrong?

So why the hell are you doing the same thing with Common Core? If you want to know the truth about Common Core, then go to the Common Core website. Read everything the creators have to say. Don't rely on CC's opponents to tell you the truth. Read the actual standards themselves, not somebody's interpretation of them. Use your own brain; don't borrow somebody else's.

Finally, a Message for Everybody

The Common Core standards were developed by teachers, for teachers. It was, and remains, a grassroots effort, with the students' best interests in mind. Although CCSSI itself was launched only four years ago, the groundwork for it was laid years before - by teachers.

This isn't something that was thought up by politicians, bureaucrats, administrators or union bosses. It came from the teachers themselves, because they cared about their students.

Don't believe the negative stuff in the press. If it's not outright lies, then it's distortions and innuendo. Even the anecdotes are suspect, as I've shown in the case of Jeff Severt. If you look behind the stories, you will see that they're based on misunderstanding, and sometimes on stupidity.

Finally, and I can't stress this enough: read the standards yourself. Go to the Common Core website and read them. Understand them. Make up your own mind. Use your own brain; don't borrow somebody else's.

Final final note: My wife says I'm ranting. Yes, I certainly am.

Update, April 7: I found a great explanation of the difference between Common Core standards and Common Core curriculum. I quoted it in my latest posting. Click here to read it. 

My greatest impact

Question from a job interview: "Thinking back on your career, what's the one thing you've done that has had the greatest impact?"

Answer:
Well, I can't think of one. I'll have to give you three.

First, back in the 1980s, I did something that everybody said couldn't be done. I figured out how to gold-plate the inside of a copper tube. This tube was about 30 centimeters long and had an inside diameter of 7 millimeters. It had to be gold-plated on the inside, to a very exacting specification. I figured out a way to do it that was twice as exact as the specification. That might not seem like much, but these perfectly plated tubes were used to calibrate microwave test equipment, which was in turn used to calibrate and tune the radars in military helicopters and fighter jets. Our two biggest customers were Hughes Aircraft and the U.S. Marines. So, in summary, this is a story like "The House That Jack Built:" I invented a way to gold-plate the tubes, that calibrated the testers, that tested the radars, that went in the aircraft, that were flown by the Marines, that won the Cold War.

Second, I was one of the first 200 employees of Hewlett-Packard's Inkjet Components Operation. We made the printer cartridges that kicked off the inkjet revolution. My job was to turn the nozzle-plate manufacturing operation from a low volume R&D operation to a high volume, high quality, production operation. From 200 employees, our cartridge volume expanded to fill seven factories on three continents. If you open the HP printer on your desk and pull out the printhead cartridge and look at the business end of it, you will see a little gold square, smaller than a postage stamp, with hundreds of tiny holes where the ink comes shooting out. That little gold square is my baby. My work appears in every HP inkjet printer in the world.

But my greatest impact didn't come from my work as an engineer. It came from my work as a teacher. For two years, I taught 7th grade mathematics, and I had an impact on 200 young lives. Some of them came into my classroom hating or fearing mathematics, and unsure of their abilities. Almost every one of them left with an advanced understanding of math, and with increased self-confidence. I didn't just teach mathematics, I taught about math and reading and music and life skills and believing in yourself. Many of my students still keep in touch with me, and it's fun for me to see what they're becoming and what they're doing with their lives. Some of them will change the world, and I will take my share of credit for that. That is my greatest impact.

Note for my seminary students: I didn't mention you in the interview. But for the record, I was an early-morning seminary teacher for 12 years, off and on, over a period of 30 years. I taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ, through the scriptures, to hundreds of high-school students over those years, for an hour every morning before school started. But it wasn't just book learning. I taught you how to search for and find spiritual truth on your own, how to recognize it, how to test it, and how to apply it in your lives. The spiritual foundation that you young people built for yourselves in my classes has sustained you through the years, kept you morally strong, and guided you through your life experiences as individuals and in your own families. Many of the things that I taught you have been passed down to your own children. That is an impact equal to, or greater than, the impact I had on my mathematics students.

Note for my children and my adopted children: Forget "impact." You are the greatest things I ever did in my life. I didn't mention you in the interview either. I didn't need to.