Early on in my teaching career I grew frustrated with the deciding the exact grade boundaries for internal exams. So I created two tools.
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Subject Clusters Version 1
It started as a random tweet to my epidemiologist friend Dr. Gonzales. He encouraged me to fully form this idea of how a school could be structured in the face of the corona virus crisis. I know there are many plans and proposals out there and maybe this will suit one of their contexts.
I finished working on this as soon as I was able to fit my school’s curriculum into the plan. If my school takes it further I will update and improve this write up.
Continue readingSubject Cluster – How highschools can navigate forced re-opening
Here is a scheme I have been thinking about if we are required to return to school.
Subject “Clusters”
Actual numbers will, of course, be different and we may rely on many teachers teaching non-specialist subjects. and limit optional subject.
Assuming 90ish students per year we can split each year into 3-4 groups. And thus the school into 21-28 groups. This will end up with 3-4 “Subject Cluster”
Continue readingAvoiding Modification and Deletion Methods
Deletion and modification seem to confuse students. Additive methods appear easier in my experience. I wish to present a few tweaks I have used to get my students past sticking points. In my practice these tweaks have been extremely potent. I would like to hear about any other special fixes people have found for the other areas of difficulties.
Stop thinking – A peculiarity of teaching
I teach students between the ages of 16 and 19, specialising on mathematical components of a more generalised course .
I am uncertain as to the location of the inflection point between pushing critical understanding and just mechanically working through procedures to arrive at an answer in learning maths. However, it still continues to surprises me the frequency at which the admirable pride and inquisitiveness of students hinder their mathematical progress simply because they desire to understand why techniques or methods work before they are adequately able to do so. Continue reading
Massive Small Change
Forgive the obvious joke
The Engineers Without Borders UK Professional Network (EWB-UK PN) held their first conference on Saturday 22nd June. And what a conference it was. It was titled “Massive Small Change“, here is the hash tag for the live tweets #massivesmallchange. (Ignore Ianrosmarin’s individualised V3 promotions, it gets good afterwards.) If I had to summarise it I would say it was about non-linear effects of intervention and how with changes of approach we can enact real, self-sustaining progress.
The idea of moving beyond community involvement to community investment remained strong throughout the day. The victim image limits the options we are willing to entertain. Despite perceptions there is a lot of money available in these communities, often tied up in other necessities. If we can provide the opportunity to invest in catalytic improvements, the same revenue stream can be re-fed into other investments and free up ever greater shares of ever growing income.
The talks were brilliant, particularly the ones I attended in the main hall. The topics broad yet on the whole focused, building upon and complementing one another without ever repeating themselves. Continue reading
2013 Sustania 100 – Part 1 Building Sector
This post is intended to be read alongside this publication.
My impressions, thoughts and comments on the innovations in the 2013 Sustania 10o, an “annual guide to 100 innovative solutions from around the world that presents readily available projects, initiatives and technologies at the forefront of sustainable transformation.”
Read their page first then come to me. EDIT: Last year’s winners Azuri presented at the EWB Massive Small Change Conference I already wrote up my impression on their 2012 winner in the last paragraph of a previous post.
Part 1 Building Sector
E.F. Schumacher on Natural Capital
To press non-economic values into the framework of the economic calculus, economists use the method of cost/benefit analysis. This is generally though to be an enlightened and progressive development, as it is at least an attempt to take account of benefits which might otherwise be disregarded altogether. In fact, however, it is a procedure by which the higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price. It can therefore never serve to clarify the situation and lead to an enlightened decision. All it can do is lead to self-deception or the deception of others; for to undertake to measure the immeasurable is absurd and constitutes but an elaborate method of moving from preconceived notions to foregone conclusions…The logical absurdity, however, is not the greatest fault of the undertaking: what is worse, and destructive of civilisation, is the pretence that everything has a price or, in other words, that money is the highest of all values.
– Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (Page 31), E.F. Schumacher
Devon Double Hexayurt
EDIT: Link to Nick’s Blog
One problem with categorising dates by the weekends i.e “First weekend in June” is you forget what other events approximate to it, such as a friend’s birthday. So where was I instead of reconnecting with old friends? In a field, in Devon, with a bunch of strangers. I will be vague with names since I cannot recall which individuals requested not to be photographed and uploaded.
Meet Nick. Nick has been living in a field for a few months. He decided he would like to live off-grid in a sustainable fashion and that his housing solution would be a Hexayurt. We were supposed to build it in December with the aid of wind, rain, and limited daylight but that had to be delayed. In the meanwhile Nick lived in a van, and we waited for the sun.
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Maths Triage
Should any experienced educator spot any mistakes in my methods please alert me to them.
A latent dream to become an educator has taken great leaps forwards. With great luck I might be accepted onto teacher training course, despite losing many of my application slots (a grand total of 3) to schools that have yet to remove vacancies from the system, and are even slower to reject me after informing me that there is no space. I am also waiting on my previous employer to respond to my reference request should he ever find a free moment in between providing water and medicines to Malians.
In the meanwhile I am tutoring and as yet remain far below any threshold for reporting my earnings. I do wish I could pay tax. I initially advertised to provide free maths and physics tuition up to GCSE. In the meantime I am revising my A-Level and university maths and will tutor these once I am confident enough to devise teaching strategies. I am now charging new tutees, we negotiate but it averages about £10 per hour and I eagerly wait for the time when honestly will allow me to charge £15.