When Am I Ever Going to Use This?

“When am I ever going to use this?” You should be hearing that in that unique tonal quality in which whining teenagers excel.

I hear that often enough and I’m sure your other teachers do as well. 

Just so you know, education is not just about teaching you things you’ll rush right out and use tomorro, it’s also about you learning how to learn, how to think critically, how to solve problems. 

For science, it’s about having a fundamental understanding of how the Universe works.

And math, well, maybe you won’t go buy 120 grapefruit all at one time, but you will use much of your math in your future. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know many of you hate fractions, but you WILL use these again.

I’m renovating my kitchen and look what I found behind the microwave. 

Look at what this worker did - they measured, divided by two, then subtracted 15. I think they were trying to center the microwave in the wall, by measuring from one wall to the edge of the microwave. 

I particularly love the way they divided the fraction - they just doubled the denominator, thus cutting the fraction in half. (Note: When do you think a school-aged Mr. McKellar would have predicted he’d need to know the name of the bottom number in a fraction?)

Maybe you’ll never do construction, but you might want to hang a picture on the wall, or craft a halloween costume, or double a recipe or any of a million other things.

Education is not wasted, it changes who you are, even if you never use a particular bit of information for a practical purpose, it helps make you a better version of yourself. 

The Last Time I Saw My 6th Grade Teacher

Memory is a funny thing. It fades over time. Events blend together like an impressionistic painting. Certain events will stand out, but as you get older even those will drift out of focus and become fuzzy. You might remember your middle school teachers names - maybe, but in a few decades you will have very few clear memories of us. 

That is unless, you have a teacher who really makes a super-strong and long-lasting impression. That middle school teacher for me was Fred Hone. He was my 6th grade teacher.

He looked a little like Jug Head from the Archie comics, but what impressed me was that he didn’t talk to us like we were kids. He didn’t talk down to us. He treated us as equals who just didn’t have the education and life experience he had. 

He was a great teacher for me. He was energized and intense. When you had his attention, you had his FULL attention. A few moments stand out:

When he read The Call of the Wild, a wonderful book about a sled dog, he opened the

huge windows in the classroom on a cold winter day and read aloud as snow flurries swirled around our feet. 

He showed us how to frame a building and helped us build scale models of houses and garages. 

When I casually mentioned my family was getting a pop-up camper, he diagramed how and where to weld the hitch to the frame of the car we would use to tow the trailer. (I’m not sure if he expected an 11-year-old boy to actually do the welding or just impart the information, diagrams and all, to my Dad.)

You know how it is, you see the teachers you had in younger grades around the building. It was the same for me. I saw him around until I left the building and went to high school. 

I didn’t think about Mr. Hone for a very long time - about 18 years. In those years, I finished high school and college, got married, started a family and was, of course, working.

I came home from work one day and casually turned on the TV - The Oprah Winfrey talk show was on - and these were the days when her talk show was a lot like the Jerry Springer or Maury Povich shows. That is to say, very sensationalistic with all sorts of strange and bizarre people featured each day. 

And there was Mr. Hone and his wife casually chatting with Oprah. They met in his 6th grade math class. He was her teacher and, a few years later, when she turned 17, they married. It was national news. He even went to jail for a brief time.

I was shocked and stunned. I just stood there in my kitchen, mouth agape and just stared at the TV. I mean who does that?

That was the last time I saw my 6th grade teacher and it’s kind of a funny story to tell.  But, when I think about Mr. Hone (Here I am, 60 years old and he’s still Mister Hone to me), I think about how enthusiastic he was in the classroom, how he loved to impart knowledge to his young charges and how intense his teaching style was. 

Sadly, as I was researching this post, I discovered that Mr. Hone passed away this September. He made an impression on me. I hope I carry some of his respect for students in my teaching style.  

And, if anyone wants to know how to weld a trailer hitch to a car, I’d be happy to diagram it out for you.

Do Your Job

“Do Your Job.”

It’s about the most famous phrase in New England sports history. 

It’s the mantra that has powered the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl winning seasons.

I say it all the time, but in the school-speak version: “Do your work.”

I know it’s true for my class, but I suspect it’s a universal truth - if you do your work, you’ll get good grades.

When I see students who are not getting good grades in class, it’s almost always because they’re not doing the work. And, it’s usually not because they don’t understand, it’s because they’d rather sit and chat. 

We’re at the end of the first quarter. Report cards come out next week. Your grades are probably just about done. You can ask your teachers about your grade. 

If you’re not happy with the grade, now is a time for some honest reflection. Did you do your work?  Did you finish assignments or just let time slip away until it was too late to complete your work? Did you sit and talk while you should have been working?

It’s not too late to change your approach to school. It’s really pretty simple:

• If you do your work, you’ll get good grades.

If you get good grades, lots of good things happen: Your parents will be proud of you. You’ll be proud of yourself. You’ll have more choices on where to go for high school. You’ll get the better classes in high school…and so on.

• If you don’t do your work, you’ll probably get poor grades. 

If you get poor grades, lots of bad things will happen: Your parents will be on your case. You’ll feel bad about yourself. You’ll have few if any choices on where to go for high school. You’ll get the lower, slower classes…and so on.

Just do your job - do your work. 

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I am a licensed middle school math and science teacher, but I'm only teaching science now. Some of you may not know, I have taught 6th, 7th, and 8th grade math in the past. 

When I was in middle school, I was an average math student. My grades were usually in the B range. In high school, I continued as a B student except for Geometry. I loved Geometry - I earned 100 on all the tests and usually got the bonus right, so my average for the year was 107 or something ridiculous like that.

When I got to college, things changed. I struggled with Calculus (Thank you Sir Issac Newton). In my first Calc class, I got a 13 on the first major exam. I was lost. My professor was not helpful but 99% of the blame falls on my shoulders. 

I was afraid. 

I was afraid of failure - but I was failing in a big way. 

I was afraid to ask for help. I was all mixed up.

Instead of taking steps to un-mix myself, I hid. I avoided the problem. I wished it would just suddenly make sense. Of course, I was doing nothing to make it all make sense. I just tried not to think about it. 

Guess what? 

It did not get better. It did not “suddenly make sense.” I failed. I still have nightmares about that struggle and it was a loooong time ago. 

But, I learned from my disastrous experience. 

I took the class again, this time with another professor. I asked for help as soon as I started feeling lost and confused. I went for extra help. I asked questions. 

This time, I earned a solid B. It was hard, but it was not something I could not do. I just needed to take action. I needed to face my problems and solve them, often with help from friends, the professor and his teaching assistant. 

It’s hard to face failure. It’s hard to admit that you don’t understand. It’s hard to ask for help.

We all fail. We all have things we don’t understand. We all need help sometimes. 

We just need to be brave enough to ask for help. We need to take action and not hope it gets better. 

Ask the questions. Admit you don't know it all, yet. Raise your hand. 

Be brave and you will be sucessful. 

The Day I Broke My Finger

Look at the picture of my right hand. Do you notice that one of the fingers has a bend in it?

Yeah, that’s the finger I broke. It didn’t heal quite correctly, so it’s got a bit of a bend towards the index finger and thumb.

Actually, I’ve been pretty lucky with respect to broken bones. I’ve broken that finger and a toe (same toe - twice).

The finger break happened when I was in college. I was working for an electrician. I’m NOT an electrician, I was kinda “the kid” on the job site. As in, have the kid climb into the 125 degree attic, or have the kid crawl under the house and look for that wire. 

It was not glamorous work but I enjoyed it. I liked the camaraderie with the guys I worked with (There were no female employees in the company and I can not recall any woman construction workers on any job site). I learned a lot - skills that have helped me as a homeowner. It was great and I earned a gaudy $3.00 an hour! (Of course the minimum wage in those days was $2.05 an hour)

I broke my finger using what’s called an impact-drill. It’s a drill that spins and hammers at the same time. It’s used to drill holes in concrete. That’s what I was doing: drilling a hole in a concrete ceiling so we could run some wires. Unfortunately, the bit (That’s the pointy end of the drill that actually does the drilling) got hung up on a piece of steel wire inside the concrete and spun the drill uncontrollably in my hands, taking my right hand on an alarming ride.

It hurt!

Since it was lunch time anyway, I stopped working, had lunch and worked the rest of the day. My whole hand hurt and my finger was swelling so much I could not put my work-gloves on.

That night I went to a walk-in medical center and they put a splint on my finger and told me not to use the hand for anything strenuous for a week or so. 

I did not listen. I went to work the next day with the splint on and continued working - but no more drilling!

I didn’t take good care of my finger and I guess that’s why it’s got that bend in it. 

I guess I should have listened…

Beware The Gravity Vortex

There is something weird going on in my room. And, no, I’m not talking about the 8th grade. People keep falling off chairs and stools. 

My first thought was “Oh, the new black, wooden stools are a bit slippery” but it has happened to kids sitting on the old stools - and they are not slippery -  and to people sitting in the blue chairs as well. 

I know these kids are not leaning back in their chairs, lifting the chair/stool feet off the ground. I mean, that would just be asking for trouble, right? The lab stools have four legs and four feet and to attempt to balance on just one or two, is just tempting fate, right?

If someone was leaning back on a lab stool and suddenly toppled over and landed in a heap on the floor, no one would say “I didn’t see that coming,” because, well, you do see it coming. It’s inevitable. So, i’m convinced that’s not what’s causing my students to crash to the floor. 

And, that wouldn’t explain how they’re falling out of the blue chairs. Those chairs have two long runners to support them, Those runners are about a foot and a half long and have four little feet on them. They’re pretty sturdy. You really have to work to tip one of those over. The idea of leaning back in one of those seems like more work than it could possibly be

worth. 

No, it’s not my young scholars leaning back in the chairs that’s bringing them smashing into the hard, tile floor. It’s not the slipperiness of the new wooden stools. It has to be something else….

The only thing I can think of is a gravity vortex. 

I picture it like a tornado - but invisible and with gravity and not wind. These gravity vortexes must be all over the school, because I have seen kids falling out of chairs in other classrooms as well. 

Maybe, to keep you kids safe, we should install seatbelts on all the chairs/stools in the school. I’m not sure how to get this done, but I’ll speak to the administration to see how we can make this happen.

Until then, be careful. Watch out for the gravity vortex!

The Joy of Audiobooks

I enjoy reading. I always have. 

One of my most distinct memories of middle school is walking home (I was a walker because I lived less than a mile from school (but, truthfully, it was about 12 feet less than a mile)) after school while reading “Reach for the Sky.” This is one of my favorite books and I’ve read it several times. It’s about a World War II fighter pilot who had lost his legs in a plane crash. I literally could not put

it down.

Each year, I set a goal for myself to read 20 books and I always exceed that number. As I write this, at the end of July, I am on book number 21 for 2019, so I’ve exceeded my goal again. (Maybe I need to set higher goals).

Recently, I have found reading in the evenings very difficult. I get tired after a few pages so it’s hard to get through a 300 page book, 5 pages a night. But, I listen to books - mostly in the car. 

Listening is easier than reading, and I spend a lot of time in the car. I get through a lot of books by listening. I don’t retain the information as well as actually reading it, so sometimes I’ll re-listen to a book or a chapter if I really want to “get it.”

Some of our science textbooks are available as audiobooks too, if you’re interested in listening rather than reading, see me. We can figure out how to get the audio version of the textbook on your phone. 

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Ten weeks off from school. Wow! It really helps not to have a lot of snow days. 

Ten weeks…and now it’s over.

I actually had a mostly busy summer with some stretches where I had very little to do. 

I sold my home and moved out. That was a LOT of work!

We bought a new condominium but had to wait 26 days from the time we sold our house to the date we could move into our new condo. We spent 26 days living in a hotel, waiting for our new place. Ugh.

That’s a long time in a hotel room with two adults and a dog. I had a lot of down time, so I

went to museums. 

I visited the Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport. I love all things related to ships, so this was a museum I had wanted to visit for a long time.

I visited the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, NH. This was okay, I was hoping it would be a great place for a field trip, but it's geared to elementary-aged kids. 

I visited the Warren Anatomical Museum in Boston. Gruesome and fascinating. Lots of skulls, bones, skeletons and other body parts.

I visited the Hart Nautical Collection at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

I visited the MIT Museum obviously at MIT in Cambridge. They had a lot of really cool things - like mechanical sculptures that moved on their own.

I visited the Umbrella Cover Museum in Portland, Maine. Honestly, I didn't even know what an umbrella cover was until I stopped in there. 

The two highlights of the museums were:

• Finding a mistake in a display at Hart Nautical Collection. They misidentified a ship in a display. I emailed the curator and pointed out the error.

• Seeing the skull of Phineas Gage. Phineas Gage was the victim of s gruesome accident. A four-foot long iron pole was blasted through his head, leaving part of his brain destroyed and two gaping holes in his head. The pole landed several yards
  
  away.  And he survived!

Then, it got busy again - we moved into our new home and that was a LOT of work, too!

Finally, it was time to prepare for school.

And here we are….

Seven Samurai

Welcome!!!

This is my blog and I write it for you, my students. I’ve written 230 posts so far. (Blog posts are like short little essays). Good thing I enjoy writing!

I encourage you to read my posts. Sometimes they’’ll be funny, sometimes serious and sometimes in between. 

This is where I write about my life as a teacher and a person. Yes, teachers are people just like you - we’re just older, more experienced and better educated than you. 

My posts are not long so you won’t strain your brain reading them. Many students find them interesting and funny. 

I usually post on Sunday mornings - and no, not at 3:15 a.m. (the posting time is listed as Pacific Standard Time). I will post a link on google classroom, so you’ll get an email notification when there’s something new to read.

Please read.

Feel free to comment.

Talk to me about what I write.

PS - What do you think the title of this post “Seven Samurai” means???

Would I Go Back to Middle School?

My wife and I were talking the other day and an interesting topic came up.

This discussion came out of a headline I saw that suggested doing 15 minutes of yoga would make my 50+ year old brain “like a 25-year-old’s brain.”

For me, I prefer my well-used, experienced brain over the one I was operating in the 1980’s. Today, I am a more patient, less emotional version of myself than I was oh, so long ago. However, I would take back my 25-year old body for sure. Trust, me, there was much more hair and less, ummm, let’s just say; much less middle section, than I have now. 

But, after talking about the yoga thing, my wife asked me the acid question; “If you could, would you go back and do middle school over again?”

I thought about it for a while and then came up with an answer.

Yes, and no. 

I would go back and do it all over again, if I could take my 59-year-old brain. Mind you, not the part that causes me to walk into the kitchen and wonder why I am there, but the part that can make good decisions based on fact, experience and how things might affect others. (Brains are funny things, I can remember the look, feel and smell my my Dad’s lawn mower from 1968, but can’t recall where I put my keys 11 minutes ago.)

Right off the bat, I can see huge value in having my current brain in 7th and 8th grade. I’d be less influenced by emotion, I would know for a rock-solid-fact that I’m not invincible, and I could more easily tune out the middle school drama and angst. And, of course I’d ace all my classes - especially science.

Of course, I’d also feel like the oldest student in the school and would probably want to hang out with the teachers and hurt myself doing exaggerated eye-rolls at the antics of my peers.

Thankfully, I do not have the choice to stay or go. So, I’ll have to make the most of where I am.

Now, where did I put those papers I brought home to grade?

Just Do the Regular Credit

It happens like clockwork - a sports season is about to begin or grades close in a few days - and here come the legion of requests for extra credit work. 

It often works like this:

A student slacks off, doesn’t do the work, skips multiple homework assignments, doesn’t study for tests and quizzes and, as a result has a poor grade in class. Then is faced with the prospect of not being able to play on a team and/or bringing a report card home with disappointing grades. 

Panic sets in.

This is when I end up with multiple students appealing for extra credit work or to make up work they didn’t do months ago. 

Homework and classroom work often has an expiration date. For example, in the genetics unit our 8th graders were asked to read an article about Sam Berns. We were working on genetic mutations and how they can affect people. The whole point of reading the article was to set the students up to watch a TED Talk Sam Berns recorded mere months before he died. It’s a hook to increase their interest in the topic and get them emotionally involved in what we’re learning.

We did this in January, and there is very little value in doing now. The unit is over. We watched the video. We learned about genetic mutations. Your understanding has been assessed. It’s done. We’ve moved on. We have plenty of current work to focus on.

I don’t generally do extra credit. Just do the regular credit and you’ll be fine. If you didn’t do the regular credit work, then you’re in a little bit of a pickle.

It can be a hard lesson to learn, but it’s better to learn it in middle school where the stakes are low, then in high school or college where the stakes can be much, much higher. 

Just do your work….it’s as simple as that. 

The Act of Writing Things Down

In the two years I teach you science, we will go through almost 200 vocabulary words. That’s 200 times you will write out the definitions, and add the word to the index of your science notebooks.

That’s a lot of words and a lot of writing. 

When I ask, that’s the number one complaint students have about my class - all the writing and note taking. 

I understand - many of you find it boring. I know some of you hate it, but, here’s the thing…It works.

Really, the act of writing these words and definitions down on paper helps cement it in your mind.

Recently, I ran a little experiment: 

In one class, I printed out two words and definitions and asked my junior scientists to paste them in instead of writing them down. The other class wrote out the definitions as usual. Over the course of the next week, I featured the words in several Do Nows, they were used in a chapter we read, and they were both included in a study guide.

On a recent assessment, I asked all students to write out the definitions of the words. Twice as many in the group that originally wrote down the words got them correct compared with the group that pasted them in.

I think this is a pretty clear indicator - writing these vocab words down has value. I think you learn them faster and better because you have written them. I guess that process of seeing the words and definitions, hearing the words and definitions and writing the words and definitions gives your brains a better chance of holding on to that information.

So, we’re going to keep writing them down. Sorry, if you don’t like it, but it does work. 

I know this would never, ever happen, but I can imagine a group of students who take that paste-in and never actually read the words and definitions - they just mechanically paste the little hand-out into their notebooks and ignore the words printed on that paper. 

Like I said, I’m sure that would never happen with my young scholars, but you never really know, do you?