April 2014 Posts

Compartmentalization

Being a teacher is easier if you can keep the stresses of your outside-of-the-classroom life… well… outside of the classroom.

Unfortunately, grown-up life can be very stressful.


Yesterday, the internet went down for our entire district12 sometime around 11am. They did NOT cancel the rest of the school day.

Around this time last year, our campus lost water (broken water main) and school was cancelled that day.

I suppose WATER > INTERNET.3

  1. AT&T’s culpa, apparently []
  2. Our INTRANET, however, worked just fine []
  3. At least for now =) []

Imagine you’re a youth football coach.

Imagine that your team has a big game coming up this weekend.

Imagine one of your key players comes to you in the days leading up to the big game and asks for help because they’re having trouble learning some of the plays / routes / schemes / etc.

Would you help the kid out? Of course.


Imagine that kid does NOT learn his/her stuff by game time, and runs all of the wrong routes, blows defensive coverages, etc. Imagine you lose the game because of that.

The game is lost. Game over.


Now if that kid comes to you afterwards and admits that they blew it, and asks to review the game footage to help learn what they did wrong so that they can earnestly learn from their mistakes, would you be willing to do that?

Probably. Yeah, it’s too late for this past game, but this sort of thing might actually benefit your team for future performances.


Now imagine that this kid does none of that. This kid did nothing to put in any meaningful effort before the game, did nothing to show that they were interested in learning things properly when they had the chance – none of that.

Instead, imagine that this kid comes to you after the game has been lost, and asks if you can go back in time and change the score of the game to make it LOOK like you actually won the game. (You read that right. But read it again anyway.)

That’s the kind of stuff that teachers deal with at the end of every grading period.

Asking us to change the numbers after it’s too late.


The final day(s) of the 5th six weeks might be the absolute most frustrating day(s) to be a teacher.1

A video shared with me by a colleague, to give context to those of you that don’t toil in the educational sector:


Here’s a true story:

A number of years ago,2 a student once came to me at the end of a six weeks with a 79 average, and said he needed to get his grade up to an 80 to avoid having his parents take his car away.3 Being naïve as I was, I helped the kid eke out an extra half point to help him keep his car. 4

The very next week? The kid started doing JACK in my class. Stopped doing homework. Stopped studying. Started acting like a total brat. Until the end of the next six weeks when he came up with another song (which by then I was having none of). Sadly, it made me regret helping the kid out in the first place.

So now whenever a student tells me that they need a point or two to keep their allowance / car / phone / pet / life / whatever, it’s an easy call:

No. Sorry. You get the grade that you earned. If I give YOU a half-a-point, then I have to give EVERYONE a half-point. 5


The most ridiculous thing ever said to me by a student?

(another true story)

Back in season 2,6 end of the first six-weeks, one of my Pre-AP Algebra II students had an 81 average.

The kid came to me after school to ask for an “A”. 7

I didn’t really know what to say… so I told him/her,

You’re making a “B”. That’s a good grade.

This kid looks at me with a straight face, and proceeds to crow:

Mister Youn, I can’t make a “B”. My parents are INDIAN.8 You have NO IDEA what it’s like to have INDIAN PARENTS.9

Tactical Facepalm

Sigh.10

  1. The only other days that come close? The final days of the 4th six weeks. There is something uniquely high-quality about the shallow whining that comes into play during the Spring semester that separates it from everything in the Fall. []
  2. circa 2007 or 2008 []
  3. he said his girlfriend would severely disapprove of her boyfriend not having wheels. What a dilemma. []
  4. and by extension, perhaps his date for the weekend []
  5. But let’s get this straight: I don’t like telling kids “no” to be mean or to be cruel… but the reality is that sometimes saying “yes” to this sort of thing does more long-term harm than good. []
  6. 2008-09 []
  7. Yes, that is ridiculous in and of itself… but that’s not the point of this story. []
  8. Dot, not feather. []
  9. OH YES S/HE DID. []
  10. If you’re new to this blog and know nothing of the author: I’m Korean. I grew up with KOREAN parents. </story> []

The calm after the storm

Town-Lake-Bench-BW-watermark

A beautiful, quiet Saturday.1


This past week, my Statistics students took a practice AP Multiple Choice Exam.2

AP MC Exams

40 questions, 90 minutes.3 30-plus pages4 times 110 students.5 Just as much of a test of mental endurance as subject matter. And since I don’t really advise students to “study”6 for it, is brutal raised to the power of brutal.7

Just like every year, I overheard a kid or two asking their friends8 if it was too late to get a refund on the AP Exam. But I prefer they feel this shock to their systems now, as opposed to when they’re walking out of the actual exam. And with a full month of nothing but review between us and May 9, most of them will be just fine.9

But a full month (and change) is all that’s left.

It’s truly insane how fast the time flies by.

  1. after a long, torrid, gut-wrenching week []
  2. which is an actual past AP multiple choice exam []
  3. The actual exam consists of two 90-minute sections: Multiple Choice and Free Response. We’ll be taking the practice Free Response in a couple of weeks. Generally if a student can earn at least 40 or 50 percent of the points on the exam, that’s good enough for a “3”. []
  4. It is astounding how much paper we burn through this last month leading up to the exam. It is also astounding to see how much the department gets billed whenever I order these stacks of dead trees. I realize it is 2014 and we have electronic alternatives, but seeing as how the actual test is on paper, I believe in practicing on paper. []
  5. Around 90 of them are signed up to take the actual exam next month. []
  6. which to most kids, really means “cram” []
  7. The first time I took one of these during my first year of teaching Stat, I scored a 33/40. The average for my students on this practice is usually around a 21 or 22, but they usually do much better on the real thing []
  8. in jest, I hope []
  9. Well, so says my experience in having been through this circus three times already []

Sensitive questions

On Monday/Tuesday of this past week, we had our last regular major exam in AP Statistics.1 It was on the very next day of class that I pulled the following activity with them.


Every now and then, statisticians need to ask questions of a sensitive nature — questions that people may be too embarrassed to answer honestly under normal circumstances — such as:

  • Have you ever cheated on your spouse?
  • Have you ever been under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs while at school/work?
  • Do you like to kill kittens? (what?!?)
  • (for teenagers:) Have you been to a party where alcohol was being served?2

Well, you get the idea — the list of potentially fascinating questions is endless.

So how do we get honest responses to questions like these?

Here are the steps:3

  1. Have every student find a quarter and flip it twice.
  2. Tell them to remember what they flipped and in what order, but do not tell ANYBODY what they flipped (otherwise, scrap their flips and do it again)

I then give every student a slip of paper on which they write “yes” or “no”, based on the following instructions:

If your FIRST coin flip landed “HEADS”, then answer the following question:

Did your second coin flip land ‘HEADS’?

HOWEVER, if your FIRST coin flip landed “TAILS”, then answer the “sensitive” question du jour. The one that I investigated with my students is:

Have you ever cheated with regards to a quiz or test in my class?4

(Muahahahahaha)

Of course, nobody knows which question you are answering. And that’s the point. This provides a psychological veil of secrecy which allows the subjects to answer the question honestly.

Here is the final tally for my AP Statistics classes this year:

The "aye's" have it...
The “aye’s” have it…

What we do then is use some statistical-voodoo-magic5 to arrive at an estimate6 for the true proportion of students who have done “a horrible thing”.

For this group, that estimate would be 67.9% with a margin-of-error of plus-or-minus 18.2%.7

If you’re shocked, don’t be. That’s pretty much the estimate we get every year.8

Here’s the work, if you’re curious:

(The technical mumbo-jumbo)
(The technical mumbo-jumbo)

This moment in class is, of course, followed up with the “just because we are discussing cheating does not mean cheating is acceptable” conversation.

But regardless, it’s all great fodder for discussion.


The PTSA9 sells donuts and coffee in the main mall before school, and this past Friday I went by to pick up a cup of coffee. As the PTSA mom that was there poured my coffee, she asked me,

So, how many more Fridays are there in the school year?

I couldn’t remember… and for some reason, I almost felt embarrassed that I had to stop and think about it. She laughed and said,

I thought you teachers were counting this down!10

So here it is:

One full month and change until the AP Exam.

Eight weeks until FREEDOM Summer vacay. 11

  1. The rest of the year is spent reviewing for the big exam on May 9. []
  2. Yes, I will concede that there are much edgier things you could ask teenagers… []
  3. and this is just ONE methodology, I am sure there are others []
  4. It is worth noting that we consider discussing quiz/test questions with students outside of class before everyone has taken the exam to be a form of cheating. It is also worth noting that I force my students to sign an honor statement on the first exam of the school year. []
  5. probability and algebra with tree diagrams, since you expect roughly half of the participants to answer the first question, and half to answer the second []
  6. plus-or-minus a margin of error []
  7. Based on a 95% confidence level. Yes, that’s a huge margin-of-error, but it is limited by the fact that we can only use about half of the sample []
  8. Again, keep in mind that our definition of “cheating” includes discussing what was on the test with students in other class periods who may not have taken the test yet. []
  9. at least I think it’s the PTSA…? []
  10. Well, we ARE. But it was just a rough week… I’m still reeling from our Superintendent asking me if I was a student… []
  11. Not that anyone is counting =) []

So I met our superintendent today.

We had a staff meeting this morning in the lecture hall with all of the district suits. My student teacher and I took seats in the back, and when I saw our Superintendent at the front of the room, I whispered to my student teacher,

This is the closest I’ve ever been to him.1

Then he started the informational video and took a seat in the one empty chair in the entire lecture hall – which was right next to me. 2

If you’ve been following my story for a few years, you’re gonna love what happened next:

We shook hands and introduced ourselves… but then he looks at me and asks:

Are you a student here?3

  1. It was actually the closest I’d ever been to ANY superintendent, past or present []
  2. He was actually nice and asked if he could sit next to me lol []
  3. He told me afterwards that he was joking. Actually, it turns out that my student teacher’s mother works in his office, so by association, he already knew of me. When my student teacher went up afterwards to say hello to him, she told him that I was her supervising teacher, and he was like, “But he’s a student!” He did explain that he was 18 when he started teaching — not sure how that works out, now that I think about it — but that he got the same kind of flack all the time back then, so it’s all good. []