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lewelma

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Everything posted by lewelma

  1. I'm a tutor. That is even lower than a teacher. I learned long ago not to tell anyone I was a tutor, or they would dismiss me out of hand. Instead, I say that I work with at-risk youth (and some of my students have been). Then they will talk to me.
  2. For my older boy, it is his music that people connect to. As a theoretical physicist, nobody and I mean nobody will engage with him about his work. In fact for his entire life, people will be pretty rude and just say I hate math, or I don't want to listen to this, or just glaze their eyes over. He learned early on that people will come up and talk to him about his music, engage with him on a high level conversations about his performance, or music theory, or composition etc. Music is approachable for anyone, theoretical physics not so much. If my ds didn't have his music, he would be way more isolated and have exclusively physics friends which would have changed his personality. Here is the essay he wrote for university entrance that really demonstrates how important the humanities were to his formation as a person: Describe the world you come from; for example, your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations? Throughout my life, math and music have been my constant companions. Math has given me passion and purpose, while music has given me my community. I am lucky to be a part of a family that appreciates mathematics and loves science and technology. However, from the age of twelve, I have outpaced both my parents and my peers in math, requiring me to study independently. My peers came from music. For the past six years, I have been actively involved in a series of chamber music groups and small string orchestras. These ensembles have given me my community -- a collection of quirky, outgoing individuals who aspire to become professional musicians. Through their friendship, I have become more outgoing and less self-conscious. I have learned how to handle disasters on stage: I have forgotten pieces of music played from memory, had to improvise when my trio skipped a section, and had to reassemble twelve pages of sheet music off of the floor. Music has also given me opportunities to practice public speaking, lead a small string orchestra, and mentor younger students. The music community has helped me to develop the people skills critical to all endeavors, and has convinced me that I love working in groups. I love the people and the camaraderie. Music has made me realize that I don’t want to do mathematics in isolation, that I want to be a part of a collaborative project, working together towards a common goal.
  3. FODMAP fixed my IBS in 48 hours. I had diarrhea 10 times a day, and poof it was gone and I was normal. And so I stayed on the FODMAP diet for 6 months and then did the whole slow one-food-at-a-time-return to find out it is wheat. What they should have done, and did not do, was test me for celiacs before putting me on FODMAP. Because now that I don't eat gluten, they won't be able to see the celiacs, but if I am a celiac, I would need to be way way more careful. So yes, do testing before a major diet change that could mask other things that could be going on.
  4. I'm a pockets girl. But when I dress up and carry a purse, the only thing it holds is my dress shoes! 😛
  5. There was the kid that held the world record for the rubik's cube. 4 seconds as I remember. His mom posted the video and it was incredible.
  6. My older boy is still taking lessons at 23 through the university department. He is passionate about his violin and is incredibly accomplished. I could see him teaching music as a side gig one day, and he is definitely planning on being in a city-level orchestra for his whole life once he finishes his schooling. I do think there is more than one way to keep music in your life even if you don't make your main living from it. ETA: he would have double majored in music and physics, and had been accepted into the music department, but his university did not have a performance only degree.
  7. I'm not a big car person, and my dh gets road rage so we sold his car early on in our marriage. So we have always looked for places to live without a car. Typically, you need to live either downtown (in a highrise) or in the early suburbs (1920s) where they have trains into town. Many of the 1920s suburbs are too tightly packed for box stores, so the mom and pop shops still exist and are walkable. I'm not a big bus person, so we have looked for either walkable or near a train line. These are the places dh, ds, or I have lived in the USA without a car: Reno, NV (Near University) Seattle, WA (Pioneers Square, walk to downtown for work) Cleveland, OH, (Cleveland Heights, train to downtown for work) Boston, MA, (Near MIT) Ithaca, NY ('downtown' area) Richmond, VA (in the 'Fan' the 1920 subdivision so close to downtown). Washington DC (near subway line) Newburyport, MA (biked everywhere, worked at the wildlife sanctuary) Here in NZ, we live in the 1920s subdivision of Wellington (walking distance to downtown) We have lived for close to 30 years in places where a car is not needed, and my older boy has chosen not to learn to drive so is committed to living a car free life. lol
  8. Our path shows the flexibility in the system. My older boy was homeschooled in NZ, where to gain college entrance he needed to pass the equivalent of 4 AP exams. No other classes in any grade were counted or considered. Because he was homeschooled and majorly motivated, he did lots of other academic 'stuff' that the NZ system knew nothing about. When he decided quite unexpectedly to apply to American universities, we had 2 choices, to apply with the 4 NZ exams or to create a homeschool transcript. I chose the latter. Basically, I had to create courses out of all of the other academic/for fun work he had done (I had records, but this work was not organised into courses. For example he read 4 hours per night and I knew what he had read). I decided to make 7.5 classes each year to show that he had worked a full academic load (which clearly he had given his test scores like a 1580 on the SAT). But I could have made 6 or I could have made 8. What I came to understand by working with this board is that the goal of a homeschool transcript is to represent your student fairly not accurately, because there is no way to be 'accurate' with something as squishy as learning. Education is in the eyes of the beholder, and taking 'courses' is just one way of organizing/explaining learning. However, 'courses' are the way that admissions people understand education, so all learning must be explained in this way even if it was not done in this way. My point is that it is your choice how to represent your child, and I counted a lot of stuff that was done for fun because this kid loved to learn. Breakdown for my ds's 30 courses: 2 Dual enrollment courses 4 courses through the National NZ system 24 homeschooled 'courses' (6 were using AoPS as a provider, 10 were organised by me, and 8 were created out of his self-learning passions) With this approach (and a LOT of math competitions) my ds got into MIT, U-M, CMU (with top scholarship), and was rejected from Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.
  9. I had set time requirements for his weaker subjects, and then let his passions run. I did this throughout middle and highschool. At 11, his dad read history to him at night, and during the day I required 1 hour of English with me. The rest of his time was his to do with as he wanted. Typically, he did 2+ hours math, 1 hour physics, and 1 hour violin. He also chose to read for hours and hours every night - classic literature, the economist, national geographic, and scientific american.
  10. My nephew was. So he contacted them. He found out that he was waitlisted because they didn't have some test scores but everything else looked good (they did not tell him this until he called). So he got the test scores sent in, and he was admitted 2 days later. This was for a reach school in engineering (top 3).
  11. I've come to believe that integrated math in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade is a better idea than siloed math by year. (algebra, geometry, and statistics). That way you can do all the easy topics in 8th grade, leave all the hard ones until 10th grade, and have constant repetition so stuff sinks in. It is actually a small percentage of kids that are developmentally ready for a proper course in Algebra 1 in 8th grade. This sets kids up for failure and sets teachers up for covering only the most basic drill and kill content so that most kids can pass with an A (or maybe a B lol). Bad all the way around.
  12. This is what I saw with my nephew that I homeschooled by zoom during covid. He thought he was good at math because he always got top grades. But then we found out that this is only because they were teaching algebra at the most basic level, doing a 2 week unit and taking the test right after it (with no cumulative tests), and all word problems were extra credit. He was NOT at grade level as far as I was concerned. But he thought he was far ahead because he was earning 100% on all tests (but then he would forget everything he had learned). This kid wants to be an engineer, so I was working really hard to convince him that YES you should do word problems even though they are extra credit and you already have 100%. What a disaster.
  13. I remediate this work for Every Single Student except the kid who did Math-U-See epsilon (which is an entire year of fractions). This ALWAYS includes 10th graders where I have to go back to drawing pizzas so we are still working on conceptualization, and typically I have to keep them practicing in 11th and 12th grade in for kids in the calculus stream because it was just never understood or mastered in primary school.
  14. Ah, well, I guess I forget what is in an algebra 2 course, given I work within a different system. lol. Yes, to exponential growth. No to differential equations. I did multivariate time series analysis and lots of nonparametric stats which is based in combinatorics. There is just lots of types of maths. The US has picked one kind to put full focus on which helps some students (economists, scientists, actuaries) and hurt other students (humanities kids, social scientists, artists). I think the key point here for me is not that the algebra 2/precal/calculus stream shouldn't be offered in high school, it just shouldn't be compulsory to get into university, given that university is a gate keeper to higher socio-economic position in life.
  15. My PhD is in mathematical modelling of ecological systems. I did the equivalent of covid modelling for mice. I never used Algebra 2, precal, or calculus in my 4 years of research. Just saying.
  16. We also need to get rid of computer based programs in primary school. They are becoming common here, and the encourage teachers to let the program teach, and discourage students from learning to show proper workings, as all that is required is the answer to go in the computer. Both of these are bad bad bad.
  17. I might support a high school graduation requirement for statistics, as long as it is qualitative statistics.
  18. In NZ it is not. To earn a high school qualification here, you must pass a basic exam covering numeracy, measurement, and statistics. To get into university, you must pass a 10th grade class that covers the equivalent of 1 year each of algebra, geometry, and statistics. However, even that requirement can be sidestepped if you enter university at 20, where there are NO requirements for entrance at all. There are other ways of helping kids make a contribution to society, which in the end is what highschool and university are all about. I think that a lot of people use diplomas in the USA as signalling and as a gate keeper. This is not what education should be about.
  19. NZ has been falling down the rankings in math for a decade. The NZ government has just announced the requirement of 1 hour of math every day in primary school. Not sure if it will work, but I know that right now primary schools do more like 20 minutes 4 days a week, so I don't think it will hurt unless teaching is so incompetent that kids come to hate math. Hoping that is not the case! https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/backing-our-kids-learn-basics (also banning cell phones in primary and secondary during school hours)
  20. You do not need 2 years of algebra to do well on the above 2 exams that I posted. They are tough (go look at them, and only 12% of students earn an A on either exam), and require a lot of mathematical/statistical understanding, but the algebra is limited to rearranging very basic equations. And, in fact, I have gotten a kid with dyscalculia through these exams who could not do ANY algebra AT ALL. She could not even subtract 8 minus 6 (and the one time I asked her to do it, it took her 2 minutes with a tally chart to get 3). I rearranged the equation for her in the 3 ways she would need and she memorized when to use each rearrangement. There is NO WAY a girl like her could get through the US high school math system, but by keeping her in math all the way through 12th grade, she conceived of herself as 'mathy' and developed a LOT of mathematical/statistical skills.
  21. The core problem I see is that universities are gatekeepers to a lot of careers, even careers that have no math in them. It seems to me that the goal of an education is to allow people to work to their highest potential. Requiring jumping through an algebra 2 hoop, to be able to go to university for the humanities is just that, a hoop to jump. I agree with the article that there are other types of 'math' that can be taught. You can keep kids in math without it being the calculus stream. Here in NZ, we have a very strong mostly qualitative statistics stream for 11th and 12th grade that requires a deep understanding of statistical principles (not calculations) to analyse data and interpret results. But also teaches kids how to ask proper questions, find hidden assumptions, and assess experimental design. It has 2 external exams that focus on probability and distributions in context of real life problems (they require 8th grade algebra to get an A). When I hear interviews on the national radio show here, I can tell that the interviewers have taken these 2 classes, and I've told my students that they will be more capable of understanding the issues facing society with the knowledge they are learning. Can't say the same thing about algebra 2. This year's statistics exams: https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/nqfdocs/ncea-resource/exams/2023/91585-exm-2023.pdf https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/nqfdocs/ncea-resource/exams/2023/91586-exm-2023.pdf
  22. For world history, my ds watched the 2 crash course series about 4 times each (his choice!!). He really got the big picture content in his head. Then we did one deep dive on the colonisation of Africa. This combination was very effective in achieving both general knowledge and an understanding of the nuanced nature of historical study. It was simple and fun.
  23. My older boy had 2 high school classes where we only read and discussed. There were no test, papers, presentations etc for the year-long class at all. I made this clear on my course descriptions. He learned a ton, and no university cared.
  24. My younger boy really needed social stuff. He had 9 activities per week. I came to understand that this was more important than any school work, so we streamlined. For the 4 years of high school, he did 1 hour math and 3 hours writing per day + easy reading at night. I folded in geography, history, literature, economics, science into the writing work (he has dysgraphia so getting him to write was a long arduous but critically important task, one that I did with him side by side on the sofa for 4 years 3 hours per day). So his 'school work' totalled 20 hours per week. This prepared him well for university. He is in an honours program getting all As in a university with no grade inflation where 60% of students get Cs or Fs. I have come to believe that a lot of highschool 'school work' is not overwhelmingly useful.
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