Back to School

A little over two years ago, I became fascinated with a different approach to presenting multiplication.

Let’s multiply 21 x 13. Most people here would probably do this:

There are other ways to teach multiplication. Why not use lines?

I’m come across a video by Vi Hart, a mathemuscian, who went further to explain this great method of multiplying, its similarity to our traditional method, and exactly what multiplication means (something I think many people never know). Enjoy her excellent video!

After the STEM fellowship program was canceled due to insufficient enrollment, I decided to teach summer school. Here is my first day experience with S.L.A.M. (Summer Learning And More). 

Today started off great.

I got to sleep in. I got to walk to work for the first time ever. When I arrived to my summer school site this morning I couldn’t be more happy about what I found.

Jackson Elementary School has the most welcoming appearance of any school I’ve been in. The doors open up into a pristine hallway lined with the flags of the students’ nationalities lining the walls. The bulletin boards have current news and actually interesting events listed.

By 9:10 a.m. everything changed.

The principal and acting IRF (instructional reform facilitator) of the summer program welcomed everyone to the building and told the assembled teachers that they had received an email from the District this morning. Like every other time I’ve heard “we got an email from the District this morning,” the news wasn’t good.

Due to yet another staffing snafu, nine teachers were to be bumped out of the building and have to pick another school tomorrow morning at 10:30. I was relatively certain I would be called as my summer school seniority is quite low. Sure enough my name came up as number nine.

So, I lose practically all of the two days of orientation and have no idea what school I’ll be able to pick tomorrow. It’s a big system, budgets are in flux, people are unpredictable, I get it. But I’d really appreciate if the District would start getting more things right in terms of staffing … like, soon.

See everybody else who got bumped tomorrow at Franklin High.

TNicole Stapp, 18, a student at Chemeketa Community College in Salem fills out paperwork in the Enrollment Service Center to arrange to get a transcript. Stapp, an honor student, is preparing to transfer to Portland State University. The Oregon legislature approved a tuition reduction for students in foster care and Nicole Stapp has just left foster care. he legislature passed a measure Tuesday that it hopes will help ease the challenges for foster youth seeking a college degree.

The Senate voted 25-4 in support of House Bill 3471, which requires Oregon universities and colleges to waive tuition and fees for foster youths applying to their programs as well as directs the Oregon Student Assistance Commission to give them preference for Oregon Opportunity Grants. Participating students will be required to complete 30 hours of community service each year, probably mentoring other foster children considering applying for college.

The measure now heads to the governor’s office for final approval before becoming law. A press release from the Senate Majority Office noted Oregon will be the seventeenth state to establish a tuition waiver for foster children.

“It will really help our young adults who have already faced incredible challenges,” Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, said. “It will help break the cycle of poverty and failure.”

The Oregonian previously reported on the unique difficulties foster youths face transitioning out of the system and into higher education, including a 2006 study that found 20 percent were homeless within a year of leaving state care and less than 2 percent obtained a four-year degree although the state reports nearly half of them attend college.

Sens. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose; Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg; Joanne Verger, D-North Bend; and Doug Whitsett,R-Klamath Falls, voted against the measure because it did not include any requirements for receiving the free tuition, such as having a minimum grade point average.

“While this is a very deserving group of people for our help, they have to be qualified to be able to use that help and I don’t think this bill gets that done,” Whitsett said.

The Palm Beach County All-Star Marching Band Camp is in danger of closing because Riviera Beach said it won’t be able to sponsor the Academic Summer Camp this year because of budget cuts.

Without the city paying for the camp, there isn’t any money for salaries for the college-student staff. Antoine Miller, the summer camp band director, said if the camp doesn’t raise $4,600 by Friday to lease space and pay for insurance, the camp will close.

Camp staffers haven’t given up, however, and are seeking donations. A meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday at 5 p.m. at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Rivieria Beach for parents and to ask for contributions.

– Kevin D. Thompson

The Washington Post erred in its exclusion of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School from the newspaper’s list of the nation’s top 1,900 public secondary campuses, according to an email from a Post columnist to Pen High. I described Pen’s surprising exclusion last week.

The index should be updated later this week, and Pen High will be somewhere around 192nd rank, making it the top school from the South Bay and Harbor Area, and placing it within the top 1 percent nationwide.

Here’s part of an emailed apology from Post columnist Jay Mathews to Peninsula High:

The Post erred in failing to place Palos Verdes Peninsula High School on our 2011 High School Challenge rankings of the nation’s high schools. It is entirely my fault. I expect that great school–one of the first I visited when I conceived this project 15 years ago–will be added to the list this week, along with other schools we missed in the first version of the list. Every year since this list began in 1998, we have had a second updated version to make sure we include every school, including those who failed to notify us of their numbers and those, like PVPHS, whose paperwork I lost somewhere on my desk.

PVPHS will be ranked in the top 200, somewhere around 192, which puts it in the top one percent of US public schools measured this way. Its line on the list will read as follows:

Palos Verdes Peninsula Rolling Hills Estates CA 73.00 2.10 3.489

Those three numbers are, in order, the percentage of seniors who had at least one passing grade on an AP exam while in high school, the percentage of students qualified for federal lunch subsidies, and the school’s Challenge Index rating (the number of AP test in 2010 divided by the number of graduating seniors.)