Almanac: Back to School Nights-A Teacher's Perspective

I’m not sure when the concept of “Back to School Night” began. While the event is known as “Open House” in some areas, the principle is the same, regardless of the title.

• School gets out early one day. Late September is a common time for the event. I’ve taught where there was a “Spring Open House” as well. More about that below.
• Teachers prepare to meet with parents in the evening.
• Parents come “back to school” during an “open house” at the school.
• In most instances, at least part of the evening involves parents mimicking their child’s day in an abbreviated format. Middle and High Schools commonly reduce the length of the class periods to around 10-minutes. 
• Parents start the room of their child’s first class, listen to a presentation of some sort by the teacher, then try to find the next classroom in the schedule within the time designated as the “passing period.”

There are variations on this theme, but this is the most common schedule I experienced in my 31-years of high school teaching.

Assuming the “most common” schedule is in place, teachers have 10-minutes or so to discuss curriculum, discipline plan, and grading scale. Fortunately, that wasn’t a time for parents to ask questions about their students’ grades.

Below are the actual Powerpoint slides I used during my final three Back to School Nights at Great Oak High School.

I started with “Pre-AP Biology, Dr. Downing” on the screen. The first mouse click brought the banana snake to the screen. I began,

“I am Dr. Chuck Downing. I’ve been doing this a long time. I graduated from San Diego State University with High Honors in Biological Science and began teaching high school as the last T-Rex collapsed from hunger and died. I taught science for 23-years at Monte Vista High School in San Diego County and was full-time faculty and Point Loma Nazarene University in Teacher Education for 8-years. I taught at least one biology lab every semester in addition to my Teacher Education course load. I’ve been at Great Oak since we opened in the fall of 2004.”

It took me the entire ten minutes to complete this presentation. I left no time for questions. I had a sign-up form at the back of the room for parents who wanted to schedule a conference. I found that most parents had the same concerns. Since my presentation address those concerns, I had to schedule few parent conferences.

Score!

For the first few years at Great Oak, Back to School Nights—note the plural—were on the days that the first student report cards were released each semester. There was no time for an in-class presentation. Teachers sat at tables arranged along the outer wall of the gymnasium.

Parents, who’d just picked up their students’ report cards, lined up in front of a teacher they wanted to “talk with.” After talking to one teacher, they could move on to another table.

For five semesters I was the teacher with the longest lines of parents. Twice they had to shut off the lights in the gym to get parents in my line to speed up the process.

Most parents were “concerned” about their child’s grade. The fact that less than one-third of the semester was complete—there was plenty of time left to get any grade—failed to sway some. I explained, over and over and over and OVER that this class was unlike any their student had in middle school. The expectation was that students would learn thinking and problem-solving strategies along with science content.

I knew what I said was true. I’d been teaching the same way since 1973.

Parental line-up nights were most unpleasant experiences.

On the flip side, the best Spring Open House ever was at Great Oak.

We were teaching Global Science, a hybrid science class for 9^th-graders. The course connected biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science principles with an imaginary trip to six locations around the world. It was different and intriguing. Here’s a sample assessment piece.

Global Science Semester 1 Final

Investigation and Experimentation Section

Igor is the lab assistant for Dr. Frank N. Stein. Dr. Frank, as his friends call him, is working on a new project. Igor’s job is to sort the stored body parts in Dr. Frank’s lab and put them in order on the shelves.

Igor likes this kind of job. Below is a table showing how many of each body part Igor sorted.

Hour	Legs	Feet	Toes	Arms	Hands	Fingers	Ribs	Vertebrae
1	10	26	12	29	5	62	14	57
2	14	21	20	26	8	55	20	49
3	16	18	25	22	18	49	22	41
4	20	14	28	18	20	42	30	33
5	30	10	35	14	22	38	36	28
6	31	9	41	12	30	33	41	22
7	33	8	44	10	35	25	49	19
8	40	5	52	8	46	15	54	12
9	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?

Make a graph of this data for the body part you are assigned. Be sure to follow ALL THE RULES OF GRAPHING.

Questions.

1.             What body part was assigned to you?

2.             Define: Independent Variable.

3.             What is the Independent Variable for your graph?

4.             Define: Dependent Variable.

5.             What is the Dependent Variable for your graph?

6.             What is the range of your body part data?

After you are done making your graph, answer these questions.

Assume that Igor took his lunch break after his fourth hour of work and could have stopped after 8 hours. Dr. Frank offered him one hour of overtime. Igor took the offer.

7.             Based on your graph, how many of your body part would you predict Igor will sort and store during his hour of overtime work (hour 9)?

8.             Explain how you used your graph to determine your answer to question #7.

9.             Write an explanation for why your think the number of your body part sorted and stored changed every hour.

10.         Would you do Igor’s job? Why or why not?

Once students understood the concept, the vast majority bought into it.

Not so the parents.

“Why isn’t my child taking biology?” was the most common question. No matter what answer was given, parents didn’t really care. Even if they didn’t like their high school biology class, or if they did poorly, their experience of that single-content class was “the right way to teach science.”

My Ph.D. research was on teaching the way described above. I know it is at least as effective as single-content courses. Students in “integrated science classes” learn content and how that content fits into the grand scheme of the field of scientific endeavor.

The year the school announced the Spring Open House would be a showcase for incoming 9^th graders, I proposed that we seize the opportunity for parents and their students to see what Global Science and the rest of our huge selection of science course offerings were about.

Aside. For most of my 8-years at Great Oak there, were 18 full-time science teachers in our department. Over 75% of the student body took at least one more year of science than is required for graduation by the state of California. In addition to Global Science, we offered two levels of biology, AP Biology, chemistry, AP Chemistry, physics, AP Physics, anatomy and physiology, marine biology, AP Environmental Science, and forensic lab techniques. We also offered a complete list of International Baccalaureate offerings in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.

There was a lot of content to show off. End of Aside.

There are four ENORMOUS lab rooms at Great Oak. Capacity in those labs is 86. We grouped courses by main content title in each lab. We recruited students to come and do some form of activity during their 30-minute volunteer block. Interest students and parents wandered at their own pace. 

Some current Great Oak students/parents came to preview the offerings.

These were the best uses of Open House time I ever experienced.

Next Almanac: Back to School Nights – My memories as a student

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My website is: www.crdowning.com

I'd appreciate your feedback!

Email me at: chuckdowningauthor@gmail.com

Authors: Reviewing Reviews – 1 of 3. The Review Itself

This is the first of three posts on book reviews. Today’s focus is the first half of a discussion of the reviewer/reviewing entity.

My first novel was Traveler’s HOT L – The Time Traveler’s Resort. KoehlerBooks published it in 2014. At the suggestion of my publicist, Sherry Frazier, I submitted the book to the USA Best Book Awards. It was named Best Science Fiction Novel in that competition.

At that time, Publisher’s Weekly’s Booklife opened its reviews to books from independent publishers. I submitted a copy of the book. It was selected for review. I waited for about two months for the review. My hope was modest. I wanted at least one sentence that I could use in advertising.

I was disappointed at the review. There wasn’t a single complementary sentence. The review follows this paragraph. It is the first time this review has been seen outside of Booklife. I'll get back to this review in my next "Author" post.

Booklife Review: 10/1/14

A rundown hotel hides a HOT L (Harmonious Overlap of Time Location), a nexus for time travel, in a series of stories that lack the execution to deliver on the premise. Debut novelist Downing’s conceptual framework is ambitious, sending readers into a medieval historical, two crime stories, and the book’s own alternate-universe sequel, but there’s nothing new in these familiar settings. PI Phil Mamba tries to catch a murderous politician in his past and inevitably ends up altering the future; no one believes the boy who says that his dolls can speak when, of course, they can. By the time Jesus is referred to as a temporal anomaly, it’s all too much, especially given how often explanations of theory and verbose descriptions (“he spoke with tenderness tinged with resignation”) slow the narrative. The recurring characters who direct the HOT L lack personality, limited to droll remarks and clichés such as “smooth the now-wrinkled time fabric.” Nearly every opportunity to treat these concepts originally has been missed. (BookLife)

Since Traveler’s HOT L is a book on time travel, let’s fast-forward to 2016.

I tweeted about Traveler’s HOT L in one of my weekly tweets about my books. @TimeTravelNexus liked my tweet. I checked out the website—it’s a site that focuses on the concept of time travel. Excited by my find, I sent a request for a book review. A week later, I received this reply.

I've read through the Amazon description of "Traveler's HOT L - The Time Traveler's Resort" and I'm really intrigued! It looks like the time travel plays a major role in the stories and I'd love to know more about the "harmonic overlapping time locations"! This is really appealing stuff and I'd love to read it and provide an honest review!

I mailed a copy of the book to TimeTravelNexus. My hopes this time were similar to my hopes with Booklife. I wanted something positive I could use in advertising.

Several weeks later, I received the review from TimeTravelNexus. The entire review is almost 900 words long. I’ve edited it to 250 words, both pro, and con, to keep it close to the length of the Booklife review. This entire review is available at http://timetravelnexus.com/review-travelers-hotl-by-cr-downing/.

Review by TimeTravelNexus

…No, there's no missing "E" to make "hotel" - the "HOT L" is the "Harmonious Overlap of Time Location" and is the backbone of the brilliant time travel mechanism which is described most fully in the first short story. The following stories refer back to this - and even build upon it in some cases.

Time is described as a fabric which consists of interweaving threads and which can fold over itself.  Time can also be considered as a pool which suffers ripples.  Such imagery is used fully and allows for some wonderful reasoning behind why (and how) characters travel in time. It's one of the best descriptors of time that I've read and is definitely the high point of this collection!

Three of the eight stories really incorporated the time travel element well  - the first with an explanation, another with a time travel tourist, and a third with its 'discovery' and development…

Time travel, or the link to the HOT L, in the other five stories seemed to me to be rather tenuous, or superfluous. For example, by casting a character back in time for a second shot at something which could just as easily have been covered in the first version of the timeline in the narrative, or by tacking it onto the end of a story which would have been just fine without it.

The reviewer gave the book 3-Stars on Amazon. It's a fair rating based on the review.

The number of stars given by a reviewer is important to many potential readers. In fact, it may be the most piece of information for some readers in their decision to read the book. 5-star reviews for Traveler’s HOT L are posted on both my website and Amazon. However, if a book has nothing by 5-star reviews, I am suspicious. There aren’t many books that everyone I know likes that much.

I’ll take a few 3-star reviews similar to the one above of my books when they're offered.

What was the value of this review process?

I let you know in two weeks…

Next Authors blog: Reviewing Reviews – Reviewing the Reviewers

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I'd appreciate your feedback!

Email me at: chuckdowningauthor@gmail.com

Almanac: Exponential weirdness

Brief Recap

I sprained my ankle running with my soccer team.

It turned out my ankle was broken. I had a cast and crutches.

When the lower 2/3 of my leg was colder to the touch than the upper 1/3, I went back to my doctor.

Dr. Webster cut the cast off and admitted me to the Grossmont Hospital.

I was a cast-less in-patient at Grossmont Hospital within an hour.

New stuff

It is February 1981. Much of the medical technology we now take for granted wasn’t even on the radar screen at that time.

Whenever I sat up with my legs hanging over the edge of the bed, my left leg would get cold within a minute. Looking for a cause involved ultra-sound.  

Ultra-sound device from the era.

First they spread a gel on my foot. Then, they listened to the sound of my popliteal pulse—on the medial (inside) surface between the heel and ankle. From that, they determined that I had 20% less blood flowing through that artery when the leg was cold when compared to a “warm leg” check. Warm leg means not dangling over the edge of the bed.

An Aside

My very first AP Biology class had the highest pass rate—over 90%--of any of my 30+ AP classes. That was the school year of 1980-81.

They are a wonderful group of people.

The hospital food in that era was only moderately better than the hospital food of 1968 when I had my spinal fusion. Being the kindhearted group that they are, that AP Biology class smuggled in a Godfather’s pizza. It was magnificent!

They also put up a huge piece of butcher paper at Monte Vista and collected “get well” wishes from dozens of students.

We now return to regular programming

The “best guess” reason for my cold leg was

• When I fell and crashed on my left hip on the asphalt, it jarred a part of the L5/Lumbar spinal fusion I’d had when I was 18-years-old.
• The impact shifted a piece of bone just enough to agitate a ganglion just outside the vertebrae. The result of that agitation was my condition.

I still don’t know if that was the case.

I do know that they sent me home after a week in the hospital. They decided not to put the cast back on. I spent another week at my home with the instructions to “keep off your foot.”

I did stay home.

I did stay off my foot . . .

most . . . 

SOME of the time.

For at least ten years after that injury, my left foot would get so cold that I had to wear a single wool sock to get to sleep at night. Winter or summer, it made no difference. The foot got so cold it felt like it was burning.

I continue to notice the difference in the perceived temperature of my feet. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does it’s always that the left foot that is the cold one.

Aside #2

Some of this condition may be genetic. My mom’s fingers are almost always cold. People I shake hands with comment on my icy grip. “Cold hand, warm heart,” is the most common comment.

My usual retort is, “Nope. Just cold hands.”

I hope you at least smiled at that.

Doctor’s have a difficult time obtaining oxygen saturation readings from the fingertip devices every time my mom goes in. Recently, I’ve had to warm my hands so they can get the readings on my fingers.

Sounds like a genetic issue to me.

Maybe whatever’s causing the finger freeze is related to my icy foot.

Next Almanac: Back to School Nights

Follow me on Twitter: @CRDowningAuthor and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CRDowningAuthor

My website is: www.crdowning.com

I'd appreciate your feedback!

Email me at: chuckdowningauthor@gmail.com