Technology and CS in Dallas

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  • I am actually cool with this

    Students find ring tone adults can’t hear – Wireless World – MSNBC.com

    I really haven’t discussed this with other teachers but as long as the phone doesn’t distrupt my train of thought, I don’t really care.

    In fact, I told my summer school students today, as I made sure that my ringer was off, that if they needed a calculator, feel free to use the one in their phone — and then whipped my phone out about 20 minutes later when I needed a calculator.

    I honestly don’t even care if they text message as long as it doesn’t bother my train of thought and they aren’t cheating.

  • I think I like teaching Summer School — And teacher pay issues

    It is so funny — my friends, my husband and my family have been worried since I have never taught summer school, that I wouldn’t like it.

    Okay, this is ONE day, but so far, I love the hours 7:45 – 1:45 — okay, I’d like it better if it started at 8:00, because I always feel like I have to get to school about an hour before the kids (but I can never stay after).

    And today was long because I have ACP writing after words (more on that on a seperate post.

    But the class size is great. Right now below 25 and below 15 but I haven’t taken a full count.

    Classroom management is great so far, precisely because the class size is small.

    But this is the fun part for me.

    The people who are worried about me teaching summer school are some of the same people who thought that I got TOO much time off when I first got into teaching, and that teaching was over paid.

    Well, to start with, when I went into teaching 14 years, ago, I was making $42,000 a year, and I quit and later went back to school and started at $21,000 a year (I remember these numbers well). Of course, a lot of people, including my husband thought that the long time off made up for the $21,000 I lost.

    Hmmm, how. You really can’t get a job in the summer as you are only available for 12 weeks. And sometime in that twelve weeks you have to get some training in. Most AP teachers (I am one), have to get a week of training in. And let me tell you that 4 1/2 days of training is intensive and you have no energy to do anything else, because you are cover a year’s worth of material in 36 hours.

    So now you are down to 11 weeks. Again, there aren’t many part time gigs that are going to pay $21,000 (in 14 year old dollars, so think closer to $30,000 today). And of course, they occasionally juggle our start dates.

    Now don’t get me wrong, I make just under $50,000 a year now. That includes math and/or AP stipends, I get one or the other. It also includes the extra money that I get for having a master’s degree, and the best news on that, is that the district paid about 2/3 of the tution. It also doesn’t include summer school or my ACP money. Nor does it include tutoring money. Any of that is an extra $20.00 on hour.

    I think I do get paid a fair amount for my 187 days a year. I also think that our starting pay, which is just about $38,000 for a new teacher, is also far. However, my district is paying substantially more than the state does. I think, but I’d have to look at the union tables again, that we do about $4000 a year more than the state minimum.

    The fun thing is, the general public who doesn’t know what teachers do, do think that we get paid too much. Of course, they are thinking that we get somewhere around 15 weeks where we could make more money, if we needed it. I’m sorry, but that money just isn’t out there. Nor do I think it would be fair to my students if I were working a part time job during the school year — and a lot of teachers do that to make ends meet. It’s also hard to find the continguous days to make up a 50% difference — and honestly, I do believe if I had stayed in the non-educational workforce, I would be making $100,000 since my husband’s salary compared to now and then is comparable.

  • Summer School – before Day 1

    Students can still register through Tuesday I think … so we won’t have our full enrollment until then.

    I’m looking forward to it, even though I had my normal — can’t sleep the night before new students.

    I’m teaching Algebra I, and the plan is to kill as few trees as possible, though I killed a bunch for the first two days. That means I have to figure out something before Wednesday for Wednesday and Thursday.

    I am already planning to have each student keep a folder in my classroom of all their work for the six weeks, so that will be one of the first things I let them do — decorate their folder. I’m going to have them pull them each day, and put them back each, rather than hand work out and back.

    I also plan to have them keep a folder on the computer. I’ve already got two days worth of Measuring Up questions in Examview, and plan to have them finish each day by answering those questions. They are multple choice or free response.

    As to setting up my room. I think my first priority is going to be to cover and design my bulletin board since I can get to that one. Darn, I should have thought a bit further ahead and gone by Lakeville and gotten something for it. Of course I can do that anytime.

    And I’ve got my tape measure in my summer school stuff, so we can measure before we start doing things.

    The biggest plan is to set up the room so that switching between desk work and computers is very easy.

  • So what am I doing now?

    Right now, I am in the process of starting summer school and I am teaching Algebra I. I like teaching Algebra I, especially to repeaters. In fact, last year ALL of my Algebra I students were repeaters.

    I am hoping summer school will be easier. I got a lot of divergent type of students.

    The first group are good kids who just didn’t do what they were told to do. Those kids are great, don’t give any problems and just crank out the work and get it done.

    The next group are kids who have minor problems that are keeping them from being successful. At lot of that is attendance. They are frusterating because you know if they would just come to school everyday, they could be successful. And of course, they never make up the work.

    The last group and the one that was in my face every day, were the ones that have major problems. I had a bunch of Katrina kids. They had problems BEFORE I met them. Before Katrina even. Every one of them presents a different complex set of problems that have to be dealt with.

    I am thinking seriously of ripping Jimmy Buffet’s Math Sucks off the CD I have here, and have it playing continously when the kids come into the classroom on Monday and Tuesday morning (I won’t see all my students until Tuesday).

    Right now, my classroom is split. Half of my room is overcrowded with desks, the other half of my room is overcrowded with computers. The plan is to have the students help me move the furniture so the room “works”. That means bringing a tape measure so that we only have to move things once.

    My dream is to move everything so that the computers are on the outer perimeter of the room, and I have desks in the center so I can teach “both” ways.

    Actually I was planning on teaching 100% technology, but that kills major trees. I hadn’t thought of it until my principal mentioned that I ought to wait to move the room, and leave it as it is so I could teach “both ways”.

    The reason that teaching 100% technology kills trees, is that a) we don’t have a book and 2) I have this weird belief that the kids need to have a hard copy of what we are doing. I’ve done that for the first two days, but I’m going to try to change that. Other than the fact that it kills trees, it means I have to stand in front of a copies for hours and I hate that.

  • Good news and Bad News

    Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Local News

    I get a $4100 approximate raise.

    We lose our hall monitors. I love our hall monitors. Nothing I hate worse as a teacher than sitting in a hall and yelling at people.

    The hall monitors come and get back kids out of our classes. (That says it all!)

  • Welcome!

    I’ve decided to start a new blog about teaching. In other words, I’m starting to feel safe again — long story, probably won’t blog much about it.

    I have taught Computer Science at Hillcrest High School in Dallas for 14 years. It blows me a way every time I think about it — (okay, I didn’t teach it from June 2005 – January 2006 and tried hard not to think about it and miss it, but I’m not counting that). I’ve been in the same room for about 13 years, counting the fact that I didn’t move into this room until about February of the first year, and then was moved out and back in about February again.

    I am certified in Computer Science and Mathematics with a “permanent” teaching certificate and received it back in 1992 when you got those things for life. I am certified with a renewal certification in Technology Applications but I keep thinking about letting that silly thing expire. Mainly because I don’t like teaching Webmastering much (I actually perfer teaching math), and it will take a gun to get me to teach the other technology applications.

    I love computer science and have since I met my first computer, the mainframe at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi when I was a junior in high school. My mother says it was like watching her ugly duckling turn in to a swan (thanks mom, rolling eyes), but it’s true. I did find my calling.

    I took my first programming class that year at Jackson State, back in 1977. We did BASIC with a terminal. I am pretty sure that I could haven’t gotten a full ride scholarship to Jackson State, but it’s a traditionally black college and man or man did I want to get away from home and from my dad. Man was driving me nuts as he wanted me to go into real estate — the fun part is that my sister has fulfilled his dreams.

    I went to the University of Southern Mississippi on an Air Force ROTC scholarship. Bit of trivial about me — at the time I absolutely LOVED the military and wanted nothing more than to be a programmer for a branch of the service and I had been accepted at West Point but chickened out when I realized I would have been in the second class of woman and the Point is notoriously bad to “new people”.

    I graduated in 1982 but because the Air Force had too many officers and my dad was terminally ill, they opted me out, and I didn’t actually serve. Instead they put me on inactive reserve for 8 years.

    I went to work for a fertilizer company, called Mississippi Chemical in Yazoo City. We were a COBOL shop busily writing code to move everything from an old computer, I’m thinking an HP, but could be wrong, to an IBM 370 system.

    I spent a year and half there letting my family make me nuts, when one of my favorite people from college gave my name and information to a head hunter. He wanted to me move where he lived, but didn’t bother to ask me. Stubborn person that I am, I told the head hunter I wanted to move to Dallas. My sister lived in Paris, and I loved Dallas, so he gave my information to TI who recruited me heavily on a Friday. They sent me to every hiring manager, and I had three offers by the end of the day.

    I moved to Dallas in 1983 and have been here every since.

    I loved working for TI as long as I was working for GSI, but when I got transferred to the main unit up in Spring Creek I hated it. GSI was super informal, jeans and boots were the dress code as we worked with the doodlebuggers — okay, I worked with accounting but THEY worked with the doodlebuggers, but sometimes they would let me talk to to doodlebuggers. (A doodlebugger is the name for the people who actually LOOK for oil, along with their trucks — cool trucks by the way).

    After about 11 years at TI, and two with a boss I couldn’t stand, I called the head hunter and asked them to get me out of there. They did, and I went to work for a jewerly company that will forever remain nameless for 3 months. Here’s the deal, I was on call, 24/7 literally before it became a buzz work, when I was working at TI, but married to a programmer that worked 8-5 and spent at least an hour a day playing hangman. I wanted THAT gig, not the one I got. And while he still works at the company, he knows works 24/7 and they stopped playing hangman long ago.

    So they gave me a pager and I took a walk, literally. No way, no how was I going to be on call.

    Since I never had taken a break, I decided to play for a while — at least that was my intention, but I’m easly taken advantage of. I wanted to make enough money I could keep showing my dogs and my obedience instructor offered me a job of washing dogs a few days a week. It soon came to my running her shop but making slave wages so I decided THAT was for the birds.

    At the time, I decided there were three directions I was interested in. Occupational Therapy and I had been doing pet therapy at Baylor Rehab and had a taste of it. Nursing because that has always been my second choice (and still is today, but only a specific brand of nursing). The choice was teaching high school. You see, I taught basic obedience all over town at the time, and my students all thought I should teach high school.

    So I did a lot of research and I figured out that the best way back into the job market, meaing the quickest and cheapest, was to get a teaching certificate. I even figured out that I could teach at a smaller high school if I had both a mathematics and computer science certification and that it would only take a couple of math classes.

    In the meantime, Dallas ISD had a school that kept trying to get me alternatively certified. But as my luck goes, I picked the only years that there was a teacher surplus in my lifetime to get into teaching. So I went to Texas Woman’s University (yes, spelled right), and got a traditional teaching certificate.

    I’ve taught Algebra II, Geometry, and Algebra I. When I teach Algebra I, like this year, I usually get the bottom of the barrel (but that might be true of all the subjects, but I don’t remember because it’s been somewhere around 12 years since I taught Geometry. Since only teach a few sections of math, and we have a policy that makes sure that kids don’t get the math teacher they flunked before, they usually just give them to me. Occasionally I get a kid twice, but that’s okay, because I don’t hold grudges.