Author: mrvaudrey

A Week in the Life
School started Monday.

For the first time in nigh a decade, I didn’t welcome students into Mr. Vaudrey’s class with a handshake and a smile.
I didn’t take roll and ask each student how to pronounce their name and “Do you prefer Bernardino or Bernie?”.
I didn’t prep a beginning-of-the-year icebreaker activity.
I didn’t even hang up colorful examples of student work or revise a syllabus.

Because for this first time in eight years, I’m not starting the year in the classroom.

In May, I accepted a job as Teacher Coach of Instructional Technology for Bonita Unified.

“But Matt, didn’t you just take a new job in March?”

Yep.

And I learned a lot while I was there, but it wasn’t for me. In this position, I’m in the classroom every day, I’m helping teachers with aB variety of needs, and I retain the title “Teacher”, which is important to me.

Here’s what I did in my first week asB EdTech Coach:
- Trained about 100 teachers on Music Cues in the classroom, which was well-received by manyB elementary teachers (a target market, in which I have very little experience and could use some credibility).
- Visited all but one of our district’s schoolsB and met principals and teachers, nearly all of whom had no idea that I was even hired, but were thrilled to hear it.
We have an EdTech Coach?!
- PerformedB bread-and-butter tasks with my new department (e.g. tag the Chromebook carts with District ID, follow up on tech needsB from New Teacher Orientation, deliver keyboards) and actually enjoyed it. As 33% of my department, we’ll likely get to know each other pretty well, and Kris and Cheryl are both a hoot.
Hoot.
- Visited 15 (wow… that’s a lot) classrooms to help teachers with various tech needs. Most of them Elementary, most of them for Music Cues, all of them delightful and eager to learn.
Here’s the cool part: I log each visit here and get the results in a spreadsheet (below), so I can quantify just how helpful I am in a given week. My new boss liked this form so much, she had me make her one, which she then showed toB her boss, who wants one, too.

Click to enlarge

And I can color-code the “Future Needs” column based on who I want to invite to a future training. For an upcoming Music Cues follow-up, all the teachers I visited who expressed interest are in green cells.

Next workshopB is probably Google Classroom, so I’ll change the formatting to show me those cells and inviteB those teachers.

Oh! And I can use formulas to separate out the email of those teachers using the first and last name, concatenated with the district email!

(Inhaler)

Seriously, if you haven’t used Concatenate yet in a spreadsheet, you are missing out.

It’s more funB than Revenge of the Sith.

“You were the chosen one!”
“I hate you!”
“=concatenate(left(D2,1),C2,”@bonita.k12.ca.us”)!”

Anyway, the new job is great and I’m thrilled to have it.

Next post:

What’s in my purse as I visit classes?

or

Matt Carries a Purse His Wife Tried to Donate to GoodWill

Stay tuned.

~Matt “Speadsheet and Star Wars Joke…this siteB is now complete.” Vaudrey
August 22, 2014
Why I Let Students Use Calculators All The Time
“Sure! I’d B loveB to have you demo a lesson!” Ms. B’s eyes widened as a smile grew on her face. I was surprised and thankful that she was so open to the idea.

“Great!” I replied. “What unit are you doing right now?”

“Well, we just finished Quadratics and we’re about to start Volume and Surface Area.” Ms. B replied, pointing to the standards list on her wall.

“Okay, so how about I introduce Circumference and Area of circles?”

“That’s fine. What do you need for that?” Ms. B asked, ever eager to help.

“Do you have graph paper, calculators, rulers, that sort of thing?” I asked.

“Calculators? You let your students use calculators?” Ms. B countered, incredulous.

“You what?”

Yes.
Yes, I do let my students use calculators.

Here’s why:

Lifelong Need

My wife doesn’t know her times tables. She’s a university professor and will regularly grade freshman Theology papers sitting on the couch. She’ll call out while I’m cooking or playing with the baby.

“What’s eight times six?”
“What’s 27 plus 18?”
“What’s 85 divided by 15?”

I’m a walking, smiling, calculator in the Vaudrey household.

When I’m not home, she has a calculator in her pocketB all the time. Even if her phone is in the other room, she can Google it.

My wife doesn’tB need computational skills.

Reasoning

…but she needs the reasoning.

She needs to know what the average means, when toB find the sum of a row and give the total student points, and how to explain to her college freshmenB what it means to have 6 quizzes, each worth 10% of their grade.

“But what if I miss one? Can I still get a C?”

The students in Ms. B’sB classroomB also have calculators in their pockets. I want them to know how to use it effectively, which is a much better use of their time than memorizing their 12s tables.

Diane Kinch, former president of CMC and board member ofB TODOS, gaveB this truth bomb at a recent workshop:

Students have had 15 years to learn their times tables and theyB still don’t know them. At a certain point, I have to stop boring them, give them a calculator, and say “Let’s do some math”.

In my own classroom, we use TI-83+ calculators nearly every day, which I like for a few reasons:
- TI-83sB keep a record of the last 8 or 10 calculations, so if students clear accidentally, they can recall it.
- There are tons of other buttons that do weird math stuff that we won’t use this year. This (f0r some) serves to build creativity about what’s coming next. About 2/3 of the students found the Stats Generator application and did coin-flipping trialsB four months before our unit on probability.
- They could easily show their neighbor the order of steps and describe the reasoning that led them there.
Let’s work backwards

Students who focus on reasoning instead of computation are better prepared for college and career in the US.

(It’s notable that most of the grunt work for my CPA buddy’s tax clients comes from the western coast of peninsular India. Computation is a high value there.)

That’s why I use calculators in the classroom all the time; because I think that reasoning is more important than computation.

For more on that idea, watch this by Dan Pink.

~Matt “Which one is the minusB sign?” Vaudrey
July 26, 2014
Summer Update

I had a new baby.

And still have this baby.

…so summer’s been pretty busy. I do have two things (in addition to that) to note.

1.) What a tragedy that Fawn Nguyen nearly lost hundreds of posts. If her content were lost, I imagine a herd of furious math teachers would’ve stormed the headquarters of GoDaddy.com and burned it to the ground. I’d hold a torch for that venture, too.

2.) My grandparents (who are 70+) live in Seattle and wanted to meet baby Clay. I walked Grammy through the installation of the Google Hangouts plugin and boom!

Cross-country goo-goos and ga-gas.

My grandparents (who still use disposable cameras and balance checkbooks by hand) are openB to new technology, and I hope that teachers in the coming year will be as receptive as they are.

~Matt “Close the window… it’s the red X” Vaudrey

P.S. If you want to follow the morning adventures of Pickle and Daddy (as Mommy and the new baby sleep in), you can follow me on Instagram.

July 2, 2014
Open Letter to Tom Torlakson, California Superintendent
Mr. Torlakson,

Good morning, you’ve no doubt heard that theB existing tenure situation was ruled unconstitutional yesterday.

I myself was tearing up as I read the brief. For my entire career, I’ve felt what the court realized yesterday, and my relief and joy nearly made me weep during my meeting.

Mr. Torlakson, you’reB currently “farther up” in the education chain of command than I–a lowly teacher–so it’s been a while since you’ve sat in a staff meeting or observed stinky teaching by a tenured “permanent” teacher.

It’s probably been even longer since you watched a stinky teacher make more money than you. For me, that memory is fresh.

Anyway, let’s talk about education.

In the court briefing:

“… teachers themselves do not want grossly ineffective colleagues in the classroom.” (page 13, line 1)

If I were in your position, posed for reelection,B I would be tempted to please the California Teacher’s Association (one of my biggest supporters) in order to secure my seat in November.

I’m asking that you focus on the students instead. Our students deserve great teachers, and as State Superintendent, you’ll have the proper pull toB drive the design of a system where great teaching is rewarded. This would helpB flush out the dummies and keep the hard-working professionals.

I hope you see that, by encouraging teachers to be our best, we place the students first.

In short, I’m a teacher, and my right to a job matters less than my students’ right to a quality education.

Mr. Torlakson, please support this court ruling in the next few months and continue to reform teacher tenure after your (probable) reelection in November.

~Matt Vaudrey

UPDATE June 25, 2014:

P.S. No doubt that by now, you’ve read the highly polarized brief fromB the CTA website, you’ve heard complaints that the “1-3% of teachers are grossly ineffective” statistic is unfounded on any data or studies, and you’ve seen that Students First is hailing the decision as an important step, with many more to address going forward.

Two things:
1. As a classroom teacher, the “guesstimate” of 1-3% of all teachers are grossly ineffective is not only statistically likely, but it sounds pretty generous based on my anecdotal experience.
2. The CTA press releases are full of negative language and the Students First releases are full of optimism and urgency. Why do you think that is?
June 11, 2014
Common Corgi: Mascot of Common Core

Marcia and I were discussing the need for a Common Core mascot this morning. She’s a dog person, so we came up with…

The Common Corgi.

Submitted byB Matt Enlow:

Got an idea? Tell me about it:

[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”forms/d/1B6pnVQucRtggbO0m2nndYN81HQasvXZMqUNtchM3A_U/viewform” query=”embedded=true” width=”760″ height=”720″ /]

~Matt “My Corgi Is Not Common” Vaudrey

June 7, 2014
Common Core Will Not Eat Your Babies

Let me tell you a story.

I’ve taught next door, across the building, and across campus from some really bad teachers.

I have sat in staff meeting at the same table asB teachers who give printed notes to students to copy down into their notebook,B and that is theirB sole class activity for the year.

As a teacher, my profession is cheapened if badB teachers aren’t held accountable.B That’s why we have standards; so that there is a minimum expectation to guide teachers and students.

I have a daughter (and a son on the way). In a few years when I send her to school, I expect the school to do a good job training her in skills she’ll need to be successful. Some things will come easily to her, some will be more difficult, and some will sit in darkness until a special teacher shines a light on them.

When I send my child to school, I’m giving my acceptance that school will do a good job. If I don’t like it, I can pull her out and home-schoolB or private-school her.

Of course, your child isn’t common. No child is.

Schools do the best that weB can with the diverse, unique students that are sent through our doors every day.

Therein lies my problem with the advocates against the Common Core;

If you don’t like it, you can leave.

Otherwise, you’re justB the kid who goes to a birthday party and complains about the flavor of cake.

(Concerned Parents Against Chocolate Fudge)

~Matt “Not afraid of Common Core, but a little afraid of the trolls this post will attract” Vaudrey

June 2, 2014
Chalk Art for Math Daddies

My daughter has water-soluble sidewalk chalk and free reign of the backyard.

Here’s the thing though: As adults, we rarely have to go outside our comfort zone. I don’t draw much. Most of my adult life, the drawings I’ve done are geometric figures.

So I’ve been mixing thingsB PickleB wants me to draw with theB things I can draw well. She asks for something, and I add to it.

A dinosaur chasing a square root function.

A black sheep standing on convex polygons.

Snakes on a plane. Get it?

An owl and a banana enclosed inB an isosceles triangle.

A robot with a striped face and a RAY gun. See it? RAY?

A blue sheep walking on a rhombus.

The locus of points equidistant from a baby.

…and tangent to a turquoiseB bee.

A linear function tangent to two sheep and a blue stick-cat bounded by a negative parabola.

My kid is gonna blow the socks off her mathB teacher.

~Matt “Daddy coloh lello seep?” Vaudrey

May 31, 2014
Big Shark

In the last few months, John Stevens and I have been training teachers on Math and Technology in the classroom with Classroom Chef.

Things are good.

One of the lessons in La Cucina hasn’t been recorded here yet, so here we go.

Big Shark

Start class with the media, which I got from Timon Piccini.

All students: Whoaaaaa!

Here’s why this is an excellent 3-Act math task:
StudentsB immediatelyB start asking questions.

Alex: How tall is that lady?
Marie: Is that shark still alive?
Dylan: What’s her Mullet Ratio?
Mr. Vaudrey: Aw, you’re a sweetheart. What else?
Lorraine: Do any other organisms live in a symbiotic relationship with it?
Mr. Vaudrey: Wow. Ms Smith owes you a high-five for that one. What else?
Victor: Is that one shark or two jaws facing each other?
Alyssa: Is she standing, like, really far back to make it look bigger?
Luis: What does that shark eat?
Frankie: Is that a Megalodon?

To that question, I responded, “I dunno. What’s a Megalodon?”

Frankie then had the full attention of the class as he stood and described the giant prehistoric shark that is large enough to destroy boats and battle a giant octopus. He was crushed to find out that the Megalodon is actually extinct and has never been captured on film.

“But!” I say, borrowing Frankie’s excitement and pausing dramatically, “Scientists noticed a lot of similarity between this:”

“and … this:”

“What’s happening here?” I ask.

Frankie (now very helpful): That guy is holding a shark jaw.
Kamiah: Is that a Great White shark?
Mr. Vaudrey: No, that’s a manB from south Florida named Barry… Oh, you meant theB jawB he’s holding.B Yes, the jaw of the Great White is like a smaller version of the Megalodon. Do you see the similarities?

(Go back and forth between the two pictures as students nod).

How do you think those two sharks are related?

Tionne: Well, like what if the Megalodon was… like… theB ancestor… of the Great White?
Luis: No, it’s not.B This one is way smaller.
Tionne: Yeah, it is! Look at dinosaurs and like… lizards and stuff!
Mr. Vaudrey: You’re both right.B The Megalodon is related to the Great White shark, but the Great White is way smaller. Does anybody disagree?

Scientists noticed what Tionne noticed; that the jaws are similar and the Megalodon was probably related to the Great White shark that we have today. Here’s the thing, though: The skeleton of a shark isn’t bone, it’s cartilage. So we don’t actually have a full skeleton of the Megalodon and don’t know how long it is. Scientists noticed this, though:

The teeth are almost identical, except for the size. They also noticed that the bigger the Great White, the bigger the jaw.

[Lead students through discussion about proportional relationships until…]

Dream Student: So if we compare the teeth, we can figure out the length?B ¹Vaudrey: What luck! We happen to have such a format on page 68! Go there.

Fanda: Wait, how long is the Great White?
Vaudrey: Oh, yeah. Here.

Teacher Notes:

Depending on the class, you can go through unit conversion, take guesses first, whatever. I followed the flow of the class; if they had concerns about the units, we converted feet to inches or mm or whatever. If they didn’t care, then I just made sure the end result was in feet and they could explain how they knew.

The numbers in black on the right side were technically the “answer”, but didn’t quite have the catharsis that we wanted. So we went outside.

Students took 20 paces from the blacktop, which varied “much like the size of a shark would have varied between 56 and 64 feet.

Turn around and look back at the blacktop.”

Vaudrey:B The distance from you to the blacktop is the about length of a Megalodon.
Alan: Holy shit!

It’s a good day when students are involved enough to curse.

Then we went back inside and I showed them this:

and this:

Maria: I wonder how tall the fin is.
Fernando: Could the big shark swallow a bus?
Ramiro: How many humans could it eat at once?
Vaudrey: Let’s get into those questions tomorrow.

All the downloads are here.

And click here to email me and book La Cucina Matematica for your district, school, or county.

~Matt “Big Shark” Vaudrey

^{1. I teach RSP, it’s unlikely that they would jump here so quickly. An actual 2nd period would involve turning to yesterday’s page in the notebook and looking for similarities.b)}

May 21, 2014
Teacher Pay

I’ve been out of the class for about a month.

My co-workers and new bosses in the District Office have led me to many new conversations about Education (on and off the clock).

If you don’t mind, fill in this anonymous form so I can make a graph of (what is probably) an inverse correlation. I’ll share it when I’m done.

UPDATE: Also, if you know the pay of anybody else, feel free to enter it as well. It just occurred to me that very few District Administrators are on Twitter or read my blog.

[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”forms/d/1y3mVBjS5bXR6dwT03AtklLKplSzuaiqQQ1OihDMomL8/viewform” query=”embedded=true” width=”760″ height=”900″ /]

May 6, 2014
So… What Do You Do Now?

Before Spring Break, I cleaned out my classroom and left.
This week was my first week as Professional Development Specialist. In my district, we don’t actually “specialize”, but rather support teachers across all contents. I’m hoping to specialize in Tech Integration, something that our district sorely needs (and I’m assuming that’s the reason I was hired).

“Welcome aboard! Can you carry that case of soda to the fridge in the other room?”

Here are some observations:
1.) While I’m a “specialist”, I don’t actually give specialized trainings. After walking through five schools, all five mentioned a need for EdTech Integration; good news for me.

2.) Nobody working in education outside of the classroom isB in a hurry. Everyone seems to stroll between events and walk between buildings at a leisurely pace. My orientation meeting with my new bosses lasted nearly three hours, and not onceB did anybody look at the clock and wonder when 2nd period was going to end.

“I still have to pass a note to my friend and go to the bathroom and walk allthewayacrosscampusHURRYUP!”

3.) After said meeting, we went to the district office so my Director could introduce us. I immediately realized that I hadn’t had lunch yet. No bell had rung to instruct me that it was lunchtime, so I didn’t eat. As the clock rolled pastB 1:00 and marched toward 2:00, I was grumpy, faint, and didn’t enjoy parading through every cubicle in the damn building, but I managed to smile anyway.

“Everything is fine, I’m just… woo… a little light-headed.”

4.) There are three of us just hired, one was brought in a few months ago to serve as interim coordinator (my immediate supervisor) but her first official day was Monday, with me and Chris. Chris and I are the only men in a building full of women, both youngest by… we’re the youngest by about 12 seasons of the Bachelor.

Remember this guy? Season three? I was still in high school.

5.) I stayed “late” until 4:10. It’s likely that I’ll leave most days around 3:15 and have no lessons to plan, working out of my car at my school sites, asking teachers what they need to teach their best. That’s awesome.

6.) One of the line items on my orientation agenda was “Student contact is minimal”. That is not awesome, but I got to prep three elementary classes for the state test yesterday.

7.) Director said that our job descriptions for the next 10 weeks are “ambiguous”. That might be awesome.

8.) Everybody… everybodyB B mentions how young I am. Eventually, my colleagues will note that I’m skilled in EdTechB because I work hard, not because I was born after 1970. Perhaps my babyface willB grease the wheels on getting me into an EdTech training role, so I’ll keep grinning and saying “Thank you”.

If only IB actually looked like Babyface.

9.) The secretary in my department is Eve, a tiny lady in running shoes with a thick accent who is excited about everything. I love her immediately. Her cubicle is covered with paper fans from all the places she’s visited around the world, and she goes for walks during her lunch break.

10.) The storage area for all the specialists is un-interesting-ly called “The Brick Building”. There’s a big “8” spray-painted on the wall. My goal is to have everybody calling it “The Ocho” before summer. Also, it’s in total disarray and my “ambiguous” job description can hopefully include “making The Ocho into usable space and clearing out a decade’s worth of old textbooks”, which would be awesome.

11.) I’m the youngest, greenest, and tallest teacher in this building. While I may know a lot about some things nobody else does, I know very little about things that everybody else does. My attitude is one of seeking to understand new ideas and help others, not preach and inform everyone of stuff I learned on Twitter.

I’m the new kid on the block, and polite will win more friends than smart.

To show I have “The Right Stuff” and keep “Hangin Tough”.

~Matt “What’s a Specialist?” Vaudrey

April 16, 2014