GT, College Admissions, & A Mathematician's Lament

It's no surprise that many Americans, young and old, express frustration with math and skills of numeracy. As a teacher, I hear far more people note how they "hated math" and struggled with it than people who express the same feelings about language arts, humanties, sciences, and electives. However, because of where I work and because of the truly gifted mathematical mind of my son, I have a window into the world of mathletes and mathematically-talented students. My school has four classes past AP Calculus, and that's because some students accelerate to the level of calculus by sophomore or even freshman year. These students are usually highly-ranked math and science competitors who score in the top 1% on tests like the AMC8/10/12 and the AIME. It is a pleasure to work with these kids and coordinate their incredibly advanced talents and schedules. However, the achievements of students like these can lead to an unintended consequence - a "math acceleration arms race," where other advanced students want to accelerate quickly, even skipping classes, because they believe they must keep up. As a GT coordinator, we look at a body of evidence for true giftedness, and we see clearly the difference between hard-working, advanced students and truly gifted kids. In speaking with kids and families about math advancement, it always seems to be focused on advancement as the key to an Ivy League college admission. And that's so sad.

For many years, my wife and I have listened to parents of other mathletes ask us "How do you get him to do that?" And that is the key. We don't. It's also the key difference between a smart kid pushed by zealous parents and a truly GT kid. We have never done anything as parents to push our son to achieve. And he does not attend endless math camps or have private tutors. We are certainly open to opportunities, and we encourage him with his participation in competitions such MATHCOUNTS and A/JMO, as well as his work in the mathlete  community on AoPS, the Art of Problem Solving.  But we haven't pushed him to excel - he excels precisely because he is gifted, passionate, and engaged. You can't create gifted, and parents absolutely must stop trying to do so. In a recent discussion with kids about "skipping math classes" to get ahead, I was turned on to a fascinating treatise on math and math education - Paul Lockhart's A Mathematician's Lament. For those interested in the world of advanced math, it's worth reading his essay.

Mathematics and Culture - The first thing to understand is that mathematics is an art. The difference between math and the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such. Everyone understands that poets, painters, and musicians create works of art, and are expressing themselves in word, image, and sound. In fact, our society is rather generous when it comes to creative expression; architects, chefs, and even television directors are considered to be working artists. So why not mathematicians? Part of the problem is that nobody has the faintest idea what it is that mathematicians do. The common perception seems to be that mathematicians are somehow connected with science— perhaps they help the scientists with their formulas, or feed big numbers into computers for some reason or other. There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the “poetic dreamers” and the “rational thinkers” most people would place mathematicians in the latter category. Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.

Additionally, the Lament was eventually developed into a book, which expounds on Lockhart's ideas and his concerns.

May the Fourth Be with You

It's Star Wars Day - May 4th.  And, I've had a very un-Yoda-like day.

At school my Youth Advisory Board is showing The Empire Strikes Back after school to celebrate the day, and I have just watched Luke's training with Yoda on Hoth. It was a propos for my day, as I exhibited nothing Jedi-worthy in my day today. But after letting too many things bother me, and thinking rashly and emotionally rather than practically and productively, it was nice to get some lessons from Yoda.

Trump Compromises ability to "Respect the Office"

The United States of America has long been a complicated place in terms of its dueling ideologies and political parties, and there is little doubt that the intensity of the differences have been magnified in recent years. Yet Americans have generally been able to disagree about candidates and administrations while still respecting the institutions of society and government, most especially the Presidency. The historical expectation has been that Americans "Respect the office, not the man." But that condition and agreement has changed with the election of the Ivanka's dad. Simply put, the current occupant of the office of POTUS does not respect the very office he holds. And if the man in the Oval Office cannot hold himself to a standard of decency, then Americans cannot simply agree to respect the office while he is in it.

That issue came to a head today on a CNN panel as a group of pundits and commentators discussed the rally that he held in Pennsylvania in opposition to the tradition of the White House Correspondents dinner: The sharp exchange began when Democratic strategist Paul Begala unleashed a withering attack on the President, calling him both a "moral midget" and "needy little baby."  It is simply not possible for many Americans to condone or accept the embarrassingly deplorable behavior of the current occupant simply because he holds the office. He has shamed the office with his behavior, and that has sadly changed the percpetion that America and the world has for what was once reverentially called the Highest Office in the Land.

The man who disagrees with Paul Begala says "We owe this man ... respect," and he could not be more wrong. That man has dishonored the office of the Presidency at nearly every chance he gets, and as a man he deserves no respect because he is not even a man. As countless critics have pointed out - both liberal and conservative - he has said and done things that no sitting President has or should have the gall to do. There is an expectation of restraint and tact and reserve and maturity and poise that must come with the Presidency, and that man has sneered and spit upon all of  that tradition. I'm saddened to say shame on him, and I'm disappointed in anyone who seeks to excuse or justify or accept such indecent and un-Presidential behavior. For me, this is not about politics or ideology - it's about character. And the current occupant simply has none.

Of course, this view is simply my opinion, and I may clearly take "things" more seriously than many. In that way, it's worth noting the views of people who supported him before and still do. Former newsman Greg Dobbs of Evergreen, CO, recently explored the supporter world, and he summed up his findings in a piece for the Denver Post: What My Conservative Friends say about Donald Trump 100 Days after the Election. Dobbs offers some valuable insight into reasoning for Trump support, and while it saddens me, I do accept that these are reasoned positions. They simply don't ground themselves in the same values I do.

I asked everyone the same questions. The first one was: Are you just as enthusiastic now as you were on Election Day? The answer across the board was yes, with a few caveats. Like this one: “In my mind I didn’t vote for Donald Trump, I voted for Mike Pence — a man of character — and I voted against Hillary Clinton.” Another qualified her answer this way: “We didn’t vote for him because we loved him. We didn’t want Hillary.” Another put it bluntly: “It was as much (maybe more) about not giving the Left another four years as it was Trump.”Others were purely positive. One said, “Trump has surrounded himself with experienced business people and I think a perspective on what is going on not only in the United States but worldwide. I think it’s also encouraging that he questions so many things.” Another explained that he’s “getting more accustomed to Trump every day.”

Anthony Bourdain returns with new Parts Unknown

Well, no one can accuse Anthony Bourdain or CNN from shying away from the controversial issue of immigration and culture in the post-2016 election era. The inveterate traveler, foodie, chef, and verbal essayist Anthony Bourdain returned tonight with a new season of his signature food & culture show Parts Unknown, and he delved right to the heart of the immigration and American culture debate with a show about Latino and Mexican culture in the city of Los Angeles. I truly enjoy the show for its meditative voice-over essays of the places and people Bourdain visits, and I revel in the beautiful cinematography that captures the spirit a place through its cuisine.

Homework, "Doing School," & Success in Life

"How are they going to succeed in real life if they can't complete homework?"

Good question. Or is it?

For as long as I've been in education - and that includes being a student - I've heard the argument that the discipline of doing homework, being prepared for class, and knowing how to meet demands are all essential to being successful in adulthood. But the older I become the less certain I am of that platitude. Certainly there is a correlation between students with good grades and adults with successful lives. However, I have an increasingly difficult time squaring that logic as absolute, and I become increasingly frustrated when we as a society write off kids who don't get homework done or meet the often mundane academic expectations of many classes.

In reality, there are numerous kids who very competently handle "real life" even as teenagers, though that may mean choosing jobs and family responsibilities over worksheets and textbooks. Young people with highly developed social-emotional traits or technical skills may have as many opportunities for a successful adulthood as ones who are good at studying, listening to lectures, and filling in bubbles. The saddest aspect of our contemporary education system is that it is so institutionalized that it cannot begin to recognize the myopic definition it has developed for success and student achievement.

Additionally, schools have only just begun to scrutinize the challenging question of whether they are teachers of content or teachers of skills. And if they are teachers of skills, then what exactly are the skills for a successful life? I've known many students who are late or absent from class, and rarely have their "homework" completed, but who are considered the most dependable employees at their jobs and will work harder for minimum wage than they will for a diploma. That can be insulting to people focused on academia. Often the problem is that a teacher's "real world" and a student's reality of that real world are vastly different. 

So, I think we must be careful in writing kids off simply because they aren't adept at "doing school," and I think our outcomes as a society will improve when we acknowledge that academic skills are only one component of a successful character.

Where Have I Been ...?

It's amazing how quickly time can pass when you're busy with work and life. As a blogger, I like to maintian a pretty consistent presence for people checking in at A Teacher's View, and I don't like more than 4-5 days to go by without a post. So .... where have I been? Oh, between Spring Break and administering the PSAT-10 to nearly 850 students, it's been an interesting couple weeks. Here are some issues and ideas that I've been meaning to write about:

I spent a few wonderful days in my hometown, a sleepy little river town outside St. Louis, known as Alton, IL. Over Spring Break, I took my kids back to visit my parents in Godfrey, and then we also did some exploring of what is one of the most interesting towns in the United States.

I've also been doing quite a bit of reading, both fiction and non-fiction. As I noted in an early post, I've been interested in learning more about the ideas and foundations of conservatism as a political ideology. So, that has led me into such pivotal works as the iconic Russell Kirk's A Conservative Mind and modern writer/thinker Yuval Levin's The Great Debate. And, I was forced to return to the library too soon a wonderful little coming-of-age story set in 1970's Maine called Setting Free the Kites by Alex George. I was quite enthralled with the story, but it was overdue and on request, so I've shifted my attention to a bit of post-modern historical narrative from the inimicable writer Robert Coover who has drawn my attention back to the Mississippi River of my youth by offering up the book Huck Out West.

There are of course other things on my mind, and hopefully I will find some time soon to write about them.

Campus Middle School & the Challenge School win at state Math Counts

For those who worry about the state of American students' math skills, they can rest assured that our nation's top students have truly mind-blowing talents of computation and logic. The spring is the time of competitive math for a group of talented kids known as mathletes, and the top national competition for middle school kids is MATHCOUNTS. Late March is when most of the state championships are held, and in Colorado two schools in the noted Cherry Creek school district continue to dominate the Math Counts world. Here is a link to my coverage of Colorado's Math Counts State Championships.

The Countdown Round is where the mathletes prove their skills and amaze the crowds, and this year’s competition did not disappoint. In Countdown, the top ten individual students are called to the stage where they go head-to-head in lightning fast math challenges. Imagine having only forty-five seconds to solve questions like “If a, b and c are positive integers such that a + b + c = 7, what is the least possible value of a! + b! + c!?” Well, some of the mathletes answer these questions in less than five seconds. This year, after working through the top seven students, the final came down to the Challenge School’s Grace Zheng and Brandon Dong trying to take down number one seed Rahul Thomas of Campus. Challenge student Brandon Dong who won first prize at the Denver Metro chapter humbly attributed their success to the fact that “Austen isn’t competing anymore.” That’s reference to two-time state champion Austen Mazenko, now a freshman at Cherry Creek High School. Mazenko, alongside another former state champion Andrew Ying, has returned to help coach the Campus Middle School math team. That mentoring component is another special quality of Math Counts, as numerous high school and even college students coach teams and assist as proctors and judges at the tournaments.

For up and coming mathletes, there is no better place to refine their skills than MATHCOUNTS. Competition is a prime motivator for sharpening skills, and schools/parents who'd like to see their kids math skills develop exponentially should consider cultivating a program and math team. One of the best resources for these kids is a website and curriculum known as The Art of Problem Solving. Participation in AoPS is a must for any high achieving math student and mathlete.

"The Wire" creator David Simon on the future of news ...

While I only watched two seasons of the groundbreaking crime drama The Wire, I can fully appreciate the depth and significance of the show. What I didn't know about was the depth and significance of its creator, David Simon. Prior to becoming the writer of one of HBO's first genre-changing shows, David Simon began his career as a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Undoubtedly, the gritty nature of crime reporting honed his skills of insight and expression around the darkest of our social issues including the drug war and race. Since finishing his run as a television writer of one of last decade's most watched and talked about shows, Simon has become a prominent voice in the social media world of cultural and socio-political blogging. And, this month Simon will be in Denver to receive the Denver Press Club's Damon Runyon Award. In anticipation of that career moment, the Denver Post's John Wenzel recently sat down with Simon to discuss his career and his thoughts on the ever-fascinating world of journalism, news, and info-tainment in 2016/17. I really appreciated his thoughts on the future of news, looking in the rearview mirror at how journalism somewhat missed the challenges and opportunities posed by an on-line world.

Cable succeeded — and is now threatened by some of the same forces, including streaming and people pulling the plug — because of its subscription model. Look to the cable model for what journalism should have been doing in the 1980s and ’90s, particularly in the ’90s as we were coming online. Not every station can be self-sustaining. Not everybody wants C-SPAN, The Weather Channel or The Cooking Channel. It’s effectively like that with a daily, general-interest newspaper. Everybody got it for different reasons: the metro section, the classified section. The model was such that the things people found essential — like sports or stock tables — sustained things like covering the zoning board. What would have happened if, at the point which you were going online, you were offered what the cable companies were offering? By basically synthesizing the visual information world under one bill, they were able to offer content and sustain the stuff that wasn’t all that popular. On a small scale, that’s what happened to me at HBO, because I was in same tent as “The Sopranos,” and I was basically the metro section.

Spring Cleaning for the Soul

Spring has sprung. The spring equinox has passed, the days are getting longer, and the winter chill is starting to thaw. Many schools are off for a week of Spring Break, and that's providing kids and families with the chance to re-charge and rejuvenate, whether they hang around for a stay-cation with long lazy mornings and cleaning out the basement or they head off for a week in Aruba. It's also the time for a little re-charging of our personal and professional lives and choices. To that end, around this time of year each spring, my AP English Lang class does a brief, non-AP unit about life and how to live it. The foundational text is a wonderful little fable by Paulo Coehlo called The Alchemist, and the unit draws in a variety of supplemental pieces designed to generate reflection from the kids on how they feel about the life they are choosing to live.

One question I ask them is whether they are "sitting on their ticket." By that I mean are they procrastinating and putting off the things they really want to do. The metaphor is a reference to beautiful anecdote from the twentieth-century American sage, Robert Fulghum, who many of us know as the author of the book/essay All I Need to Know about Life I Learned in Kindergarten. In one of Fulghum's many essays from another book, he tells a humorous story about a young woman he encountered years ago who was stuck at the airport because she was sitting on her ticket. That moment and phrase became a metaphor and guiding principle for Fulghum to always remind himself to get on with what he really wants to do with his life. 

Another bit of sagely advice that I share with my students comes from a guest spot on Oprah. It's been a few years now, but many of you may recall the story of a man named Randy Pausch who became known for his Last Lecture. The lecture from the Carnegie Mellon professor who was dying of pancreatic cancer became a viral hit on YouTube.com as well as a best-selling book. It was a bit of advice and a few principles for how to life your life and achieve your childhood dreams, and it was based on the simple idea that if "you live your life correctly, the dreams will come to you." Here's the clip from Pausch's appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show:

Norway has the happiest people - And the key is the bureaucracy

So, the other day I met with a family from Denmark because they are relocating to the United States, and they were in the country looking at schools. When I mentioned that story at the dinner table later that night my daughter said, "Why?! No, tell them to go back. They already live in the happy place." Her reaction was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it reflected a genuine sentiment in contemporary America that things are better elsewhere. And everyone knows that the Danes are the happiest people on earth. That is until this year when they were edged out by the country of Norway. According to the recent "World Happiness Report," the country of Norway beats Denmark for the happiest people. What I found really interesting was the reasoning - it may be the bureaucracy that is the key to happiness. Of course, it's not the bureacracy in the negative American sense with all the implications of incompetence at the DMV and the cushy government salaries drawn from the tax dollars of the hardworking common man. It's instead a trust in the standard institutions of society that provide stability and "a sense of the common good." In reality, it's the stressors of daily life around safety, health, and well-being that cause the most anxiety among people. If those are removed by a basic trust and understanding that the police serve and protect, that the schools provide a respectable education, and that the family won't be bankrupted by medical bills, then it's easy to understand why Norgwegian countries with a strong sense of community and a stable social welfare system produces happiness among their people. As Norway resident and comedian Harald Eia explains,

“The answer to why Norwegians are happy — it’s a bit boring — it’s well functioning institutions,” explained Norwegian comedian Harald Eia. “The schools, health care, police, all the bureaucracy treat people with respect and that trickles down and makes us happy, makes us trust each other, makes us feel a part of the whole community. So it’s very boring: bureaucrats are the secret to our happiness.”

CO's Conservatives need to stand up to Libertarians on Roads

Personal responsibility is one of the central tenets of conservatism, and it has been foundational thinking for conservatives since the days of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. The problem for American conservatives in the twenty-first century is that the GOP and its brand of "Republicanism" has an agenda and ideology, but it's not really what could be called conservative. Nowhere is this disconnect between party and philosophy more apparent than in Colorado, where the state legislature is trying to fill its potholes by filling a serious gap in revenue and budgetary responsibility. As the Denver Post recently opined, Republican "Sen. Kevin Grantham is a statesman standing up for transportation." His bipartisan bill to raise transportation funds by simply asking taxpayers to approve a one-cent/dollar increase in state sales tax for twenty years is the epitome of personal responsibility and legislative leadership. Yet, among the loud and rigidly unproductive Libertarian voices in Colorado, the very idea of even asking taxpayers for the money is being squashed. No one typifies this lack of personal responsibility more than the head think-tanker at the Independence Institute, Jon Caldera. While Caldera recently used a rather absurd analogy about taxes and date rape to assert that the important part of Colorado's constitution is that the government must simply "ask" for the tax revenue rather than just take it, he contradicts his own position by opposing the simple opportunity for Grantham and the legislature to ask taxpayers. It's as if he is violating his standard tenet that only liberals don't trust voters to choose for themselves. Now, Caldera and other "free market libertarians" are crying foul at the very idea that the government ask for money. Instead, Caldera and his echo chamber have floated their own idea of fiscal irresponsibility with a bill that seeks to find transportation funding in an already stripped down state budget. These not-even-conservative thinkers have crafted a bill with the (in their mind clever but actually crass) title "Fix Our Damn Roads. When people like Caldera craft legislative ideas around the idea of revenue and government budgets, you can be certain that the idea of personal responsibility will be tossed aside in exchange for their standard position that no new tax revenue could possibly be necessary or amenable to the people of Colorado. It was conservative thinker Edmund Burke who articulated the most important principal of the government's fiscal responsibility in that "The revenue of the state is the state." Failure to have simply pragmatic discussion of that idea is the reason that Coloradans so rarely find conservative principles in the decisions of their Republican leaders. However, there is hope if people like Sen. Grantham can stave off the Tea Party attacks of his bill and his leadership.

Oh, and for a great tongue-in-cheek response to the silly FODR bill, look no further than the recent editorial from Aurora-Sentinel editor Dave Perry who asks Caldera and people who naively endorse his ideas to "Pay your damn share if you want your damn Colorado roads fixed."

New to Jazz? Just follow Bret Saunders

I've been getting my jazz on lately, and my world is infinitely better for it. However, it's tough to come into the jazz world later in life because the vocabulary and the players and the rules are just off-center from what so many of us know. So, it can be helpful to have a guide if you want to immerse yourself in the world of jazz beyond the classics that we all know and love. Certainly, I can listen to my Pandora.com "Cool Jazz" station every day and continually go back to classics like "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck or "My Favorite Things" by John Coletraneor even a sublime but less well-known jazz re-telling of a contemporary song like "Dear Prudence" from the Brad Meldhau Trio. But if you want to stay up on who's doing what in the present jazz circuit, then look no further than Denver's own KBCO host Bret Saunders. Saunders regularly writes for the Denver Post as well, and last weekend he offered a great write-up on "the best of jazz so far this year."

The trio Harriet Tubman has collaborated with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith on a bracing set of tracks titled “Araminta” (Sunnyside Records). These smoldering, brief pieces of state-of-the-art funk and rock are the ideal showcase for Smith’s ageless post-Miles horn, Brandon Ross’ massive guitar sound, Melvin Gibbs’ more-thunderous-than-Thundercat bass, and the exhilarating drum fills of JT Lewis. The chemistry of these artists, brought on by decades of collective wisdom, is ideal, and the level of communication is at a very high level. The effect of “Araminta” is that of a splash of cold water to the face of current jazz music, and in the first three months of 2017, I haven’t enjoyed any new recording as much.