Quadratic Emergency
By: Melissa Tomlinson
Recently one of my coworkers was involved in a wonderful
project. He is a bit of a math geek and
has managed to spark a love for mathematics in his students for years. Now he has taken that a step further. He, with several of his classes, have
produced a great math rap video about the quadratic equation called “Quadratic
Emergency”
Why do I think it is important to highlight his video?
(Besides the shameless plug for my
school.)
I see events like this becoming
less and less frequent as the time that we are required to spend on testing and
related test prep classroom time increases in our schools.
Teachers are even more afraid to step outside
of the box to coordinate events like this because it is not on the test.
The quadratic equation isn't even something
that is taught at our grade level.
But
learning it now through this song will help them in the future.
Teachers will not see the benefit of actions
and future planning like this as we become for and more fearful of our
evaluation rankings that are tied to the student standardized test score.
This project was completed when testing was done for our NJ
ASK.
Next year it is planned that we
will participate in the PARCC test.
Currently the schedule of this requires a testing window of about a
month long chunk of time, twice during the school year.
This is a month that events such as this will
be discourages.
Classes cannot be
disrupted to allow students to be taken out to participate in the video.
Outsiders cannot be allowed to come into the
building to record the video.
Events,
such as the video release party will not be planned as teachers become more and
more demoralized by the bullying atmosphere that they are currently operating
under grows more oppressive.
Another question regarding this event comes to mind.
Would a Teach for America intern be willing
to go to all the extra trouble of carrying out a project like this?
To them, teaching is just a job, a way to
reduce their student debt.
For some it
is a stepping stone to 'bigger and better' things.
Eventually, teachers will be more and more afraid to step
outside of their curriculum and embark upon projects such as this.
In the end, what we will have if we are
forced to continue along this path is the death of great teaching.
This will be the real emergency!
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