Musings from Mrs. Galvan

Our headmaster is retiring this year. He emailed us all the following quote as words to "teach" by. I love it and will read it often in the years to come. “ I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess the power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”    Haim Ginott

A student at my school used trig to help free a falsely accused man from prison. She also provided math teachers everywhere with another answer to the most annoying question we get: When am I EVER going to use this??? High School Student's Math Skills Contribute to Release of Man Wrongfully Imprisoned for Seventeen Years from David Hinden on Vimeo . Here is a handout on the calculations.

This was fun to organize... I am lucky to work where I work! I have talented colleagues who are willing to spend their free time creating  a fun memory for our students. Take a look at the lyrics and hear our polished version on the song here. 

So working at a prestigious school on the west side of LA means that I don't face some typical challenges faced by most middle school math teachers. For example, my students don't lack motivation. I have been sitting on this blog post for two months, meaning to post something about it or at least discuss it with colleagues and students, but working where I work, I have been busy organizing a staff musical number instead . Anyways, the research is a decade old, but the message is clear. When students aren't motivated they don't engage in school. When students don't engage in school, they are less likely to graduate, less likely to instantly become excellent, independent, happy contributors to society (yes I too became a teacher to "make a difference"). While we can't control all the socio-economic factors at play in students' lives, we can try to come up with ways to motivate students while they are at school. The Forbes article narrows the fo...

In the classroom and in life, I am continually frustrated by negative attitudes, so much so that I have the following rule in my syllabus: Never say "I hate math". I strive to encourage my students to see what is possible and not to get bogged down by what is challenging. For example, instead of saying, that they are bad at fractions, I make them repeat that they need practice  with fractions and remind them that saying is believing. I love reading this parenting blog - Short Fat Dictator . Not only is it is hilarious, but it describes my own home life as a mom of two small kids pretty accurately. I hope that this post about the writer's confident two year old will inspire my middle school students to start each day with this question: " I wonder how many good things are going to happen before bed today?" 

I don't know much about programming except that it seems to be key skill if you want to be competitive in the job market. Software Engineer continues to be a top profession  both from the perspective of being lucrative and for promoting a nice quality of life, and yet the image of a nerdy, anti-social programmer persists among my students perhaps preventing them from even considering a future in computer science. My students are  not typical middle school kids. The independent school that I work at attracts the best and brightest in Los Angeles. Yet, not many of our graduates go into STEM professions. This report from NPR discusses what it is like to be among the only women in the field of programming. Beyond trying to recruit girls into the field from the practical perspective of being able to get a job, I like how the woman in the story mentioned that programming can also offer a nice solution for the age old issue facing women in the work place: how to balan...

Careercast.com released their report on the Best Jobs of 2013 . According to the website: High pay, low stress, a robust hiring outlook, a healthy work environment and minimal physical exertion combine to define what makes a great job for most people.  The top three jobs, Actuary, Biomedical Engineer and Software Engineer, would all be quite impossible to obtain without proficiency in math. Just saying.