Nine years ago
I was at a different school and I only had five and three year old kids at home. Soon after these posts my daughter was born and I ended up changing schools to a place closer to our new home. How much of me has changed from this version of Mr. Anderson? I'd say very little. These are four posts that I had written describing how I like teaching.
Where am I now? - Course Evaluations
I still give anonymous course evaluations and find them invaluable. Students give me important feedback about how the course is going, how I can improve, and what worked well for them. I still share their advice with the incoming classes every fall. Here are five quotes from this most recent "Teacher Report Card" about how things went well:
- AP CSP: "I loved how we got to do fun projects throughout the year, this class was so fun and creative."
- Precalculus: "How we do our work on the whiteboards so he can easily help us when we are stuck."
- AP CSP: "We had the freedom to make mistakes and explore."
- Precalculus: "How much practice we do. When we do so much practice in class it definitely helps me understand it and do better on tests."
- Precalculus: "I like how we have a few minutes before a test to review, I don't have that in any of my other classes and it gives me time to ask any last minute questions and go over the notes. I also like how you play music in class."
And here are five quotes from students about what they think we could improve to class:
- AP CSP: "Less CodeHS because after a long time of CodeHS days I was fatigued... maybe have more of a mixture of types of lessons... where you teach us physically and some lessons online."
- Precalculus: "Sometimes I get tired of working at the whiteboards so maybe make us get up once or twice to go to the whiteboard, and then after that offer the chance to either stay seated or work at whiteboards."
- AP CSP: "Maybe we could learn what it's like to do for a day as a computer scientist/programmer."
- Precalculus: "This might just be a personal preference but I like working independently to make sure that I actually know the material and we didn't really do a lot of that."
- Precalculus: "Videos explaining the topics could be useful for studying something that I don't understand from the lesson or the notes."
Where am I now? - Whiteboards and Furniture
Not much to say here. I'm a big proponent of a subset of Building Thinking Classrooms: the biggest two for me are Vertical Whiteboards and Randomized Grouping. Not much to say here really. The kids are up and standing on average two or so times per 80 min block and are working together in randomized pairs (they change every two weeks) on problems. Furniture is important here too, they sit in their random pairs at big tables. I don't move tables around anymore to make different sized groups. Part of the reason for the static setup is that I now my room is now shared and I'd like to make it less chaotic with the furniture, and also frankly I just didn't find the juice worth the squeeze. Here's a picture of day 1 this year.
Where am I now? - Teacher Technology Use
Lol not much has changed here either. Still use Notability. Still project iPad Pro (newer model but same setup). Still share notes via pdf's to students with a shared google drive folder. Still puffing my leafs. Still f*@k with the beats, still not loving police. Still rock my khakis with a cuff and a crease. Still got love for the streets, reppin' 213 (For life). Still the beats bang, still doing my thang.
Where am I now? - Interests and Interesting Things
The biggest new thing that I've been sharing with the kids over the past nine years has been the axidraw and making mathy sketches. Also I've been sharing my trials and tribulations of AI with the CS crew specifically, talking to them about what the future might bring when it comes to AI and the CS industry.
Nine years ago
I was at a different school and I only had five- and three-year-old kids at home. Soon after these posts, my daughter was born and I ended up changing schools to a place closer to our new home. How much of me has changed from this version of Mr. Anderson? I'd say very little. These are four posts describing how I like teaching.
- Classroom Top Four – #1 Course Evaluations
- Classroom Top Four – #2 Whiteboards and Furniture
- Classroom Top Four – #3 Teacher Technology Use
- Classroom Top Four – #4 Interests and Interesting Things
Where am I now? - Course Evaluations
I still give anonymous course evaluations and find them invaluable. Students give me important feedback about how the course is going, how I can improve, and what worked well for them. I still share their advice with the incoming classes every fall. Here are five quotes from this most recent "Teacher Report Card" about how things went well:
- AP CSP: "I loved how we got to do fun projects throughout the year, this class was so fun and creative."
- Precalculus: "How we do our work on the whiteboards so he can easily help us when we are stuck."
- AP CSP: "We had the freedom to make mistakes and explore."
- Precalculus: "How much practice we do. When we do so much practice in class it definitely helps me understand it and do better on tests."
- Precalculus: "I like how we have a few minutes before a test to review, I don't have that in any of my other classes and it gives me time to ask any last minute questions and go over the notes. I also like how you play music in class."
And here are five quotes from students about what they think we could improve to class:
- AP CSP: "Less CodeHS because after a long time of CodeHS days I was fatigued... maybe have more of a mixture of types of lessons... where you teach us physically and some lessons online."
- Precalculus: "Sometimes I get tired of working at the whiteboards so maybe make us get up once or twice to go to the whiteboard, and then after that offer the chance to either stay seated or work at whiteboards."
- AP CSP: "Maybe we could learn what it's like to do for a day as a computer scientist/programmer."
- Precalculus: "This might just be a personal preference but I like working independently to make sure that I actually know the material and we didn't really do a lot of that."
- Precalculus: "Videos explaining the topics could be useful for studying something that I don't understand from the lesson or the notes."
Where am I now? - Whiteboards and Furniture
Not much to say here. I'm a big proponent of a subset of Building Thinking Classrooms: the biggest two for me are Vertical Whiteboards and Randomized Grouping. The kids are up and standing on average two or so times per 80-minute block and are working together in randomized pairs (they change every two weeks) on problems. Furniture is important here too — they sit in their random pairs at big tables. I don't move tables around anymore to make different sized groups. Part of the reason for the static setup is that my room is now shared and I'd like to make it less chaotic with the furniture, and, frankly, I just didn't find the juice worth the squeeze. Here's a picture of day 1 this year.
Where am I now? - Teacher Technology Use
Lol not much has changed here either. Still use Notability. Still project iPad Pro (newer model but same setup). Still share notes via PDFs to students with a shared Google Drive folder. Still puffing my leafs. Still f*@k with the beats, still not loving police. Still rock my khakis with a cuff and a crease. Still got love for the streets, reppin' 213 (For life). Still doing my thang.
Where am I now? - Interests and Interesting Things
The biggest new thing that I've been sharing with the kids over the past nine years has been the AxiDraw and making mathy sketches. An AxiDraw is a pen plotter, essentially a robot that draws with a real pen on real paper. I use Desmos to make designs, export those designs as SVG files, and then draw them to paper. There's something satisfying about watching an algorithm become a physical object, and it's been a natural conversation starter when the math behind a pattern connects to something we're actually studying.
Also, I've been sharing my trials and tribulations with AI with the CS crew specifically, talking to them about what the future might bring when it comes to AI and the CS industry. These conversations have gotten more serious over the years; students are genuinely asking whether they should pursue CS in college, what skills will still matter, and how to think about AI as a tool rather than a threat. I don't have all the answers, but I think that's kind of the point.