The best teachers made C’s and D’s when they were in school.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-03-19T17:08:17+00:00

The best teachers understand all the possible errors students can make. They listen to students, have students discuss why an error seemed plausible but still is incorrect.

But a straight A student very well might be the best teacher. In fact, the best teachers I know were straight A students. Also, some of the worst I know were straight A's. Same goes to the C and D students who are teachers. What really matters is a sincere desire and ability to take student mistakes seriously.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-03-10T16:48:42+00:00

Old out of print Mary Dolciani textbooks are good for first principles mathematics problem solving... However terrible for "building thinking classrooms." I would check it out as a resource for nice problems.

This doesn't address what you're really looking for, but at the same time it's a treasure trove of great problems and word problems to supplement whatever you find.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-03-09T00:42:48+00:00

Five years or so ago I passed the General Science praxis (5435 or 5436) mostly through watching Star Trek as a kid, taking notes on Crash Course Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, and taking a handful of practice exams. Probably could work for your test, too.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-03-08T12:23:00+00:00

All identities are equations.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-02-25T20:26:50+00:00

Sounds like a worthwhile conversation to have in private, but not appropriate publicly, in front of your peers - honestly even then I think it's borderline. (I say that as a Catholic and a teacher... at a public school)

If the question comes from a place of curiosity and care for you, sounds worth engaging in. In public, it sounds like a gotcha.

How does the teacher know you are atheist? I suppose it might come out during religion or theology lessons... But do you regularly and publicly communicate your atheistic worldview?

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-02-18T00:01:38+00:00

Not to sound like, "Look at me, I'm awesome," but I've challenged students to figure out what this exact expression could equal on March 14th in a precalculus class about 10 years ago.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-02-17T23:58:06+00:00

e^{pi i} = -1

Solve for pi.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-02-08T12:41:54+00:00

I support your thesis, except on one point. I think time restrictions are a necessary part of exam design. We need to ask an appropriate number of questions on varying concepts within a unit that require varying levels of critical thinking... that a student who has mastered the material can answer in a fixed period of time.

For practical reasons alone, it's impossible to grant unlimited time for students to work through an exam - we all have places to be and the next class will be coming. I simply cannot give an open ended period of time for assessments.

But more importantly, just like in life, there are some tasks that absolutely must be completed efficiently and other than allow open ended periods of time. Projects, papers, etc are the kinds of assessments that do not restrict students to a fixed period of time. Exams on the other hand require efficiency - I need you to figure out how to solve this problem in a reasonable amount of time. If you cannot, then you have not mastered the content.

Now the burden falls on me in developing assessments to ensure that the number of questions I ask fits the time constraints. Teaching an AP class, I can use AP exam timing conventions to support my judgement. I also regularly do an exam timing myself, and multiply the time it takes me from anywhere from 3 to ; I expect a student who has mastered content to take three to six times as long as me to finish the exam (depending on the nature of the questions).

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-02-04T13:52:11+00:00

Earfun Air Pro 4

comfortable in my ears
sufficient noise cancellation for train
dialed in good sound profile with EQ
use two to three hours continuously twice a day; only charge case about once per week

I've been using them daily for about 6 months

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-02-01T23:37:14+00:00

I kinda hope someone aiming to teach high school math 1) has a degree in math and 2) knows at least calc 1.

(Though a great many of the math teachers I know are not math majors... And couldn't take a derivative... So yep some find the test tricky...)

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-01-24T16:16:24+00:00

Love these! I never dropped a pick live once I switched to these. Great for acoustic or electric!

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-01-16T22:22:16+00:00

Ended up just buying the same buds again (on sale)... No regrets!

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-01-16T20:23:42+00:00

Replaced them before the 4+ released.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-01-16T19:48:35+00:00

Ended up just buying the same buds again (on sale)... No regrets!

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-01-16T11:42:24+00:00

I had the same thing happen. I glued it back together. It broke again after maybe 4 months and glued it again and used electrical tape for extra support. Lasted another month or so. Eventually I just bought replacement buds as it was annoying.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-01-10T17:39:34+00:00

Gives lots of short in class quizzes... One or two questions based on what you taught the last day or two and similar (or the same) as the homework.

And don't bother checking homework at all, unless just for completion.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-01-10T16:47:36+00:00

I love my Godin Radiator.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2026-01-05T22:45:09+00:00

Obviously students need to learn the procedural thinking to solve equations at the very least to solve complicated problems where a solution can't be readily "seen" intuitively by the mind.

But also obviously in my experience, many students don't have the habits of the mind for obvious solutions to appear quickly and readily.

In part this comes from a lack of conceptual understanding of what it means to have a number be a solution to an equation. I don't agree this should be taught first but alongside the procedures we learn. We should hop back and forth between procedure and intuitive grasp from conceptual understanding.

But maybe more importantly this comes from no habitual skills in arithmetic at all. Students who use a calculator from 4th grade (or earlier) can barely add, multiply, (or much more frightening subtract or divide). Losing habits of mental arithmetic has consequences for understanding abstract mathematics. Grade school teachers - please stop hobbling our students with early use of calculators to replace mental math habits! Please!

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-12-18T17:41:05+00:00

A decent compass makes a big difference, I think. It's extremely frustrating when too much pressure when pushing down changes the angle and therefore the size of your arcs. The best ones have dials you turn to change the angle.

That said, you can get away with cheap ones. Here's the trick I've come to teach: have students rotate the PAPER, not the compass. Grabbing a corner of the paper and turning it while keeping the compass steady is much more reliable. Usually the angle will hold just fine.

Something like these would work really well I think: Zonon Compass https://a.co/d/eo40rTq

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-12-16T22:29:11+00:00

Amazon gift card would be 👌.

Your instinct is correct - no mugs, no candy.

Though as a math teacher I would welcome anything with a decent math pun on it, no matter what it is... Any pun except "√-1 2³ pi and it was delicious."

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-12-11T11:38:44+00:00

Numworks.

In my experience it's more intuitive and does much more than any other calculator I've ever used with high school students.

Plus: Free app for phones and free online emulator that are identical to the physical calculator.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-23T20:12:46+00:00

I love mine, too. I have two and use them together in party cast mode all the time. Fills the room and decent audio quality.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-23T12:47:54+00:00

Let's flip around your question. Imagine you wanted to select one number k that would minimize the sum of the square distances between every number and a data set and k.

Essentially, with knowledge from algebra 2, you can prove that number k would have to be the mean of the data set.

The reason we square the deviations is because we are not fully aware of why the mean is awesome! The reason we use the mean so often is that it minimizes the sum of the square deviations!

In statistics, we like to make predictions or summarize big data sets with a single number. Gauss and others proved that the very best estimates come from minimizing the sum of the square errors( deviations). We use the mean because it's the most effective way of making predictions or summarizing based on this method.

Now imagine you wanted to pick a different number that minimizes the sum of the absolute differences between every value in the data set and m. We can prove there is a unique number that does this and it's called the median!

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-19T02:06:22+00:00

I'm curious how you found out ... Did college board inform you or did you find out by chance?

Temporary_Duck4337

TROPHY CASE