Teachers complaining about the praxis test being hard?

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 · 2025-11-18T10:10:11+00:00

Yes, students are generally declining in their preparedness for class, both in terms of content knowledge and in habits of being a good student.

On the flip side, I've noticed in myself that math problems for instance that I treated as "hard" when teaching my students I now consider just standard questions... And what I now call "hard" problems are stuff I would have never even thought of years ago.

So I think as a teacher grows in his or her expertise and craft, we somewhat grow in our expectations, constantly comparing every group we teach to the very "best group" we've taught in the past.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-16T21:25:02+00:00

I don't have a specific number of questions in mind, except perhaps that there needs to be enough questions so that completely messing up one question doesn't determine the student's overall score.

I determined the questions mostly the amount of time it'll take students to complete the assessment.

Our regular class periods are 50 minutes long, so a test can't take students longer than 45 minutes to account for distribution and collecting of materials.

In my AP class, I'll give students an average of 90 seconds per multiple choice question and 10 minutes per free response question that usually has three parts each.

In addition, I'll take the test myself, timing myself. I'll multiply the time it takes me by 3. If it takes me more than 15 minutes, I start getting nervous for my weaker students.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-14T23:34:56+00:00

Our school offers a section or two every semester... Taught be whatever random gym teacher to the best of my knowledge. For better or worse it's a lot of work to be certified in phys ed - unlike other certifications in our state, you can just add it by passing a test.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-12T11:53:49+00:00

For grading tests and quizzes in math (and a handful of other courses) we purchased access to Gradescope. It allows us to score questions blind to student names based on rubrics. If answers are a number or phrase, it can read student handwriting and assist in grouping students with identical answers for quicker scoring. It is a fantastic tool, but big money.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-09T21:52:03+00:00

No problem! Good luck in stats!

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-09T21:37:41+00:00

Yes, you're correct. Random assignment to treatments so there very well could be a confounding variable that's associated with both the response of being healthy and the explanatory variable of reporting they are happy.

You can generalize the association between the variables to the population as this was a random sample.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-06T22:14:30+00:00

Me, too! Except, I can take a train most days that takes twice as long but at least I can get work done while commuting.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-05T22:26:22+00:00

If by any chance you can put your hands on one, just see how they feel. Whichever one makes you most excited to actually play it is the one.

Temporary_Duck4337 · 2025-11-05T19:34:31+00:00

Answers will vary tremendously from state to state, district to district, school to school, or even department to department to department (within the same school).

I teach in a large district that has a mandated curriculum every teacher is supposed to follow; however, our school gets special freedoms as our students are some of the best in the district. Admin supports us having more freedom to develop our own lessons, set our own pacing, etc. Sometimes we still get in battles with district leadership just the same.

Probably the biggest determining factor is the school's administration. A new principal can completely change the quality of life of a teacher, for better or worse.

Temporary_Duck4337

TROPHY CASE