Has No Solutions
Onfim was a six-year old from Novogrod who lived in the 13th century. He left scratching in soft bark where he completed this homework exercises and sent pictures to friends. Wikipedia: "Besides letters and syllables, he drew "battle scenes and drawings of himself and his teacher."" One reads, "I am a wild beast."
Math, from MathChallenges.net: "If we add the primes 11 and 23 we get 34, which is twice the prime 17. Give that p and q are consecutive primes, show that the equation p+q=2r, where r is prime, has no solutions."
Larry Cuban, on the history of year-long grades: "Too often we forget, that there were late-19th critics of age-graded schools...The development of twice yearly promotions and ability groups smoothed out some of the inherent problems of age-graded schools."
I spent a planning period laboring over this incredibly simple and buggy "what's the slope" app so you're darn right I'm going to share it.
I've been thinking about everything that goes into effective teaching of students when the whole class is together. I think question/explanation works better than explanation/question at the start of class. That's sort of cryptic, but maybe you know what I mean.
It's Channukah, here's some dour Yiddish rap.
New to Me: "I Think I Should Get More Credit For Killing Hitler." It opens like this: "I think I should get more credit for killing Hitler. And I know you’re thinking: “Who’s Hitler? I’ve never heard of a guy named Hitler.” But the only reason you’re saying that is because I went back in time and killed him."
Let's talk books: Spy Who Came in from the Cold gets an A; Less by Andrew Sean Greer gets an A-; Empire of Pain gets an A. (Speaking of Sacklers, this article by Sam Quiones about the meth epidemic is essential.)
Music videos: a sax battle on the subway, Mdou Moctar is a guitar god, so is Neil Young.
This is the hard part of the year. Also, the next part is hard too. The part before is tricky as well. Good luck with all that,
Michael