Prime City

Today I'm taking you out of my running world and back into my school world.  If you have children in your household who are currently in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade in Massachusetts, you may be interested in this.  For those of you who don't, you might not be as on top of the current educational goings-on in this state, so you might not be too interested in this first part, but I promise I'll make the end more exciting.  So you can always scroll down to the photos and reverse read your way up if you want.  I know that's an awful writing technique but I've already committed to it, so here we are.
This year in my city, we've decided to forgo the MCAS test in favor of the PARCC test.  There's a million reasons behind that decision, none of which I'm going to talk about right now.  But for those of you who are in a city/town who is opting into PARCC for the year, you may have realized that this test is HARD.  Believe me when I tell you I don't say that lightly.  The other day, I got a practice test that PARCC has released to the public, and brought it home to try out.  I figured if we were going to require these students to take this test in 90 minutes or less and solve every problem, I should find out if that was realistic.  As a highly-educated, well-informed, licensed elementary school teacher, the 17 questions on Unit 1 took me a total of 74 minutes to complete.  Think about this for just one second.  I know how to read in English, I can decipher questions and understand what problems are asking for even if there's more than one step, or the steps aren't explicit in the problem.  I also know how to do regular old multi-digit multiplication and long division.  Keep in mind that many of my students are not FLUENTLY SPEAKING English yet, do not necessarily read on a 4th grade level yet, and have never learned how to do long division.  (That's because it's a standard not taught in 4th grade, and it's not really a key point, but I figured I'd add it in.) To ask these poor children to take a test in 90 minutes, I feel, is setting unrealistic expectations on these students and asking them to fail from the beginning.  Look at it this way.  The MTEL has a 4 hour time limit for 100 multiple choice questions and two open-response questions.  Yet, I know plenty of adults who have caved under the pressure, not finished in time, or completely blown the test because they were too worried about the time limits.  If adults have a hard time with it, why are we putting a 90 minute time limit on a test for a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds?  It just doesn't seem fair to me.  I'm fine with the actual test, and I do think many of my students could do the actual math part, it's the reading and the time limit that are going to get in the way.  Imagine you moved to Russia and two years after being there, someone handed you a math test in Russian and told you that you had 90 minutes to take and pass the whole thing.  If that sounds crazy, just remember that many times, this is what we're being forced to ask our students to do.  Just so you can get a feel for it, here's a released PARCC test question from a previous test.

Use the information provided to answer Part A and Part B for question 3. The number of science fair projects entered for each grade in a city-wide science fair is shown. 
 City-Wide Science Fair 

   Grade    Number of Science Fair Projects
           3    462
           4    759
           5    891
Part A
The science fair projects are set up on tables. There are 99 long tables used. Each long table holds 7 projects. The rest of the projects are set up on short tables. Each short table can hold 4 projects. What is the fewest number of short tables that will be needed for the rest of the projects?
        A) 202
        B) 203
        C) 354
        D) 355

Part B
The science fair judges will be science teachers and volunteers. Each judge will only have time to view 5 science fair projects. There are 133 science teachers. What is the fewest number of volunteers needed to have enough judges for all of the projects?
       A) 290
       B) 396
       C) 422
       D) 423

Please take a moment and actually read that test question.  It's a hard question to break down, and while I'm sure my students COULD do it, I don't think they could do it in the time allotted, which I think is the real problem.  We keep talking about getting these kids college ready, but at this point, I don't even know if ANY of my students will be able to afford college when the time comes. So I'm glad we're working on improving our countries skills in STEM subjects, but I truly feel that this 90 minute time window is unfair and needs to be removed if we want these students to REALLY succeed.

Moving on from PARCC though, in a brighter spot, I've been reviewing some topics with a very small group of fourth graders at the end of the day.  These are the students that are currently not passing, but could be, if they had that extra help, so I'm revisiting some former standards to really help drive the concepts home.  The first standard we revisited was prime and composite numbers. I noticed that these students could list factors and multiples, but couldn't tell the difference between prime and composite numbers.  So for the past two days, we've focused solely on prime numbers.  Yesterday we built Prime City, an idea I came up with in the shower one morning.  Each student got a few pieces of long construction paper and bunch of small squares.  I wrote this note on the board and we got right to work.  If you can't read it, it says: Prime City.  Prime City is under construction. The construction workers are putting windows on the buildings today.  Each building can only have a prime number for the number of windows.  Help finish Prime City by putting windows on the buildings.  
The students got their construction paper and a glue stick and worked on putting windows on their buildings. They had to tell me what number each building represented and why it was a prime number.  If they couldn't tell me, they couldn't use that number. The group had a lot of fun doing this, and the cities came out awesome.  Today, to reinforce the concept, they played Prime Number Match.  This is something I came up with a lunch today and figured I might as well go with it.  It's similar to Memory, but they only keep the match if both numbers are prime.  In order to prove that their match was prime, they had to list all the factors of both numbers on a separate sheet of paper and label prime or composite.  By the end, only one student had managed to match two prime numbers, but they were having fun playing and were doing a great job of listing the factors.  I'm very interested to see how their homework comes back tomorrow, to see who really did learn the concept of prime numbers after all of this.
 Here are the pictures of Prime City and the rules for Prime Number Match, if you're interested in that.

Ok, now that we're done with that educational stuff, here's the running stuff for everyone who reads this for that.  Sorry I left it for the end, I just had to get that PARCC stuff out of the way.  Here we go.  Yesterday I did 3 miles of sprints and hill repeats on the treadmill and then did a 10 minute ab workout at home, followed by stretching.  Today I did another 3 regular miles on the treadmill, 2 flat and one at 2.0 incline.  It doesn't seem like a lot, but man, running on that treadmill at my typical outdoor pace is really a struggle.  I made it through the first mile at an 8:34 no problem and by 1.2 it was a real struggle to continue. It's just so easy to stop and jump off, since I'm not going anywhere.  I think the biggest difference is that when I'm outside, even if I stop, I still have to get back to where I started from, so eventually I have to keep moving.  Inside, I'm not actually going anywhere, so I end up stopping all the time, because, you know, whatever.  Bad habit? Definitely.  Fixable? Who knows, I've tried many times, it probably is, I'm just real bad at actually fixing it.  So, that's my running for the week so far.  I'm going to try and get 5 or 6 in tomorrow since it's supposed to be warm/rainy.  Friday I have the Disney in Concert show with my mom at night, so I'll probably skip the running and just do a regular workout instead.  But, I do need some help deciding which shoes to wear on Friday night, so leave your opinion below, after you check out both options.

Planking in the bedroom.  I never realize how much harder it is to plank in bare-feet until I do it in shoes.  (I always do my boxing workout barefoot, which includes the ab session at the end.) Hip raises/bridges are also much easier with shoes on, for the record.

OK: Shoe Choice Time

A: Mickey and Minnie Themed shoes

B: Little Mermaid Themed Shoes

I patiently await your answers.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading, even if you did scroll down and work your way backwards!

Teach them well and let them lead the way

In a huge jump, I wanted to take a minute to write down something I've been thinking about for a few months now.  Generally I like to keep all my good ideas to myself, but every now and again I throw one out there for the rest of the world to contemplate.  This has absolutely nothing to do with running or working out, and everything to do with the children/young adults that I work with during the school year.  As you may already be aware, there is no summer school in the city this year, due to funding issues.  Unfortunately, many of the students in my school could have used the extra help, even if it was a just for 3 - 5 weeks over the summer.  But on top of that, many of these students could have used the food that comes along with the program and had a safe place to go for a few hours a week.
After looking through the programs that I've heard about in various PD courses, I found that Lynn is seriously lacking in the community youth area.  Sure, they have the Community health program, the library, and Centerboard, as well as places like the Y, the Boys and Girls Club, and Head start.  But, what the city doesn't have, is a community youth center.  Here's my proposition, should I ever get the chance to make this a reality.  What I want, in short, is a safe, clean space, where the youth of Lynn can go and spend a few hours a day. In short, a Community Youth Center.  Bear with me here, because what I'm thinking of is very specific.  If I had the means, I would have a space available that was partitioned into 3 basic areas.  1) A quiet library/study/homework room. 2) A place to hang out with friends, talk, or play board/card games (not video games, not iPads, not cell phones, straight up board games).  3) An indoor sports area, for lack of a better term, basically a gym.  In addition, an outdoor area would be nice for Fall, Spring, and Summer, to garden, hang out, and play outdoor sports.  But, the outdoor space I'd be willing to pass on if needed.
Now, you may be thinking that the Y and Boys and Girls club already exist for this, so what's the point.  Here's where it varies.  As far as I know, all those businesses require some form of payment, whether it be money or a voucher.  Not to mention, transportation is often required after school. This community youth center would be free.  Yes, free.  Student's could come after school for a few hours, maybe get a snack, do some homework, hang out, and then head home. All the person would have to do to enter would be to fill out an entry form once, with important information (name, address, phone, emergency contact, etc) and then sign in/out every time s/he came after that first visit. It would be open on the weekends and during vacations so that everyone had a place to go.
You see, I noticed a trend last year in what my students did after school.  Get out of school, go home to a house with an older sibling or cousin, hang out until a parent got home, maybe do homework, watch tv, eat dinner, go to bed.  A lot of my students had no real place to read a book, do their homework, play basketball, practice baseball, etc.  Many of their parents weren't home until 5 p.m. or later, or didn't drive, or couldn't afford a house big enough for a child to have a space to do homework.
How could it possibly be free though? A space like that costs money, snacks cost money, basic operations cost money.  I am well aware of that, and therein lies the problem.  If I was Bill Gates rich, I'd just straight up open the place, run it for free for the city, and pay a highly qualified staff to keep it running.  But I'm not Bill Gates rich.  I'm not even regular person rich.  All I have is an idea.  So far, my way around paying staff would be to recruit the high school students that would be coming anyways, to become tutors/mentors to the elementary and middle school children.  Along with that, I would recruit college students from the many schools in the area, and offer them a college credit internship for spending X amount of hours working.  Ideally, college students who are studying to become teachers, counselors, or social workers, would come and volunteer their time in exchange for college credit.  There could even be classes offered for those interested, basic basketball skills, crafting, drawing, whatever the attendees have an interest in really.  As for snacks, I think I'd have to take the hit and shop Costco or look for companies to donate food in exchange for advertisement in the local newspapers.  I don't even know if that's something they would do, but it's the best idea I've got.  Other than that, all I can think of is to offer cooking classes and use the finished products as snacks! I suppose if we had an outdoor area, we could greenhouse it and grow our own fruit/veggies, and maybe that would work?
I don't know, it seems like such a good idea in my head, and even written down, it doesn't seem like it's unreachable.  The problem is, for me to do it alone, it is.  I couldn't even afford to rent a space for a week, let alone keep it open for a trial year. What I really need, for the first time in my life, is a business person to take this on and actually find an investor.  But how do you convince someone to invest in a program that offers no ROI?  At least, not in the monetary sense.  Could I just hope that someone is feeling philanthropic and wants to give back to the city? Sure, I could, but I still don't know anyone from Lynn that's willing to jump on board.
At the end of the day, all I really want is for the youth of the city to have a safe place to go in order to stay off the streets.