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monkey-network · 4 years

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Eizouken v. Ratatouille: Dawn of the Creative Drive

WARNING: This critique will contain spoilers for Eizouken episodes 1-4 and the film Ratatouille. Also this is long. And yes, I had to make this or else I would’ve exploded. Enjoy.

Youtube’s TheRealJims made a video review of pixar’s Ratatouille not long ago, check it out by the way, and one thing about it caught me deep. He described Ratatouille as “a progressive kind of film, not in the political sense, but a very forward looking movie.” This line stuck with me as I begun to watch Keep Your Hands Off the Eizouken, an anime about a high schooler, inspired as a child, working her way to create anime with her friends. It wasn’t until episode 4 where mind threads started to knot, where that line about the pixar flic started to click with this anime in a way I’ve never thought of before. As such, I found that these two have a great thematic link, a connected warp between the creative minds of adults and children. Eizouken and Ratatouille do the remarkable in giving us the bouts and beauties to having a creative, “progressive” drive, and I wanted to explore how they stack up differently and similarly. And with that,,,,

The Ignition

The beginning scene of Eizouken where Midori see her inspiring anime for the first time is personally my favorite moment of the anime so far, borderline perfect. Like Remy, we already see her have this extrinsic passion for drawing once she arrives at her jungle gym of a newfound home; crude as they look, we see her seedling talent in jotting the details of her world onto paper. It’s then when she watches Future Boy Conan where her passion becomes etched in stone intrinsically. Miyazaki was her Gusteau, the bonafide inspiration that, taking it all in, made a simple hobby into a driven pursuit. Ratatouille more or less streamlines this whole moment with narration (makes sense cuz it’s a film) but they nonetheless bring home how a talent can be solidified if given the right push. Even if you didn’t have a desire to have a fulfilling career from it, you can’t deny that there was a moment in your life where something (be it a show, game, book, etc.) was the foundation to your biggest hobby, which then allowed you to explore it more as you grew up.

One thing to note is how Ratatouille handles Remy’s character with his interest. In spite of his palette gift, he doesn’t become a snob or too good towards his rat family; there’s not a moment where he claims he knows better than his skeptic father, they just idealistically disagree and their connection remains intact throughout the film. He has taste and knowledge, but isn’t smug about it. Midori is rounded the same way, she doesn’t push Kanamori or anyone to accept that anime is the best thing ever, and there’s that layer of anxiety to her love of anime that humanizes her aspirations a little more than Remy. It was a lot easier for Remy to be a cook than it was for Midori to make anything beyond concept art, or be sociable about it for that matter. At the same time, both remain humble in their ignited desires and understandably had to deal with an initial drawback to pursuing their dreams which is where...

The Helping Hands

Now, I’m not saying Midori is puppeting Tsubame or that Tsubame is a subversion of the whole rags to riches trope. I say like Linguini, Tsubame is one of the bridges for Midori to live out her desire, with the added bonus of being just as on board in scaffolding Asakusa’s passion to its most palpable form with her own dream of being an animator. Midori and Remy, be it their figurative or literal limitations, needed the likes of Linguini and Mizusaki to make things come to fruition. Even when Linguini doesn’t desirably wanna be a top chef himself, he witnesses Remy’s skill and is willing to put himself out there to work together and make the best cooking at the restaurant. Likewise, Tsubame is more than willing to work with Midori if it means not being forced into doing what her parents want and sharing that pathos of anime with a similar mind. And unlike Ratatouille, it helps that Tsubame is already adept in animating; I’ll talk to more on this later, but I’m glad Ōwara didn’t force us a character that wants to be somebody but has done nothing for herself. That’s what I noticed with both of these features, there’s a great semblance of support when passion is there but can’t progress singularly. There can/will be people out here to help you and they will come when you least expect it. Linguini and Tsubame both work well as the muscle of the cast, the character that does the heavy lifting in bringing the meal or anime to life. As such, we essentially have our director and the more hands on conductor of the project, but this all can’t be done without the producer.

Colette and Kanamori serve well as the anchor for our respective characters; we can’t just have the four characters go nuts with whatever, there needs to be some stability, a reality to the ambitious madness that can come with creating. Kanamori isn’t teaching the two any ground rules of anime, but she understands the analytics and guidelines to keeping things on track. Colette helps Linguini, by extension Remy, on the known etiquette to being productive in the kitchen, the same can be said for Kanamori in helping Tsubame and Midori in getting the film done clean and timely. While making a meal isn’t the same as making a whole cartoon, the ins and outs of getting things done have a parallel organized track. There’s especially more to making animation, especially on a deadline, and I’m glad Eizouken doesn’t shy away from giving you the thought process in what might go on behind the scenes; it practically gives you the ropes on what could happen if you were in each of the trio’s shoes.

Additionally, these two are the most resolute of the three characters; they stick to the mission understanding where Remy and Midori are philosophically, and Tsubame and Linguini are fundamentally, coming from. She and Kanamori exhibit the practical outsider, the one to truly stick their neck out, don’t put up with bullshitting, to push the creative drive further. Both see the weight that comes to production and while Colette has her fallback in the 3rd act, they make sure everything goes as planned. They truly practice what they preach and are the glue that holds things together. The only disadvantage Colette has is that she lacks a relationship with Remy, it’s mostly indirect at the end while Asakusa and Kanamori are initially on better terms since they were already close friends. But with our characters on the move, there’s hardly such thing as a perfect run,,,,

The Fallback

This part is where Eizouken and Ratatouille truly divide because the problems that arises for our characters come in differently. Ratatouille has more outside factors coming in with the fact that Remy is a rat and is pulled between his connection with humans vs his own kind. Eizouken is more in-fighting between the three where Tsubame and Midori’s ambitions have to face off against Kanamori’s more realistic shut downs and options. Eizouken also presents the compromises that can come with being a creator where Ratatouille reasonably montages through the hardships that can come with human puppetry and becoming an instant hit in the kitchen. Success is portrayed more consistently in Ratatouille than in Eizouken, which focuses more on the progress. It’s obvious given that, again, making food is not as time and energy consuming as making a feature; we see that animation is a lot more than just drawing all your ideas onto the equivalent to a flip book.

To sidetrack a bit, I came to agree with Jim that Monsters University is the antithesis to Ratatouille where the hard work that one puts into their dreams doesn’t mean imminent or easily delivered success. It’s a bizarro film in that, while not breaking new ground plotwise, MU is grimly realistic in that your passionate drive won’t always lead to getting the spoils you exactly want. Eizouken cleverly sits the middle of the two, where success is achievable if you put the effort in, but that effort realistically won’t go exactly how you want. Mizusaki wants everything hand-drawn and Asakusa wants a story, but come to understand that shortcuts need to happen if they want to get it done by the council meet. Kanamori isn’t crushing their aspirations for the hell of it, she makes it clear that time and the student body are not on their side. As opposed to Ratatouille, the final boss that are the critic(s) are notably secondary to getting the project done somehow. As mentioned before, I’m glad Ōwara made Tsubame already apt in animating because we can focus less on her being able to do it, more on the limitations that come with doing it. She has the skill, but has to bargain on her capabilities with what’s necessary as we see the tolls that come with the job.

Where I say these two collide somehow is the facet of the outsider putting the effort in for their goals. Remy and Midori are gifted and near encyclopedic in their trades, but are reasonably setback by both internal conflicting question of how far are they willing to go in exercising their drives. Remy more external than Midori since he could literally be killed if the truth was out too soon, but there is that self doubt in both of them where it can be hard to imagine that anyone can cook or that creating the great world is possible. It’s near the end of the arcs where they truly stand up for their beliefs and I appreciate that both handle the determined directing of our MCs in a respectable, pretty relatable way. They finally get to call the shots. They never sacrifice what could’ve been for what could be dauntingly realistic either; both offer an organic sense of optimism. But, with this optimism, comes the endgame that truly puts it all to the test in...

The Moment of Truth

Mr. Anton Ego, Skinner, and the Student Council are undoubtedly the final piece to these puzzles. It’s smart that they’re only present by the end of the arcs, only mentioned initially as the antagonistic force Remy and the Eizouken need to convince; they didn’t need to shoehorn their looming gavels any further. Naturally Skinner parallels the council president, a disingenuous hothead that antagonizes our MCs in a more unfair light while secretary Sakaki represents Ego, an intellectually honest person with actual standards and can see the forest for the trees. Eizouken’s episode 4 perfectly conceives why Kanamori is the boss, as she effortlessly confronts the allegations against them; not so much bluffing as she is spotlighting the council’s rash judgement. Unfortunately Kanamori can only debunk them so far, which leads to Midori overcoming her anxiety to demand that they’re given a chance. It’s great that Asakusa can suffer in silence for only so long before pushing herself to say something. This falls in line with Remy’s dad showing his son the grim realistic front of humans and rats before coming back to help him when he realizes Remy’s determinism. It’s like the rat says, the only way to go, “With luck, forward.”

Like the scene where Ego eats the titular dish, the moment we finally see the anime in full is almost disgustingly perfect. It’s fitting that a riot was going on before the presentation only for the action packed film to essentially come to life and throw chaos right back at everybody with powerful air waves, tank shells, and the tank itself jumping off the screen, literally blowing the audience away. Eizouken has literally more louder of a scene than Ratatouille’s, but both offer that climatic impart equally hard in their respective moments. They don’t shy away from grasping that immersive feeling of what you loved the most about food and/or animation, those invested in the film/series are basically with Ego and the student audience as those moments happen. It kinda hurts the brain how perfect these two moments are. Eizouken and Ratatouille, in a meta sense, weren’t successful only because they poke at our nostalgia or love, but of how they go the mile to convey it significantly. Ratatouille by the end, thanks to Ego, provides the apt idea of open-mindedness; that greatness can come from anywhere. Eizouken does this but adds the step that being open-minded can come with seeing what the efforts of that determined greatness can lead to. And with this, we see how it ends, or how it begins...

The Step Forward

I mentioned this before, but I loved that immediately after their demo reel finished, they weren’t worrying about any approval from the council or audience but discussing about what to improve on next. We see the soon boundless enthusiasm of the trio when, regardless of , they want to improve and do more as a team, all while the secretary approves the club in the hopes to see the fruitful potential. Compare this to Ratatouille for while Remy succeeds in convincing his family and Ego of his talent, they don’t sacrifice realism too much. Gusteau’s is naturally shut down, rats and humans aren’t suddenly living together by the end. At the same time, the movie wasn’t really about that, but about achieving small victories, optimistically grasping that palpable progress. Like Eizouken, Ratatouille leaves us with the progressive prospect that there’s the potential for more, for better.

To quote Jim once more, I say what makes both Eizouken and Ratatouille work fundamentally is that they keep the finger on the pulse of their respective message(s) while still creating enjoyable moments; they don’t sacrifice the fun of getting things right for pushing why it matters. They don’t sellout the bonds between our characters for irreverent romps in the kitchen or studio. Both offer a meaningfulness to their respective crafts, blending its many flavors into a well made dish that explores what it means to create and the steps that come with it. What it means to have passion and utilize that to its capable extent. What it means to enjoy a meal while watching an impressively finished production. They’re also very well animated; thanks Yuasa and Bird.

#keep your hands off eizouken!#keep your hands off the motion pictures club!#eizouken #eizouken anime #KYHOE #Ratatouille #pixar #disney #anime #animation #critique #analysis #Good Stuff #long post

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teacherfromthegreenlagoon · 4 years

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Teacher Leadership Styles and Responsive Classroom

According to the Responsive Classroom school of thought, there are four types of Teacher Leadership Styles. Autocratic leadership is reminiscent of the stereotypical drill sergeant, teaching students compliance through fear-based manipulation and coercion. Permissive leadership is more like a complete lack of leadership, with no creation or enforcement of structure or accountability for students. Flip-flop leadership bounces back and forth between permissive and autocratic, largely stemming from a lack of education or support for a teacher who tries to do what’s best for their students. The final leadership style, Responsive Classroom calls authoritative. It is a top-down management of the classroom, like the autocratic style, but focuses far more on relationship building and activating the internal motivation of students.

As far as effectiveness goes, authoritative teachers are the best way to go among these four options, and for many teachers and students, authoritative leadership is the best style possible. However, I do not agree that authoritative leadership is the only style of leadership that is capable of creating a positive and successful learning environment, nor do I believe that these four styles are the only leadership styles available.

If I were to define my own leadership style, I would classify it as cooperative, not authoritative. My students are not the recipients of my teaching, they are partners in their own learning and growth. Authoritative leaders, no matter how responsive, assume that they have ultimate authority in the classroom, but that simply isn’t true. The student always has the choice in how they want to respond to the situation, and while teachers have control over many things, they cannot control the behavior of their students, nor should they seek to. All they can do is set expectations for their students and respond in consistent, logical ways.

As a cooperative leader, I take ultimate responsibility for overseeing the structure, set-up, and procedure of learning in my classroom. Students take ultimate responsibility for their engagement and participation. Classroom rules are not edict I impose on them, but rather mutually agreed upon guidelines for creating a positive learning environment. I hold them accountable for following those rules, but if a rule isn’t working, my students must be involved in changing that rule. On the one hand, this requires careful negotiation at the beginning of the term and can often take up class time that would otherwise be spent on curriculum. However, doing so increases student buy-in, meaning they are more likely to follow the rules and less likely to resist the established consequences of those rules. Now, at the beginning of a term, I may insist on a particular rule being included, but as the term goes on, if my rules are harmful to the social, emotional, and academic success of my students, they have every right to demand a change. If I’m being fair and focused on respecting them as individuals, this almost never actually happens, as students who were initially resistant are shown the benefit of that rule.

As a cooperative teacher, my ultimate goal is student autonomy. I know I’ve been successful in teaching my students when my presence becomes superfluous. This is true in classroom management as well as academics. I’m an English teacher. If I’ve successfully taught students how to use commas, then they no longer need me to check their comma usage. If I’ve successfully taught them how to talk with their peers, then they no longer need me to monitor their language; they can monitor it themselves. I will always be the expert in my content matter and in education, at least as long as they are in my classroom, but that doesn’t mean I am the supreme authority of the learning that transpires there, nor am I the supreme authority in the classroom environment. When I assume complete authority over my classroom, then my students become disenfranchised, powerless to control the direction of their own improvement. Without student autonomy, there can be no learning. When I deprive my students of any choice except whether or not they participate in the learning, many will choose not to learn, because it is the only way they feel like they have control over their own lives.

Whatever the content of their curriculum, any middle or high school teacher’s primary goal should be to prepare their students for adulthood. The tricky part of that is we don’t know what their adulthood will look like. We don’t know if they will further their education or how much. We don’t know what kind of job they will have or what kind of social situation they will find themselves in. We can’t see the future, and even with clear evidence, it can be difficult to predict. What we can do is teach students how to be in charge of their own learning, so that whatever concrete skills and knowledge they need to be successful, if we haven’t taught it to them, they can teach it to themselves. However, we cannot teach students to teach themselves without giving them ample time to practice in a safe environment with a scaffolded process that gives them room to make mistakes and improve. Essentially, we are training students to take over our jobs. We must give them opportunities to be in charge of their own learning, or they will never learn how.

As a middle school teacher, I know my students have an increased need for respect, self-determination, and independence. While 6th graders need more scaffolding and support in having authority over their learning than, say, 9th graders, they still need some authority. And let me tell you, as a teacher who struggles with coming up with logical and respectful consequences for mis-behaviors, it is a relief to turn the question back on the student and say, “What do you think the consequence should be?” They almost always are more harsh on themselves than I would be, allowing me to be the good guy who reminds them the goal is growth, not punishment, but it also allows them to take responsibility for changing their behavior because they took part in determining the consequence and learn self-discipline in the process. Not because I had authority. Because we collaborated.

There are many things I love about Responsive Classroom, but their categorization of teacher leadership styles is not one of them. I encourage teachers who are unfamiliar with RC to learn about the methods and philosophies and take the training, if you can. I also encourage teachers who are familiar with RC to think critically about the different aspects, choosing for themselves which benefit their students and which do not. We must all practice learning and unlearning, have the humility to accept when someone else’s way is better, and have the self-respect to stick to our convictions, even when those we respect are telling us to take a different path.

#teacher leadership #teacher leadership styles #responsive classroom #responsive classroom management #student collaboration #student respect

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myfandomrambles · 5 years

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Carol Danvers First Thoughts

I really liked her a lot and have some opinions.

Okay, Some Stuff I Really Like:

I really liked her ability to have confidence even while scared. It is very powerful when we see people who are scared but do what they need to anyway.

I love the “get back up” imagery it is a really powerful motif and it's a pretty strong character trait that was consistent no matter what. Giving some consistency in a movie that could feel a bit disjointed.

Her ignoring rules is another way they connected her character across a very volatile character in other wars. I also enjoyed that even when others tried to force her into boxes but she would not do it was really important.

The costume being non-sexualized was amazing, but the outfits can still be in character and theme without being a cat suite built for males to think are hot.

That helping support a woman of colour being why she is considered brave and hero to her family.

That we weren’t shown graphic or sexualized violence when showing her past traumas. Even the memory extraction scene didn’t including graphic beating, gaging, ripped clothes, excessive blood or injuries that ring reminiscent of abuse. I was also grateful that neither acts of or threats of sexual violence were included. They didn't even have sexually suggestive insults/manipulation. They are still giving her a story, and knowledge she can bee hurt and setting up some well paid off emotional reactions without this horrific violence. They did still have cartoon superhero fights and explosions keeping the genre traits we all wanted to see.

I like the way she is swayed by the stories of refugees and empire. She has always been a bit of a rogue soldier and this lingering distrust of the Kree allows her to change her mind. She becomes an anti-colonialist and protects refugees, which is the best kind of hero to be. Though it is a little funny that they make the US army look chill as they are imperialists themselves. (Also since we genocided the Asgardian refuges I can't assume the Russos won't murder them all)

Part of her hero arc being throwing off not only the indoctrination of the Kree but also the very apparent gaslighting and control of Yon-Rog and the Supreme Intelligence. She explicitly rejects both of their control, telling them she is not weak for feeling and owes them nothing. Their undermining of her identity, feelings and what she wants to do is shown as an enemy. And I like that it obviously has shaped her but she can’t still bunch those abusive people in the face!

Where They Could Do Better:

Some things to add could be expanding what we know of her birth family. They are down to yell at and deride her multiple times. we also see her father (or another male relative) physically handling her roughly and shoving her to the ground at a beach. We also are told that her real family are the Rambeau’s. While it does show the theme stretches back to childhood, but some more information I think would be good. It does show she has always been stubborn but some more ways it changed her would be nice.

Other topics that could be dropped in would be some likes and dislikes. Maybe some of what she uncovers could be emotions/reaction to some cultural touchstones. Like maybe references to 80s/90s American cause some thoughts. We get a lot of this characterizations in Marvel movies and it could go a long way.

Also some more direct conversation with her old Kree teammates and Maria Rambeau not tied to just her memory blackouts. The best conversations we got were with Monica we see some other sides to her than warrior/soldier and snark. Her stuff with Fury was fun for sure but some conversations other than banter could help so we could build up a relationship that would connect to why she would give him her communicator and have an emotional tie that would bring her to immediately show up when called and have the long term emotional tie I likely think they are going within Endgame. It also could have added characterization to Fury outside facts, easter eggs and setting up later fils.

However, I love her so much and found the movies overall fun to watch and even had me almost tearing up. I also got a pretty strong immediate headcanons. (also projection probs)

Nd Headcanon

C-PTSD w/ Dissociative symptoms:

Affect & Emotional Dysregulation: Often either showing almost no emotion on her face and internalizing her feelings or very visible and explosive expression of emotions.

Disrupted Systems of Meaning: Similar to the identity issues we see multiple ways she creates specific scaffolds she works on as her identity. Being a pilot for the army, the Kree way of life "heroes", and then the idea of the protector of the Skrulls/refuges. And in conjunction, there is a loss of belief around these too.

Dissociation: She is shown to check out and go blank. One I remember is in the Project Pegasus bunker when reading through the papers she misses fury trying to talk to her. Another example I remember is the way her sensory perceptions distort when shown pictures of her past.

Dissociated/Repressed Memories: So this is much more of a theory/headcanon then something that’s not explained by sci-fy stuff. But the way they describe her memory blanks is super relatable for my dissociation and memory loss. She has some huge blanks which can happen a lot, even whole people she loved. The way these gaps cause feelings of loss and confusion which is so common with people who have dissociative amnesia.

Also that she has flashbacks and nightmares of memories but can’t properly access them. And the way memory recovery can have a painful reaction and while it’s great to be reunited with people but it can’t really be the same it was before. And the deep reaction she had to hear her voice making her have to bolt from the situation, feels like it can’t be her, even when she knows it has to be.

Flashbacks: Clearly was shown multiple times, not just under Skrull manipulation. They are even triggered by reminders of her past and under stress. They are disruptive to her life and are also shown to be disjointed.

Hypervigilance/Excessive Fight Response: She absolutely is almost constantly in fight/flight/freeze mode. We can see her have a pretty impressive startle response and easily switching to her "fight" mode. She can't shut off her way of handling things or really being casual in case only a few situations.

Identity Confusion/Malleability: She literally has multiple ways she presents herself. Changes wildly on her circumstances and manipulatable. Her parents seem to be trying to tell her to be calm, not fight, not be emotional and she completely tries to prove them all wrong, is super into her pilot identity, then Yon-Rogg is horrible manipulative and forces her to be something else. Know the Skrull also shifts her, making more of a one-man band instead of the loyal soldier even changing the way she was dressing.

Nightmares: These are directly referenced by her and Yon-Rogg. The nightmare is really relatable and pretty accurate for trauma memories. They are of her past/trauma but with confused details and trouble placing them. Even shown to prevent sleep to the point she doesn’t even want to sleep.

Paranoia/Anxiety: Falls a bit in the adage of "just because your paranoid doesn't mean their not after you" there really were shape-changers, but her immediately switching to grilling people to check for Skrulls (like when the neighbour comes to Maria Rambeau's house) shows a state of paranoia and being on edge. Always doubting thinking everything.

Re-Victimization/Distorted Perceptions of Abusers: The implied abuse of her biological parents visibly including controlling er behaviour, interests, identity and emotions. Also pretty likely including some physical aspects having them shove her to the ground. While in a lot of ways joining the Air Force is highly bulking her upbringing, it's also directly subjecting her to a situation of more people controlling and deriding her. There is also going to be more violence forced on her.

Then with the Kree, she is obviously most close to Yon-Rogg, out of obligation likely but she doesn't reach beyond him to form other bonds and while she does rebuke his statements she does seem to follow them and lets him manipulate her and directly send her to the Supreme Intelligence to mess with her mind. She doesn't seem to realise how manipulative he is being, constantly undermining her emotions and ideas. He also holds his "saving her", giving her al her "power" and "worth". Even seemingly saying she is only alive through his blood. This connection doesn't break till she is shown obvious lies he and the Supreme Intelligence forced on her.

Strong and Explosive Anger/Rage: Anger is one of the emotions she shows most visible. It often is expressed in active violence and can cause involuntary usage of her powers. It's also something used against her by her father, Supreme Intelligence, and Yon-Rogg. The last two are actually really good at using it as a control tactic even liking it to the direct device that reacts to her powers which are strongest in relation to her emotional state.

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globetrottinggeordie · 6 years

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Day 87 - 25th February 2018

Today we had a full day to explore Christchurch, which was just as well as the first signpost for the City Centre that we came to, sent us in the wrong direction and added at least a mile to our journey. At least it bumped up the number of steps on the Apple Health App!! We were interested to see how the city is recovering from the massive earthquake in February 2011 which killed 185 people.

First stop, as you might expect from previous blogs, was to a café for two large flat whites and scones. We found a nice café in New Regent Street, which is a very quaint part of the city that has retained many of the original shop frontages.

What also adds to the character of the street is that the Christchurch Tramway runs down the middle of the street, right in amongst the café clientele.

The old trams run a restricted service around the city, passing through a couple of areas that still have restricted pedestrian access, and provide a great way of getting your bearings for the places that you want to go and visit.

We went around the circuit and eventually hopped off at the cathedral, which was extensively damaged by the earthquake. The tower and the front of the cathedral collapsed on the day and there are some major cracks showing in the remaining stonework, which is supported by extensive scaffolding.

In the past few weeks it has been announced that the cathedral is to be restored in its original form, after year’s of deliberation on whether it should be demolished and rebuilt in some alternative form. I think that common sense has prevailed.

We continued on our walk around the area of the city that suffered most badly in the earthquake, and it resembled a bomb site in places. There are large areas of ground that are covered in gravel, or crushed aggregate, and this is where a building once stood. It is difficult to take in the full extent of the impact of the earthquake as we never saw the city as it was before 22nd February 2011.

After walking around for a couple of hours we were ready for a drink, and having passed the ruins of Smash Palace, an alternative ale house and eatery, we came across a plot of land next door where they have parked up an old single decker bus and converted it into a bar. They have recovered as much as they can from the ruins next door and are continuing to serve the faithful who frequent this fine ale drinking establishment.

Suitably refreshed we wandered down to the Cardboard Cathedral which has temporarily replaced the main cathedral that currently stands in ruins. Large cardboard tubes form a major part of the structure and it is obviously providing a valuable service to the community, as there was a theatrical event being staged there that afternoon, to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the earthquake.

From the Cardboard Cathedral we walked around the corner to view a memorial to the 185 people that died in the 2011 earthquake, that has been created by a local artist. The memorial consists of 185 seats, of various forms, that have been painted white, and stand as a stark reminder of those who died. Each chair had a red carnation, presumably from the official remembrance ceremonies that took place on 22nd February.

In some ways it reminded me of a similar memorial to the Jews of Krakow who were deported by the Nazis to the nearby death camps at Auschwitz.

We then walked to the Christchurch Earthquake National Memorial, which is a white marble mural on the banks of the River Avon, and includes the names of the 185 people who died on 22nd February 2011 when the earthquake struck.

It is a very impressive monument and there were many floral tributes to the dead that had been placed there a few days previously to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the quake.

We were beginning to feel the strain of walking the streets all day, so with one final venue to visit, we jumped on a tram and went to the City Quake museum. The museum provides a detailed description of the events that occurred on 22nd February 2011, and incorporates a lot of artefacts recovered from the ruins. The museum also provides commentaries by people who were in the city at the time, either as victims, rescuers or members of the emergency services who worked non-stop for days to recover the final survivors, and then to recover the bodies of those who were buried in the collapsed buildings.

One of the most striking exhibits is CCTV footage of the actual earthquake as it happened outside a car showroom. It shows a man crossing the road, with another man walking towards him, when suddenly the earthquake strikes and masonry starts falling from nearby buildings, and the road on which they are walking starts lifting and subsiding, and they stagger around as if they were drunk.

After the City Quake exhibition we were all walked out and so we headed back to the hotel for a soak in the bath to relive our aching joints. After we had recovered, we went out to dinner at the Dux Dine restaurant around the corner. The restaurant specialises in seafood and vegetarian dishes, and I had seafood risotto while Joan had terakihi (a local fish from New Zealand), both of which were delicious. For dessert I had a chai parfait, which is a seed concoction that resembles tapioca, all served in Kilner Jar with a handle. Very nice, it was.

After dinner, we strolled back to the hotel, where I caught up on the blog, while Joan caught up on a few Zs! Tomorrow was our last day in New Zealand, as we fly to Sydney in the afternoon at the start of the return trip to the UK.

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mathematicianadda · 4 years

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Empowering Students Through Individual Goal Accountability https://ift.tt/3gdEuU1

This article features contributions from MIND Research Institute's Director of Product, Twana Young, and Senior User Experience Researcher, Alesha Arp.

Individual vs Group Goals

I learned the value of individual goal setting as a high school cross-country and track runner. My coach, Dave Donaldson, taught all of his runners to set goals and then aim beyond them. His philosophy was that you didn’t want to just run to the top of the hill, but over the top.

Today, my goals are not as speedy, but they’re no less “over the top” and I am always heartened when I visit schools where students can articulate their goals and can share how they’re working toward achievement.

In the current version of ST Math, the primary metric is percent progress. Students across the country are recognized on class bulletin boards and in school assemblies for achieving a targeted progress percentage, whether that’s 25% per quarter, or 70% by spring break, or 100% by the end of the school year. These celebrations are wonderful and the sense of pride that students have in this accomplishment is evident by their smiles.

However, focusing on one single metric for all students can be exclusionary. Sometimes a one-size-fits-all goal centers too much on extrinsic motivation.

Oftentimes it’s the stars on the bulletin board, or the popsicle party at the end of the year that drives kids to reach their percent progress goal. If you ask the student the value of achieving that goal, they’re not going to tell you what they learned about problem solving, goal setting, and perseverance. They’re going to tell you they wanted to attend the popsicle party.

If a student doesn’t reach the school- or class-wide 25% progress mark by the end of the first quarter (or 33% for the trimester), they start every subsequent grading period behind, and the hill they need to climb to overcome that deficit can be insurmountable. Some never catch up.

By the same token, some students reach 100% quickly, and then have no motivation to deepen their exploration or understanding of the concepts.

I spoke with a teacher in Oakland, CA early this spring who lamented that the kids who get recognized at their weekly assembly are typically those students who have access to devices and internet at home. She feels this celebrates the “haves” and leaves out the “have-nots.” While their students without device access at home benefit from the time they play ST Math in school, it is not likely—with their current program implementation—that these students will reach 100% progress.

The administrator, curriculum coach, and teachers are all working to alter their implementation, but until that comes to fruition, a vast majority of the students are striving toward an unattainable goal. I would propose differentiating and encouraging students to set and track their own goals.

Revising the Focus

With the redesign of ST Math due out for the 2020-21 school year, differentiation will be easier for teachers to employ and students will have direct visibility into metrics they can influence. But we do not need to wait until next school year to individualize student goals.

With students now learning at home, individual accountability gives kids more control at a time when they likely feel they don’t have a lot of control.

Tracking Individual Accountability

To better understand what is available for parents and teachers working remotely to use now with their kids, I invited Twana Young, MIND’s Director of Instructional Development, into the conversation. Twana is one of our thought leaders here at MIND Research Institute. She brings a rich background to her work as an educator and former district administrator experienced in developing curricular programs at the local, state, and national level.

Twana has rich experience building, supporting, and monitoring STEM-rich environments. I asked Twana, “How can teachers foster individual accountability for their students now?”

With so much talk of what students are missing out on by not being in school, there are some great opportunities that exist to build student agency, accountability, and confidence in mathematics. In our current ST Math program when students complete their session, they are taken to their My Accomplishment’s page.

This page highlights the amount of time, the progress, number of puzzles, and levels the students mastered during this session.

Having this type of explicit data provides a great opportunity for students to identify appropriate goals, set action steps to achieve the goals, monitor their progress toward the goals, and learn to adjust the goals based on the data.

“Are there ways parents can support their students’ learning with little management time?”

To support student goals we have developed an ST Math Usage calendar. Students can identify a goal at the beginning of the week based on the number of minutes of ST Math or the number of days to play ST Math. Students can track their goals by recording their progress on the ST Math Usage calendar. Students should be encouraged to share their goals with family and discuss how they plan to achieve them.

Download the Spanish version>>

Twana cautioned though, that usage goals are not the only way students can track achievement.

In addition to usage goals, it is important for students to set and work toward academic goals. Because ST Math is a mastery-based visual, spatial program, students are able to have confidence that they are growing in mathematical understanding as they play.

They may set academic goals related to number of objectives completed, math concepts learned, hurdles overcome, classroom connections made, etc. As students communicate their academic goals, they should also communicate what they are learning. This will support them in developing a deep understanding of content, transferring and applying knowledge, and learning how to effectively communicate.

Math journals are great resources for students to reflect on their ST Math session, process their thinking, communicate what they have learned, and monitor their progress toward their academic goals.

Empowering Students to Set and Achieve Goals

Thinking back again to my high school running days, I can assure you, I never would have run a sub-5:30 mile for my coach, no matter how supportive and encouraging he was.

I had to set that goal for myself, and do the work to consistently run a mile in under five-and-a-half minutes.

I had to solve the problem of not having enough practice-time after school, by running extra practices in the dark before school.

I had to persevere through the 40 repetitions up and down the nearby junior college stadium steps each week.

Helping students set, own, and achieve individual goals is so much more powerful than giving them stars and popsicles. Had my coach set a team-goal some would have achieved it, while others wouldn’t have come close. Had he set the sub-5:30 goal for me in my freshman year, I’d have ended that season well-short and feeling unaccomplished.

I asked Twana, “What are the greatest advantages to kids being accountable for their learning that you’ve seen?”

When students play ST Math games, they are not only deepening their understanding of math concepts, they are developing critical problem-solving skills that will lead to lasting success. Setting goals is a great way to build on that and increase opportunities for student agency and accountability. Students will not only develop confidence but will more readily recognize their progress and growth.

Goal setting can also strengthen students’ ability to communicate about what they have learned and accomplished, as well as identify areas in which they would like to improve. In addition, students will learn how to manage their time better, focus on challenges, and develop plans to overcome them.

“Wow, these are the skills all of our kids will need to succeed in the workforce of tomorrow!”

Individual Goals Support Differentiation and Inclusivity

Next year’s redesigned ST Math will shift the focus to minutes spent and puzzles completed (a puzzle is one math problem within a level of a game). Regardless of what content students are playing, they will be able to see that they have spent x number of minutes and achieved y number of puzzles. This will allow for differentiated learning in tandem with individual goal setting and accountability.

Teachers will have the ability to assign content from any grade level to any student or group of students. For students struggling with a concept, the teacher can assign scaffolding concepts to build up their foundational skills. For students who excel and need a greater challenge a teacher might offer more advanced concepts. This will allow different students to traverse varied paths through the ST Math content.

Students at all points in the learning curve—those who struggle to those who excel—will be able to set goals based on the available metrics: minutes spent, and puzzles achieved. Students are, after all, individuals. The student who has trouble staying focused might have a very different goal than the student who speeds through without retention or the student who seeks help at the first sign of difficulty.

Just like I did with my dark-morning workouts, a student can control the time and the focus they put into ST Math. Even a student who doesn’t have device access from home, can be most productive with their allotted time by signing in and getting to work right away. They could set a puzzles per minute goal and work to achieve that.

My first goal when I joined the cross-country team was to break 8 minutes in the mile. Over time, as each goal was attained, a new goal was set.

If students have an achievable minutes goal and awareness of the average number of puzzles they typically achieve, they can work to increase that week over week. If they’re spending time visiting with their seatmate, this will be evidenced in that ratio; they can then adjust and can take full advantage of the time allotted by spending each minute productively.

Running the same mile-time on a hilly cross-country course, or in mud is not as achievable as running it flat-out on a track.

When students are met with a really difficult concept, and their puzzle count drops, they can talk about that and adjust. Kids can learn to adjust their goal for the conditions and readjust when conditions are more favorable.

A student who needs scaffolding content to build their foundation, likely won’t complete all the grade-level content in that school year, however they can improve their math competency, problem-solving abilities, and their perseverance by setting and achieving their own goals.

I have visited classrooms where they haven’t yet figured out how to get 60 or 90 minutes of time worked into their weekly schedule. But motivated students opt-in to ST Math during “free-tech” time or “free-learning” time—which usually happens on Fridays when teachers are wrapping up lessons with students who were absent during the week. If students have ownership of and accountability for their own goals, they are more likely to opt-in.

Additional Resources

New ST Math: Coming June 2020!

Redesigning the New ST Math to Drive Actionable Data

Adaptive and Supportive Learning with ST Math

Success and Failure: How Growth Mindset Can Change Education

Podcast: Being Driven by Actionable Data

from MIND Research Institute Blog https://ift.tt/3iffu0v Alesha Arp from Blogger https://ift.tt/31vRwrH

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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On a mildly related talk to all this reading practice stuff...

it really is a wild trip when I compare learning how to read french to reading chinese. >o> Yesterday I was reading some sites in french for learning chinese and like. For some background, back when I was studying french, about 3 months in I started reading technical texts like esperanto learning books, wikipedia, psychology books, linguistic books, and news articles... who even knows why. I just did. Maybe because I was reading that stuff anyway, so i figured I’d practice french at the same time. Maybe I was comforted by the higher chance of cognates in technical french writing, compared to like fictional stories.

Either way, when I first went through that “brutal slog” of reading stuff I comprehended way less than 90% in french, it was informational technical texts galore. Also, eventually, I switched my french grammar study to reading sites written in french about grammar, at which point i pretty much never looked at a french learning book written in english again. So anyway now, years later, that specific kind of reading material is so easy for me I can skim through it for specific details, I can speed read it to learn stuff.

With french fictional novels I’m not as competent, for sure. I can comprehend stuff though, which is all I really desire to be able to do in French. I should eventually read some more french fanfic though. I’ll improve where I’m lacking. (also you would not believe the amount of high quality Merlin/Arthur fic, and Root/Shaw from Person of Interest fic, that exists on ao3 it is phenomenal.... im talking multiple 100k+ Root/Shaw fics spanning many genres, pages of Merthur novels!)

But anyway, one notable thing about french for me was... it was certainly a slog and brutally draining in the beginning. But the rate at which the difficulty lowered, and the amount of effort I had to put in for the difficulty to lower (and my comprehension to increase), is so much different than with Chinese. I would imagine a huge reason for the difference is simply that French is ranked as one of the easier languages that should take a shorter amount of time for native english speakers to learn (600-some hours), compared to Chinese which is ranked as one of the hardest languages to learn taking the most amount of time (2200 hours+) (source). So just, in general, one would expect reading level progress in French to take less time. The other big difference that sort of ties into that, is the character based writing system that I had no basis of prior knowledge for, and the lack of cognates to chinese compared to french. Which, I have noticed over the months, this problem becomes less as I learn more characters - knowing characters that make up new words is sort of, for me, like knowing a ‘similar’ word that makes the new word easier. Since the pronunciation is familiar, and since I at least am familiar with the parts the new word is made from.

Sort of like seeing french words that look like cognates of english or that have similar endings/beginnings to english words, and those french words being easier to remember and learn. So... for me personally, I’m focusing a lot on characters and vocabulary in chinese right now, in the hopes that sort of similar-to-words-i-know feedback process happens more in chinese. Since I think it makes learning new words much easier, compared to learning words where I have no already-known information to connect to the new information I’m learning. In french, I felt a large portion of words could easily ‘connect’ to some prior english knowledge I had in my head... so learning words wasn’t too hard, and once I learned enough words, I had a lot of french words to also use as this ‘scaffold’ to help support me as I picked up more new words.

But also, the amount of effort I put into French is just staggeringly less (to me). French was definitely difficult, still is difficult as far as purposely choosing to do stuff to speed up things I want to measurably improve in. But it just took a lot ‘less’ than Chinese to see improvement. In French, I genuinely only read once every couple of weeks. I rarely looked up words, after the first year (because I am immensely lazy). So a giant portion of my improvement in reading was just from me brute force trying to read with nothing to help me, once I knew some basics. And mostly, it worked? After a couple years I could read whatever I wanted in French, and at least follow the main ideas/main plot. Which was all I wanted. Then everything after that has mostly just been the process of reading getting easier (less focus required from me, speedier reading, easier to catch more details without sacrificing speed). Compared to my Chinese reading practice, I just generally had to put less time into french and less effort. I only had to intensively look up words in french for the first year of reading (around 9 months).

For Chinese, if my current reading level if anything to go on, I’m looking at at least another year of intensively looking up words if I want to keep making substantial progress, and likely years of looking up words every few minutes (to improve comprehension, and pick up new words regularly). Whereas in French, after 1 year I could switch to looking up words every few minutes/occasionally, if I wanted more context and more detailed understanding or to learn a new word faster.

But I could also just... not look up any words, and still managed to keep improving. I am not sure if me learning 2000-3000 characters would make a difference for Chinese, and make it easier for me to learn more words from ‘context’ in chinese at a bit of a faster rate then I currently can. By learn from ‘context’ I mean, that I’d be able to remember words more easily, figure out their meaning in show subtitles and books more easily, and generally just work less hard to learn them. Compared to now, where many new words contain at least 1 new character, so I’m usually SRS flashcard studying them and drilling them ALONG with reading them in context and looking them up over and over (because I’m struggling to recognize them when I see them again).

Then there’s also the matter of me wanting to read more complicated material in Chinese then I ever wanted to read in French. In French, mainly I just wanted to be able to read my historical books and theatre-play books. Occasionally I read a fiction novel in French, but its never particularly important to me to catch the details. The only time it is, is when I’m reading a fanfiction I really like (and when that happens, I do actually look up words sometimes - even though with most other french reading i no longer bother). Whereas in Chinese, I have a lot of authors I’m specifically interested in, specifically because of writing style nuances and details they choose to use. And because I want to read content of theirs that is only available in Chinese - so a decent portion of the material I’m not going to have backup English context to lean on. So alongside Chinese just taking over 3.7x more work (roughly 2200 hrs/600 hrs) than French to progress the same amount, I also want to end up being at a higher reading level in Chinese then my goal was for French.

It’s all just... interesting to me. Studying and improving in any language takes a lot of time and effort. And for me who kind of just threw myself into reading, it’s brutal in the beginning sort of no matter what. And it gets easier, over time. It’s just a stark contrast when I think about it. People always like to say the ‘easier’ languages for english speakers to learn are significantly easier. But of course, starting out, any language is ‘difficult’ to improve in. Over time it is always going to be considerable effort to improve in. So to someone with no prior-language study experience, it’s all a long consistent amount of effort so it’s not like the difference in ‘difficulty’ should be anyone’s deciding factor on what they study. I can say though, when studying French and Japanese at the same time, it really slapped me in the face how true the ‘difficulty’ levels thing is. Something I’d learned in French would take me 4 times as long to learn in Japanese. And because Japanese took so long to improve to the ‘same level’ compared to how quick my French improved, it was so easy to get demotivated. It’s easy to get demotivated when progress is slow. With Chinese the difference has also been stark. But unlike Japanese, with studying Chinese I’ve really buckled down and studied a lot to try and ‘make up’ the time difference it takes to learn things a bit more. So, I study Chinese a lot more than I did with Japanese - but the payoff is I’m improving a bit faster, seeing results a bit faster, and I’m more motivated. I’m still taking significantly longer to learn something than it has taken to learn it in French. But instead of seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, the extra time and effort I’m putting in means that my Chinese is always at least improving fast enough to see the hint of light. If we’d assume French is always right by it, reaching it pretty fast, and my Japanese is lagging in the back of the tunnel wondering if it picks a direction if it will ever find a way to get through this tunnel ever and make any progress at all... (the tunnel being some x noticable progress in the language).

So like... Chinese takes 3-4 times as long to improve in as French? I compensate by grinding words with SRS to really speed up my vobulary acquisition (compared to french where I just looked at word lists, occassionally looked up words, and generally took a lazier approach). I compensate by spending more time studying Chinese - usually at least a half hour a day, sometimes a few hours, and way more active immersion then I ever did in french. In French I did it once every few days somewhat leisurely, to every few weeks intensively in short bursts, in Chinese I did it at least once a week intensively, a lot more for ‘leisurely.’ (’Leisurely’ being looking words up once in a while, and consuming content for a decent chunk of time instead of only a few minutes). This all does make me wonder... how much better could I be in French, if I started doing this stuff for French? How much faster could I have gotten at French, if I’d been working this hard?

It doesn’t really matter now, since i can do what I wanted to in French... if I ever want to do other things better in French, at least now I know a solid plan to make improvements fast...

#rant #chinese studyblr #french studyblr #this is a lil bit of a niche experience #in a way im glad french was the first language #i tried to study #because i made slow progress #but french was 'easy' enough that #even Slow progress was Quickly a noticable #significant improvement #so french gave me time to see what worked #and didn't work for me personally #and i saw reasonably fast feedback on my results #all that i learned studying french #eventually helped me better plan how to #approach studying japanese and chinese #and my struggles with japanese #actually really helped me improve my chinese study plan.#actually #what im learning rn about chinese #is in some ways #gonna pay off later #when i apply it to japanese #like? i discovered a graded reader style textbook for chinese #it works really really great for me #and so i found a similar book for japanese #i know when i go back to japanese ill use it #knowing i've found a tool that #i alread proved works for me

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zipgrowth · 5 years

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How Improving Student Feedback and Teaching Data Science Restored Our Classroom Culture

Over winter break in 2015, I found myself scouring the internet for career alternatives that would take me out of the classroom. I was in my fifth year of teaching at Forest Ridge, an independent all-girls school serving students in grades 5-12 in Bellevue, Wash., and I was feeling isolated in a room with students who didn’t seem to want to engage with my class, despite all my efforts to bring enthusiasm and passion to my work.

The learning environment was tense, my students were angsty and I didn't have the information or strategies to make it better. I wanted to go back to my previous life as a geologist, where everything was quantifiable and the path forward was always revealed through methodical data analysis. Little did I know that by 2019 I would find a way to apply the data science strategies I learned as a geologist to bring joy and engagement back to my classroom.

This Class is Unfair

The pivotal class I was teaching at the time was a physical science course, consisting of three sections of 15 to 17 eighth graders. The previous summer, I started the Physics By Inquiry Summer Institute at the University of Washington, a three-year program where teachers learn how to run an inquiry-based classroom by engaging in inquiry-based learning themselves. I came away from the institute eager to try inquiry-based instruction in my class during the 2015-16 school year.

The switch to inquiry-based learning required a dramatic shift from teacher- to learner-driven instruction. To maximize instructional time, I also transitioned to a flipped-classroom model for content delivery, providing my students with learning materials to engage with online outside of school before coming to class. I was hopped up on the energy that comes from a new, promising instructional strategy and, admittedly, a small dose of ego since I’d discovered something I was sure would be a game-changer. I was convinced this would spark excitement for my students.

Unfortunately, reality had other plans. By winter, my students ranged from patiently tolerant to disengaged to downright defiant, and parents and administrators were starting to get involved. In response to my new teaching style, I was seeing clear signs of student resistance: refusal to engage with learning tasks, blaming poor academic performance on my teaching and disrupting class. Some students were rallying others to join in these behaviors.

After a long talk with my mentor teacher, I decided to stick with teaching at least through the end of the year, but it was getting harder each day. Hoping to get to the root of the issue, I conducted an anonymous survey of my students. I asked a variety of questions about their perception of the instruction and assessment practices we had shifted to, the types of feedback they received and how they felt about the class. Combing through the results was a humbling and difficult experience. In order to leverage the survey results to change my practice, I knew I needed to remain objective, so I applied statistical analysis techniques and qualitative categorization, which surfaced two general trends:

Unfair Assessment: "It felt unfair when there were questions on the quiz which were not taught in class or even the videos and textbook, because often times I prepared well for the tests but never got the grade I thought I deserved." —Anonymous student

Lack of Agency over Learning: "I felt that you didn't teach us anything in class...with so many students telling you we learn better with lectures, I feel you are ignoring our feedback and just taking the easier path." —Anonymous student

This was the toughest feedback I have ever received, but it helped me define the problem so I could figure out what to do about it. Through the anger and frustration of their feedback, I could see what my students were really trying to tell me: they felt a distance and lack of support in my classroom, and it was unfair.

I dug into the existing research about student engagement and realized that my challenge was actually that my students lacked agency over their learning. In switching to inquiry-based instruction, I had pulled myself back and asked my students to step up and take the lead, but I hadn’t given them the skills or strategies to do it successfully. So my first step toward empowering them to drive their learning was to include them in the process of figuring out how to rebuild the positive classroom culture we had lost.

Over the past three years, with experimentation and many conversations, my students and I have worked together to develop a system of learning that values transparency, fairness, collaboration and feedback—and we've got the data to support that it’s improving student engagement.

Building an Effective Feedback System

My quest to resolve issues around student engagement and agency led me to partner with two other educators who were struggling with related problems. After reading “The Power of Feedback,” a research report by John Hattie and Helen Timperley, we concluded that frequent and focused feedback was the key to empowering students to take charge of their learning.

We decided to make some changes, but shifting our practices proved harder than we expected. With anywhere from 50-150 pieces of work to grade at a time, narrative feedback was taking days for each assignment, and half the students were tossing their feedback in the recycling bin without reading it. To ease the burden, we tried peer feedback but found that students were anxious about being honest and unclear on what feedback would be helpful, so they spent their time hunting for misspelled words instead of digging deeper. Part of the issue was that students didn’t know how to give high-quality feedback or what to do when they received it.

Feedback dialogue sample from eighth grader Grace, Image credit: Christine Witcher

In response, we created Floop, a tool that allows teachers to give digital annotated feedback, allows students to respond immediately to the feedback and facilitates a scaffolded and anonymous peer review session. Floop became the foundation for a system that aims to teach feedback literacy skills, make actionable feedback constantly available, and give students the agency to act on their feedback. Here’s how it works for a typical unit:

Engage with the Learning Criteria: We start each unit by mind-mapping the learning targets and posing questions about the unit topic.

Check-In & Reflect Regularly: After each inquiry lab, we complete a Socratic-style group checkout, in which students pose and respond to questions about the skills and concepts we covered, then reflect in digital feedback portfolios—a place where students to keep a record of their feedback, action plans and reflections so they have a record of their journey and not just their destination.

Translate the Rubric: Before any assessment, we work as a class to translate the related rubric into student-friendly terms and evaluate examples of student work.

Give & Get Feedback: After a first draft of any assignment, we complete a scaffolded peer-review session, in which students use Floop to provide feedback and engage in dialogue. Students use peer feedback to quickly revise their work and pose at least one question before I provide in-app feedback. The next day in class, they respond in-app to any questions they received from me or from a peer.

Revise-Reflect-Revise: Students submit their final work and receive detailed narrative feedback, which I provide using another home-grown tool, Flexible Feedback. They self-assess and give themselves a grade, which goes in the gradebook as long as it’s reasonable. If it’s unreasonable, we have a quick conference to sort it out. Students always have the option to resubmit work in response to feedback, and their improved competency is reflected in their summative grade.

Enter, Data Science

The thing about feedback is that it’s not enough to simply give and receive it—you’ve got to analyze it. That’s when data science come into the picture. Students carefully comb through their peer and teacher feedback, color-code and categorize it, look for patterns and make an action plan for how to implement it.

Feedback sample from eighth grader Julia, Image Credit: Christine Witcher

At the end of each unit, students repeat this data-driven reflection to identify their strengths and opportunities to grow. They summarize their achievements and identify the behaviors and strategies that contributed to their success. For example, one of current students, Julia, recently wrote:

"In some of my earlier projects and explanations…my sentences were excessively long and I was including unnecessary and repetitive phrases and sentences. Throughout my explanations and arguments, I have learned how to make my writing more concise and how to organize my thoughts…My feedback from Ms. Witcher helped me because it clarified what I did and didn’t [do] to bring my work to the next level."

At the end of each semester, grade reports come out and I find myself frustrated with that single number that’s supposed to represent the sum total of all learning in my class for each student. It doesn’t give any detail or direction to inform growth, so I supplement that reductive number with a growth summary report, which details performance on each skill and standard, self-assessment scores and progress on content targets, without averaging or summarizing their performance into a single score. Then I ask my students to make meaning of it.

This new feedback system has empowered my students to own their learning and helped me love teaching again. Instead of hearing talk of unfairness and seeing looks of disengagement, my room is now noisy with productive scientific arguments and objective conversations about mistakes and successes. Sure, my students still talk about their grades but their conversations are richer. They've learned how to talk about their progress and use data to talk about their actions and pathways forward.

How Improving Student Feedback and Teaching Data Science Restored Our Classroom Culture published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

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naomitoliman806-blog · 6 years

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Famous people, Music, Movies, And Wit

Scientists believe that intellects are sensitive to the top quality from child care, according to a research that was actually pointed through DOCTOR Sonia Lupien and also her associates coming from the University from Montreal published today in the Process of the National Academy of Sciences. Assisted living home may not be loaded only with elderly individuals which never ever had youngsters; much of those folks exist because of their little ones, which prefer to not have to take care of the everyday care of their growing old parents (or even are actually actually, clinically, or financially unequipped to perform so.) My partner is actually a medical professional that does residence phone call to homebound aged people and retirement home as well as I can easily inform you, a lot of the saddest tales he listens to are from senior citizens who hardly ever if ever learn through their little ones. In addition to fantastic swimming, the kids could go snorkelling, go out on kayaks or paddleboards, play on the seaside waterslides, look into the water splash play ground and you may even have all of them out on a jet ski safari. And frequently when they carry out not listen closely to their moms and dads, this's given that they really feel that their parents likewise do not listen closely to all of them- Spiteful and also hard moved like the remainder people. Alleviate him with club sandwich parenting if he is actually leaving and also not listening.

The post "Parenting Styles Can Impact Youngsters," from the College from Delaware, states kids of uninvolved parents tend to experience additional complications in life, ranging from an absence of mental control to low-grade than ordinary scholastic functionality. This is actually a great time-pass for them in their vacations, when there is no other job to carry out. Since the character from Ben is actually extremely interesting one of the children, therefore that is actually ending up being definitely acknowledged swiftly. I recognize that at times in my lifestyle when I've lost someone close and also have a buddy that still possesses that "unprejudiced" person in her life, I've regularly needed my buddies to recognize that I really did not want them alleviating me any sort of in a different way compared to they typically would certainly (even if they possessed, claim, their mommy alive and also I didn't). Although this is actually beyond the scope of this particular paper, and our company have actually picked not to feature peers or delinquent pals in either from the made a proposal styles, study assists the reputable hyperlink, as a potential social knowing illustration for the strong linkage from childhood years abuse as well as withdrawn habits in young illegal transgressors (Fraser, 1996; Lennings, 1996).

Certainly, some youngsters could consistently require time periods within the 'safe haven.' As the youngster starts to be actually and also accept secure in his safe harbor, stimulation in whatever sensory technique is resulting in the troubles, need to begin to be launched at a really reduced amount, so reduced actually that it is hardly detectable. Such children have actually discovered how to conform to a altered as well as violent or even irregular parent or caregiver through coming to be carefully self-contained (Schofield & Beek, supplement-pills.info 2005) and also are actually frequently called glib, manipulative as well as insincere as they move via youth and also teenage years.Interactional theorists, including Jerome Brunner strongly believe that the CDS (Kid Directed Speech) used through parents 'scaffoldings' a youngster's foreign language achievement as well as supports its advancement, and also offered this system the label from LASS (language Accomplishment Support System), which in fact connects to Chomsky's nativist concept of the LAD.

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acnetreatmentandsolutions · 6 years

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Get Rid Of Acne Scars

The quality acne Scar remedy for Even the hardest Scars

As lots as you’d want to forget about your pimpled past, your face remembers—inside the shape of scars. Whether they’re raised and purple, flat, or depressed, acne scars don’t stand a danger towards these more modern pores and skin-smoothing treatments.

Ice select scars

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simplest history/Shutterstock

Because the name shows, ice select scars are deep holes inside the pores and skin that seem like the skin has been punctured with… an ice pick. While the body produces too little collagen in response to an arm, depressed scars which include ice selections can shape.

“Ice select scars constitute the result of inflamed sebaceous gland openings at the pores and skin. They're commonly the maximum tough to correct,” says NY city plastic physician Gerald Imber, MD.

Acne scar treatment: “treatment might also include excising the scar with a small

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‘punch,’ and suturing the illness closed, but this most straightforward works for isolated ice choose scars,” he says. the big apple city dermatologist Judy Hellman, MD, adds: “We can also do pores and skin grafts and take skin from in the back of the ear to fill the scar, and then we can use a laser or radiofrequency device to smooth it out.”

If there are a couple of ice select scars, zits scar treatment devices that use radiofrequency energy are Dr. Hellman’s first desire. “these remedies assist build collagen from the internal out, and collagen enables to fill the scars from within,” she says. Several remedies are generally wished. The techniques are performed using local anesthesia, and it’s powerful in all skin types, she says. in one observe, published in a 2015 issue of the magazine of Cosmetics,

Dermatological Sciences and programs, Dr. Hellman determined that about four treatments with a radiofrequency device produced properly sized development within the depth of the scars. A comply with-up study in a 2016 trouble of the same magazine showed that these results held for up to two years, although some people had touch-ups.

Boxcar scars

02-boxcar-The-5-sorts-of-zits-Scars-and-How-to-deal

Budimir Jevtic/Shutterstock

Boxcar scars are also depressed, but they tend to be broader and boxier than ice selections. Anybody heals in another way, and depressed scars like boxcars form when too little collagen is produced in the course of wound recuperation.

Acne scar treatment: strength-based skin resurfacing with a laser, radiofrequency, or an ultrasound device can assist treat boxcar scars, consistent with Nada Elbuluk, MD, an assistant professor at the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at my college Langone clinical center in new york town. “all of the paintings by using creating new collagen below the surface of the skin.”

A chain of treatments is probably wanted based totally at the quantity of scarring, she says. Chemical peels also can help but to a lesser extent. With either technique, the usage of a retinoid to boom cell turnover and further improve collagen can assist enhance consequences, Dr. Elbuluk adds. (right here’s what you want to recognize approximately getting a chemical peel.)

There is additionally a role for Bellafill and different injectable fillers, which includes fats, for a few depressed scars. Bellafill is presently the only filler that’s authorized via the U.S. meals and Drug management to help enhance depressed scars. It packs a one- punch via including extent, and also encouraging collagen formation under the floor by developing a supportive scaffold.

“Bellafill and different injectables can fill in scars however those tend to be higher for one scar,” provides new york city facial plastic healthcare professional Jennifer Levine, MD. Filler consequences can last up to 18 months. “when you have a cheek full of depressed scars, it’s higher to resurface the face with the laser, radiofrequency, or another power-based remedy,” she adds.

1 What causes acne Scarring

It’s estimated that acne impacts eighty% of humans among them a long time of eleven and 30. Scarring can be an unsightly aspect impact of breakouts, and however luckily it’s viable to decrease the damage in your pores and skin.

There are sorts of pimples scarring. “Depressed” or “atrophic” scars are the maximum commonplace. This type develops as dents inside the skin in which tissue has been misplaced.

“Keloid” or “hypertrophic” scarring is wherein the pores and skin create new fibers of collagen – the protein that offers skin strength and flexibility. These scars are raised above the pores and skin’s floor and are extra unusual.

2 Get rid of acne scars

This facts approximately pimples scar removal will offer thoughts on the way to help enhance and reduce the advent of acne scars at domestic the use of non-prescription remedies. It'll additionally give an outline of treatments provided with the aid of medical professionals. Always seek advice from a dermatologist, or health practitioner approximately pores and skin care or fitness worries.

3 Forms of Acne Scars

Depressed or atrophic scars fall into the following categories:

Ice select Scars

Those are deep, slim (around 2mm extensive) scars that appear similar to open pores. About sixty-five–70% of atrophic scars are ice select scars.

Rolling Scars

Those are resulting from harm underneath the skin. There are usually more full than four–5mm and lead to shadowing on the pores and skin floor. About 15–25% of atrophic scars are rolling scars.

Boxcar Scars

These are typically spherical scars, just like rolling or bird pox scars. They’re usually more extensive at the floor and regularly compared to craters.

4 How to lessen zits Scars

You won’t be capable of disposing of pimples scars completely, but, you'll be able to help alleviate the advent of acne scars Cream over time definitely at home with some which protect you and clear skin from Scars.

Avoid the sun

The sun’s intense UV rays cause your melanin-producing cells (melanocytes). This will darken your pores and skin and make scars seem greater seen. Wear sunscreen of SPF 15 or better, and reapply frequently. The sun is at its most potent from 11 am to 3 pm, so avoid direct daylight all through these hours.

Moisturize

Your pores and skin desire moisture to heal and enhance its appearance. The top layer of skin on my own – the stratum corneum – can soak up three times its weight in water. If you are afflicted by zits scarring to your body (shoulders and back for instance), moisturize with Vaseline® in-depth Care Deep repair Lotion. It is formulated with vitamins and multi-layer moisture to penetrate deep down and can assist maintain skin hydrated and wholesome-looking.

Cosmetic method

A few procedures are available for pimples scars but, you need to usually talk to a qualified dermatologist approximately the blessings and dangers before committing. Your physician can also suggest:

The satisfactory Exfoliating Pads Neogen Peeling Lemon Pads

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Thank god these are to be had on Amazon top, due to the fact I’m always fearful of going for walks out. They’re the significant factor to use in the morning due to the fact they exfoliate gently, with chemical compounds, and admittedly “wake up” my pores and skin with the aid of making it appearance sparkling and refreshed. Every pad has three layers of glycolic acid, lactic acid, and nutrition C to clean your pores and fade your scars at the same time. Just slip your fingers into the little sleeve and change between facets, with the gauze side for scrubbing and the soft aspect for selecting up particles.

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For me, P50 is a non-negotiable product. It exfoliates your face with acids instead of a harsh scrub, giving you brighter, greater even pores and skin and fading pigmentation tons quicker than a scrub would. I take advantage of it every morning and night time with the aid of applying it onto cotton pads, then pressing and liberating the product onto my face in an upward motion.

There are some dupes out of there that claim to do what P50 does, but trust me, they don’t like paintings. For my part, I like the authentic method, that's the strongest choice. However there’s additionally a special one for hyperpigmentation, P50 PIGM four hundred, that’s made for extra touchy pores and skin.

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The diet C Soko Glam Triple C Lightning Liquid

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pixelstocode · 7 years

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Death to the Table or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grid

In the very beginning, there were no style sheets,…at least, not for authors. This meant that their was very little in the way of changing the look of a web page. Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) was never intended to do more than contain content for a web page.

By the mid 90’s cutting edge web designers were hacking tables to produce some great layouts. This involved slicing images up into little squares that were laid into the tables to create some customization. This allowed for some unexpected positive results, such as: fluid and responsive designs. The industry soon realized that tables should be used as they were originally intended for, tabular data. This required a better solution for creating graphical layouts, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) was the answer.

TL;DR

A brief history of CSS:

In October 1994, Tim Berners-Lee formed the World Wide Web Consortium, (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science. The W3C is made up of members representing all sort of institutions including: government, educational, business and individuals. This organization is responsible for making recommendations which are used to keep the experience consistent across all browsers.

Hakon Wium Lie released the first draft of “Cascading HTML Style Sheets” in October 1994. After 9 separate proposals were presented to the W3C, influenced the creation of CSS. It would become in important to support additional markup languages so, HTML was removed from the name. In late 1995, the W3C set up an Editorial Review Board to make HTML specifications.

In December on 1996 CSS level 1 was released. It supported: font properties, text attributes, alignment of text, tables, images and more, colors of text and backgrounds, spacing of words, letters and lines, margins, borders, padding and positioning, and unique identification and classification of groups of attributes.

W3C released CSS 2 in May of 1998 which added new capabilities including z-index, media types, bidirectional text, absolute, relative and fixed positioning, and support for aural style sheets. By June 2011 that W3C released CSS 2.1, which fixed errors and aligned the capabilities better with browser functions.

With the release of CSS 3, its capabilities were separated into modules. The following modules were released as formal recommendations: color, selectors level 3, namespaces and media queries. This means that future releases of CSS will be released in smaller specifications due to the modularization of CSS 3.

So this all leads to today and how we have come full circle, back to table layouts, without the use of tables. How you ask? Well, allow me to introduce the Grid.

CSS Grid Layout

The CSS Grid layout is a layout method that arranges a web page’s items in two dimensional layout. While others, like Flexbox, arranges layouts in one dimension. This resolves the issue of not being able to achieve both a vertical and horizontal alignment. This is what makes CSS Grid a powerful solution.

Additional Benefits:

Versatile in how layouts can be constructed, being adaptable in varying combinations of rows and columns. They even support nested grids for more complex use cases. No matter your layout requirements, a grid system is almost certainly well suited.

increase in productivity by providing simple and predictable layout scaffolding to HTML design. The structure of a page can be formulated quickly without second guessing its precision or cross-browser compatibility.

Ideal for responsive layouts This is where grid systems reign supreme. They make it incredibly easy to create mobile friendly interfaces that are adaptable to different sized viewports.

Support for CSS Grid is widely supported by most of the major browsers with the exception of IE Edge, which is out dated and supports an older version of the specification according to caniuse.com. Grid has been in development for over 5 years now, though behind a flag. This was done to help prevent a buggy launch like Flexbox had.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Rachel Andrew here, a technology expert and recognized authority of CSS. A GDE (Google Developers Expert). Rachel has a great website and a valuable resource for getting familiar with the grid, Grid by Example.

Defining a grid

In our example we take a look at a 12-column grid layout, which happens to be a very popular layout. Since 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, this makes for a useful layout amongst web designers.

The base markup starts as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html> <body> <div class="wrapper"> <header class="box">Header</header> <nav class="box">Nav</nav> <main class="box">Main Area</main> <footer class="box"></footer> </div> </body>

From here we will create a 2 columns layout for simplicity. Our layout will consist of 3 rows, the first contains the header column. The second row will share 2 columns, the navigation and the main content. Lastly, the column footer will be in the remaining row.

To define a Grid use display:grid or display:inline-grid on the parent element. You can then create a grid using the grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows properties, which are called tracks.

Let’s start by creating some white space on the body and adding a wrapper to expand it so covers the entire viewport, while making it into a grid container. Now we can define our first set of tracks, the rows:

body { margin: 40px; } .wrapper { display: grid; grid-template-rows: 75px auto 50px; }

We will now set up a series of sizes to define the individual rows using grid-template-rows. In our example, we are setting the first row height to 75px and the last one to 50px. The remaining middle row is set to auto which permits the height to adjust as needed to accommodate the grid items.

Our second set of tracks consist of columns. Now let’s make the columns more dynamic. We want the nav and main area to shrink and grow, while always maintaining a minimum width of 150px and also keeping the main area larger than the nav. The class .box is used to create a base of colors and font sizes

.wrapper { display: grid; grid-template-rows: 75px auto 50px; grid-template-columns: minmax(150px, 2fr) 8fr; } .box { background-color: #444; color: #fff; padding: 20px; font-size: 120%; }

The CSS above is setting a minimum and maximum size of that track. The minimum width is 150px, while the maximum width is 2fr. The fr is grid-specific unit that allows distribution of available space to the frid elements. The main area is set to 4 times the width of the navigation column.

I am using the grid-gap property to create a gap between my columns and rows of 10px. This property is a shorthand for grid-column-gap and grid-row-gap so you can set these values individually. All direct children of the parent now become grid items and the auto-placement algorithm lay them out, one in each grid cell. Creating extra rows as needed.

.wrapper { display: grid; grid-template-rows: 75px auto 50px; grid-template-columns: minmax(150px, 2fr) 8fr; grid-gap: 10px; }

The remaining elements only require the using a shorthand syntax declaring the start and end values at once. Values are separated with a / and again it would be valid to omit the / and the end value as we are spanning only one track.

header { grid-column: 1 / 3; } nav { grid-row: 2; grid-column: 1 / 2; } main { grid-row: 2; grid-column: 2 / 3; } footer { grid-column: 1 / 3; }

The header and the footer are both set to start at 1 and end at 3. While the navigaton is set to start at 1 and end at 2. Lastly, the main area is set to start at 2 and end at 3. Below you can see the final layout example.

See the Pen Defining a Grid by Jean-Paul Quiceno (@Japes) on CodePen.

Where to go from here?

We are at an exciting time with the advent of CSS Grid layout. As you can see setting up a responsive layout is the perverbial, piece of cake. Now designers have the ability to create layouts as we did in the 90’s without having to resort to using tables. And it works accross most of the major browsers. Now you can have your cake and eat it too.

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