The saga of the wooden San Jose Schools BATHROOM PASS continues

[krw]

Wait for the class to get over, then skip the next.

[Michael A. Terrell]

By letting them get up and use it quickly without interrupting the class to ask for the pass and the time it took to return it. Some people have medical problems, and the need arises without much warning.

We had five minutes between classes. Then the principal retired. His replacement cut it to three minutes between classes and turned off the bells even though the clock system needed a lot of work. It turned into a real mess when hundreds of kids were sent to the principal's office for being tardy for each class. The teachers used whatever their watch said, and no two were the same.

[krw]

*Exceedingly* few high school students have such problems. There are ways to deal with those few. IOW, a red herring.

Your principal and the entire faculty, in fact, were morons. Maybe they were just ahead of their time. It also must have been a very small high school.

[Michael A. Terrell]

1400

[J Burns]

Now I remember. Starting around 7th grade, my schools did have bathrooms. No tubs, just communal showers. It was compulsory to bathe together twice a week.

[J Burns]

Our school had a Western Union clock system governed by a grandfather clock in the office. Occasionally we'd see classroom clocks jump because the principal was adjusting the grandfather clock.

I believed in punctuality, being neither late nor early. I'd generally reach my desk 10 seconds before the bell. All we had at home was a 3" electric clock on the stove. That couldn't be read precisely, so I relied on my internal clock.

Sometimes on a Monday morning I'd be 10 seconds late instead of 10 seconds early. I couldn't reset my internal clock on the principal's whim, so I'd be 10 seconds late every day. By Friday, teachers would be complaining about my continuing presence in detention. The principal would fix his clock and Monday the school would be back in sync with me.

He could have saved detention teachers a lot of unpleasantness if he'd checked with me or the Naval Observatory before tampering with the grandfather clock.

[Danny D.]

krw wrote, on Fri, 31 Oct 2014 19:00:31 -0400:

San Jose high school classes are an hour and 45 minutes long, which is double your class periods. On Mondays, they're very short. About an hour.

[Stormin Mormon]

That sounds like a lot too long to keep students at a desk. Half hour to 45 mins would make more sense. Need to get up and walk around. I don't think this sounds practical.

- . Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

.

[krw]

That's about the same size as our HS. I can't believe any principal would be so stupid as to believe classrooms could be emptied, people jam halls, all mixing on their way to the next class, and file into the next class in 3 minutes, particularly when the clocks don't work (ours almost always did - Simplex and IBM, same clocks). Add to that the "need" for bathroom passes, and he must have been someone current administrations could look up to.

[Bill]

You can probably see how to use this idea to help estimate the distribution of the population of trees n years from now, if you plant a new one today. Of course, there are "overcrowding" issues, but you may be okay for small values of n. So it is on topic. ; ) Any answers for the question given? I've been working on a related one all afternoon so it is fresh in my mind.

[krw]

+1

An hour is about all one can expect for an attention span. My son had classes that went two hours but they were really a combination of two (English and history, or some the like). They were combined classes with about twice the size, with two teachers. They had plenty of breaks and changes of topics during the classes.

Add in the current ADD "epidemic" and it can't work.

[Bill]

Even an hour is a long time for students to listen to a lecture. One secret to making it work is to include some group activity such as a worksheet, so that the students are not just (not) listening to a lecture.

[krw]

Hmm, perhaps you're not Abe. Et tu Brute? ;-)

[Michael A. Terrell]

He was a liberal loon. You couldn't get from one end of the campus to the other in three minutes, with the crowded hallways. I averaged 4:15 from science class, to electronics, then 4:00 back to the new wing for the next class.

This was an IBM clock system, but parts of it were over 50 years old. The oldest part of the school was built in the 1800s.

[Michael A. Terrell]

That situation didn't last. Everyone was pissed off about it, and I'm sure that the school board heard from a lot of parents over it.

[krw]

Agreed. Unless there is some contribution from everyone, an hour is a lot. At work, meetings generally last an hour, though design reviews can lass all day. There is a lot of participation, though. Neither are "lectures", by any stretch). When suppliers come in for classes, they take 15 minute breaks about every 45 minutes (time to stretch and check emails ;-). OTOH, we aren't required to check out a plunger to go to the rest room, either. In fact, attendance is rarely required.

[Lew Hodgett]

---------------------------------------------------

Basic law of any instruction:

"The mind can absorb what the ass can endure".

Lew

[Danny D.]

Stormin Mormon wrote, on Sat, 01 Nov 2014 08:59:41 -0400:

As a matter of fact, the teacher (who is brand new to teaching) asked me for advice on how to keep the kids *engaged* for the entire hour and forty five minutes.

She, knowing I'm good at googling, asked me to find some math games, and I also gave her a big bag of extra Halloween chocolate I had bought, which she is going to use to "reward" the kids when she catches them being good.

She also knows my strong feeling that math isn't taught correctly, which is a very long story, but the short of it is that math needs to be taught from the practical problem standpoint.

For example, I suggested she think from the perspective of two kids throwing rocks into a lake. What happens, mathematically. Or two kids trying to kick a soccer ball into a net, while clearing the height of the other kids. Things like that might keep the kids engaged, if, I suggested, she *start* a problem that the kids might be interested in, and then, working backwards, she bring in the math, and, in the end, the equation and graphs (and, ug, proofs).

I told her to think of all the math that applies to that problem (or any problem involving two kids trying to figure something out that two kids would want to figure out), and to teach that way. She told me that is a *lot* of work, and I did not disagree.

So, that might take years.

In the meantime, there are always the math games we found, which might help to exercise the kids' bodies, every 30 minutes, for a five-minute game.

[Danny D.]

J Burns wrote, on Sat, 01 Nov 2014 18:11:42 -0400:

I almost never had to go to gym, because I was on sports year round. So, I missed that experience.

However, if you've ever *smelled* the varsity locker room, you'll know the meaning of "gym socks" all too well!

[John Grossbohlin]

Along those lines...

Saw this article in other publications too...