Every night, my son watches the same Kanye West collection of interviews which typically means that it’s blasted all over the house at the most annoying of decibals. My son is 15 so of course I took this gesture as a means of annoying every person in the house. This was not a TED talk, afterall, which we tend to associate with "motivation". This was basically a collection of some of Kanye’s craziest interviews that some youtuber put to music, added visuals and uploaded. If you are familiar with the legend that is Kanye West at all, you probably guessed that my son has been entranced by the "non-Kanye created", Kanye’s New Testament. You can read more about it here and here because apparently this was quite the big deal. Last night, our "Kanye rant" ritual, took a different turn. My son asked me to listen to it. He said… "Somewhere between the moments that seem crazy are some really deep thoughts. If you actually take the time to listen, you’ll understand why I like listening to this before I try to do something that may seem hard. Kanye is really a motivating human being. He’s super creative and just wants to create in other ways, outside of music sometimes,  but people don’t want to see him do that. He’s frustrated about it. I like that he decides what he wants to do and he goes for it. He lives on his terms and doesn’t let people’s opinions hold him back. That’s what I hear anyway because I don’t focus on the other stuff. I don’t know what you hear but that’s what I hear." Last night, in typical "tech-mom" fashion, I opened my Video Notes Chrome app and tried to get into the mindset of my son. What I found was that beneath all of the "crazy" that seemed to overtake pretty much every Kanye West interview, were quite a few deep motivational thoughts. So, again, keeping with my "tech-mom" theme, I made a Haiku Deck which interestingly enough, had a nice collection of images fitting each Kanye West motivational thought. In case you’re wondering…NO I have not lost my mind. This was my way of connecting with my son. Maybe he’s on to something.   Kanye West Motivational Thoughts For Creatives - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires 10 Motivational Thoughts for Creatives 1. "I always feel like I can do anything." - This was my son’s favorite statement. He said that this motivates him to continue to push even when he wants to quit sometimes, For the record, I’ve always told him this but I guess it sounds different coming from Kanye. 2. "The main thing that people are controlled by is their perception of themselves." - We all have within us the potential to be great but often times, we hold ourselves back because of our own fears and self doubt. Why do we do this? 3. "Create and make mistakes in front of people." - When you create, nothing is perfect because everything should be a new risk. This is ok. Mistakes are human. We should make these much more and out loud! 4. "Don’t allow yourself to be boxed in to someone else’s idea of who you are." - Be you no matter what…not who others think you should be. 5. "The time is now to be okay to be great. The time is now to be the greatest you." - Greatness is within us all. What are we waiting for? 6. "We’re not always in the position we want to be at. We’re constantly growing, making mistakes and actualizing our dreams." - Growth is about exactly this. We’ll never be exactly where we want to be as long as we are always focused on growing and being better. 7. "I know exactly what I want to do. I know what I’m up against." - Fight for your dreams regardless of what the world has to say 8. "If you ain’t trying to help me then you’re hurting me." - For many young males, this idea haunts me. 9. "The time is now to express & for people to believe in themselves." - Seriously, what are you waiting for? Believe in yourself now and quit waiting on the world to believe in you. 10. "I’m a creative genius and there really is no way to word that. For me to say that I wasn’t a genius…I’d be lying to myself." - No explanation needed

As a connected parent educator, it is tough to remain edu-neutral when it comes to who teaches my kids especially when they are in schools where 0% of the teachers are connected. I have to make this distinction between "connected" and "not" because of the difference gained through deep conversations and access to ideas from a broader perspective. Face it, we are different…we just are. I made the choice two years ago to leave my home town where I started my career but I also made the tough choice to leave my son in this school. Actually, with my insane schedule…it wasn’t really much of a choice. I could not move him and with that realization, came an embedded set of positives and negatives that I will have to face on top of the typical, "parenting a teenage boy" issues. On the positive side, my son has to grow up and make the right choices, which he has honestly struggled with. At 15 years old, he needs this room away from me during the school day. On the other side, I have zero trust that his teachers are there to support his growth. I take that back. His football coaches are for sure. Academically, this one hurts more than anything. I have always been a teacher who taught my students as if they were my own children. It’s tough being on the other side of this when other teachers are not the same. In my mind, this should be a minimal requirement. About those trust issues… The other day, I talked to a teacher in my son’s school who needed to vent about the new mandates that the new superintendent has placed on school staff. I sat on the other end of the phone as this person said that he did not have time for "this foolishness". In case you ‘re wondering…here is what this supt is asking… Teachers meet with subject area teachers to discuss instructional goals, students…etc (PLC) Teachers must call a certain number of parents a week (this is an increase over ZERO) Teachers must integrate technology (Last year, my son used zero technology) Teachers must write actual lesson plans and maybe reflect on them Normally, I am against mandates but to me, these seemed pretty minimal. In my mind, what this superintendent is requiring are things that good teachers already do but in this case, it is rare. I am proud that my hometown has a leader who wants to address the issues but I am sad because when you attach the word "mandate" to anything, it automatically becomes negative…even when it is good. You can’t mandate a relationship though. That takes effort. A Few Small Parent/Auntie Wins My son came home and told me that a varsity football player tried to jump him in Geometry. He also told me that his friends handled it by snitching to the coach and he is fine. I was then told to keep it to myself and NOT intervene. He said that all he kept thinking about was his goal to stay out of trouble and he was more afraid of that than anything. (To be clear…this should not be on our children’s radar of worry. For me, the win was that he confided in me.) He didn’t say not to blog about it though…so there’s that. My nephew came home from school excited because he has a project to do with a team of students for science. He didn’t bring home a worksheet. He had a series of questions about paper airplanes to research. YES!!! It’s only day 3.

The first thing that my son said to me yesterday was… "Hey mom, you got called, "THE Rafranz Davis" by one of my teachers." Oh great! The context of this statement came about because my son wasn’t paying attention in his computer class which meant that he missed the directions. So, of course…the natural response from his teacher was… "Your mom is THE Rafranz Davis, you can do this in your sleep." Or something along those lines… Although I am so against comparing parent to child, I know this teacher and I get the humor in the message that she was trying to convey. I didn’t freak out and get all "preachy" about appropriate teacher response either. (I call this edu-parental growth btw) Instead, I asked my son how that made him feel. I wanted to know what he thought when she said it because he has been compared to me for most of his school life and he gets quite annoyed with it…as he should. My son responded… I wasn’t mad at all. I laughed and then I nodded my head…YES! I mean mom…She called you THE Rafranz Davis. The emphasis of that wasn’t even about me. It was about you so maybe she has respect for you because of what you do. I just smiled back and started paying attention because she was right, I shouldn’t have struggled but it had nothing to do with you being my mom. I shouldn’t have struggled because I know how to use a computer. I mean, all we were doing was clicking. It didn’t even take require thinking. That’s why I wasn’t paying attention. Plus it was a PC and not a Mac. But for real…I wanted to come home and tell you that because I was proud that she mentioned you in a computer class. I always get it in math. This was fun though. We then moved on to the next conversation completely driven by him…discussing a girl, naturally. Long sigh… It was only day 3.   PS: My son is his own person and has his own strengths and weaknesses. He is not me and should not be compared to me on any level. One of these days, people will get that. Today though…smiles and head nods.  

I love spending time talking to my son about his day. I will also say that my life as a technologist is fueled by his opinions on how kids should use technology for learning as well as when they should not. While talking, I handed him my laptop to write his thoughts. Below is his reflection I don’t like the first weeks of school because all the work is too easy. You’re always learning stuff that you already learned from sixth grade and up like lab safety. It doesn’t change but teachers act like it does. It’s terrible to be able to sleep through an entire lesson and then wake up to make a 100 on the assignment. I’m taking Geometry this year and right now we are learning about points, lines and planes. It’s funny because we spend the whole class naming points. It’s not hard but there are always multiple students who don’t get basic stuff. It’s planes though!! The question said, "What points are on this plane?" The points are right there and people still ask what it means. Maybe I’m just highly intellectual. I’m probably wrong but it is frustrating. I have a project this week to name shapes using power point. I’m probably not going to do a power point because it sounds basic. I’ll do a video instead and somehow I’ll make it more interesting. In history, I’ve been taking notes all class period. We have to take Cornell notes and we get a grade from them. I’m not even in AVID but I have to do it. I just realized that I’m going to have to study my notes because we’re probably going to have a quiz. A good teacher would do that I think. In English, we’ve been reading and writing essays. We’re reading a book called The Monkey’s Paw. I actually read the whole thing because I love reading and putting my emotions into the story. One more thing, I wanted to be in theater but they put me in sports marketing. Hopefully I can change this because I really do like to act and perform in front of people. It fuels my heart to bring joy to others from the stage.  

Every night Braeden will be required to write his multiplication facts three times each and since this is a strategy that has been repeated without question over the years, many will swear by its perceived effectiveness. Before presenting an opinion, let me remind you of a time long ago when teachers used "discipline sentences" to punish kids for things like talking in class. I remember writing "I will not talk in class" 100 time and I did it by writing all of the "I’s" followed by the "wills" and so on. We called this "columnizing" because we didn’t write whole sentences but columns of repeated words. To be clear, it didn’t work to keep me from talking then and it’s not the best practice for math now. Today, while Braeden was working, I heard him say, "Should I stop when I get to 33 or 36?" I glanced at Braeden’s paper and saw that he was "columnizing" his repeated facts and in doing so, he skipped a number and made a mistake which threw off his pattern. He knew that something was off but again, he wasn’t connecting to the facts themselves but to the pattern that he knew he should have had. Braeden’s method of fact writing was for no other purpose than to finish the task. It wasn’t about learning the facts. It was completely about getting through the assignment in the fastest possible way. This method is not teaching the memorization of the facts themselves but the practice of writing numbers and patterning which may sound appealing except that to "remember" facts, one must first write down the pattern. Some teachers may argue that parents should monitor their children and make sure that they are not recording facts in this way but instead, writing the entire problem before going to the next. I actually did that with Braeden and as he was writing, he was also singing his math facts…turning them into his own little song. Again, I am not advocating for writing in this way either but the song that Braeden made was quite joyous and memorable. If the intent is that students learn math facts, then the follow through to that should be that the practice of learning them should be up to the student. Braeden said… "I would have rather made my own flash cards. I could have also made a few patterns on each one to show the multiplication. I would have loved to do that instead of writing these over and over. My hand hurts. I’m tired. Can I play minecraft now?" Bonus Braeden Minecraft Challenge: Create a structure in minecraft utilizing various representations of this weeks facts up to 12 from the perspective of area. Don’t forget to include signage for each one.

About a week ago, my son was assigned a geometry vocabulary project that required him to choose 30 words from a list and visually represent them. The instructions were as follows… "You are to find these images in the real world. You can personally take pictures, find them on the internet, or find the items in a magazine. You must manually or electronically mark the picture so that I can identify the geometric term in the picture. You will organize these items to present to me in some manner such as gluing the pictures to posterboard, create a "book" of the symbols, or you can do it digitally and burn it to a CD or email them. However, just copied images won’t do, put them in a power point or Prezi presentation. Be Creative!" My son, the same kid who said in his blog post that he was not going to "do a basic ppt", fixed his mouth to ask me to head to the store at 11pm for glue and poster board. That was not an option on any level! Instead, I handed him my ipad and showed him how to use Haiku Deck which enabled him to use its internal image search to connect his terms. While this project may seem pretty basic for a high school sophomore, I was pleased to see him not only do it…but do it excitedly. To him, Haiku Deck was new. It was also super simple and to use. My Haiku Deck Pro-Tip for math vocabulary: Each of my son’s slides had exactly one term. When searching, I taught him to think of a real world object that may have characteristics of the geometric term, and search for that object instead of the word. There were a few words that my son did not know and I knew immediately because the image did not match which meant that we were able to discuss and make better connections. Of course, a project such as this had its "issues". We do not own flash drives anymore…so a CD was out of the question. My son exported his Haiku Deck to Keynote, added a few diagrams where needed and then uploaded each keynote image into Animoto which is an auto video creation tool…very old school. However, it was new to him and will probably be extremely new to his teacher. To turn it in, I shared one more tip with my son…a bit of an homage to him wanting me to buy a poster board. I showed him Tackk.com a digital storytelling/poster tool and encouraged him to create an account which could house his slideshow, and video. You’ll have to click the image below to view it! You can also check out his animoto video below!

If you have children in school, logging in to the online grading system is a necessity. Many of them even have alert settings and getting those alerts is critical to you supporting your child. This is especially important for high school students. In a perfect world, my son would tell me every little detail of his life and for the most part, he does. However, when it comes to grades…my son often holds back and understandably so. I am his mother but I am also a teacher and it is sometimes difficult to turn the "super critical edu" part of me off. I am working on it though. Today I saw that my son had a zero in a class because he didn’t turn in a student information sheet that I know I signed. A part of me was annoyed with him for not turning it in and the other part of me was annoyed with his teacher for assigning a grade to an information sheet. So, I emailed her to inquire about the purpose in doing that. Why would his grade be reflective of my signature in lieu of his work? Long sigh… She replied and after a short discussion followed by the exchange of a digitally signed signature sheet, I realized that sometimes I have to choose my battles. During this exchange, I actually shifted focus to building the relationship with my son’s teacher. My son’s success depends on it. One more thing… After inquiring about grades in another class, my son’s teacher checked and found that he made a mistake in not giving him credit for something that he did. This too, was due to a few exchanges of building the relationship. If you are thinking that these are things that my son could’ve done himself, you are partially correct. The reality of being a black teen in a largely non-diverse environment is that student led advocacy is often misinterpreted as insubordination. My visibility and involvement means that maybe he has a chance to navigate a few more of these waters by himself…with me watching from the distance.

Yesterday after school, I was meeting with a group of 3rd grade teachers about how they could make use of the ipads in their classroom. While we were meeting, the most perfect interruption occurred that completely changed the entire conversation. Trust me…I could not have planned it better than this. As teachers were wondering about the mechanics of teaching kids how to use the technology and every barrier possible, another teacher walked in panicking over changes that kindergarteners made to her classroom devices. After examining the "odd black" ipads and showing her how her 5 year olds went into the accessibility option and "inverted colors" (on multiple devices because it was fun), the teachers that I was working with…the ones who feared the uncertainty of technology, looked at me and said… "Well, that answers that question. If 5 year olds could figure that out and go change other devices like that, our 3rd graders can do this too. We can’t hold back. We need to just do it. Our kids are ready." With the words of Whitney Houston silently playing in my head…"There comes a point when you exhale"…This was mine! Most Kids Figure it Out I have a 10 month old nephew and on occasion, I hand him my ipad. He doesn’t know what to do but he knows that when he touches certain things, the device responds. He gets excited and repeats it over and over and over until he remembers which touch produces the response that he loved. He then repeats. Kids are naturally fearless…especially little ones. When you are working with teachers who are hesitant because they feel that kids "can’t", you have to push back on that and remind them of the babies that figure it out. They always do. Truthfully…a teacher’s hesitation isn’t really about the kids figuring it out, it’s about that teacher. We (teachers) hold kids back with our own fears and we have to stop doing that. I may not be the expert of a tool or concept but I would not keep a kid from investigating and when they figure it out, let them show you. Let them share how it works and why. Those 5 year olds that inverted those ipads are my heroes because what they did in figuring out how to "disrupt the norm" is make "jumping right in" okay to some pretty fearful teachers. Now we can have discussions about creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication. Now we can talk about how to use technology in a way that enhances learning…when applicable. In the words of my friend and colleague Kristy Vincent (@bigpurplehat), "You are more than welcome to remain in the technological cave but you are not allowed to keep kids in there with you" Let them go…Let them go…Can’t hold them back anymore… (You’re welcome)

The other night, my son brought home a geometry assignment on midpoints that he needed to complete. I recognized the assignment right away because it was a simple worksheet from the "binder", a collection of district purchased worksheets from 2003. (Imagine eye rolls and a sea of long sighs…Yep!) As ridiculously bad and basic as this worksheet was, my son had not turned it in because he did not understand how to do the work. Yes, he lives with a math teaching momma, but he’s still not a fan of being tutored by his mom. I get it. (Again…eye rolls…long sighs) With that said, he is lucky and here is how our "homework help" played out. His first few problems were simple number lines and after talking about the meaning of a midpoint, he eventually figured out that he could combine points and divide by two. Things changed a bit when he got to coordinates. Me: What don’t you get? Son: Well, it has two points. What does that have to do with the number line up top? How am I supposed to graph that? Me: How would you prefer to graph them? Son: Probably on a coordinate grid. Me: Well, you don’t have one. So what’s your plan? Son: (freehand draws) Wait, it’s a horizontal line. So, it’s just (-1,4) (Does next one and sees another horizontal line and says oh, it’s (0,-4)) Son: Cool, I get this part Me: Wait just a sec. Let’s explore those a bit more. What would you do if the line wasn’t horizontal? What if you had coordinates that weren’t so simple to graph? How would you find it? Son: She gave us a formula to use. (searches mounds of crumbled paper for notes) [eye rolls...long sighs] Me: Let’s explore   This is the point where I opened the Geogebra Chrome app and placed a point that we renamed M. I then told him to place two other points anywhere on the coordinate grid. Next, I told him that Point M was his midpoint and his job was to move point M to be the midpoint of the two other points that he placed. Me: What do you notice about point M in relation to the other points? Son:Well, it looks like it’s still halfway. Me: Hmmm…What do you mean by that? Son: Well, look at the point (0,9) and point M. They’s like opposite corners of a rectangle that’s 4×2. (I showed him the segment tool and he outlined the lines) Look at the point at (4,1) and point M. It’s the same. Both are 4×2. Wait, the whole thing is 8×4 and the midpoint is at 4×2. Does that work every time? (Son knows the drill and proceeds to check several different points. He grins and says…wow) Me: Let’s go back to your original problem. Where was your midpoint? Son: Well, it’s at (2,5). [stares at the page a bit] (0+4)/2 = 2 and (9+1)/2 = 5 Son Screams: Oh my gosh…Does that happen every single time? Me: You know the drill Son: (Places points at several locations…followed by calculations) Why didn’t we do this in class? All you do is Add x’s and then divide by 2. You do the same with the Y’s. It’s like finding the average of the points. Me: What about the next part? This time, you are given a midpoint and asked to find the other endpoint. To be continued…  

The other day I published a conversation, a tutoring session, between myself and my son. It was a painful reminder of a problem that is so systemic in math classrooms that students, like my son, are suffering on a day to day basis. It’s called 100% lecture and zero inquiry. The problem with this method is that lecture does not reach every student. It reaches some…the ones that can see the problem happen visually as they hear it. My son is not that kid. He needs to manipulate, ask questions, manipulate more and ask more questions. Sometimes he needs questions asked of him because there are moments that he still does not see. When we ignore the necessities of "the hands on learner", we are sending this message… You do not matter and you need to learn it as I taught it. If not, that’s on you. Dear "lecture only up-front-information giving math teacher", please reconsider your methods for the good of the mathematically thinking universe! The fact of the matter is that if kids are not actively pursuing the what, why, when, where and HOW of math, there is a greater chance that they are not learning. Regurgitating a given formula isn’t learning. Knowing how to do a problem is one thing. Understanding why you do it and why it works is another. There is a difference. Tutoring My Son…Continued When I left off my last post about my son’s pursuit of finding the midpoint between two points, he was at a place where he understood not only the meaning but also how to manipulate the equations. However, when he was presented with a problem where he was given the midpoint and told to find the other point, he was a bit stumped again. Son: Ok, so this is different. Me: What makes this different? Son: I am given the midpoint and I need to find the other point, like it says.(pure sarcasm) Me: Alright smarty, what does this mean to you? Son: Well, it’s like if Ferris (TX) were the midpoint and Ennis (TX) was the other point, I need to find what’s on the other side of that which might be Dallas (TX) Me: Oh?? Son: Well it makes sense. Me: So, how would you go about doing that? Son: Can I use the points that we used before because the pattern should be the same here too, right? (Goes to Geogebra to test) Son: Wait, I’ve already worked out this problem. (Somehow he chose this series of points last time) Me: How can you use graphing as you pursue these answers? Do you feel like you understand? If so, are you ready to look at how the formula works? Son: Mom, when we are at home, can you use "home language" and not "School language"? You sound like a teacher. (insert 5 minutes of off task comedic banter) My son continued with physically placing midpoints and one endpoint on his geogebra board in order to play around and make sure that he understood. Algebraically, he could easily plug points into the formula and find the other point but on occasion, he made mistakes. What he found was that if he "free handed" a graph and points, he could estimate where his answer should be and this gave him a way to check himself. I must also point out that our formulas can’t always be their formulas if students find a better way. My son’s way of doing it… "I feel like this is working backwards. I already have my midpoint so since I added and then divided by 2 to get it, I can work backwards to find either point. If I take my midpoint and double it, you know….multiply by 2, I can then subtract the given point and I will get the other point every time. See….try it, I bet it works. Or better yet, in your "teacher language", find a time when it doesn’t work." "I bet you can’t" The student becomes the teacher. That should be our goal…always.