2020: One Day At A Time, We Will Achieve!!
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That was a really nice obituary for your dad. Sounds like he had a really full life. I’m guessing you got your math skills from your dad. I had math phobia all my life. I took algebra and geometry in high school in high school and a required statistics class in college. I never took another math class after that. I put off taking the GRE for several years because I was nervous about math section. I finally got a study guide and did what I could to prepare. I got a decent score and got into grad school. My skills definitely lie in the verbal field. Lucky I became a librarian and not any careers in the math field. I did have to do the budget every year so my life wasn’t math free. The statistics came in handy when I had to do reports so math managed to sneak into my work life.Apparently someone wrote an obituary on dad.
https://gettysburgconnection.org/obituary-richard-n-allison/
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Math was never my strong suit either. In high school I took algebra I and II and geometry, then it was several years later that I started college and had to take college algebra. The school required students to take a placement test before you could enroll in any math courses and when I took it I placed at the top of the B level for remedial math. It was suggested that I check out an algebra textbook and brush up some and then retake the test so I could move up to the next level and thus only have to take 1 remedial course before getting into algebra. I spent a weekend reviewing algebra, retook the test, and was able to skip any of the remedial classes, which was both a blessing and a curse. I made it through the class and was grateful to get a B in it it. Then my advisor told me I needed to take trigonometry. That class almost led to a divorce. I truly struggled with it. I would spend hours trying to do my homework and finally ask DH for help. He would come over, look at the problem I was stuck on and say “oh, that’s easy. You just do blah, blah, blah.” Not what I wanted to hear at that point, lol. I think I managed a B in that class as well, by the skin of my teeth. When I transferred to the university, the first thing my new advisor said was “Why did you take trigonometry? You don’t need it for your major.”
I did need an undergraduate level statistics class that I struggled to get through. It was a very large class and the instructor gave true/false, multiple choice tests. There were only 2 tests, a midterm and a final, plus quite a few extra credit opportunities. I did every extra credit that was offered because I had scored a low C on the midterm. I truly did study and worked hard, but I just didn’t understand the material. When I took the final exam, I knew the answers to about 10 out of 50 questions. For the rest, I just worked out pretty patterns on my Scantron answer form because I literally had no clue how to answer them. I sweated for 2 days then finally went to the professor’s office to find out my fate. I will never forget how nervous I was sitting there waiting for him to find my grade. He said “You really surprised me. You got the highest score in the class on the test!” I mumbled something along the lines that I had really studied hard and hightailed it out of his office before he figured out that I had no idea how to calculate anything more complicated than a mean, mode, or average. I ended up with a B in the class and was thrilled to get it, lol!
I was not as lucky with my graduate level statistics class. My instructor there required us to show our work and did not ever give true/false or multiple choice tests. However, it was a small class and he was a very good instructor, so I did finally learn a little bit about statistics. I passed his class with a B as well on my first try. One of my classmates was taking the class for the third time, so I was happy to take that B. When it came time to calculate the statistics in my thesis, I paid someone to do it for me and coach me on how I arrived at those numbers for my thesis defense. It was well worth it for me. I doubt I would have ever completed my masters degree without that assist.0 -
That was a really nice obituary for your dad. Sounds like he had a really full life. I’m guessing you got your math skills from your dad. I had math phobia all my life. I took algebra and geometry in high school in high school and a required statistics class in college. I never took another math class after that. I put off taking the GRE for several years because I was nervous about math section. I finally got a study guide and did what I could to prepare. I got a decent score and got into grad school. My skills definitely lie in the verbal field. Lucky I became a librarian and not any careers in the math field. I did have to do the budget every year so my life wasn’t math free. The statistics came in handy when I had to do reports so math managed to sneak into my work life.Apparently someone wrote an obituary on dad.
https://gettysburgconnection.org/obituary-richard-n-allison/
I originally wanted to be a librarian. I wanted nothing to do with math or science or anything dad did. When I went to Pitt I intended to major in Spanish and go to graduate school in library science. In high school I took two years of Spanish. Our teacher's only credentials were being born in Puerto Rico. In 2 years we got through part of the first year book.
At Pitt I was put into Spanish 2, worked hard, got an A and was immediately put into Spanish 4. They handed me a novel written in Spanish and it finally dawned on me these people thought I knew WAY more than what I did. I thought about it awhile, changed my major to math and never looked back.
It always did seem to me that us math folks had an unfair advantage in all those standardized tests.0 -
Pam - that's a shame that you had to go through all that struggle with math but you figured out how to get through it - kudos!!!!!0
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Math? I always did well in it and also tutored some in statistics in grad school. I look back at all that math I took and realize that I had little need of calculus, etc. in adult life. It and other advanced math classes were good at exercising the mind.
I am on a two week break. First, it is normal for us to have Thanksgiving week off out of the school calendar as it is also deer season starting today. The governor then ordered all schools closed the first three days back after Thanksgiving to give time for virus issues related to it to surface. That only left two days for us so the days were converted to at home and virtual instruction.
I tested negative on the Covid tests. I got the results yesterday. I took it as part of the free testing.0 -
Jean - enjoy your break! Good news on the testing front!
Somebody said something to me about something being 'low risk'. My response to that is if it doesn't need to be done, unless it's zero risk I'm not doing it. With any luck this isn't going to go on forever. I personally see no reason to take any risk to do something that doesn't need to be done. I'm even weighing doctor visits individually to determine which ones can't be postponed.
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I noticed that whoever wrote the obituary (I'm still guessing dad) didn't include his middle name, just "N". His middle name was Norwood. I asked him once where that came from. He didn't know; had never been curious enough to ask. His late brother Robert's middle name was "Ellsworth". I just can't imagine being that incurious to not ask about your middle name. I was named for my mother's piano teacher's daughter. Weird, but at least I know. So far my ancestry.com work (which admittedly has been at a dead stop) has turned up no Norwood or Ellsworth.
Strange factoid: at least three men named Richard Allison have died in this country since July. There are a TON of Richard and Robert Allisons.0 -
For the last four years the White House has not had the slobbery, shedding, panting presence of a dog that it so often has. Until the Trump administration, the last time the White House didn't have a resident dog was during William McKinley's presidency from 1897 to 1901. And despite the fact that keeping dogs didn't start to become a true national pastime until 100 years after the beginning of the republic, two-thirds of all presidents have shared the storied hallways with a recent descendant of the gray wolf. And nearly every president since George Washington has had a presidential pet of some sort -- including a ram, a cow, a badger, raccoons, and a couple parakeets.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/22/opinions/biden-dogs-white-house-horowitz/index.html0 -
Jean, are you involved in any of the virtual teaching or just in person classes? I could have benefited by math tutoring. That wasn’t something my family would have even realized was out there. I was one of 5 kids and financially, things were tight. I remember being in second grade and the class was adding up columns of numbers. The pace was fairly fast and the class was already a few problems ahead of me. I remember I was stressed and frustrated. I decided then I just couldn’t do math. And what about those problems about 2 trains leaving the stations at different times and at different speeds. I never understood those at all. One positive thing that happened about math was a talk I went to at a conference. I’ve forgotten the author’s name but her book was something like I Can’t Do Math. I was familiar with her other works. Her point was just because you couldn’t do something as a 10 year old doesn’t mean you can’t do it as an adult. She used examples of math in everyday life that we do without calling it math. We follow recipes, balance checkbooks, measure and cut things. That made me feel better and reduced my stress. I realized I was using math in my life without realizing it. With the emphasis on STEM education, maybe students are getting better math instruction and feeling successful. Math and science are where the good jobs will come from. I also realized I had some teachers who weren’t good at explaining math concepts. I failed algebra in 8th grade. My high school required algebra as freshman math. I got a B. I didn’t get smarter over the summer. I just had a teacher explaining concepts in a way that made sense.
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The teacher can make all the difference in the world. Seventh and eighth grade math curricula are weird. If you're smart, there's almost nothing in the curriculum you don't already know. But OTOH I had some kids who'd never even learned to subtract. We had big classes but I tried to provide enrichment for the kids who could have skipped right to algebra and also remedial tutoring to the kids at the bottom while keeping the middle on track. It wasn't easy (or terribly appreciated). The one good thing about being a math teacher is the reading is minimal so the kids who can't read (and there were a LOT of them) tended to be much better behaved in math class because they weren't as lost.
But on the whole, I'd have been much better off as a college professor than as a junior high teacher.0 -
Helene--Subs are only needed when a teacher of an in-school class is not available. I subbed all week in a class in which the teacher was on quarantine because of being named a contact. I just supervised the classes while she taught from home. We no longer will have snow days with school cancelled because the teacher can conduct class from home. The students always keep their laptops with them.0
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I totally agree that the teacher makes all the difference, especially in math. Unfortunately, my high school math classes were all taught by football coaches and I had football players in my classes who were very skilled at getting the teacher off track and talking about football instead of algebra or geometry. Consequently, I struggled. I had never had any issues in math until then. I started college classes at age 29, so there was a lengthy gap between my last math class and college algebra, but I had a really great teacher and got a B in the class. My trig teacher was also very good, but he had Parkinson’s Disease, which made it very difficult for him to write on the blackboard. Unless you sat in the front row, it was really hard to see what he wrote on it. We didn’t have assigned seats and my prior class was all the way across campus, so I didn’t always get there in time to claim one of the front row seats, so that contributed to my difficulties in understanding the material. Being an engineer, DH excels in trigonometry, but I have to say he’s a lousy teacher, lol. I’m not joking when I say him trying to help me with my homework almost led to a divorce. We were newlyweds at that point, and luckily I was too stubborn to throw in the towel on the marriage or trig, but it was close!0
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Helene--Subs are only needed when a teacher of an in-school class is not available. I subbed all week in a class in which the teacher was on quarantine because of being named a contact. I just supervised the classes while she taught from home. We no longer will have snow days with school cancelled because the teacher can conduct class from home. The students always keep their laptops with them.
NO SNOW DAYS????? I'm not sure who would be more upset about that, teachers or students.0 -
I can remember one time coaching my sister and sending her downstairs to pretend interest in something and ask a question. From upstairs, I could hear Dad say "tell MA to do her own homework!" LOL!0
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My dad coached basketball and baseball but he was a teacher first and coach second.0
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Pam, I can sympathize with you having your DH try to teach you math. My dad tried to teach me to parallel park for my driving test when I was sixteen. His method was to yell right, right, left, left as I attempted parking. I’d end up crying and still couldn’t park the car. A friend of his offered to help. One session with him and I could do it. Since I never park on the street anymore, I’m hopeless at it now. I probably do more of our driving than DH. If I have to park on the street or back down a long driveway, I make him do it for me. We have a circular driveway and most of my parking is in parking lots. The FL driveway is wide enough for me to make a K turn and drive out forward0
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Pam, I can sympathize with you having your DH try to teach you math. My dad tried to teach me to parallel park for my driving test when I was sixteen. His method was to yell right, right, left, left as I attempted parking. I’d end up crying and still couldn’t park the car. A friend of his offered to help. One session with him and I could do it. Since I never park on the street anymore, I’m hopeless at it now. I probably do more of our driving than DH. If I have to park on the street or back down a long driveway, I make him do it for me. We have a circular driveway and most of my parking is in parking lots. The FL driveway is wide enough for me to make a K turn and drive out forward
I've never parallel parked once in my life. Ever.
My dad tried to teach me to drive. Too much yelling; not enough instruction. I ended up waiting until I could take driver's ed.
I wonder if high schools still have driver's ed.0 -
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