Tag: Trisha

Let the teachers use tried, tested, highly successful methods to teach math (and other important stuff)

On Friday, May 8, 2015

Trisha's teaching award I talk with my cousin and favorite government school teacher, Trisha, regularly on the subject of pedagogy and traditional school politics. There is always drama and it is always interesting. Her current school leadership makes her situation way more interesting than it should be. It sounds like the school board is on top of it and is in the process of fixing some pretty serious stuff, but it takes way longer than it should and the kids and classroom teachers are the ones who suffer. Much emotional and bureaucratic effort is unnecessarily wasted on this drama that takes time from the teaching of the kids.

At any rate, Trisha got a highly deserved teaching award the other day (see the cool picture of the apple trophy). Her students regularly outperform their peers on standardized tests. Part of this is a result of Trisha’s hard work to find appropriate methods for each particular student and situation. She really knows how to teach the kids. Her biggest challenge in doing her job is the demands placed on her by government regulation, school management and by disruptive students in the classroom. It is interesting that the school board appears to be very much on her side, but through no fault of their own–again because of government restrictions–have to move at a glacial pace to fix bad stuff.

This was all in my mind when I read about a letter to the editor written by a parent in Seattle that was linked on the Sonlight blog. The author of the letter really nailed it with something that, in our experience, is very true. Schools have successfully taught math in some parts of the world for many years. The idea is to find the methods that work so well in these places and use them. That is precisely what we tried to do in our homeschool with some level of success, especially in Math. Here is the well stated salient point from the letter:

Math has been taught to children at least since ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt, and those kids grew up to use their mathematical skills to build the Parthenon, aqueducts and pyramids, which are still standing. The math taught in K-12 hasn’t really changed much since Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton invented calculus in the 1600s, so one would think that educators have had enough time to figure out how to teach it.

How about if educators stop experimenting with our kids, adopt whatever approach the Finnish or Singapore schools use, and get on with it?

Betty Blonde #317 – 10/02/2009

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My favorite government school teacher’s blog

By Dad

On Thursday, May 2, 2013

In Blogging, Education

Thanks for nothing! My cousin, Trisha, teaches at a school with somewhere in the range of 30-40 students in the (very) small town of Austin, Nevada. She writes an absolutely fascinating blog called RollCallTales about a school that is so small, the principal works at another school over two hours away and all the teachers teach multiple grades. I think Trisha’s oldest students are in third grade. Austin is a ranch community so her students live a long way from town, only go to school four long days per week because many of them travel a long way to get there. These are kids who know a lot about rural life in a cowboy culture. Trisha has unique challenges and chronicles them in an engaging manner. It is one of my first stops in the blogosphere every day.

Trisha is a teacher because she loves to teach. She is not one of those teachers who believes all teachers are underpaid although she, like the rest of us, would like to earn more money. She is one of those teachers who is not in it for the money. She recently turned down an offer for a job with significantly better pay in a town where she could actually buy groceries without making a three hour drive. She did not turn it down because she loves being so isolated although I do not think that bothers her so much. Nor did she turn it down because of the stellar staff at the school or in the district (they might actually be stellar, but that is not the point). She turned it down because of the kids. This post on her blog about the state tests her kids must take exemplifies her passion for her work.

Trisha loves to write, has an eye for all things quirky, and loves to record interesting anecdotes, events, and images that describe the human condition. She has a hilarious story of riding in the car with two little girls in the second or third grade from her class on the way to a field trip to a museum. One of the little barrel-rider cowgirls used her horsey plush toy as a prop to explain to the other little girl how to preg-test a mare. The picture that accompanies this post is one she put up of a message the janitor left in her classroom one evening when the whiteboard had no writing on it. Her writing is interesting day in and day out.

Trisha currently lives above the town saloon that is only open for a few weeks per year when people flood into the town for an annual festival. She lives in an amazingly picturesque place that most of us would love to visit but that requires people with robust spirits to inhabit all year long.

I HIGHLY recommend you make her blog a daily stop.

No dueling teachers in Nevada?

By Dad

On Monday, October 24, 2011

In General

My cousin Trisha who teaches at a VERY small school in Nevada, several hours from a grocery store, pointed out a law about how teachers in her state have to swear they have never been a principle or second in a duel. I think that is pretty limiting, especially in places as civilized as Austin, Nevada. She needs to write about it on her blog rather than just post it on Facebook. For a good read, I recommend her whole blog. There is an especially good story about how there are no air compressors at the gas stations in Austin so it puts a real crimp in your style when you have two flat tires.