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tim

wireless generation

Six years as a teacher in a school where every student had a laptop has proven to me that technology has the power to transform education. I like the work you have done in writing and see your company as well positioned to expand and realize the potential of students.

In my classes all students work was online and visible to every other student in the school. Students were writing for each other almost as much as they were writing for their teacher. As writing became part of their identity, their identity expanded to include their take on Macbeth or the style of Steinbeck.

To do that required hacking Mediawiki to be able to inject pages into each students repository. I accessed the API's of Quizlet and Visual Thesaurus scraped the web a little to create resources for my students. I needed tools to create assessments from open response to the multiple choice style of SAT/Accuplacer. On Friday afternoon I would meet with a group of teachers and we would help solve each others problems on Moodle, upgrade our servers, write scripts to help us harness the power of technology. I think the potential in the education sphere is limitless.

My software skills have always been in service of a particular task at hand. As a PhD student in cognitive science the name of the game was building model of how the brain accomplished pattern recognition, memory, vision and motor control. We would run simulations all night long on every available server at Boston University. As a builder I used AutoCad to creat 3d wireframes of the houses I was building and then wrote lisp routines that would create all the building elements, sized, labeled and illustrated.

Perhaps I am not the perfect fit for this position. I ask that you factor in my experience in the classroom and my passion for creating software solutions. Thank you for your consideration.

Timothy McKenna

Edmodo

phone interview on 11/29/11 with Steve Edwards.

Hi Kanika,

I just had a phone interview. Thanks for organizing it. Steve Edwards asked that I forward other sample scripts.

On the phone I referred him to a Github repository of a site that helps small groups organize projects that take s place on a specific date. The link to the repository is: http://github.com:mckennatim/OBsoup The prototype site is at http://soupteam.com. If it still has a bunch of silly soup names it isn't live, you can create an account to see it work.

Steve asked for links to scripts that I wrote and used as a teacher. Here they are:

vocab scripts

The idea here was to identify interesting vocabulary contained in the readings of the class and to give the students some tools that would cause them to stumble upon those words the 7-10 times it takes before new words become part of the way you express yourself. From the teachers perspective the goal was to expand what I could do, save time and shift responsibility to the students.

The workflow is as follows

grab the vocab
using visualthesaurus, you send a chapter or an article in and out comes a wordlist like: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/wordlists/40290 after a few minutes of finetuning. Now I've got the words and the sentence each word showed up in.
get the definitions
this is a scraping operation that goes out on the web and finds definitions and parts of speech and maybe another sample sentence. Then it takes the word definition, context etc. and posts it to various tables and categorizes it by topic unit and course. (http://pathboston.com/assess/vocabgrab/vocabgrab.html stick in the wordlist link and for source type in 'mule' (jquery autocomplete) but you won't see much of anything (code on github))
verify definitions
Here I needed a tool to verify and modify the 10-15% of the definitions that were incorrect for the context. This is also where usage submitted by kids for extra credit shows up. (http://pathboston.com/assess/vocabgrid/uses.html# 'select source articles' gets you a list. Alas this is why I don't use ajax. It only works in browsers of the firefox 6 generation)
use the vocab
Now those words are available in lots of ways. Among them:

City on a Hill

cover letter

City on a Hill Charter School
July 29, 2008

re: Teaching Opportunities



To Whom It May Concern:

I always found young people to be interesting. I coached youth soccer for 15 years in Jamaica Plain and was intrigued by the dynamic between the kids. We had very diverse teams both in skill level and ethnicity. Left alone the skilled kids would just want to show up for the games; they wanted to be in for 80 minutes. The other kids either thought that was OK or very unfair. My job was to make a case why it was important to show for practice and work toward being a team. The trick was to do it without using the threat of benching or guarantees of playing time. The kids needed a strong adult who was reasonable and held values. Then they could play.

I find high school teaching to be similar. If I can make a strong case for what we do each day, students will work. There is as diverse a spectrum of skills in a high school classroom. My job is to help each kid to recognize where they are and where the need to be moving to. It is the best job I have ever had. There is something about getting tuned into a young person's thinking mind. It is fascinating.

Recently I attended and all day workshop by BATEC at Bunker Hill Community College on "Why Johnny Can't Learn". It attempted to address the remedial education problem. I already knew that 70% of BPS, non-exam school students need at least 1 remedial class and that only 20% of students in remedial classes ever graduate from college, but I was surprised to hear that 60% of the resources of Massachusetts community colleges are spent in remedial education. I believe that we can prepare Boston kids to be ready for college level work when they graduate. I gauge my success by how many of my students successfully complete freshman year of college (in one year). My three years of teaching in BPS has reinforced that belief.

Thanks for your consideration.


Sincerely,

Tim McKenna


MATCH

cover letter

Mr Alan Safran
MATCH Charter High School
alan.safran@matchschool.org
July 29, 2008

re: Teachers (Science, Math, English)



Dear Mr. Safran,

I always found young people to be interesting. I coached youth soccer for 15 years in Jamaica Plain and was intrigued by the dynamic between the kids. We had very diverse teams both in skill level and ethnicity. Left alone the skilled kids would just want to show up for the games; they wanted to be in for 80 minutes. The other kids either thought that was OK or very unfair. My job was to make a case why it was important to show for practice and work toward being a team. The trick was to do it without using the threat of benching or guarantees of playing time. The kids needed a strong adult who was reasonable and held values. Then they could play.

I find high school teaching to be similar. If I can make a strong case for what we do each day, students will work. There is as diverse a spectrum of skills in a high school classroom. My job is to help each kid to recognize where they are and where the need to be moving to. It is the best job I have ever had. There is something about getting tuned into a young person's thinking mind. It is fascinating.

Recently I attended and all day workshop by BATEC at Bunker Hill Community College on "Why Johnny Can't Learn". It attempted to address the remedial education problem. I already knew that 70% of BPS, non-exam school students need at least 1 remedial class and that only 20% of students in remedial classes ever graduate from college, but I was surprised to hear that 60% of the resources of Massachusetts community colleges are spent in remedial education. I believe that we can prepare Boston kids to be ready for college level work when they graduate. I gauge my success by how many of my students successfully complete freshman year of college (in one year). My three years of teaching in BPS has reinforced that belief.

I sat in on a conference session with some of your teachers 2 years ago. They were making a compelling case for assessing students frequently, as much as 3-4 times a day. I was impressed by how well the teachers worked together in making their case. I am intrigued at how much the teacher's union hates your school. It's not that I am against empowering teachers. I don't believe we are doing urban kids a service by programs and products imposed by NGO consultants + the free marketeers. We need teachers who share some principles, and are willing to relentlessly question the status quo and test new methods on insights shared, by planning, carrying out and evaluating initiatives as the normal course of business. I am looking to work in a place like that.

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tim McKenna

BPS

applied for all jobs up to 7/29

codman academy

Position:: Humanities teacher, Math teacher
Contact: tbrown@codmanacademy.org


Why are you interested in teaching? More specifically, why are you interested in teaching in an urban high school serving primarily low-income students of color?
Urban high school kids are interesting and intelligent. While most of my students talk the talk on the importance of education, on some level many are skeptical, not sure the system will work for them. For them, being compliant, doing what the teacher says because we know what is good for them, does not really make sense. There is little data that proves they win in that game.

As a teacher, this is an exciting challenge. I feel like I have about ten minutes every day to make a case for what I am doing, for what I want them to do. Sometimes I make a good case, other times are not as good.

Most of my work over the past 3 years has been with seniors. We want our students to be ready to engage, prepared to compete with any kids anywhere. The data on remedial college courses, the lack of financial aid for sub-500 SAT scorers is sobering and instructional. Bridging the gulf, between smart kids and kids able to represent that intelligence in the form that society deems valuable, is a compelling challenge.

The character of my students has been an unforeseen delight. Once you can peel away and see through the defenses it is apparent. We have to get these kids out in the world with some skills. They are attractive, supportive, fair. I want them to be in charge.
Go to the school’s main webpage. Click on “Best Practices”, then on “Curriculum Examples.” Choose “Stairs” or “Justice/Injustice”. What do you think is the most challenging thing about teaching this way? What excites you the most?
Both the stairs and the social justice projects had a strong group component. I believe that there can be synergy in a group though you cannot take for granted that there will be.

Projects have a tendency to get drawn out. I am always running a side calculation in which I list the important skills being gained vs the skills that students should have or have further developed over the year.

Through their research students are taking responsibility for creating their own knowledge. Yet I am always concerned that they have a framework through which to judge their research. What are the compelling ideas that the projects have in common? I believe this shared lens is important and through it I can bring readings that challenge, a shared vocabulary, a precision in language, a literary take on the subject, an historical perspective. I fear leaving them to the New York Times, AP, BBC alone.

Along the way of a project I like to see milestones. I value them as much as or greater than the final show. Did you understand that paragraph, that line? Wasn't that described beautifully? Where is that author coming from? Sure, write a report but make a compelling argument while you are at it. That is a little tricky in a group. I'm not sure that seeing it in the reflection is enough. As we lead our students to draw on their personal narrative as they transition to writing about things outside of themselves, and in doing so, develop an individual voice, how can we structure group work to facilitates that process?

I'm not sure I can separate the stairs project from my experience as a house builder for 30 years. I look at the examples and there are no fractions, the rise is exactly 4" or 8". They might be the only stairs in Boston without a them. I think it is important that young mathematicians develop a precise understanding of language, words, sentences in reading a problem. In putting a problem in words themselves, synapses fire that otherwise would not. This is all good. I like data collection and analysis. The process here however seems too long and drawn out. This then is, to me, the challenge of the stair expedition. I agree that you can boil down most of Algebra 1 as the study of y= mx +b, yet I am not sure that you get facile problem solvers out of long math projects. I know you don't from 800 pages of Glencoe. This is a very interesting problem.

I am excited about the willingness to experiment that I see in these initiatives. I like the way the social justice project has developed over three years. Teachers are empowered and creative. The administration must be good.
How would you describe your approach to classroom discipline? Where do you think you would fall on the spectrum from authoritarian to relaxed?
Where I fall on the spectrum depends on the age of the students and the type of infraction. I do not have any problem with students walking around the room, the lyrics in hip-hop are not necessarily offensive to me. As as student, I was always in trouble. I see acting out students as an leading indicator.

Younger students may need a little more structure than seniors. If 14 year olds didn't think they know everything they need to know I might be worried. If I didn't challenge that notion, I'd be irresponsible.

Discipline is in service of creating a positive classroom environment. It takes a while. I find students to be surprisingly risk-averse. Aside from heightening your attention level, being willing to take risks seems to be the most important precondition to learning. Students will not take risks if they don't trust you or fellow students. I am uncompromising in disciplining students who put down fellow students. I work hard on this. Students who disrupt the ability of fellow students to learn represent another case where I might be considered strict.
How do you envision yourself contributing to the school community (for both students and colleagues)?
I work hard and accept that this is a job that will always require hard work. If the classes I teach are engaging and challenging then I contribute to an academic environment in the school. I like to do my prep at school so that I can open my room to students for extra help, to work on projects, read or just hang out. I will strive to establish working relationships with other teachers. I enjoy developing curriculum and finding the correlation between a teacher's passions and that material. As a humanities teacher I am aware of the power of words, and believe that ELA skills are essential across the curriculum. As a math teacher I see that logic underlies every argument, that precision is at least as important in words as it is in numbers. I believe in teachers. It is essential that we move beyond shared platitudes and develop ways to talk about the minutia of collecting our own data and developing our own specific solutions every day.

humanities teacher

Position:: Humanities Teacher

Status: Full-time (for 2008-2009 school year)

Date Available: August 2008

Contact: tbrown@codmanacademy.org

Description: High School Humanities - an integrated English and History course

Qualifications: Must have a bachelor's degree in American Studies, English or History and/or pass Massachusetts History/English subject matter tests. Seeking candidates who share Codman's mission and Expeditionary Learning philosophy, which focuses on experiential learning and social justice. Successful candidates possess extensive content knowledge, experience working with special needs students, classroom management expertise, and a love for collaborative curriculum development. Successful Urban teaching experience and Master's degree strongly preferred.

math teacher

Position:: Mathematics Teacher

Status: Full-time (for 2008-2009 school year)

Date Available: August 2008

Contact: tbrown@codmanacademy.org

Description: High School Math Teacher

Qualifications: Must have a bachelor's degree with mathematics major and/or secondary certification in mathematics. Seeking candidates who share Codman's mission and Expeditionary Learning philosophy, which focuses on experiential learning and social justice. Successful candidates possess extensive content knowledge, experience working with special needs students, classroom management expertise, and a love for collaborative curriculum development. Successful urban teaching experience and Master's degree strongly preferred.

thanks for the interview

Thank you for considering my application for a job as a teacher at Codman Academy. Should your require any further information or recommendations just let me know.

I thought it was an interesting if very short conversation. I asked the question, what would you like you students to know when they leave Codman Academy. I heard about the importance of being able to work in groups, the value in expeditionary learning and facility with functions.

I wished I had gotten to answer the same question. My answer would be that I would want to see young people who were good problem solvers; who could draw on a limited but powerful set of fundamental relations to solve problems that they have never seen before. I would like to see young people who have worked at becoming quick thinkers, worked at raising their attention level as they meet the world. Finally I would like to see students who have developed as abstract thinkers; who can classify, recognize patterns, move from decoding the words and images to perceiving problems with sufficient confidence that they can sustain themselves through doubt and confusion.

Functions are great and facility with continuous mathematics will give you a solid understanding of analog electronics, Newtonian physics, electricity and magnetism and single particle quantum mechanics. I would like there to be a broader conversation about mathematics in the 21st century. The last day that I used a closed form solution by integration for a differential equation was the last day of my diffeq class. We are a world totally dependent on numerical methods, the important algorithms are no longer function based. As I think of the big unsolved problems in environmental science, alternative energy, cellular biology, bioengineering, genetics and brain science I believe that there should be an ongoing conversation between high school teachers and the broad array of researchers and professors in our wider academic community.

I started off my interview badly on the first question. I would hate that my stated lack of desire to pursue an additional masters is education to be misconstrued as an unwillingness to be a reflective practitioner. I believe reflection is the most important artifact of a lesson besides student work and that it is important that teachers learn to communicate their reflections to each other. I had a bad start in a Northeastern program for certification then masters in special education. I was very interested in research on the students classified along the autistic spectrum, or the behavioral or communications spectrum and hoped to increase my understanding of how the brain works and what would be effective practice. I asked for my money back. After superficially defining the legally protected disability classifications, the courses went on with edu-washed poorly done review versions of important research, and an audacious claim that one jumbo set of strategies would cover all these diverse learners AND the same set was all you needed for economically disadvantaged urban kids. Funny thing was it was the same set of strategies that you get in regular ed master in ed. Though this is very convenient for ed schools, I have come to question this whole content-neutral strategy approach. The one or two classes you take in your "concentration" are neither enlightening nor engaging. I refer to my collected array of strategies on a daily basis. They are in service of ideas and content.

Thanks for your consideration, Tim McKenna

Timothy S. McKenna Parkway Academy of Technology and Health 1205 VFW Parkway Boston, MA 02132 tim@pathboston.com http://pathboston.com/hum (857)498-2574 (mobile) (617)524-0938 (home)

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