Ok. I have an educational challenge for you. Here are the stipulations of that challenge... and I would like to see if anyone can come up with an ongoing, workable solution to this challenge.
(This challenge is purely theoretical. Any resemblance to actual challenges -- persons, places, or schools -- is purely coincidental.)
Teacher Stipulations:
- You must teach Geometry to a new group of students (or new groups of students) every year for 25 years.
- You must gradually decrease the amount of material you cover over the next 25 years, so that you are covering no more than 40% of the original material. You must do this in such a way that it will still be considered a course on High School Geometry.
- You must cover all of the material in the 180 days of school allotted to you. In those 180 days, your class time can range from 50 minutes to 45 minutes on average, with multiple days in the school year limited to around 15 minutes.
- You may assign the student's practice for the material being covered for when they are not in the classroom, this may be titled "homework." Over the 25 years of time, you must gradually decrease the amount of practice assigned as homework. (By the end of year 20, there will be at most 20% of students who complete any assigned homework. See Population Dynamics for further details.)
- By the end of year 10, you must begin to learn how to use and incorporate new technologies each year. These technologies may or may not remain in use, and could at any point become irrelevant. Upon the demise of any particular technology, any work you have poured into that technology, creating e-learning experiences for your students, will no longer be available, and you will need to learn a new technology.
- By the end of year 15, you will begin to duplicate all student materials into a digital format. These materials must be updated and hosted online for any student to access at any given time. Any work that has not been duplicated and hosted -- as well as posted in an easy to find format, will not be work that the teacher can require the students to complete.
- By the end of year 20, you will be required to regularly create "gamified" versions of all practice materials that were originally considered homework. Eventually there will not be any practice given that doesn't have an element of fun attached to it. Anything that is purely work, though not prohibited, will be frowned upon by all colleagues and will be attributed as a potential cause for any failures.
- You must post all grades in a program that students and parents can access at any given time.
- You may not expect students or parents to be aware of the posted grades, so you must regularly contact both students and parents to update them on the status of their current grades. The contacts must be documented as evidence of parent contacts. Contacts must be attempted via phone calls, e-mails, and text messages. It is the teacher's responsibility to figure out each parent's preference on how and when they are contacted.
- When you begin this challenge, any math instruction may be delivered in the form of direct instruction via lecture and the modeling of examples being worked on in front of an entire class. As the challenge continues, you must employ this method of instruction less each year, until around year 20. Direct instruction, though permitted, will be increasingly frowned upon as backward, unhelpful, and potentially oppressive. You must research and/or create a myriad of methods for delivering content. Limiting delivery methods will not be permitted.
- Around year 15, you must begin to offer additional opportunities for students to demonstrate competency with any unit of material presented. These additional opportunities will begin as simply "second chances" for a few students, but by year 20, you must anticipate that at least 30% of your students will be, not only utilizing these multiple attempts, but planning on them as a regular method of engaging in their classes. Additional attempts will eventually need to fall during regular class time, no student can be expected to offer up additional time outside of class for these additional attempts.
Student Dynamics:
As the student dynamics change, you will not be allotted any additional time to compensate for any missing skills or any added distractions, but must find a way to include all required teaching into the given class time.
- Basic Math Skills: In the first few years of teaching, 99% of all students will already be proficient with basic math skills. Each year this percentage will decrease until there are at most 50% of students proficient with basic math skills. The teacher must compensate for these missing skills by offering additional instruction during class time.
- Basic Math Skills: Additionally, at the beginning of this teaching challenge, no more than 30% of problems may contain fractions or decimals. This percentage must decrease each year until year 20 when no student will be expected to engage with a problem that either contains fractions or decimals or has an answer that would require fractions or decimals to be considered correct.
- Essential Algebra Skills: In the first few years of teaching, 99% of all students will already be proficient with basic math skills. Each year this percentage will decrease until there are at most 10% of students proficient with essential algebra skills. The teacher must compensate for these missing skills by offering additional instruction during class time.
- Student Independence: In the first few years of teaching, 99% of students will be able to work independently of teacher assistance, once a new skill has been demonstrated. This percentage will decrease until there are at most 20% of students who will be able to work independently, without teacher assistance.
- Student Independence: In the first few years of teaching, the 1% of students who will not be able to work independently, will only require additional assistance from the teacher 50% of the time. As that percentage of students gradually increases to 80%, there will also be an increase in the amount of time that those individual students will need individual attention in order to complete any work.
- Student Engagement: In the first few years of teaching, all students will be expected to engage in the lessons, regardless of your presentation style. By year 20, no students will be expected to be engaged, unless your presentation is engaging to that student. You will be expected to determine each student's preferred engagement and "differentiate" all experiences in order to properly engage each student.
- Student Engagement: Starting around the 10th year of teaching, random students will begin to be given electronic devices that can play videos, play music, and the students can play games or contact their friends at any time. Each year, more and more students will be given these devices, until around year 20, 99% of students will have one or more of these devices regularly available.
- Student Responsibility: At the beginning of this educational challenge, the responsibility for student failures will rest on the student and the parent/guardian of that student. Responsibility for this will gradually shift, until year 20 when the student will no longer be held responsible for their failure, unless the teacher has completed every aspect of this challenge to its fullest. The parent / guardian will be relieved of all responsibility by year 25.
The reward for accepting this challenge will be additional paperwork to complete each year, additional conferences to attend, and the opportunity to learn special stylized fist-bumps.
Again... I repeat, this is a purely theoretical challenge, meant to be humorous and silly, not meant to be offensive to anyone, and not meant to make any personal claims by me, the author of this challenge. In fact, my response to this challenge is... Challenge Accepted!
