Just Plain Bill

 Angle of Repose

Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve been fascinated by what happens when I pile up dirt or sand. I found that no matter how much of the dirt or sand I add, it tends to pile up into a shape of a cone. Whether digging in my back yard (where I wanted to dig to China when I was five) or at the beach (where I loved to dig in the sand and see how high of a pile I could make), it never failed that whatever granular substance I was piling up, there came a point when it would form into this cone.

So, the other day when I had just a little time between the long list of projects I had to finish (and items on my honey-do list), I decided to use the power of the Internet to learn a little about why my sand and dirt piles became cone shaped.

When I looked up the definition of the angle of repose, a term I had heard over the years but hadn’t bothered to find out what it meant, I was fascinated by the definition I read from Wikipedia:

“The term has a related usage in mechanics, where it refers to the maximum angle at which an object can rest on an inclined plane without sliding down. This angle is equal to the arctangent of the coefficient of static friction μ_s between the surfaces….Ranges in degree from 15 degrees (wet clay) to 45 degrees (wet sand)…”

Now that I know the “why” my piles would continue to form a cone, I was wondering to what human phenomenon I could possibly apply this new learning.

Could it be my streak of stubbornness when, in spite of additional facts, I will hold to my initial position, since additional matter will not “matter” as the cone will still result? Or could it be the persistence of finding a creative outcome when, without the benefit of serendipity, I have difficulty accepting the obvious – the cone will always result?!

As I doggedly struggle to see how else I can apply this physical phenomenon to life in general, I find I need to “leave it” for now (a command I give my dog, Abbie, when she finds something on the ground that I don’t want her to eat), and await the blind flash of the obvious that I know will come when I least expect it.

Just Plain Bill

Do you have any lifelong regrets?

Every once in awhile, I remind myself of some regrets, mostly things I didn’t do rather than things I did do. Like the time when I couldn’t decide to get off the 5^th grade bus one stop earlier than my own, so I could accept the invitation from the cute girl sitting next to me to walk her home. (Must have really impacted me as I referred to this regret in a past post.) Or when I couldn’t decide to take the exam for flight school in the Marine Corps. Or when I should have left more space between myself and another contestant in a Duncan Yo-Yo contest on our local theatre stage (our strings got tangled performing the “loop the loop”). Or when I didn’t agree to extend my military duty a year to join the world-renowned drum and bugle corps while stationed in Hawaii. 

Considering all of the above - and more - one of my greatest regrets is related to a choice I made in my 8^th grade typing class. Back when I was in junior high school (here comes one of those “when I was your age” stories), we learned to type on manual typewriters, without any letters or numbers or symbols on the keys. (Liquid Paper, even correction paper, hadn’t been invented yet.)

I did pretty well with the main typing stuff, achieving over 45 words per minute with a minimum of errors, but, when it came to memorizing the location of the numbers and symbols, I didn’t pay attention to which finger was responsible for which number and symbol.  

Looking back over my years of typing (or keyboarding as I’m doing now), I can conservatively estimate that I’ve wasted well over a week or two of cumulative time, as I continue to have to look at the keyboard when it comes to numbers and symbols. What a waste, considering what I could have done with all that lost time.

I know what you’re thinking…that I could still learn the location and fingers for the numbers and symbols. I guess I could, but I have to admit I don’t learn those routine kinds of things quite as easily as I did when I was young. I could lose more time trying to learn them now…

What a shame!

Just Plain Bill

What might be at the “core” of resistance to Common Core

The questions of what school children should be taught and what teachers should be accountable for teaching are once again being hashed out in the public square.

“Wise” from my many years of teaching in public schools, institutions of higher learning, and corporate training and development, I have an opinion that I feel is worth sharing. Although my observation may not be as robust and scientific as all the chatter we’ve been hearing, I believe it belongs in the discussion. 

My opinion focuses on the impractical, extreme time demand put on teachers for creating new learning activities to match new learning objectives. Lessons and methods used year after year by experienced teachers are now obsolete, or soon will be, because they are based on now outdated curriculum standards because of the world in which we live. Think for just a moment of the preschooler tapping and sliding fingers across her tablet. Technology hastened the demise of traditional needs to teach handwriting and math to name just two examples. Tools replacing penmanship and multiplication memorization are literally at a student’s fingertips. 

I clearly remember that the learning activities my children experienced over a 20-year period involved many well-worn exercises (even to a point the copies were barely legible). They reflected little change generation-to-generation, between the youngest and oldest, for completing their public school requirements.

In short, the “core” of resistance to Common Core may be the requirement that teachers stop using exercises and materials they had developed over the years. For many, those lessons represent their best professional efforts and now they are required to spend an enormous amount of time and labor creating new learning activities – time they do not have! It’s a lot of work and I am speaking with the voice of experience. I still invest at least eight hours for every one hour of instruction I produce in the world of corporate training for adult learners.

Not sure how to address this basic “core” of resistance, except to provide ready-made and proven materials to the modern teacher charged with teaching a whole new way, to a whole new set of objectives, in a whole new world. This surely treads on the sacred ground of all good teachers…creating their own customized materials. Perhaps a paid “working sabbatical”, such as a full year of learning activity development just for teachers? It’s part of a solution that may be impossible to even consider, with Common Core mired in politics (e.g. big government vs. state rights) and enforced by financial “incentives”.

Sounds like a conundrum, eh?

Heaps of credit and thanks to my awesome editor, friend,

and fellow educator, Allyn Geer, for enriching my post.

Just Plain Bill

Writing competence = intelligence?

Each semester, I pose the following question to the students in my community college business writing course:

Does your writing competence 

influence how people judge your intelligence?

Over the years, the comments made by my students are somewhat mixed, with a few more disagreeing with the statement than agreeing with it. Regardless, (or “irregardless: as far too many people say), I believe that one’s writing competence precedes any other information that a person may use to judge someone’s intelligence– whether that’s fair or not.

On September 4, 2014, Seth Godin – the world’s most read business and marketing blogger, wrote a blog entitled, Does "stationary" matter?

Seth made the following statement: “I have trouble buying paper and pens at a store that cares so little about competence that they've misspelled the very thing they sell on their sign.”

Question: Does that matter to you?

Answer: It does to me!

I understand that spelling ability or the choice of a word is not necessarily a reflection of a person’s or an organization’s intelligence, but it does reflect the lack of attention to detail, quality, correctness, and even professionalism of a person or organization.

It would be very easy to side with those who feel that spelling ability is not related to intelligence. I had poor writing skills – spelling, punctuation and grammar - for much of my formative years. In college, I failed the upper division writing test and had to attend a “Bonehead English” class to improve my writing skills. Fortunately, my section was taught by an innovative instructor –my favorite professor – who felt the only way to learn to write was to write. We were assigned seven topics each week that required at least 500 words. We then had to correct one classmate’s papers – and this went on for 15 weeks – meeting briefly once a week, with no instruction being given. From that experience (and getting tired of all those “red pen” marking on my papers), I learned to punctuate correctly, use proper grammar, and most importantly, spell the words I liked to use and avoid using those that I had difficulty spelling- opting to find other words, if necessary. (By the way, I passed the upper division writing test at 96%!)

You see, I learned to respect the reader’s intelligence by enhancing my spelling, grammar, and punctuation skills and reducing the possibility of having my intelligence judged solely on the basis of my writing competency. 

What do you think?