Charles Colson wrote, “Holiness doesn’t stop with our own condition, but carries over into actions that affect the world around us.
His concern was that, evidently, the preacher wanted to give the impression that preachers are used to the dark, but, actually, he was accommodating himself to the dungeon of this age.
“We are tempted to leave our noontide lights behind in our study, and to move among men with a dark lantern which we can manipulate to suit our company.
We pay the tribute of smiles to the low business standard. We pay tribute of laughter to the fashionable jest. We pay the tribute of easy tolerance to ambiguous pleasures. We soften everything to a comfortable acquiescence. We seek to be all things to all men to please all. We run with the hare, and hunt the hounds.
“A holy life will produce the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns. They only shine!” (D. L. Moody). 4
This guest post was written by Crystal Lander, Director of Advocacy, Living Goods. Living Goods supports networks of ‘Avon-like’ health entrepreneurs who go door to door to teach families how to improve their health and wealth and sell life-changing products such as simple treatments for malaria and diarrhea, safe delivery kits, fortified foods, clean cookstoves, water filters, and solar lights. Living Goods is a Global Health Council member.
We live in an age of medical and technological miracles. Yet, six million children still die each year from preventable or readily treatable illnesses like malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia.
We have the means and the medicines to save lives—they just aren’t reaching the families who need it most.
Living Goods community health promoter Janat visits a young mother who she supported throughout her pregnancy. Photo credit: Living Goods
To reach the 400 million people who currently lack access to essential health care—and work toward Universal Health Coverage—we need to put families first, reaching them when and where they need it. In areas where doctors and nurses are scarce and resources are limited, community health can be a critical linchpin connecting families in hard-to-reach areas with the formal health system.
Despite its transformative potential, community health is often underfunded and underutilized in many parts of the world. Where they do exist, community health workers (CHWs) often receive minimal training and supervision, and don’t have access to the medicines they need to treat sick patients. It’s like asking a student to learn without schools, teachers, books, and supportive learning environment. Living Goods, and other like-minded organizations are seeking to change this by working with governments to strengthen community health care systems and help CHWs reach their full life-saving potential.
Living Goods partners with the governments of Kenya and Uganda to transform dedicated women and men into highly-effective CHWs. The CHWs go door to door supporting pregnant mothers and newborns, assessing and treating sick children, targeting early nutrition, offering family planning guidance, and selling health-focused products including fortified porridges and modern contraceptives.
We help CHWs operate at full throttle—giving them hands-on training and support, motivating performance-based pay, and building reliable supply chains for life-saving medicines. By blending best practices from business and public health, we’re working to overcome the biggest challenges in community health.
Living Goods community health worker Janat uses her mobile phone to test a sick child’s breathing patterns. Photo credit: Living Goods
Research shows that it’s working: a randomized controlled study demonstrated a 27 percent reduction in child mortality in areas where Living Goods CHWs were present. Families in the catchment area were five times more likely to receive a visit from a community health worker, and those with newborn babies were over 70 percent more likely to receive a home visit within the baby’s first critical week of life.
Our robust mobile platform, developed in collaboration with our tech partner Medic Mobile, helps drive performance and health impact across all levels of operation. It provides CHWs in the field with on-demand medical know-how, and gives supervisors access to real-time performance data that helps them pinpoint exactly where their support is needed.
The platform is the backbone of the Living Goods system—enabling real-time supervision, quality assurance and accuracy, and ensuring that every client has access to the compassionate, high-quality care that they deserve. As one Living Goods CHW puts it, “it’s like having a doctor in the palm of your hand!”
In the past couple of weeks several proposals have surfaced that would allow States to declare bankruptcy. Some lawmakers have said they are concerned that some fiscally challenged States may seek a Federal bailout. After all, isn’t California too big to fail as well? Under Federal law, only cities and localities in some states may file. If a town fails to pay principal or interest in a timely manner, the lawsuits begin to fly, writs of mandamus are issued, and local officials become consumed with legal matters. Bankruptcy offers them time to organize their finances and address their financial problems in an orderly fashion.
But bankruptcy is overseen in Federal Court. And State bankruptcy would raise thorny Constitutional issues, because States are sovereign entities. Also, municipal bankruptcy is a long and tedious affair. Because judges have no power to raise taxes, cut spending, or force asset sales—liquidation is not an option—Chapter 9 proceedings usually last for years, especially when a large entity is involved.
Moreover, no governor or state is asking for a bankruptcy solution. California treasurer Bill Lockyer put it succinctly: “To the folks in Congress cooking up this baloney: Don’t bother. States didn’t ask for it. We don’t want it. We don’t need it.” There’s widespread speculation that the real target is union contracts. Because politicians fear the political clout of the unions, they might use the power of a federal judge to help them re-write pension contracts.
But municipal bankruptcy is always voluntary. A politician can’t blame a judge for re-writing a contract if that politician asked the judge to re-write the contract in the first place. Sovereign states have to deal with their own issues.
No meeting this week, so why not check out a recording from the archives of one you might have missed?
Last week, Anna Weltman presented Seeing Stars: Using Art to Spark Investigation in Math Class. Check out the recording here.
However, I was assured that it may just be my twitter lens and that #MTBoS still has a lot of work left to do…
For those of us who couldn’t make it to NCTM: Nashville this year, where the #MTBoS take-over was burgeoning, a new resource was provided by some valiant #MTBoS-ers, like Mike Flynn and Pam Wilson…
Periscope is an app that allows users to live stream video and save it for up to 24 hours. So if you miss a session or aren’t at the conference at all, Periscope can provide an opportunity to engage in a new way. The only thing is the 24 hour window, to which Mike and Pam have sought an answer. Katch will store user’s live-streamed videos seemingly indefinitely.
Finally, here is an open google doc started by Michael Pershan including his (and many other’s) thoughts about the NCTM conference experience. This maybe yet another way for those not at a certain conference to engage with those were there.
I remember Graham Fletcher recently shared at Twitter Math Camp how interesting a conversation can be that revolves around students understanding (or misunderstanding) the equal sign. That’s why Marilyn Burns’ post, The Equal Sign: What It Really Means, caught my eye. The post is an excerpt from her fourth edition of About Teaching Mathematics., where she uses the children’s book, Quack and Count by Keith Baker.
My favorite part is Marilyn saying, “The equal sign, however, is a relational symbol, not an operation symbol.”
It seems only appropriate during Thanksgiving week to talk about One Good Thing. If you’ve not seen this site before or if it’s been a while since you checked it out, head on over and scroll through some posts for thoughtful reflections on teaching days, humorous anecdotes from the classrooms, and tales from grading purgatory.
This week, Anna Weltman will be presenting Seeing Stars: Using Art to Spark Investigation in Math Class. Join Anna, author of “This is Not a Math Book,” to investigate activities from her book focusing on number theory from a geometric perspective. We’ll brainstorm strategies to get kids investigating– posing questions, developing hypotheses, experimenting, and evaluating results– and see how approaching math through art can help. Join us tonight at 9 EST here.
Last week we were lucky to have Glenn Waddell presenting High Fives and Trust: Why Relationships Must Come First. This discussion about the importance of classroom climate led to a great discussion about how to create a great environment for learning. When discussing Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships, the Relationships must come first! To view the recording click here.
Jumping into number talks has been one of the most exciting adventures I have put myself and my students through. Though, if you’re like me and totally new to this whole thing, you probably are constantly asking yourself, am I doing this right? I have been! All the time! I’ve been reading various number talk books, but my biggest resource (as always) comes from the #MTBoS community. I have been lurking a great deal on Kristin Gray’s (@mathminds) blog. She recently shared some plans for a dot image numbertalk that her team had developed for 3rd grade. While the dot images were rich themselves (which are also appropriate for middle school students!), what drew me most to her post was the planning and reflecting piece which can’t be found in any book. Her consideration of the goal, anticipated responses, her further questions, and then modification of the dot images demonstrates the thought process required to plan and modify number strings to meet the specific goal. If you’re implementing number talks or thinking about implementing them, don’t forget to check out her entire post to see the planning process as well as some rich dot images to share with your students!
While lucky folk are attending various NCTM Regional events this month, closer to home (my home, that is) I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the first workshop in a 3-part series entitled Hands-On Mathematical Construction taught by George Hart through Math for America. George Hart is identified by Wikipedia as “an American Geometer” (did you know Wikipedia has a list of geometers?); he is actually a research professor in the engineering school at Stony Brook University and a freelance mathematical sculptor/designer. And he’s Vi Hart’s dad.
In this first meeting, which was simulcast to teachers across New York State, we built a truncated icosahedron out of CDs and zip ties. But we participants weren’t just told what to do; we first learned how to draw 2 dimensional representations of these 3 dimensional objects, and transform our drawings into plans for the construction of our group sculpture. George Hart dynamically led us through some of the geometry behind the construction we were making; he is admittedly not a teacher of school-age children, but his ideas and enthusiasm easily opened the door for us to consider how this type of activity might be used in a range of classrooms. He and his team are putting together a detailed lesson plan for use by teachers, and he is open to feed back about implementing this type of project in schools.
I can’t wait for the next session, when we will be doing paper constructions, and plan to spend some time digging through his website. Check it out!
This week marks a tremendous moment in the evolution of the MathTwitterBlogosphere. Sadly, I wasn’t a part of the #MTBoS in its infancy years but it stems from some amazing people that we all are continuously proud to call our colleagues. This week, we (the collective #MathTwitterBlogospehere) are keynoting at the NCTM Regional in Nashville. If there were ever a micro-TMC this would be it. Check out the online conference planner because you’re bound to see a friend or two. On Wednesday night Mike Flynn is planning to periscope the opening session.
A special shoutout goes to Robert Kaplinsky for being the brainchild behind this NCTM opportunity. He’s opened the door for us to share with the world what WE all do…each and every day. Robert is one of the most inclusive people out there and if you haven’t met him… start here.
Join Glenn Waddell for a discussion about high fives and classroom climate builders. When discussing Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships, the Relationships must come first!
Last week at Global Math Michael Pershan presented on being your own source of professional development.
In most systems, student understanding is monitored through the implementation of pretests, midterms or interims, and finals. Some systems apply a bit of pressure upon teachers to meet an arbitrary deadline to have taught a certain set of standards. Others use it to monitor growth of understanding.
Whatever pressures applied within your system, I’m sure you could use some great review activities. This post provides a kinesthetic review requiring students to take ownership of their claims. In the Human Bingo Review Activity, Eric Biederbeck explains how students complete a bingo board by having classmates and the teacher sign off indicating they know the answers to given problems. In order for anyone to win bingo, everyone who signed the problems in the row identified must prove they actually know the correct answer. Perfect for those middle schoolers who like to try and beat the system.
Another activity which is great for the class that is talkative and needs movement for engagement is discussed in this post. With this adaptable matching game, students solve multiple problems and they must find someone in the class who has the same answer as them.
If these activities do not fit your teaching style, take a moment to watch the GMD professional learning session as outlined in this post. “Review Activities That Don’t Suck” is worth the time of preparing your students for midterms and for finals.
Julie Reulbach has a great lesson for introducing logarithms, but her blog post is worth reading regardless of what level of math you teach. Nestled in this simple blog post is a vital pedagogical idea, which is that students need to need a tool before you introduce them to it.
Julie asks her students to determine how many hours it will take for their whole school to be infested with zombies if the number of zombies triples every hour. Of course, the student body isn’t a perfect power of three, so the students are stuck guessing and checking as they get infinitesimally close to the correct number of hours. At one point, one of her students even shouts “There’s got to be an easier way!” as if he is a frustrated housewife in the black-and-white segment of an infomercial. By the time she introduces logarithms, students are primed to understand and value their purpose.
Coding, explaining, storytelling, and my continued fascination with the Desmos Activity Builder occupied my mind during the last couple of weeks. Andy Schwen (@mrschwen) gets his students to write code in order to deepen their understanding of math concepts, not unlike the reason I get my own students to create their own geogebras and desmos’s. His post about that is from May, but for some reason, I only saw it this week. This week, Kalid Azad published another gem of a post at his Betterexplained website, this time about making sense of trig identities. Admittedly, it involves math that my students are not familiar with, complex numbers, but it’s still a beautiful visual and verbal work of art. I found another post about the Desmos Activity Builder, this one from Cathy Yenca (@mathycathy). And the storytelling? Well, in my last newsletter contribution, I started a list of blogposts about the activity builder. I wanted to share ideas and reflections on best practices. Since then I decided to keep adding to that list chronologically, because that way I get to watch how the tool and the community are transforming each other symbiotically. I’m keeping that list on this page if you’re interested, or if you’d like to add to it, just tweet me at @a_mcsquared.
How do we become better at teaching math? Conventional answers point to quality training and departmental collaboration, but not all teachers have access to these opportunities. What can be done to improve practice on our own initiative? In this session I’ll share stories and thoughts on what can break the cycle of same-old teaching.
I will be writing a blog post soon about why I think Counting Collections is one of the best mathematical instructional routines there is, but for now we can just enjoy math teachers leveraging a holiday that encourages their own kids to engage with math in order to eat candy, lots of candy! Check out more Halloween math fun on the #tmwyk hashtag.
Elementary teacher Jamie Duncan says the following about teaching math these days, “It’s what I look forward to most and I have a hard time not doing math all day.”
Jamie didn’t always feel so ecstatic about teaching math. At one point, she classified math as “something to get through.”
Take three minutes to read her post and check out all the great things her students are doing in math with measurement and more! Another #MTBoS success story!
If you’ve not had a chance to check out Desmos’ Activity Builder, now is the time to give it a look. Don’t quite have the time to make your own during the busy school year? Then check out the curation efforts of the Desmos team highlighted in this recent post on some transformation activities. Transformations were one of my favorite things to play with in class so I can’t wait to dive into all of these!