{"id":1550,"date":"2015-12-28T12:40:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T17:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2015-12-28T12:40:09","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T17:40:09","slug":"easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2015\/12\/28\/easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Easy!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1551\" style=\"width: 518px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/Ruby.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1551\" class=\"wp-image-1551 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/Ruby-e1451322159748.jpg?resize=508%2C448\" alt=\"Life is easy for my parents' bloodhound.\" width=\"508\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/Ruby-e1451322159748.jpg?w=508&amp;ssl=1 508w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/Ruby-e1451322159748.jpg?resize=300%2C265&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 508px) 100vw, 508px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1551\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Life is easy for Ruby, my parents&#8217; bloodhound.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Happy winter break! I\u2019m spending mine in Wyoming and Colorado, cross-country skiing, doing crossword puzzles, eating, and hanging out with my parents&#8217; dogs, then heading up to Seattle to blog for the AMS at the Joint Math Meetings. I am also devoting some time to reflecting (grading + fretting = reflecting?) on last semester and getting ready (syllabus + fretting = ready?) for next semester. I tried a lot of things in my work last year, with various degrees of success. \u00a0Some things were hard but worth it, others were hard and didn&#8217;t work out at all. \u00a0However, it seems like a good moment to share a few easy things that worked as intended.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I changed classrooms. \u00a0In the fall I taught two sections of Biocalculus, with a total of about 60 students, mostly\u00a0freshmen. We cover discrete dynamical systems, modeling, and most of the material from a standard Calc I course, plus more differential equations. I really like these students and the course. Many of the students are math anxious but willing to work\u00a0hard. I taught the same course last year and struggled a bit\u2014partly because it was my first semester teaching in a new setting, and some of the material was entirely new to me (Cobwebbing? Wha?). This year I came in determined to do better. Success! So many things were so much better! Obviously I had more experience teaching this particular material. However, changing classrooms made a huge difference. Last semester\u00a0we met in a large lecture hall with three times as many seats as we needed. The room was built only for lecturing\u00a0and\u00a0nothing else worked easily in that space. This semester, we had a normal classroom with tables. Just a normal classroom, and wow, what a difference it made in allowing students to work together and speak up in class.\u00a0Last semester the students were at a great distance from me and from each other. The room was intimidating and encouraged passivity. The rows of desks didn\u2019t allow students to move around and talk to each other. I couldn\u2019t walk through the rows and talk to individual students.The students were fighting against the room in\u00a0trying to collaborate at a great distance from each other. I found myself constantly asking them to move to the front, which sometimes set up an adversarial relationship. I couldn\u2019t figure out why everything was so hard. Until this year, when I tried the same class in different classroom. Mind blowing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u00a0booked a room for Math Tea.\u00a0 Physical environment\u00a0in my department became an obsession for me this fall. If the design of my classroom made this much difference, what about the department as a whole? My\u00a0colleagues are really cool people. But it\u2019s taking me a long time to figure out just how cool they are, mostly because there is very little common space where I can get to know them. Not to mention the students\u2014how can we provide a community for our students if there is no place to meet them? This isn&#8217;t easy to solve&#8211;there just doesn\u2019t seem to be much extra space to go around. However, we can start\u00a0with\u00a0a tea before colloquium! This was an easy thing to create. I just booked\u00a0the classroom for the talk a half hour early and sent out announcements to students and faculty. This worked pretty well! Lots of students attended the talk and chatted with faculty. The faculty members talked to each other and the speaker. Great! These two teas were the longest I had talked to several of my colleagues all semester. This was just the first step; I am still plotting to somehow get a common room or lounge. However, it was both easy and awesome to get people together for half an hour every few weeks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_1552\" style=\"width: 485px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/Prisca-Derivative.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1552\" class=\"wp-image-1552 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/Prisca-Derivative-e1451321071930.jpg?resize=475%2C427\" alt=\"Prisca Derivative\" width=\"475\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/Prisca-Derivative-e1451321071930.jpg?w=475&amp;ssl=1 475w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/Prisca-Derivative-e1451321071930.jpg?resize=300%2C270&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 475px) 100vw, 475px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1552\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Derivative art from my Biocalc class. I heart math, too!<\/p><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>I had my\u00a0students do public art. Basically, I gave them some colored chalk and a list of problems. Their assignment was to make one of the problems and its solution into public art and email me a picture. That\u2019s all. It was only worth a few points but it gave the boring derivative rules part of class just a little bit of spice. I got some nice\u00a0pictures, it took no extra class time, and the students had fun with it. Easy!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I didn&#8217;t curve an exam. \u00a0Some of my students did\u00a0fairly badly on their first Biocalculus exam. \u00a0I didn\u2019t want to curve the exam, so I gave them the option of replacing the first exam score with their score on the same material on the final. \u00a0Instead of being annoyed that we were having a cumulative final, they were so happy! \u00a0Some students gained a lot on the final, but only by learning the material they had missed.\u00a0\u00a0The others lost nothing. It took me no extra time, aside from adding up the score on the first part of the exam. \u00a0It was easy to incorporate this into the final grade calculation by using an IF statement in Excel (by far the least difficult part of a painful 20 hour end of semester grading jag).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After the grading was done and the last grades entered, I danced around a little bit and headed out for more easy and awesome things\u2014eating cookies and watching hockey. Mmmm, winter break.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1553\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/winter-happy-jack.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1553\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1553\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/winter-happy-jack.jpg?resize=640%2C480\" alt=\"This is what winter break looks like in Laramie, WY--included for those of you on the east coast who didn't get winter this year.\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/winter-happy-jack.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/winter-happy-jack.jpg?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/winter-happy-jack.jpg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/winter-happy-jack.jpg?w=1280 1280w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/files\/2015\/12\/winter-happy-jack.jpg?w=1920 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1553\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is winter, skiing near Laramie, WY. (For the east coast, where winter was forgotten this year.)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy winter break! I\u2019m spending mine in Wyoming and Colorado, cross-country skiing, doing crossword puzzles, eating, and hanging out with my parents&#8217; dogs, then heading up to Seattle to blog for the AMS at the Joint Math Meetings. I am &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2015\/12\/28\/easy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" data-url=https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2015\/12\/28\/easy\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3c1jI-easy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1557,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions\/1557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}