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In 2018 I semi-retired by retiring from Weston High School after my 21st year teaching mathematics there. This was also my 44th year as a teacher altogether. In 2023 I retired fully, adding in my 18 years at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer. For 21 years I had taught at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA, and I used to serve on the board of the Dorchester Historical Society.

I read, cook, and spend a lot of time building my model railroad. For some reason I’m left with less free time than would be ideal, considering that I’m supposed to be retired, but somehow I also manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our varying number of cats (once up to six, but now sadly down to one).

Larry Davidson
ljd@larrydavidson.com

  • Conspiracy theory: more "evidence"

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    This is a follow-up to my post of 10/5. In a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe today, one Jeff Loja of Halifax says: It seems abundantly clear that the purpose of ABC’s new show “Commander in Chief”..is… Read More ›

  • Principal search

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    We’re looking for a new principal, as our previous one moved to Georgia over the summer to become an Assistant Superintendent in the Cobb County district. This year we have an interim principal at Weston, as we search for a… Read More ›

  • Conspiracy theories

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    From the right: THE HILLARY CLINTON ’08 CAMPAIGN AIRED ITS FIRST, HOUR-LONG COMMERCIAL last night. [caps in original] Unfortunately, it came masked as a primetime network TV series… Last night, “Commander in Chief” portrayed conservatives as ruthless, power-hungry, militaristic, Bible-thumping, sexist… Read More ›

  • Are men malingerers?

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    According to the Boston Globe: Men are twice as likely as women to play hooky by calling in sick, according to a recent poll. The 11th annual Attitudes in the American Workplace poll, reported by the Marlin Co., a workplace… Read More ›

  • Robert Noyce and Bringing Down the House

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    Usually I’m in the middle of reading two books at once — typically a novel and a non-fiction work. But for some reason I’m currently reading a biography that’s definitely non-fiction and a former best-seller that purports to be non-fiction…. Read More ›

  • Merit pay

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    Our distinguished governor, Mitt Romney, advocates merit pay for teachers, based on the standardized test scores of their students. Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles wrote an op-ed piece about this idea in the Boston Globe on 9/28. I was… Read More ›

  • Back-to-school night

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    Yesterday evening we held our annual Back-to-School Night at Weston High School. You know the drill: the parents come to school, arrive late at their first-period class because they can’t find a parking space, go to one ten-minute class after… Read More ›

  • Partial Credit

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    One of my students — let’s call her Artemis — muses in her blog: Giving partial credit may be helpful to a student’s grade in school but in real life, people don’t want to know how you did something, they… Read More ›

  • Habits of highly effective teachers?

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    Key Curriculum Press publishes our new Algebra II textbook as well as two software products that have had a significant impact on many high-school math teachers, Geometer’s Sketchpad and Fathom. Their recent catalog includes a moderately long article entitled “The… Read More ›

  • Bullet voting, pro and con

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    On Tuesday, Boston voters will go to the polls in the “preliminary election” for City Council. Something like a primary, the preliminary election narrows each race down to a number of candidates equal to twice the number who will be… Read More ›

  • Standards-based Education, Part IV

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    Standards-based education encourages us to give untimed tests. This idea makes a lot of sense: if I want to tell whether a student can solve a quadratic equation, I shouldn’t be testing how fast s/he can solve the equation. The… Read More ›

  • The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

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    If you look at almost any set of modern standards for mathematics teaching — such as the NCTM’s or the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks or Weston’s own standards — you will see a prominent role for applications of mathematics. This is… Read More ›

  • Standards-based Education, Part III

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    One key tenet of standards-based education is the observation that some students take more time than others to master any given skill or concept. No one can disagree with the observation, but the conclusions to be drawn from it are… Read More ›

  • No bad puns

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    In this week’s New York Times Magazine, language expert William Safire observes that there are no bad puns: Remember, there are no “bad” puns — all plays on words are good, and the louder the groans they elicit, the better…. Read More ›

  • Shodor

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    Math teachers who are looking for short, narrowly focused math activities should check out the Shodor Foundation. Although they tend to focus mostly on middle-school math, they have plenty of interactive activities that are suitable for high-school students of all… Read More ›

  • Constitution Day unconstitutional?

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    Some lawyers, including one of my colleagues, point out the irony that the new law requiring all schools and colleges to observe yesterday’s Constitution Day may be unconstitutional. (Techically, it’s not “all schools and colleges” — just those receiving federal… Read More ›

  • More on the miraculous iPod

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    This is a follow-up to my post of September 14 concerning my student’s iPod with the picture of Jesus on its screen. First, Keith got himself interviewed by Fox News the other day and showed the iPod on camera; I… Read More ›

  • Standards-based Education, Part II

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    This is a follow-up to my post of September 13. Today’s topic is also testing, but from a different POV: the use of “formative assessment”. We all know that testing has four purposes: To provide feedback, both to the teacher… Read More ›

  • A miraculous iPod

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    One of my ninth-graders accidentally dropped his iPod, and the screen shattered into an image of Jesus! I told him he could probably sell it to the National Enquirer for tens of thousands of dollars, but he decided to sell… Read More ›

  • Standards-based Education, Part I

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    Several years ago the entire faculty of the Weston Public Schools participated in a series of workshops on so-called Standards-based Education (SBE). There were actually a lot of good ideas in these workshops. In fact, I estimated that I had… Read More ›