Author Archives
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
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“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” (Rethinking quadrilaterals)
Why on earth would we spend two whole days rewriting our Honors Geometry quadrilaterals unit? Our textbook, after all, contains a perfectly serviceable sequence of four lessons on this topic: These lessons are adequate. In the words of the standard… Read More ›
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New furniture!
Arrived yesterday to find new furniture for students to use in our Math Office. As you can see, the chairs have wheels and the tables are modular (eight of them, though not all are visible in this photo). This combination… Read More ›
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Coding in middle school math
Google Blockly? What’s that? And should we say coding or computer programming? We’ll deal with that terminological question in the last paragraph, but let me first tell you about Blockly and about the workshop we had yesterday. A group of… Read More ›
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Confessions
This psychological thriller by Kanye Minato is not a typical book, at least not in my universe. Some say that it’s a lot like Gone Girl — but I wouldn’t know, since I’m apparently the only person on Earth who hasn’t read Gone… Read More ›
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Don’t get lost: mark your place!
Who uses paper maps anymore? At least they can be recycled, but what if they’re already laminated? Barbara sliced one apart and turned them into bookmarks!
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Watermelons?
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Damaged
If you’ve never read any of Lisa Scottoline’s South-Philadelphia-based Rosato & DiNunzio thrillers, Damaged would not be a bad place to start. (Note: I really like all the Rosato & DiNunzio books, though I don’t particularly recommend Scottoline’s so-called emotional thrillers. But maybe… Read More ›
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Standards-based grading?
What’s wrong with grading on a curve? Or what’s wrong with grading by straight percentages? Twelve years ago I wrote a post about why grading on a curve is destructive and counterproductive — and why grading by straight percentages isn’t actually… Read More ›
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The Fight for English
It seems that I have to write about David Crystal once a year or so. This expert popularizer of linguistics always provides well-informed but accessible antidotes to common myths about language, such as the one alluded to in the subtitle… Read More ›
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Back from Manchester (but which one?)
No, not that one! Not Manchester, New Hampshire. Not Massachusetts. (Oh, you’re right, that one is now “Manchester by the Sea.“) Not Connecticut. Does every state around here have its own Manchester? Not even Manchester, England. (Or do I mean “Manchester,… Read More ›
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The War Room
How I miss Bill Clinton! Yes, he certainly wasn’t a perfect president — and yes, he wasn’t Obama — but… [You can finish the rest of the sentence yourself.] The War Room is a documentary about Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign… Read More ›
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Morning glories
I do love our purple morning glories!
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Ben X (a film about Asperger’s)
Grim. Much too grim. I’m talking about Ben X, a subtitled 2007 Dutch-language movie from Belgium — a work of fiction, based on a real story. I don’t have any problem with serious films, but I just had to stop watching Ben X half-way through…. Read More ›
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Hillbilly Elegy
What an irritating book! Even if you haven’t read Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, you’ve probably at least heard of it, as it made quite a splash when it came out last year and stayed on the best-seller list for weeks… Read More ›
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Unseen World
Unseen World, a fascinating and complicated novel, will capture and maintain your attention — if you’re the right sort of reader. Right for this book, I mean of course. You probably are if you’re interested in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, online virtual worlds (as… Read More ›
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Todd Graff’s Camp
“A flawed movie about flawed characters,” as one reviewer put it. But that’s OK; even flawed movies can be worth watching, if you’re willing to focus on the positives rather than the negatives. This film from 2003 is definitely one… Read More ›
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Curiosity and conformity
Continuing some of the themes that have been lurking just below the surface of my past three posts, I turn to an essay by Joel Wagner. Most of his essay actually springs from a blog post by a different author,… Read More ›
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Turning problems into solutions
Constraints are good. Sometimes. They certainly made Houdini more creative. Actually, we impose constraints on ourselves and our students all the time, paradoxically increasing creativity by doing so. Often, for instance, we give a two-part test, one part of which… Read More ›
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The power of the feedback loop?
Take a look at the estimable Sam Shah’s post about his colleague’s method of grading classwork. The colleague, a French teacher, has some admirable objectives: When I adopted a no-homework model for my classes several years ago, my role as… Read More ›
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What about those cell phones?
A recent question on Quora: If you are a teacher, is there a way to tell students to put away their cell phones that creates willingness in them rather than just annoyance? This is an interesting twist on an all-too-common… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 