iBeth

Amelia Loses First Tooth

Yes, my 5yo baby girl just lost her first tooth, after days of wiggling and biting on apples and discussing the best extraction techniques and being proud that her older sister didn't lose any teeth until age 6.  Amelia spent an inordinate amount of time in the shower tonight, intensely wiggling and wailing.

Amelia: MAMA!  My tooth will NEVER come out!
Me:  Sweetheart, your tooth will definitely come out when it is ready.
Amelia:  NO, it WON'T!  It WON'T come out, Mama!  It WON'T!!! It won't EVER come out!
[pause]
Amelia:  My tooth came out!

When I rushed in to witness the miracle, I saw that her tooth still possessed a very long root, nearly as long as the tooth itself.  No wonder she was bleeding profusely.  But hey, cleanup was easy since she was already in the shower, and she was thrilled.  And when the bleeding stopped, darned if I didn't see a bit of new tooth already poking through.

I'll post some pictures when I can get them. (Update: Posted!  This picture was taken immediately after the bleeding settled down.  Her gum is still too swollen in this picture to see the new tooth, but it was clearly there in the a.m.)

Silly Instructor's Manual Claims

I ran across some silly instructor manual claims while prepping a course.  The textbook itself is wonderful, and the instructor manual is quite useful overall, so I'm not going to identify the book here--but this passage really surprised me:

There are several ways to bring the students' reading of assigned texts into the classroom.  A traditional way is to give reading quizzes over assigned material.  We don't care for this, since it gives students the impression that reading amounts to simple comprehension of material, comprehension that can be adequately represented in an answer to a question on a quiz. 

Huh?  I admit that quizzes give the impression that reading involves comprehension, and my courses require more than that from students--but "simple comprehension of material" is a great start. 

Even sillier is the next sentence:

If reading quizzes are graded, the practice also associates reading with punishment.

Grading is punishment?  And here I thought that grading helps students assess their learning.  Do these authors believe good grades to be punishment, I wonder, or only bad grades?  And does it punish students to grade their writing and their tests, too? 

These authors suggest an alternative to quizzes: setting students a few questions to answer while they read, but they "urge" teachers not to grade them, allowing only that they may be used as discussion starters or to take attendance, "if that is required in the program in which you teach." This alternative is great, a strategy I use more often than quizzes, but again, why assume that students will be harmed by grading?

This passage from a different instructor manual was a good antidote:

[Some] argue that we should shrink from being authoritarian and not pretend to have privileged knowledge that we impress upon our students as if they were a colonialized people . . .  I cheerfully admit that I could be wrong, but my experience and my judgment tell me that both the "feel good" and the liberatory approaches . . . fail more often than they succeed and that both encourage a disdain for hard work and hard thinking.

Prepping a new course always turns me into a curmudgeon.