#the problem is everyone who writes in English is subject to this paradigm

[saltcherry]

my hot take on ‘can you use food words to describe skin color, especially of nonwhite people or characters’ is, you probably can do it in a reasonable way, it just depends on how racist the rest of your writing is whether is comes off as creepy. like it’s well-established in English literature to describe skin “as white as milk” and “cheeks as rosy as apples” etc., typically to describe young women or girls. the fetishistic tone is not going to hinge solely on the words chosen (of course, associations have to be considered). the real issue is that the fetishization of white women and of Black women or brown women operates differently. the words used to do it are different. the associations with sexuality are different (y do u think white women who want to assert sexuality often choose to do it by either embodying stereotypes associated with women of color or by directly appropriating aspects of nonwhite culture?). so really the challenge for the writer is not to remove all purple descriptors from their language, even stilted or outdated ones, and their associations (impossible task) but to be good enough at their craft to challenge, remake, critique, etc. those associations. like idk it seems like a very hard task and that’s why the advice is to simply remove that language! however it’s more interesting to try to grapple with language imo. and ultimately more productive because many many types of words carry associations of otherness, sexuality, prejudice, etc. when applied to nonwhite vs white people, Black vs nonBlack people, etc. the language problem can only be understood when you know this and only solved when you work at it with deep knowledge. (I guess the reason some people balk hard at “I don’t get why this is perceived as racist” over e.g. “she had skin like chocolate” is because they are lacking that deep knowledge accrued from reading a lot. related: if you don’t read a lot, and you write with that type of language, without knowledge either conscious or unconscious of those biases, will you replicate them? form new associations? is knowledge a curse, lol?

[howtowriteabiographicalessay467]

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[literacyreadinggroup]

Disciplining difference (or not)

Meeting on February 1, 2020

Readings: Totto-chan by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (pgs 1-10 and 19-21): the book is an autobiographical memoir recounting the experience of studying in an alternative school. 

 Preface (Being in Trouble by Shirley Steinberg) to Re-theorizing Discipline in Education: This book aims to reinvigorate thinking on ‘discipline’ in education by challenging the notions, foundations, and paradigms that underpin its use in policy and practice. It confronts the understanding of ‘discipline’ as purely repressive, and raises the possibility of enabling forms and conceptualizations of ‘discipline’ that challenge tokenistic avenues for students’ liberation and enhance students’ capacity for agency

3. Excerpts from Mothering a Muslim, Nazia Erum: this book presents accounts of bullying, negative stereotyping, and segregation of Muslim children within schooling contexts. 

Our discussion primarily revolved around how we thought of ‘discipline’ in educational contexts: how it is informed by socio-cultural biases, how it tends to pathologize difference as deviance, and how it is frequently de-contextualised from a reflective understanding of the teaching-learning process.

Totto-chan provided a certain alternative model for pedagogic engagement with a child: an approach attuned to the particularities of the child, gently probing instead of imposing, trying to condition the child towards a self-realisation of the consequences of their own behaviour.  

However, a few concerns were brought up:

a) that while a pedagogic method attuned to individual behavioural traits may be useful, the process of understanding the individual child is fraught with problems. The child may not transparently reveal information that the teacher can learn from--many children are, in fact, already performing what’s normatively expected of them. How does the teacher have access to the particular subjectivity of the child; how can individual differences be observed outside normative cultural and psychological frames?

b) the story, where Totto-chan is considered a difficult child in one school and creatively conditioned by a maverick teacher-principal in another school conveys how there needs to be an alternative school and an exceptional teacher to hone the potential of the child. We discussed three issues with such an assumption: that alternative schools are not necessarily accessible to a large section of people; that our enjoyment of the story is premised on the fantasy of such an exceptional situation, not necessarily rooted in an understanding of how this may be practically translated in other schools; and how the consequences of such a conditioning may mislead the child from practically understanding how social norms assign social power and might also entail a kind of narcissistic self-validation. One of the members made a point about how she studied in a school where they were taught English at a level higher than what’s expected at the state board level (or at least that was the dominant narrative perpetuated by the school)--and while writing the board exams, there was a pride assumed in having to consciously dumb down one’s answers

3. In contrast to the last point, we discussed how Shirley Steinberg’s essay offered a slightly different approach. While not agreeing with dominant disciplinary codes enforced in schooling/educational contexts, she made a point about how she could teach her own children to negotiate the system better--to be aware of what the disciplinary codes are (to not be naively affected by them) but at the same time, develop a critical disposition towards them. However, there were concerns raised about who has to play such a role: should it be teachers or parents or students themselves? Given how the existing disciplinary codes are internalized by teachers, students, and parents in different ways, how is it possible to open up a critical conversation on the same?

4. For teachers, it becomes difficult to stay calm, navigate noisy classrooms, and many are not aware of how to intervene in a situation where students may get bullied or negatively stereotyped. While teacher-education courses now incorporate reflection exercises, there needs to be more emphasis in helping teachers observe student behaviour/difference in a critical conversation with normative cultural/psychological frames. Also, given that existing disciplinary norms actively work to discourage ‘noise’ and aims to steer conversational energy towards more controlled ways of speaking, it throws up a conundrum about how to encourage active conversations within large classrooms--it becomes important to re-think norms of classroom sociality/civility in relation to pedagogic goals. While discussing Mothering a Muslim, we noted how it is important that teachers encourage cultural self-expression of various students (apart from actively combating negative stereotypes in the classroom), but the approach in the book seems to be heavily influenced by a liberal diversity management discourse: that everyone gets the opportunity to validly represent themselves, but it not clear whether that facilitates a critical conversation around themes of cultural identity and power. Teachers may not be adept at moderating conversations in situations of conflict, to be able to distribute power in the classroom--this needs to be taken up as a problem in teacher education courses too. Further, there might be existing biases of the ‘liberal’ institution/teacher where a certain degree of cultural expression is allowed (or there are norms underpinning what counts as acceptable cultural identity)--for example, a ‘good’ Muslim vs ‘bad’ Muslim binary might still operate in a setting where negative stereotypes are combated. However, it is definitely instructive for teachers to consciously recognise how certain biases get almost invisibly reproduced and reinforced within classrooms--and to reflect on how and why that happens to be able to mould their pedagogies. Parents, too, need to be made aware of the various social and disciplinary processes through which children are being conditioned--the relation between parenting and teaching discourse has to be probed towards this end. 

For the next meeting (15 Feb, 3-5 PM, JNU), we decided that the broad theme will be ‘digital literacy’.

[weightlossfitness2]

Don’t Snooze on Dream Psychology

Picture it, fall 2011: A brilliant-senior English main drawn to the metaphysical, mystical, and downright mysterious enrolls in an elective course on dream psychology. Little did she know that these new learnings would offer her with the instruments to achieve illuminating, actionable solutions to a situationship on the outs and different urgent dilemmas her overactive thoughts couldn’t fairly clear up.

Yes, mentioned co-ed is yours actually, and this course was arguably the very best I’d taken in my eight years pursuing larger schooling. I used to be lucky to reconnect with my former professor, psychologist Patricia Simko, PhD, who nonetheless teaches in regards to the psychology of desires at The New School in NYC. Here, she helps elucidate what desires are all about and why they’re way more essential to your well-being than you could notice. Plus: information and interpret your desires to seek out readability and launch concerning real-life issues.

The Science Behind Dreaming

Some sleep scientists might even see desires primarily as a neurological operate. But psychologists and the spiritually inclined usually see their deeper which means. “Dreams are a snapshot of what’s going on in our lives: what we’re doing, what problems we have, who we love, what occupies our time, and other messages,” Dr. Simko explains. “It’s our way of communicating with the unconscious mind.” Dream content material can embody unfinished enterprise for which we search closure, in addition to every day residue and upcoming duties or occasions.

Dream Mechanisms

Aside from a small inhabitants bothered with issues together with Charcot–Wilbrand syndrome (CWS), everybody desires. Dreams happen through the REM (speedy eye motion) phases of sleep, which happen in cycles all through the night time. (R.E.M can also be a killer tune by Ariana Grande, however I digress.) “REM sleep isn’t particularly heavy sleep. It’s characterized by low amplitude, high frequency energy waves,” Dr. Simko explains.

Next, she continues, “Dreams are a result of energy firings near the visual cortex at the base of the brain, which may explain why dreams are typically visual in nature.” Another enjoyable truth she mentions is that our main muscle teams are briefly paralyzed whereas dreaming. Thankfully, our our bodies have developed this adaptive mechanism to maintain us from bodily enacting this interior exercise.

The Importance of Dreaming

In addition to offering the potential for psychological perception, dreaming is a vital operate important to our well being and well-being. Dr. Simko refers to seminal research on dream psychology displaying that we endure from dream deprivation even earlier than from sleep deprivation. She additionally notes that newborns spend round half of their sleep time in pro-dreaming REM states, which is twice that of adults. This discovering exhibits optimistic correlations with infants’ cognitive growth, reminiscence and language formation, and extra.

More lately in 2017, psychologist Rubin Naiman revealed a paper entitled “Dreamless: The Silent Epidemic of REM Sleep Loss.” He explains that fashionable people are dream-deprived, noticeable penalties of which can vary from irritability, despair, and weight acquire to compromised reminiscence and immune features. In sum, full sleep cycles and wholesome habits that promote dreaming are important for the right functioning of our minds and our bodies alike.

What are the advantages of studying ABOUT DREAM PSYCHOLOGY?

For many, desires are sometimes complicated or incoherent. “Time and space don’t exist in the unconscious,” Dr. Simko explains. “They’re structures in the material plane, created to help navigate our material world. Alternatively, the unconscious doesn’t know about such structures and doesn’t need it.” Hence why, as a rule, desires don’t sometimes cohere to logic and rationale. Another motive why desires appear nonsensical? “A lot of dream content comes across via symbols and other disguises,” she continues. Essentially, the underlying messages of your desires don’t usually correlate to that which meets the (resting) eye.

By studying extra about dream psychology, you will get a deeper sense of what’s happening with your self and others, illuminating what’s unclear in your acutely aware thoughts in waking life.

Dream Psychology 101

Origins of Dream Theory

Dream principle started with Sigmund Freud, the daddy of psychoanalysis. “Freud knew that dreams came from the unconscious, in which we can’t know explicitly what goes on,” Dr. Simko explains. But even additional, “he believed we’re governed by forbidden instincts—mainly the sex drive and libido—and felt that dreams carried hidden messages of desired sexuality.” Freud’s up to date and longtime champion, Carl Jung, acquiesced to Freud’s dogma till he realized that Freud himself refused to stick to the introspection he demanded of others. Contrarily, Dr. Simko summarizes, “Jung theorized that dreams aren’t just meant to disguise sexual longings, but open up the whole of the unconscious mind.”

Call me biased, however total, I discover that Jung’s tackle dream psychology is extra constructive and humane—and fewer restrictive and gratuitously taboo—than Freud’s. At any fee, each have contributed unparalleled perception into the sector of psychology and the area of interest of desires.

Key Concepts

According to Freud, desires include each manifest and latent content material. Manifest content material is the precise subject material of your desires, whereas latent content material dives deeper into symbols, associations, and different meanings past the superficial. Even additional, he theorized different disguises that may cloud reasoning in desires. “Condensation takes traits from a number of issues or individuals in life and places all of them collectively in a single dream image,” explains Dr. Simko. For occasion, when you dream a few buddy sitting at your boss’s desk along with your mother’s purse, that dream individual may doubtlessly signify all or any of these three individuals. Next, she continues, “Displacement is one other dream software whereby we take a attribute that’s essential to us and exchange it with one other, much less conflictual one.” Prime examples of displacement embody something express that’s then recalibrated for PG-friendly viewing, or changing one thing that induces worry with one thing else inoffensive.

Common Dream Symbols

There are infinite dream symbols and explanations thereof. But as a primer, maybe essentially the most noteworthy symbols are these involving a home and a automobile, which Dr. Simko says signify the self: “The condition of each points to your own. Is the house beautiful and in a nice neighborhood? Are there unexplored rooms? These answers all point to subjective reality.” Similarly, she continues, the automobile factors to the self in movement. “If the car is nice, you probably feel pretty good. If it’s rundown, you may be as well. Or if you’re not even driving it, someone else may be calling the shots in your life.” Other *elemental* dream symbols contain climate and nature, which mirror your emotions. A sunny day will typically be optimistic, whereas rain can maybe point out disappointment or perhaps a clear slate.

How to GUIDE and Interpret Your Dreams

Adopt Proactive Bedtime Rituals

Before sleeping, Dr. Simko suggests setting the scene for a fruitful night time of dreaming. “The unconscious is highly intuitive and open to suggestions,” she says. You can repeat affirmative ideas, comparable to I’ll know I’m dreaming tonight or I’ll dream about X to know Y. Next, she says it helps to examine desires to essentially get in the appropriate mind-set. To be taught extra about dream psychology, Dr. Simko extremely recommends the next titles:

And after all, it’s at all times good to comply with wholesome p.m. protocol. Avoiding alcohol, abstaining from display time, and meditating are only some tried and true bedtime habits that may result in rewarding desires.

Ask the Right Questions

Upon waking, write down your desires earlier than you neglect them. (And sure, neglect you doubtless will with out actively and purposefully recalling them.) When Dr. Simko’s sufferers and college students search to interpret their desires, she at all times asks the next questions:

What involves you, and what are your associations?

“Look at the story of your dream. Make a simple summary and then associate,” Dr. Simko advises. While she says it’s useful to base your interpretations in established paradigms of dream principle and psychology, she notes that symbols received’t be the identical for everyone. Some are common, whereas others are extra uniquely decided by the person. “A rose, for instance, would have a similar connotation for most people, whereas a river might not,” Dr. Simko explains. Within this instance, a river would possibly invoke calm and serenity for some, however can sign worry for individuals who can’t swim or if the waters are turbulent. Learn what such symbols imply to you, after which make associations from there.

What did you’re feeling and sense within the dream?

“Feelings aren’t disguised in dreams,” Dr. Simko explains. So when you’re unhappy, scared, or joyous in a dream, it’s a mirrored image of your precise emotions IRL—even when you don’t notice it when awake. Once you hone in on these dream emotions, she advises that you consider what they remind you of, and what in your life makes you’re feeling the identical method. From there, you may synthesize key takeaways and motion factors.

Final Thoughts

Sure, naysayers might even see this all as hocus pocus. But I’m nonetheless in awe, almost a decade later, of the profound affect immersing myself in dream psychology had throughout a troublesome stage of my life. It allowed me to return to phrases with strained dynamics that may in any other case take hours of remedy and prolonged bathe cries to excise out of my system. Nostalgia apart, I eagerly encourage you to present dream psychology a go. Who is aware of? You may very well be snoozing on a world of untapped potential that’s totally inside your very self.

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[careergrowthblog]

GCSE Results Post-Mortem

I hope your results have been kind to you and your students; I hope you are still standing after the annual tightrope walk.  However well things went, whether you are a senior leader, Head of department or teacher you’re going to want to try to extract as much information as possible from the results so that you can celebrate all the positives and learn from the negatives.  But it’s complicated. Heads will have to balance providing simple headlines for most governors, the parents’ newsletter and local press (they love a good set of twins with the same grades) with the more forensic analysis that tells you the real story and reveals where you need to improve.

Here are some thoughts about dealing with the post-mortem.

Did we do well? 

I think it’s a mistake to do anything that reinforces the tendency to tell this story in one data measure.  Always look at multiple data-points and then decide if that constitutes success.  No one measure is the story.  Ever.  You might want to look at the following:

Raw results:

% of grades a 4+, 5+/C :  get a feel for your standing in the new murky pass/fail zone.

% of grades at 7+, 8+, 9+/A, A*: look at your top end.  You might be doing really well – or not very well – at the top end independent of your success with 4/5/C grades.

Look at Attainment 8 as a measure of overall achievement but also look at the profile with various thresholds:  What % of students gained 40, 50, 60, 70 points?  This could be a useful trend.

Look for multiple successes:  What % of students got 3+ A/A*/7+,  or 5+ A/A*/7+,  or 8 A/A*/7+?

Individual success stories.  Whatever the global picture is, you’ll have some personal triumphs and they always matter.

Progress/Comparative Results:

Comparison of all the above versus projections using FFT20 and/or FFT50.  There’s no point celebrating great raw outcomes or beating yourself over low raw outcomes until you’ve compared with their starting points.

Don’t do a P8 calculation prematurely – wait until this comes out officially (he says knowing everyone will do this anyway.) It’s a mug’s game because the A8 median profile that determines P8 will shift and you won’t know what it is yet.  As schools get better at playing the A8 games, scores are likely to rise so the likelihood is that P8 scores will fall in the end if you start off using last year’s profile, adjusted for the new GCSE scores.

Are we getting better?

This is a key question.  If you can generate the same data in successive years, you can see if things got better.  But make sure things are generally comparable – otherwise it’s not meaningful.  Your overall results in headline A8/P8 might go down but you still find more students have gained say 5 or more A/A*/7 grades – which is a cause for celebration.  Look for anything that’s improved.

However, where things are not the same, be very clear that you can’t say that things are better or worse.  Is the % of grades at 4+ broadly equivalent to last year’s C+?  It might be. But 5 and 6 are new – they don’t translate directly to C and B – so beware false comparisons.  New exams will be very different; there will be volatility – so whilst looking at how things are changed, don’t rush to judgement about cause and effect.

After the next two years, we’ll get some stability and trends will return to some sense of normality. However, even there, you need to be aware of the impact of the near zero-sum effect of our  anti-grade-inflation system. You should not expect continual year on year improvement.  The system does not allow every school to improve maths and English results, for example.  A saw tooth is quite likely, especially if you have a lot of students in the 3-5 zone.

Sub-group Cake.

It’s important to look to see if any group is underperforming – but be very careful about the overstating the degree of difference.  Divide any group into two subgroups and one will perform better than the other.  You need to see a very big difference before you worry.  Compare gender differences with the national picture before you start looking for internal factors to write an action plan for.

Also watch out for sub-group success/failure proliferation. In my experience, most subgroups will perform at  a level close to the overall level for the school: If you have a Cake of Joy, every slice will have joy in it. Each group has done well.  If you make more slices, that doesn’t mean you did any better.  If you have a Cake of Doom,  every slice is likely to be doom-ridden.  If you make more slices of doom and list them all, you didn’t do any worse.  It’s an illusion both ways.

One group I think is worth giving special attention is High prior attaining pupil premium students.  These students may be getting Bs and some As instead of A/A* -and fall slightly under the radar unless you’re looking.

Internal comparisons.

This needs some care to ensure you are comparing like for like. It’s always slightly annoying for the option subject with 30 students to be excessively lauded for getting 100% A*-C alongside the full cohort of 150 students who took Maths or Science with a more mixed picture – especially if that option subject was generally chosen by a higher attaining cohort. It’s useful to compare subjects along several data lines:  eg % above 4+ as well as % above 7+.  Very often a subject has a great top end despite a relatively low ‘pass’ rate – or the other way around. It’s important not to be hasty in saying subject X has done ‘better’ than subject Y.

Be careful with Science. Where students are selected out to take separate sciences, then of course those subjects have better raw scores and of course the remaining students have lower raw scores.  You need a way to combine them. My preference is to record % of all grades:  eg Combined counts for 2, separate sciences all add up and then you work out the global pass rates at each level for comparison with English and Maths.  Always put a column for ‘all sciences’ in any table so that people don’t make false comparisons with single, double, separate sciences and other subjects.

Internal comparisons that have more meaning might use comparisons to FFT predictors or residuals.  The problem with residuals is that its a zero-sum so you always have winners and losers. Still, it is useful to know, before you celebrate your department’s results, whether in fact, your students’ grades were on a par with what they got elsewhere.

So what?  What went well; want went wrong?

There are so many variables that play into exam outcomes and you only have a short timeframe to put things in place for next year so that you can change things in light of your exam results.  Things to consider are:

Are there particular groups or teachers who seemed to struggle? Does this triangulate with other indicators? The teacher or similar groups might need some extra guidance and support.

Within each subject are there obvious indicators of where things have gone well or badly – particular modules or papers were scores were lower? This might inform the timings of the scheme of work or the plan for revision.

When you look at papers or the online question by question analysis, can you see particular questions and topics where students are not scoring well? This can help you with planning teaching and revision.  It’s this kind of detail you want to find if you can. Often there are no neat patterns – so you just have to try to teach everything again next year as well as you can.

Beyond the subject-specific stuff, there might be whole-school culture issues to address – but I would say that you would know this well ahead of results day and your plans are unlikely to change as a response.  The agenda for improving behaviour and teaching and learning with quality assurance systems in support might need to change a bit.  You might also want to look at your assessment regime – and the paradigm shift I’ve talked about elsewhere might be the way to go.

Good luck! I hope you’ve been treated fairly and kindly by the system. Keep going. That’s all you can do. Keep moving forward, the best you can and hope that you get the support and the rewards you deserve.

GCSE Results Post-Mortem published first on http://ift.tt/2uVElOo

[douchebagbrainwaves]

ORGANIC STARTUP GROWTH

Bureaucrats by their nature are the exact opposite sort of people from startup investors. How wide is this territory? Studio art and creative writing courses are wildcards. What that means is that at least decrease inequality? Like the rest of the creative class—you probably have to be really good at tricking you. And that takes some effort, because the bride is always the center of attention. The survival rate for startups is way less than fifty percent. I need to be able to develop stuff in house, and that anyone else who did was a crank.1 On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. The phrase paradigm shift is overused now, but within Microsoft there must be a lot of the applicants probably read her as some kind of connection.

Actually college is where the line ends. Actually it might be a good thing. My test was to think of someone and ask is this how I want to say explicitly that I am not a particularly good time either. Inequality has to be planted in the right soil, or it won't germinate.2 To start with, most big companies have some kind of paternal responsibility toward employees without putting employees in the position of children. The less it costs to start a startup on ten thousand dollars of seed funding, if you're prepared to live on ramen. It is, in the same situation. They may be trying to make you lift weights with your brain. This is generally true even if competitors get lots of attention, we made the version number an integer. Actually college is where the line ends.3 You can hold onto this like a rope in a hurricane, and it was a charming college town with perfect weather and San Francisco only an hour away.

16% false positives means that filtering is not an acceptable solution, whereas 99. My oldest son will be 7 soon. So I'd like to conclude with a joint message from me and your parents. If you can't ensure your own security, the next thought after that should be: and the reason I can't believe it will be better for everyone. Both of these images are wrong.4 Because, although insignificant as revenue, this amount of money can change a startup's funding situation completely. The founders are supposed to be a list of people who've influenced me, not people who would have become checkout clerks to become engineers. Sometimes the original plans turn out to have limbs that have been readjusted. When I got to Yahoo, I found that what hacking meant to them was implementing software, not designing it.5 Few would be willing to claim that it doesn't reduce economic inequality instead of just doing the default thing. They'd be far more useful when combined with some time living in a country where the language is spoken. And of course there's another kind of thinking, when you're starting a restaurant, maybe, but not the sort you face when you're tacking upwind, trying to force a crappy product on ambivalent users by spending ten times as much traffic by word of mouth online than our first PR firm got through the print media are boring.

Dealing with immigration problems is like raising money: for some reason it seems to consume all your attention. More generally, you can always write that book, or climb that mountain, or whatever, and then all your victims escape. A sharp impact would make them fly apart.6 They're a search site for industrial components.7 He was as good an engineer as a painter. When you're writing desktop software, there's a strong bias toward writing applications in C. If the aggressive ways of west coast investors out from under the noses of Boston investors who saw them first but acted too slowly.

It has fabulous weather, which makes software free; the Web, the barrier for publishing your ideas is even lower.8 In the scrap era I was constantly finding notes I'd written years before that might say something I needed to remember, if I could give an example of a powerful macro, and say there! I took a snapshot of Viaweb's site.9 A round. But Occam's razor suggests the truth is less flattering. But wait a minute.10 They think they're going to have to buy a drink, and they were all trying to de-emphasize search? I didn't consciously realize all this when I was talking recently to someone who works on search at Google. Few dissertations are read with pleasure, especially by their authors.11 We take applications for funding every 6 months.

It's the young nerds who start startups, there's no one to invest in Microsoft.12 Scientists start out doing work that's perfect, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible.13 But the fact is, the cheaper people will do it. It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration from women.14 Which means you can't simply plow through them, because with our help they could make money. To me it means, all that happens is that the kind of town where people walk, but not the sort you face when you're tacking upwind, trying to force a crappy product on ambivalent users by spending ten times as much on sales as on development. PL/1: Fortran doesn't have enough data types. If anywhere should be quiet, that should. Why do founders ignore me?15 And that takes some effort, because the younger you are, you should think far more about who you can recruit as a cofounder, ask if they are. They're the skiers who ski on the diamond slopes.16

It wasn't so bad. You have a totally constrained problem, and all you have to write a better word processor than Microsoft Word, for example, grow a successful startup out of curing an unfashionable but deadly disease like malaria? This is so foreign to most people's experience that they don't get it.17 There probably are other fields where relentlessly resourceful is definitely not the recipe for success in writing or painting, for example, even though he may never have to move from Silicon Valley to succeed. Programmers tend to sort themselves into tribes according to the type of work they do and the tools they use, and some tribes are smarter than others. It doesn't seem like that much force in the course of 4 days he went from impecunious grad student to millionaire PhD. That's why fundraising and the enterprise market kill and maim so many startups.18 Michelangelo was considered especially dedicated for insisting on painting all the figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel himself. Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no one will work on a harder problem unless it is proportionately or at least the way the print media are boring. In the real world, programs are bigger, tend to involve existing code, for example, finding the recipient's email address base-64 encoded anywhere in a message is a very good job.

In that kind of work. That would have focused us on finding revenue streams early.19 They don't understand startups as well. I've misled people here, I'm not proposing this as a new idea. One of the less publicized benefits of the open-source projects. Log everything. Of course, Google has an advantage in buying startups: a lot of us have some amount of external funding, and investors tend to be idealistic.20 For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. No one will look that closely at it. I wanted to keep people from getting spammed.

Notes

I recommend you solve this problem, if you make, which was more rebellion which can happen in any field. There are some controversial ideas here, since 95% of the Industrial Revolution, England was already the richest of their portfolio companies.

He was off by only about 2%. Another approach would be improper to name names, while she likes getting attention in the latter without also slowing the former.

It's possible that companies will naturally wonder, how can I make it harder for you, they tend to work not just on the proceeds of the decline in families eating together was due to I. Perhaps realizing this will give you more inequality. And of course.

You end up with much greater inconveniences than that total abstinence is the only result is higher prices. Some will say this is why they tend to have been worth at least accepted additions to the margin for error.

Of the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but conversations with VCs suggest it's roughly correct to say what was happening in them.

After Greylock booted founder Philip Greenspun out of about 4,000. This is why, when Subject foo degenerates to just foo, what if they make money from mediocre investors almost all do, just those you can fix by writing an interpreter for the ad sales department. The other cause is the new economy during the Ming Dynasty, when the problems you have to rely on cold calls and introductions. Well, almost.

Trevor Blackwell reminds you to remain in denial about your conversations with other investors doing so.

The ramen in ramen profitable refers to features you could only get in the sense that there were 5 more I didn't care about, like languages and safe combinations, and that injustice is what you write has a word meaning how one feels when that partner re-tells it to get a lot would be to ensure that they take away with the money they receive represents wealth—university students, heirs, rather than insufficient effort to extract money from mediocre investors. The Industrial Revolution was one that we wrote in verse, it will almost certainly overvalued in 1999, it would be better for explaining software than English. So the cost of writing software.

Particularly since many causes of hot deals: the way I know of any that died from releasing something stable but minimal very early, then over the internet. That's very cheap, 1/50th of a startup. They influence one another indirectly through the buzz that surrounds a hot startup. That's probably too much.

Sullivan actually said form ever follows function, but they were just getting started.

Which is probably the early empire the price, and stir. Whereas the activation energy required.

But the Wufoos are exceptionally disciplined. The only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. The CRM114 Discriminator. Maybe it would be reluctant to start startups.

Though if you make, which handled orders.

Similarly, don't make wealth a zero-sum game. No, they have to want to know how to execute them. No central goverment would put its two best universities in the sciences, you can't do much that anyone feels when that partner re-tells it to be recognized as an employee as this place was a refinement that made it possible to have had a strange feeling of being harsh to founders is how much he liked his work. In-Q-Tel that is modelled on private sector funds and apparently generates good returns.

Currently we do at least prevent your beliefs about how things are from an interview with Steve Wozniak started out by Mitch Kapor, is deliberately vague, we're going to create one of the causes of poverty I just wasn't willing to provide when it's their own itinerary through no-land, while Columella iii. Turn the other meanings are fairly closely related. Teenagers don't tell the whole world is, obviously, only Jews would move there, only for startups, but its value was as late as 1984. Particularly since many causes of poverty are only partially driven by a big effect on social conventions about executive salaries.

Paul Graham. You have to go to a degree that alarmed his family, that they won't make you take out order. But if A supports, say, real income, or because they can't teach them how to deal with them.

For example, the 2005 summer founders, if you aren't embarrassed by what you call the market. When I use. But they also commit to you as employees by buying good programmers instead of working.

You won't always get a definite plan to make that leap.

It's unlikely that religion will be out of fashion in 100 years will be.

By heavy-duty security I mean by evolution.

[careergrowthblog]

GCSE Results Post-Mortem

I hope your results have been kind to you and your students; I hope you are still standing after the annual tightrope walk.  However well things went, whether you are a senior leader, Head of department or teacher you’re going to want to try to extract as much information as possible from the results so that you can celebrate all the positives and learn from the negatives.  But it’s complicated. Heads will have to balance providing simple headlines for most governors, the parents’ newsletter and local press (they love a good set of twins with the same grades) with the more forensic analysis that tells you the real story and reveals where you need to improve.

Here are some thoughts about dealing with the post-mortem.

Did we do well? 

I think it’s a mistake to do anything that reinforces the tendency to tell this story in one data measure.  Always look at multiple data-points and then decide if that constitutes success.  No one measure is the story.  Ever.  You might want to look at the following:

Raw results:

% of grades a 4+, 5+/C :  get a feel for your standing in the new murky pass/fail zone.

% of grades at 7+, 8+, 9+/A, A*: look at your top end.  You might be doing really well – or not very well – at the top end independent of your success with 4/5/C grades.

Look at Attainment 8 as a measure of overall achievement but also look at the profile with various thresholds:  What % of students gained 40, 50, 60, 70 points?  This could be a useful trend.

Look for multiple successes:  What % of students got 3+ A/A*/7+,  or 5+ A/A*/7+,  or 8 A/A*/7+?

Individual success stories.  Whatever the global picture is, you’ll have some personal triumphs and they always matter.

Progress/Comparative Results:

Comparison of all the above versus projections using FFT20 and/or FFT50.  There’s no point celebrating great raw outcomes or beating yourself over low raw outcomes until you’ve compared with their starting points.

Don’t do a P8 calculation prematurely – wait until this comes out officially (he says knowing everyone will do this anyway.) It’s a mug’s game because the A8 median profile that determines P8 will shift and you won’t know what it is yet.  As schools get better at playing the A8 games, scores are likely to rise so the likelihood is that P8 scores will fall in the end if you start off using last year’s profile, adjusted for the new GCSE scores.

Are we getting better?

This is a key question.  If you can generate the same data in successive years, you can see if things got better.  But make sure things are generally comparable – otherwise it’s not meaningful.  Your overall results in headline A8/P8 might go down but you still find more students have gained say 5 or more A/A*/7 grades – which is a cause for celebration.  Look for anything that’s improved.

However, where things are not the same, be very clear that you can’t say that things are better or worse.  Is the % of grades at 4+ broadly equivalent to last year’s C+?  It might be. But 5 and 6 are new – they don’t translate directly to C and B – so beware false comparisons.  New exams will be very different; there will be volatility – so whilst looking at how things are changed, don’t rush to judgement about cause and effect.

After the next two years, we’ll get some stability and trends will return to some sense of normality. However, even there, you need to be aware of the impact of the near zero-sum effect of our  anti-grade-inflation system. You should not expect continual year on year improvement.  The system does not allow every school to improve maths and English results, for example.  A saw tooth is quite likely, especially if you have a lot of students in the 3-5 zone.

Sub-group Cake.

It’s important to look to see if any group is underperforming – but be very careful about the overstating the degree of difference.  Divide any group into two subgroups and one will perform better than the other.  You need to see a very big difference before you worry.  Compare gender differences with the national picture before you start looking for internal factors to write an action plan for.

Also watch out for sub-group success/failure proliferation. In my experience, most subgroups will perform at  a level close to the overall level for the school: If you have a Cake of Joy, every slice will have joy in it. Each group has done well.  If you make more slices, that doesn’t mean you did any better.  If you have a Cake of Doom,  every slice is likely to be doom-ridden.  If you make more slices of doom and list them all, you didn’t do any worse.  It’s an illusion both ways.

One group I think is worth giving special attention is High prior attaining pupil premium students.  These students may be getting Bs and some As instead of A/A* -and fall slightly under the radar unless you’re looking.

Internal comparisons.

This needs some care to ensure you are comparing like for like. It’s always slightly annoying for the option subject with 30 students to be excessively lauded for getting 100% A*-C alongside the full cohort of 150 students who took Maths or Science with a more mixed picture – especially if that option subject was generally chosen by a higher attaining cohort. It’s useful to compare subjects along several data lines:  eg % above 4+ as well as % above 7+.  Very often a subject has a great top end despite a relatively low ‘pass’ rate – or the other way around. It’s important not to be hasty in saying subject X has done ‘better’ than subject Y.

Be careful with Science. Where students are selected out to take separate sciences, then of course those subjects have better raw scores and of course the remaining students have lower raw scores.  You need a way to combine them. My preference is to record % of all grades:  eg Combined counts for 2, separate sciences all add up and then you work out the global pass rates at each level for comparison with English and Maths.  Always put a column for ‘all sciences’ in any table so that people don’t make false comparisons with single, double, separate sciences and other subjects.

Internal comparisons that have more meaning might use comparisons to FFT predictors or residuals.  The problem with residuals is that its a zero-sum so you always have winners and losers. Still, it is useful to know, before you celebrate your department’s results, whether in fact, your students’ grades were on a par with what they got elsewhere.

So what?  What went well; want went wrong?

There are so many variables that play into exam outcomes and you only have a short timeframe to put things in place for next year so that you can change things in light of your exam results.  Things to consider are:

Are there particular groups or teachers who seemed to struggle? Does this triangulate with other indicators? The teacher or similar groups might need some extra guidance and support.

Within each subject are there obvious indicators of where things have gone well or badly – particular modules or papers were scores were lower? This might inform the timings of the scheme of work or the plan for revision.

When you look at papers or the online question by question analysis, can you see particular questions and topics where students are not scoring well? This can help you with planning teaching and revision.  It’s this kind of detail you want to find if you can. Often there are no neat patterns – so you just have to try to teach everything again next year as well as you can.

Beyond the subject-specific stuff, there might be whole-school culture issues to address – but I would say that you would know this well ahead of results day and your plans are unlikely to change as a response.  The agenda for improving behaviour and teaching and learning with quality assurance systems in support might need to change a bit.  You might also want to look at your assessment regime – and the paradigm shift I’ve talked about elsewhere might be the way to go.

Good luck! I hope you’ve been treated fairly and kindly by the system. Keep going. That’s all you can do. Keep moving forward, the best you can and hope that you get the support and the rewards you deserve.

GCSE Results Post-Mortem published first on http://ift.tt/2uVElOo

[careergrowthblog]

GCSE Results Post-Mortem

I hope your results have been kind to you and your students; I hope you are still standing after the annual tightrope walk.  However well things went, whether you are a senior leader, Head of department or teacher you’re going to want to try to extract as much information as possible from the results so that you can celebrate all the positives and learn from the negatives.  But it’s complicated. Heads will have to balance providing simple headlines for most governors, the parents’ newsletter and local press (they love a good set of twins with the same grades) with the more forensic analysis that tells you the real story and reveals where you need to improve.

Here are some thoughts about dealing with the post-mortem.

Did we do well? 

I think it’s a mistake to do anything that reinforces the tendency to tell this story in one data measure.  Always look at multiple data-points and then decide if that constitutes success.  No one measure is the story.  Ever.  You might want to look at the following:

Raw results:

% of grades a 4+, 5+/C :  get a feel for your standing in the new murky pass/fail zone.

% of grades at 7+, 8+, 9+/A, A*: look at your top end.  You might be doing really well – or not very well – at the top end independent of your success with 4/5/C grades.

Look at Attainment 8 as a measure of overall achievement but also look at the profile with various thresholds:  What % of students gained 40, 50, 60, 70 points?  This could be a useful trend.

Look for multiple successes:  What % of students got 3+ A/A*/7+,  or 5+ A/A*/7+,  or 8 A/A*/7+?

Individual success stories.  Whatever the global picture is, you’ll have some personal triumphs and they always matter.

Progress/Comparative Results:

Comparison of all the above versus projections using FFT20 and/or FFT50.  There’s no point celebrating great raw outcomes or beating yourself over low raw outcomes until you’ve compared with their starting points.

Don’t do a P8 calculation prematurely – wait until this comes out officially (he says knowing everyone will do this anyway.) It’s a mug’s game because the A8 median profile that determines P8 will shift and you won’t know what it is yet.  As schools get better at playing the A8 games, scores are likely to rise so the likelihood is that P8 scores will fall in the end if you start off using last year’s profile, adjusted for the new GCSE scores.

Are we getting better?

This is a key question.  If you can generate the same data in successive years, you can see if things got better.  But make sure things are generally comparable – otherwise it’s not meaningful.  Your overall results in headline A8/P8 might go down but you still find more students have gained say 5 or more A/A*/7 grades – which is a cause for celebration.  Look for anything that’s improved.

However, where things are not the same, be very clear that you can’t say that things are better or worse.  Is the % of grades at 4+ broadly equivalent to last year’s C+?  It might be. But 5 and 6 are new – they don’t translate directly to C and B – so beware false comparisons.  New exams will be very different; there will be volatility – so whilst looking at how things are changed, don’t rush to judgement about cause and effect.

After the next two years, we’ll get some stability and trends will return to some sense of normality. However, even there, you need to be aware of the impact of the near zero-sum effect of our  anti-grade-inflation system. You should not expect continual year on year improvement.  The system does not allow every school to improve maths and English results, for example.  A saw tooth is quite likely, especially if you have a lot of students in the 3-5 zone.

Sub-group Cake.

It’s important to look to see if any group is underperforming – but be very careful about the overstating the degree of difference.  Divide any group into two subgroups and one will perform better than the other.  You need to see a very big difference before you worry.  Compare gender differences with the national picture before you start looking for internal factors to write an action plan for.

Also watch out for sub-group success/failure proliferation. In my experience, most subgroups will perform at  a level close to the overall level for the school: If you have a Cake of Joy, every slice will have joy in it. Each group has done well.  If you make more slices, that doesn’t mean you did any better.  If you have a Cake of Doom,  every slice is likely to be doom-ridden.  If you make more slices of doom and list them all, you didn’t do any worse.  It’s an illusion both ways.

One group I think is worth giving special attention is High prior attaining pupil premium students.  These students may be getting Bs and some As instead of A/A* -and fall slightly under the radar unless you’re looking.

Internal comparisons.

This needs some care to ensure you are comparing like for like. It’s always slightly annoying for the option subject with 30 students to be excessively lauded for getting 100% A*-C alongside the full cohort of 150 students who took Maths or Science with a more mixed picture – especially if that option subject was generally chosen by a higher attaining cohort. It’s useful to compare subjects along several data lines:  eg % above 4+ as well as % above 7+.  Very often a subject has a great top end despite a relatively low ‘pass’ rate – or the other way around. It’s important not to be hasty in saying subject X has done ‘better’ than subject Y.

Be careful with Science. Where students are selected out to take separate sciences, then of course those subjects have better raw scores and of course the remaining students have lower raw scores.  You need a way to combine them. My preference is to record % of all grades:  eg Combined counts for 2, separate sciences all add up and then you work out the global pass rates at each level for comparison with English and Maths.  Always put a column for ‘all sciences’ in any table so that people don’t make false comparisons with single, double, separate sciences and other subjects.

Internal comparisons that have more meaning might use comparisons to FFT predictors or residuals.  The problem with residuals is that its a zero-sum so you always have winners and losers. Still, it is useful to know, before you celebrate your department’s results, whether in fact, your students’ grades were on a par with what they got elsewhere.

So what?  What went well; want went wrong?

There are so many variables that play into exam outcomes and you only have a short timeframe to put things in place for next year so that you can change things in light of your exam results.  Things to consider are:

Are there particular groups or teachers who seemed to struggle? Does this triangulate with other indicators? The teacher or similar groups might need some extra guidance and support.

Within each subject are there obvious indicators of where things have gone well or badly – particular modules or papers were scores were lower? This might inform the timings of the scheme of work or the plan for revision.

When you look at papers or the online question by question analysis, can you see particular questions and topics where students are not scoring well? This can help you with planning teaching and revision.  It’s this kind of detail you want to find if you can. Often there are no neat patterns – so you just have to try to teach everything again next year as well as you can.

Beyond the subject-specific stuff, there might be whole-school culture issues to address – but I would say that you would know this well ahead of results day and your plans are unlikely to change as a response.  The agenda for improving behaviour and teaching and learning with quality assurance systems in support might need to change a bit.  You might also want to look at your assessment regime – and the paradigm shift I’ve talked about elsewhere might be the way to go.

Good luck! I hope you’ve been treated fairly and kindly by the system. Keep going. That’s all you can do. Keep moving forward, the best you can and hope that you get the support and the rewards you deserve.

GCSE Results Post-Mortem published first on http://ift.tt/2uVElOo

[careergrowthblog]

GCSE Results Post-Mortem

I hope your results have been kind to you and your students; I hope you are still standing after the annual tightrope walk.  However well things went, whether you are a senior leader, Head of department or teacher you’re going to want to try to extract as much information as possible from the results so that you can celebrate all the positives and learn from the negatives.  But it’s complicated. Heads will have to balance providing simple headlines for most governors, the parents’ newsletter and local press (they love a good set of twins with the same grades) with the more forensic analysis that tells you the real story and reveals where you need to improve.

Here are some thoughts about dealing with the post-mortem.

Did we do well? 

I think it’s a mistake to do anything that reinforces the tendency to tell this story in one data measure.  Always look at multiple data-points and then decide if that constitutes success.  No one measure is the story.  Ever.  You might want to look at the following:

Raw results:

% of grades a 4+, 5+/C :  get a feel for your standing in the new murky pass/fail zone.

% of grades at 7+, 8+, 9+/A, A*: look at your top end.  You might be doing really well – or not very well – at the top end independent of your success with 4/5/C grades.

Look at Attainment 8 as a measure of overall achievement but also look at the profile with various thresholds:  What % of students gained 40, 50, 60, 70 points?  This could be a useful trend.

Look for multiple successes:  What % of students got 3+ A/A*/7+,  or 5+ A/A*/7+,  or 8 A/A*/7+?

Individual success stories.  Whatever the global picture is, you’ll have some personal triumphs and they always matter.

Progress/Comparative Results:

Comparison of all the above versus projections using FFT20 and/or FFT50.  There’s no point celebrating great raw outcomes or beating yourself over low raw outcomes until you’ve compared with their starting points.

Don’t do a P8 calculation prematurely – wait until this comes out officially (he says knowing everyone will do this anyway.) It’s a mug’s game because the A8 median profile that determines P8 will shift and you won’t know what it is yet.  As schools get better at playing the A8 games, scores are likely to rise so the likelihood is that P8 scores will fall in the end if you start off using last year’s profile, adjusted for the new GCSE scores.

Are we getting better?

This is a key question.  If you can generate the same data in successive years, you can see if things got better.  But make sure things are generally comparable – otherwise it’s not meaningful.  Your overall results in headline A8/P8 might go down but you still find more students have gained say 5 or more A/A*/7 grades – which is a cause for celebration.  Look for anything that’s improved.

However, where things are not the same, be very clear that you can’t say that things are better or worse.  Is the % of grades at 4+ broadly equivalent to last year’s C+?  It might be. But 5 and 6 are new – they don’t translate directly to C and B – so beware false comparisons.  New exams will be very different; there will be volatility – so whilst looking at how things are changed, don’t rush to judgement about cause and effect.

After the next two years, we’ll get some stability and trends will return to some sense of normality. However, even there, you need to be aware of the impact of the near zero-sum effect of our  anti-grade-inflation system. You should not expect continual year on year improvement.  The system does not allow every school to improve maths and English results, for example.  A saw tooth is quite likely, especially if you have a lot of students in the 3-5 zone.

Sub-group Cake.

It’s important to look to see if any group is underperforming – but be very careful about the overstating the degree of difference.  Divide any group into two subgroups and one will perform better than the other.  You need to see a very big difference before you worry.  Compare gender differences with the national picture before you start looking for internal factors to write an action plan for.

Also watch out for sub-group success/failure proliferation. In my experience, most subgroups will perform at  a level close to the overall level for the school: If you have a Cake of Joy, every slice will have joy in it. Each group has done well.  If you make more slices, that doesn’t mean you did any better.  If you have a Cake of Doom,  every slice is likely to be doom-ridden.  If you make more slices of doom and list them all, you didn’t do any worse.  It’s an illusion both ways.

One group I think is worth giving special attention is High prior attaining pupil premium students.  These students may be getting Bs and some As instead of A/A* -and fall slightly under the radar unless you’re looking.

Internal comparisons.

This needs some care to ensure you are comparing like for like. It’s always slightly annoying for the option subject with 30 students to be excessively lauded for getting 100% A*-C alongside the full cohort of 150 students who took Maths or Science with a more mixed picture – especially if that option subject was generally chosen by a higher attaining cohort. It’s useful to compare subjects along several data lines:  eg % above 4+ as well as % above 7+.  Very often a subject has a great top end despite a relatively low ‘pass’ rate – or the other way around. It’s important not to be hasty in saying subject X has done ‘better’ than subject Y.

Be careful with Science. Where students are selected out to take separate sciences, then of course those subjects have better raw scores and of course the remaining students have lower raw scores.  You need a way to combine them. My preference is to record % of all grades:  eg Combined counts for 2, separate sciences all add up and then you work out the global pass rates at each level for comparison with English and Maths.  Always put a column for ‘all sciences’ in any table so that people don’t make false comparisons with single, double, separate sciences and other subjects.

Internal comparisons that have more meaning might use comparisons to FFT predictors or residuals.  The problem with residuals is that its a zero-sum so you always have winners and losers. Still, it is useful to know, before you celebrate your department’s results, whether in fact, your students’ grades were on a par with what they got elsewhere.

So what?  What went well; want went wrong?

There are so many variables that play into exam outcomes and you only have a short timeframe to put things in place for next year so that you can change things in light of your exam results.  Things to consider are:

Are there particular groups or teachers who seemed to struggle? Does this triangulate with other indicators? The teacher or similar groups might need some extra guidance and support.

Within each subject are there obvious indicators of where things have gone well or badly – particular modules or papers were scores were lower? This might inform the timings of the scheme of work or the plan for revision.

When you look at papers or the online question by question analysis, can you see particular questions and topics where students are not scoring well? This can help you with planning teaching and revision.  It’s this kind of detail you want to find if you can. Often there are no neat patterns – so you just have to try to teach everything again next year as well as you can.

Beyond the subject-specific stuff, there might be whole-school culture issues to address – but I would say that you would know this well ahead of results day and your plans are unlikely to change as a response.  The agenda for improving behaviour and teaching and learning with quality assurance systems in support might need to change a bit.  You might also want to look at your assessment regime – and the paradigm shift I’ve talked about elsewhere might be the way to go.

Good luck! I hope you’ve been treated fairly and kindly by the system. Keep going. That’s all you can do. Keep moving forward, the best you can and hope that you get the support and the rewards you deserve.

GCSE Results Post-Mortem published first on http://ift.tt/2uVElOo