Coming back to the blog after a hiatus with some new projects.

My last post was in mid-November and I'm now getting back to the blog in mid-January. Not the longest time between blog posts, but definitely quite a while. For the Winter 2015 term I am teaching as an adjunct at my home institution and working on a few projects. I'll list the classes below, but the hardest thing is the schedule, three of them are back-to-back (-to-back) between 10 am and 4 pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, the fourth at 6 pm. This means I only teach two days a week, but they're pretty rough days. Not being on campus the rest of the week has also given me a disconnected feeling that I can't shake. I may come in on my non-teaching days, but the cost of driving to the campus, as well as the opportunity cost are limiting.

The courses I am teaching this term:

• Algebra I - This below 100-level math course is the second of four such courses offered. There are quite a few resources available (PowerPoint notes, online math homework, etc.) so my prep time is fairly limited. However my time responding to emails and messages is quite a bit more than other classes. These students usually have quite a bit of anxiety, are new to the college experience, and need a bit more guidance than other students. I am happy to help these students, but it does change the focus of my energies.
• Algebra II - The next math course in the series is one I have not taught. There seems to be less support for this course so I am having to prepare quite a bit more. I am focusing on lectures paired with activities, and using the same online math homework as the previous course. Granted not the most innovative structure, but for teaching the course for the first time I'm feeling fairly confident about that choice. 
• College Algebra - Two sections of the first 100-level mat course which uses a flipped-classroom model. I have taught this course before so I don't envision many issues.

There isn't much I want to add to these courses, but I do want students more engaged with the discussion forums in our LMS. If you have any thoughts on how to do this, feel free to share.

The rest of the week I will be focusing on the following projects:

• Video series on a specific math application. 
• K-12 Teacher lesson prep materials.
• Developing this blog.
• Freelance projects for test develop, content development, and editing/writing for textbooks.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to share below. Thanks for reading!

How I am teaching culinary math the second time around.

After teaching culinary math for the first time I've learned a few things, the most important being the primary student learning objective; Complete a recipe costing form. The course does discuss a few topics that are outside of this form, but this one objective contains about 90% of the course material. It might sound a bit funny, it takes teaching a course once to find out the real student learning objective, but as with many things in life "You truly learn something the first time you teach it."

For those of you in education you might be asking "What is a recipe costing form?" With a current average of 5.1% profits, maintaining high efficiency and cost control for restaurants is a necessity. To do that detailed records of how much everything costs must be kept, and the menu prices of dishes need to be firmly based on their costs. Simply put, a recipe cost form is used to determine how much it costs to make a recipe. With the base cost of the recipe, how many servings it will produce, and the target food cost for a restaurant (25-35%) a restaurant manager can get an idea of how much to price a dish. There are other things to consider (target clientele, location, marketing, etc.) but a recipe cost is a good starting point to base prices on.

This might sound simple, but there are a few ideas that need to be addressed. As an example, let's look at yield. If you order a pound of potatoes for $2.00, are you going to serve exactly that pound of potatoes? No, you have to skin, trim, and wash them first. You loose a certain amount of the weight (that you paid for), so you now have 87% of that pound (the yield). That pound of potatoes now costs $2.00/87%, or about $2.30. The terminology used is: as-purchased (AP) cost is $2.00/lb but the edible-portion (EP) is $2.30/lb. If a recipe calls for 3 pounds of prepared potatoes (skinned, trimmed, and cleaned) we simply multiply this amount by the EP cost of $2.30/lb to get $6.90. Do that for each of the ingredients, add them up and you have the final recipe cost. These forms setup these calculations in a consistent manner so they are easily done, can be read by other people, and different recipes can be compared. (There is an exception to using yield when a recipe calls for a number of something, like one whole apple. If you paid for each apple, not by the pound, yield isn't necessary since you didn't 'lose' a part that you paid for.)

All this is to say that these recipe costing forms are the true final assessments of the course, and using a backwards design model, the course should be focused on getting students to complete them. Thus all the assessments are going to target different aspects of these forms. To scaffold these skills I changed the learning activities (handouts) to include two parts:

1. An Exercises portion of various questions that we discuss in-class, with the answers provided at the end. I generally start the day with an example or a discussion of the idea, then do one of the first few questions, and slowly step back my instruction as students attempt more of the questions on their own.
2. A Graded portion that they are to turn in over the next few days. Answers are not provided, but they can work with each other.

To ensure students complete the Exercises portion I have a notebook check during test days where I review their notebook. These notebooks are not my idea, I have to thank Rhonda Hull at Clackamas Community College for the inspiration. She designed the MTH111 College Algebra course that I teach occasionally, and in addition to using a flipped classroom model, uses notebooks to ensure students are completing their work.

I also included a quiz each Wednesday, and a test every second Friday. I like the regularity of these assessments, in the hope that they reduce cognitive load on students, but also allows them to plan on these activities.

I'll make a few future posts about how this class goes, the one idea that is outside of the recipe costing form (kitchen ratios) and potentially about a new culinary math project. If you have any questions for me, about the course, my approach, the activities, or anything else, just post a comment below.

Thank you for reading!

Reflection: Teaching culinary math for the first time.

Last week marked the end of the math class I taught at a culinary school, and I wanted to reflect on how the term went. I'll have another post about what I intend to do for the next term, which started today

Before the course started I did a bit of my own research and found Culinary Math by Blocker and Hill to be immensely helpful. It provided much needed guidance on how to approach teaching certain topics, terminology used in the industry, and various forms and conversions. The school uses a college math textbook that is targeted to general undergraduate students. I have been told this is to save money, but was (and am) frustrated that there is a perfectly good text out there that addresses exactly the kind of knowledge students should know. In fact they used Culinary Math before this textbook. I recommended students buy Culinary Math for their own use, and a number of them did so. Powell's Books seems to have copies for around $17 (where I bought mine) so it didn't seem to be a big hardship for students to buy this in addition to the textbook.

At the start I was also worried about student's perception of me being a 'math person' and not being a 'culinary person'. Would they resist me talking about conversions, yields, and fractions because I had never worked in the kitchen? I tried to address it head-on by sharing my independent research, how I read books by chefs regularly, I consider myself a home cook and have made Thanksgiving dinner in addition to regular meals, and tried to be honest about where I was coming from. It seemed to make an impact as students were comfortable talking to me about recipes and other topics.

Before this class students had taken 3 6-week terms of culinary classes, and thus had quite a bit of culinary knowledge that I didn't. Because of this imbalance in understanding, I gave them much more leeway in explaining a concept or idea than in other undergraduate classes. Usually I have students attempt an explanation, but if they're getting off track I'll gently correct them by asking a question or pointing something out. Here I didn't feel comfortable doing that, and had students correct each other's arguments in-class. I wasn't explicit that this is what I was doing, but let it happened naturally.

The students themselves came from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences with math, and (most importantly) attitudes toward math. One student had pre-calculus classes in high school, others got through with the minimum, and one was home schooled. I tried to target most of the material on authentic examples, but also included 'naked' math questions to delineate if students were having issues with computations or with understanding a contextual question. This seemed to work for everyone, the high-anxiety students had their own understanding of the situations we were talking about (they had worked with measuring cups and volume measures before this class) and the low-anxiety students were able to rely on their previous math experiences.

Later this week I'll detail how I'm setting up the next section of this class. If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to share below!

Student Expectations Presentation

Out of my previous post I created the following presentation. While nothing revolutionary, it allows me to talk about the college atmosphere, introduce new college students to the idea of acting in good faith in an academic setting, and what I expect from them. I will be using this during the first day of classes from now on, and most likely put them in my syllabus.

If you have any suggestions and comments, feel free to share!

Student Expectations

This term I've encountered some behavioral issues with a student in a class that is focused on group-work. It isn't a flipped classroom, but one where we struggle through questions in class and students are expected to work on them outside of class. I wasn't expecting to deal with behavioral issues this early in the term, but they have given me the opportunity to formalize some of my student expectations. This is the list I've come up with so far:

- Everyone should act in good faith. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith?show=10&t=1412798451 )

- Everyone should treat everyone in the classroom with respect.

- Everyone should come to class prepared to learn and teach.

- Everyone should come to class with a positive attitude about the material.

- Everyone should help the students in their group during group work.

- All questions should be asked in the spirit of learning and exploration of the topics.

- All answers should be provided to explain and educate.

- Everyone is capable of understanding, and answering each question.

That first one is something I've mulled over for a few years, and I think I have a good approach on now. If a student is not acting in good faith then they are acting, or saying things that aren't true. If that happens, how can I get accurate information from formal and informal assessments? I need to use those assessments to determine if students understand an idea or concept, and if not how to adjust and change my explanation, resources, tools, and materials.

My hope is that by talking about these expectations openly and honestly, I will address the behavior issues with this particular student, and also create a positive environment with everyone.

Fall 2014 Schedule

This fall term I have contracted for the following classes at a local community college:

- A developmental algebra course. I haven't taught a course at this level in a year and am looking forward to getting back to the math teaching/life coaching dichotomy these classes require. The course uses PowerPoint files the utilize 'clickers', an online homework system, group activities, and group exams. I'm looking forward to trying to make the PowerPoints a bit more engaging. There's such an awful head space with them, I'm just unsure how best to use them.
- A college algebra course. Fairly straight-forward flipped-classroom model that I've taught a few times before. We've met once and they seem fairly young, and a bit disinterested, but I'm optimistic.
- A pre-statistics course that focuses on combinatorics, and some financial math. The assessments are fairly unique, nine quizzes and one final, and there is no textbook. Not sure if I'm looking forward to or loathing not having a resource to rely on. Might be a good time to prep my own book on the topic.

I have also been contracted to teach a culinary math class at a local (although corporate) culinary school. The course mainly covers in-the-kitchen topics, like conversions, yields, and plate costing. The course is fairly small (10 students) and they all seem to be fairly motivated. All of them have taken 3 kitchen basics classes, so I feel there won't be much 'weeding out' as in other math classes at this level. Some students did mention that they've covered some of the more advanced topics in the course in other classes, so I'm a bit unsure of the role of the course. If there is quite a bit of overlap, I am looking forward to getting the syllabi of the other courses and seeing where I can support their course objectives.

I will also be doing some after school tutoring for a few high school students, taking a class or two through Coursera (more on that later), and enjoying the married life.

Culinary Math and Visual Mnemonics

For the upcoming fall term I've been contracted to teach a culinary math class at a local culinary school. The course deals primarily with units of measure, yields, and recipe costing. Doing my own research into the course content I found an excellent resource in Culinary Math, by Linda Blocker and Julia Hill. Overall it is an excellent introduction into the mathematical topics that are important to cooks and chefs, and the terminology they've developed around them.

One aspect of the book that I really enjoyed is its use of visual mnemonics. The first one they use is this one to show the relationship between cups, pints, quarts, and gallons:

Within each 'P' there are two 'C's, indicating that there are two cups in every pint, and so on; two pints to a quart, four quarts to a gallon, etc. This has a really nice recursive relationship as well, within each 'Q' there are four 'C's, meaning there are four cups in a quart. The design of it is pretty simple, nesting letters inside of each other. Compare this with the 'normal' way of looking at unit conversions, a table, and the benefits are pretty clear.

While the table is only good for one conversion at a time, the above image shows the relationship of four different units. The succinctness of the image is powerful.

The other visual mnemonics are based on the below image:

To find one of the parts cover it up and follow the below 'rubric'.

- If 'P' was covered up, mutliply the 'W' (whole amount) and the % (the percent given).
- If 'W' was covered up, divide 'P' (part) by the '%' (percent).
- If '%' was covered up, divide 'P' (part) by the 'W' (whole amount).

While not the most ingenious thing, it is a fairly simple mnemonic to follow, and the text uses it in a number of different contexts (edible portions, as purchased portions, etc.)

Have you encountered an interesting visual mnemonic? I'd like to hear what you've encountered out in the 'wild'.