Transparent Algebra: Course Expectations

Teachers at my school are required to create a list of course expectations that they give to students (typically on the first day of school) and often also post to their website. This is pretty much what you would expect, a list of general information, procedures, and rules and regulations regarding the class.

I'm creating one as well, and it will be similar to everyone else's. But I won't be printing, copying and distributing mine, it will just live on the web and I'm going to ask students and parents to read it before school starts (via an email sent to the parents that I'll ask them to share with their student).

But I also wanted mine to be a little different in another way. Many of the course expectations from my school that I looked at when brainstorming what I wanted on mine included phrases such as:

No food, drinks or hats are allowed in the classroom.

Any academic dishonesty as defined in your school calendar will result in a zero grade.

Three attendance points will be lost for each tardy.

Late homework will not be accepted.

It's not that I necessarily disagree with their policies, although I do with the points off for tardies and the late work policy, and I certainly don't approve of academic dishonesty. I guess what I didn't like was the overall tone of the course expectations. While about half of each course expectation was tone-neutral (essentially informative), the other half of each of them seemed very negative to me. They seemed to be listing all the ways kids could mess up in their class and what the penalty was for each type of infraction.

That troubles me for two reasons. First, it seems like the basic assumption is that students are going to be a problem, so let's make sure we identify all the punishments up front. Now, I'm certainly all for transparency, and stating these policies up front is certainly transparent. But my basic assumption is that students are going to do the right thing most of the time, so I don't want my course expectations to focus on the outlier events.

Second, it troubles me because, in many respects, the course expectations are my first impression on my students and their parents. I don't want my course expectations to send the message that I think they're going to mess up, I want my course expectations to be welcoming, informative, and perhaps begin to convey a little bit of my philosophy. I realize I may be over-thinking this a bit, but you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, and I want mine to match what I hope my classroom is going to be like.

So, here's the current draft of my course expectations. I would really appreciate any feedback you're willing to give.

Solar Panel Update

Several people have asked for an update on the solar panels we installed. The panels were installed and became active in January (although our monitoring system didn't get activated until a week or so later, January 27th, so that's when all my easily accessible data will be from).

Overall, the system is performing well, even slightly better than expected. Here's a typical (sunny) mid-winter day:


And a typical (sunny) spring day:


A typical (sunny) day this week when it wasn't quite warm enough that we had the air conditioning on:


As you can see, we generated 20 kWh's more than we consumed.

And here's a typical (sunny) day when it was warmer, and we had the air conditioner on.


We didn't quite break even this day, but still not too bad.

Here's what the last month looks like:


And here's our total consumption versus generation since our monitor was installed on January 27th.

As you can see, we've generated more than we've consumed. For the past three months we haven't paid for any kWh's on our bill (although there is still a monthly fee to be connected to the grid). We'll probably continue to generate more than we consume through about September, maybe even October, then start dipping into that accumulated "bank" through the winter.

It's still too early to predict, but my guess is that we might finish our year with some still left in the bank. If that happens, they'll send us a check for the kWh's still in the bank, and then we start over again for the next year. (You can rollover your excess hours, which is better because when they send you a check it's at the wholesale price. But right now once you choose to rollover you can't ever change back, which means you'd never get "paid" for those excess hours that would keep accumulating if you generate more than you consume. We're waiting to see what a year or two looks like before deciding whether we want to switch to rollover.)

Overall, we're very pleased and would recommend anyone who's interested take a serious look at installing the panels (particularly if you live in Colorado, which is not only sunny, but has some decent incentives from our energy companies in addition to the federal ones).