Doing Pilot Study Interviews in a Haifa High School Bomb Shelter
I have no idea what this is, but I had to blog it...
Pilot Study Interviews in a Haifa High School Bomb Shelter with Prof. Boris Koichu and Yaniv Biton (teacher) at the Tichon Haifa.
Today Boris took me to the campus for breakfast. Well actually I was on campus, since Chair of the Department was genrous to give me a room in the Faculty Guest house. But since this campus is perched near the top of Mt Carmel, getting around makes Ouro Preto seem like the Great Plains. This being a REAL university (ahem CSUS!) there is a respectable place to have visitors stay and be taken care of. A shame I don’t swim, as I have full access to a very serious indoor Olympic pool, with hot tub Jacuzzi and sauna and emeritus professors and possible Nobel Laureates lounging about in various stages of dress. We breakfasted on campus while observing the semicladd academics thru the windows of the restaurnt then went to his office to prepare for the research Yaniv Biton’s classes (his doctoral student) at the Tichon Haifá.
Tichon Haifá is a private school, across the street from a very large and very orange Mall on the north road to Akka. It is in a district that, tourists only glimpse from their busses enroute to Akko and Bahji. It reminded me of the brega parts of São Paulo – you know- gas stations, and stores, and humanity, and shopping centers and busses, and traffic, and diesel smoke, and industrial stuff, all poorly planned and jumbled together using a hodgepodge of international concrete and strange signage. I loved it.
The school is made up of mostly of working class immigrants kids with ties to Russia, Ukraine or other former Soviet Union countries, as a few Israelis and Arab kids. Boris was quite surprised to meet a young lady from his former town in the Ukraine. I think it was a good selection, as the kids were not from the posh part of town, and seemed very much like the kids @ Encina (the non-gang ones I work with that is).
It was a very interesting and valuable experience for both of us. I think Boris is stunned by what I have been seeing when I do the Algorithm Collection Project interviews. We had to adapt our protocol for a number of factors. One of course being the language, and again I am at the mercy of my colleague because until the kids actually begin to explain what they are doing and I can follow them on paper, I have no idea what is going on, unless Boris translates.
One thing I saw universally is that all but one of the kids out of approximately 40 students did all the problems in their head. This is amazing. I have never, ever seen this except in a few foreign graduate students at the university level. So I was impressed until we did some face to face interviews. When we asked Yaniv’s kids to actually do the problems, we found that they could not remember how to do the long division (especially) on paper. Some had extravagant strategies (that work) for doing it. None could remember when or how they learned it. When they could, they did it completely differently a sort of 35:7 = 5 or fractionizing it. None of them knew how or why they did what. A bunch of them just copied, but that is why we do the interviews.
I was impressed with their ability to mentally calculate, in fact the ability to do it with pencil and paper seems difficult for them. I submit becasue thye no longer do it, but that of course needs to be studied. However when they were asked to factor a number the wheels fell off the cart. Boris was intent on getting them to do a factorial problem as well!
It was cool, as we both decided that we can use this idea (toned down a bit) to develop a full fledge interview after kids do some problems. I can see a short, mini lesson on a new concept, with an exercise for them to solve after. If it is 1:1 the stress seems less, and the intensity seemed appreciated. It reminded me of Marylyn Burn’s discussion about lack of anonymity – each child gets attention, and Debbie Meyer’s coaching method. Tov medot / very good!.
In the future the problems need to be changed. Maybe we should use the TIMSS survey or something like that.
We want to extend this to a partnership in the West Bank / Palestine part of the region. There is a great interest in project here to look at ways to get to the root of the problem. I am thrilled to be part of it, if only in a tiny way. Abdul-Bahá calls it “nam nam kam de ruz ruz (little by little, bit by bit)”.
After we came back to campus, Boris needed to work on an article with his graduate student and I went of (armed witha campus map) to buy some postcards and a Technion t-shirt. We are on the east side of the top of Mt Carmel, just down a bit from the University of Haifa (the tall tower you see on the top of the mountain in the pics.). When the sun goes down it leaves the campus in the shade, which I am sure is a great advantage when things get toasty in August.
Oh, you are wondering about the title. We gave the exams in classrooms, with windows. But our interview was in a classroom with out windows. Boris told me it was the bombshelter… nice.
One thing I saw universally is that all but one of the kids out of approximately 40 students did all the problems in their head. This is amazing. I have never, ever seen this except in a few foreign graduate students at the university level. So I was impressed until we did some face to face interviews. When we asked Yaniv’s kids to actually do the problems, we found that they could not remember how to do the long division (especially) on paper. Some had extravagant strategies (that work) for doing it. None could remember when or how they learned it. When they could, they did it completely differently a sort of 35:7 = 5 or fractionizing it. None of them knew how or why they did what. A bunch of them just copied, but that is why we do the interviews.
I was impressed with their ability to mentally calculate, in fact the ability to do it with pencil and paper seems difficult for them. I submit becasue thye no longer do it, but that of course needs to be studied. However when they were asked to factor a number the wheels fell off the cart. Boris was intent on getting them to do a factorial problem as well!
It was cool, as we both decided that we can use this idea (toned down a bit) to develop a full fledge interview after kids do some problems. I can see a short, mini lesson on a new concept, with an exercise for them to solve after. If it is 1:1 the stress seems less, and the intensity seemed appreciated. It reminded me of Marylyn Burn’s discussion about lack of anonymity – each child gets attention, and Debbie Meyer’s coaching method. Tov medot / very good!.
In the future the problems need to be changed. Maybe we should use the TIMSS survey or something like that.
We want to extend this to a partnership in the West Bank / Palestine part of the region. There is a great interest in project here to look at ways to get to the root of the problem. I am thrilled to be part of it, if only in a tiny way. Abdul-Bahá calls it “nam nam kam de ruz ruz (little by little, bit by bit)”.
After we came back to campus, Boris needed to work on an article with his graduate student and I went of (armed witha campus map) to buy some postcards and a Technion t-shirt. We are on the east side of the top of Mt Carmel, just down a bit from the University of Haifa (the tall tower you see on the top of the mountain in the pics.). When the sun goes down it leaves the campus in the shade, which I am sure is a great advantage when things get toasty in August.
Oh, you are wondering about the title. We gave the exams in classrooms, with windows. But our interview was in a classroom with out windows. Boris told me it was the bombshelter… nice.
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