Parenting Month 67: independence and dependence

This is the end of the first year of kindergarten for T (5 1/2), and the first time we have truly experienced the chaos that comes with the end of a school year. I suppose we should have seen it in the past, since we are exposed to older kids, but the full impact escaped us.

We have been dealing with the contrast between independence and dependence. On one hand, we want him to be competent and confident in his dealings with the world, and being more daring is probably something we desired in the days when he was seemingly scared by everything under the sun. However, he is often too comfortable and we now wish he felt more of a need to check that he was still with us (or that he comes back when called!). To use the usual analogy of a rubber band to describe this tension in children, our rubber band suddenly got a lot longer in the past few months.

Along with this greater independence is a greater amount of rebelliousness. We have noted an increased rate of tantrums and anger episodes (ok, this was low beyond expectation before, but it is noticeably increasing). Part of this may be due to socialization as he picks up behaviors in his classmates and older kids in school. Part of this may be a dichotomy between school (where he seems to be viewed as exceedingly competent and capable, given that he is in Kindergarten) and home (where we always have expectations one (or many) steps above where he is now).  Some of the old tactics, such as presenting him with options for him to choose, don't work as well now (now he points out that he does not like any of the options!)

Talking with Khun Ya (grandma)(

In other news, A (2yrs) has been steadily increasing her command of language. She uses it to identify things everywhere (to the great amusement of spectators), negotiate agreements (perplexing parents), state her will and defiance (which exasperates parents and grandparents).

Their version of taking a nap on vacation

Ronin Games by Harmon: Book review

Ronin Games by Marion G. Harmon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a superhero story about Americans in Japan. In this case, the POV is Hope, an American teenager who has been given responsibility beyond her years, and she ends up having to go to Japan to figure out how to stop a potentially very dangerous person, who happens to have diplomatic immunity and there are several levels of deniability that need to be established.

This can be read as a set of four stories: first is straight up superhero story (which has a spy story as a prologue). Second is a ghost story. Third is a horror/magic/superhero/martial arts story. Last is a superhero/kaiju(monster) story. (I read this once myself, then a second time with my 5 yr old son, so I actually skipped the horror story part for him)

Things I liked:
1. Characters where rounded out. Everyone has a different set of motivations based on their different backgrounds. While much is made of the cultural concept of duty in Japan, it leads each person in a different direction in subtle ways that drive the story. If anything, the Japanese characters are guilty of stereotype here when some of them don't recognize that within the culture there are many ways that duty can play out. This discussion of what is duty shows up repeatedly.
2. The hero is NOT the one with all of the answers. Something I like about the entire series. Hope, the hero of the story, is at times being carried along by her teammates and friends. And sometimes said teammates are consciously trying to help her without telling her (and they had good reason). In this case, the teammates are not token, they are legitimate heroes in their own right, with their own characterizations, motivations, strengths and weaknesses. And a big part of the series is that to be the best they can be, they have to work in combination.
3. I start loosing my suspension of disbelief when the story consequences start rising out of control. They suddenly find themselves in a position where the fate of nations ride in the background of decisions and becoming myth.

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Parenting Month 66: Compare and contrast

Walking together on a trail

The little one is about to turn two. While children, much like runners, are experiments of one, it is somewhat inevitable to compare two children. In the discussion of nature vs. nurture, it is tempting to wonder what the differences are due to nature, under the assumption that since the parents are the same, the nurture part of the equation should be the same. 

This is in some ways a very unfair comparison. The older one was a nearly ideal (to parents) toddler. We joked that he was practically an advertisement for having kids (as two people who were not given to sentimentality about children). And frankly, when we take the two kids out in public, they still give the appearance of being ideal children (being alert and engaged in the public, but under control and well mannered. Following the middle path avoiding both being stone faced zombies and out of control monsters.) 

Some notes and obvious comparisons as the youngest finishes her second year of life:

1.  She is very verbal.  At this point, T was not talking much, and certainly not too strangers.  A also is reserved in her attention, but is otherwise well engaged in the world in the presence of others. She is certainly braver; curiosity leads her to exploring her world, touching things, petting dogs.  And she is much more expressive. The expressiveness has a cost to the caregivers.  She can express her will and desires and be defiant in english and chinese.  She has also shown signs of understanding both english and chinese grammar (she can construct grammatically and contextually correct sentences in combinations that are new to her.)
2. Songs. The knows quite a number of songs, both english and chinese.  Similarly to many toddlers, most of these songs she learned off of YouTube and such (nursery rhymes, Sesame Street). Also conventionally, she knows the ends of words and phrases before she learns the beginnings (because of rhyming).
3. Reading.  She knows her letters and numbers. But, unlike T, she has not gotten to the point where she can recite entire books. She can point to and identify things within the book. But does not have the same desire that T did (at this point, T had several board books memorized and could improvise following the pattern of a few of them)
4. Expressive.  Like other toddlers, she dances, expresses happiness, and unhappiness. She can also engage in toddler speak for extended periods of time. This follows naturally from the period where she was babbling for extended periods of time. To her it is probably the same, but to us, we can understand what it is she is saying. She also gets the language correct. (Chinese exclusively for grandparents, mostly english for daddy, switches back and forth for mommy and gege.)
5. Focus. Well, A has a typical toddler focus, meaning her current mood lasts about 15 minutes. This shows in many places. The more conventional view towards books (she does not mind being read to, but does not enjoy nearly to the same extent T did), nothing keeps her attention for very long, 
6. Daring.  A is more confident in doing pretty much anything. So she does the standard toddler activities such as scribbling (which is a precursor to drawing), climbing and jumping off of any surface she can access, playing with toys and blocks (much faster than T was). She is also more willing to work her will in crowds, claiming and defending her space in play areas, not afraid to be part of the rough and tumble of toddler play.

A is a different child than what T was. And our parenting is different. The most obvious differences day to day are focus (T) vs will (A).   One thing different that was not as intentional was weekly outings. By this point, daddy was regularly taking T out to museums, parks, etc. on Saturday mornings. While A sometimes joins in, even now, it is mostly only two of us. While T appreciated it more at this age (because he could focus on one thing at a time), when A does come, she enjoys it (although more of generally being out of the house than anything else)

Some notes on T this month.

1. He gets many complements on being well mannered. Both when we are out and about (e.g. restaurants and museums) and in more standard settings. (his teacher commented about how he said thank you for helping him clean when he spilled his lunch tray on the floor, instead of taking it for granted. He also says please and thank you to waitresses, opens and holds doors for others (this is very cute, because he barely has the mass to be able to do this)
2. He is continuing to make shy kids comfortable. We have gotten reports from other kids parents at taekwondo, saying their shy kids like being paired up with T. 
3. An extension of 2, this month T started getting notes from a girl in his class, who is one of the quiet ones. 
4. Still working on freezing in public. We have had occurrences of freezing when it is time to play piano in a group. On the other hand, he participated in a taekwondo tournament with no problem.  This is still a work in progress.
5. T is getting more rebellious, but at this point a big part of it is trying on roles.  He copies his little sister (ironic) in being defiant (trying to get attention?). He also picks up on things at school, videos, we also caught him trying out lines that originated from the school play.

Simple 2x4 step stool

It has been a while since I posted a project.  And reality is that the winter months are not conducive to woodworking when your shop is either the backyard, driveway, or garage.  And work and life have a way of getting in the way. (ok, and some of my hobby time has been taken by a new hobby, I remember telling someone a year ago that I did not have any room for one of those.)  So, here is one of the easiest things in the world, a step stool made from 2x4.

2x4 step stool diagram

What brought this on is that a step stool made by my father-in-law collapsed while we were dealing with a tantrum.  While the shock of the collapse did end the tantrum, we now did not have a step stool for the kids in the upstairs bathroom (which is needed so they can use the sink on their own).  And, to be honest, I had a few purchases over the past few months that needed a workout.

I used a design described in the blog MoreLikeHome.Net that built a stool from a single 2x4 (I think that I've seen this design in response to a contest of what can you make from a single 8' 2x4).  So, went to our favorite Home Depot to get a 2x4 while my son was at a birthday party not too far away.

A 2x4 full of potential. Yes, the iPad stand is made from LEGO. My folding workbench was project I made just before my daughter was born.

First step, cutting down the 2x4. I had the Home Depot do one cut at 37" (which represents 3 12" steps with a little more to account for the kerf. This also made two pieces small enough to transport in my car.)  Further cuts were made with a 4 1/4" circular saw and a speed square. (A framing square was large enough to measure the cuts and a utility knife was used to mark the wood. Wood was supported by bench cookies, which meant that I did not need clamps for cutting.)

2x4 pieces cut by compact circular saw

Next was sanding all the pieces down.  I have a Ridgid Jobmax multi-tool, and over the winter I bought the Fein Multimaster 4" sanding disc attachment. It is a lot larger than the detail sanding pad that usually comes with an oscillating multi-tool and delays the need for a palm sander. (and doing this by hand takes way too long :-)  )  I sanded everything down using 60 grit paper, with the plan to leave the final sanding for after the project was complete.

Next was assembly.  I used the Kreg pocket hole system (another winter purchase) and 2 1/2" pocket screws (because I was working with 2x dimensional lumber. Note to self: Kreg was delivered with 1 1/2" screws that are meant for 3/4" boards) I used my Quick Grip clamps on the flat part of the Kreg R3 (jr).  My first time using pocket holes. I am a believer.

Kreg R3 Jig with Irwin Quick Grip clamp

Next step: assembling the step stool. I used a corded Jobmax with the right angle drill head to drive in the pocket hole screws. One issue with the right angle head compared to standard pistol grips is that it is harder to control the torque, so my first leg did not go on straight.  Instead of taking the whole thing apart, after I assembled the legs, I put a wood blade on the multi-tool and cut off any overhang and cut down the back stretcher to size.

Finally, I put in fillers into the pocket holes and sanded the whole thing down with the new sanding disc.  I actually did this right and worked my way through three grades of sanding pads. This does make a difference, as the stool is noticeably smoother to the touch than my previous projects using dimensional lumber.

Fein 4" sanding disc attached to Ridgid Jobmax multitool

A nice quick project. I did not stain it yet (waiting for the weather to warm up). But now that it is in use, I'm thinking about if I will stain it at all.  Certainly the kids like it (it is a lot more stable than what was there before.)

2x4 step stool in action

Some notes:

1. Tools used
1. Rockwell 4 1/2" Compact Circular Saw
2. Ridgid Jobmax Corded Multi-tool
1. Right angle drill head
2. Fein Sanding Disc attachment
3. Kreg Jig Jr (R3)
4. Framing square
5. Speed square
6. Bench cookies
7. CRKT SpareTool (for marking wood)
2. My  Folding worktable is getting a good workout. Maybe not as good a a full sized workbench, but much better than any purchased metal and plastic table would be.
3. The advantage of having the multitool with wood saw blades, I can cut away any evidence of mistakes.
4. Pocket hole fillers cannot be cut using a multitool saw. Either I sand it or cut it before it is in place. Maybe if I glue in the fillers and wait for the glue to set, it may be amenable to a saw.
5. I like pocket holes. Much nicer to not have screws showing on outside surfaces.
6. Mommy noted that the first step is not that deep (made from a single 2x4). But since it is only used to get to the second step, it is probably ok.
7. Circular saws are a lot faster and more precise than jig saws at going through 2x4. I think a lot of my older projects would have been faster with it. I suppose that the jigsaw was useful as a first power saw with out of nervousness, but I would tell any beginner to start with a compact circular saw that can cut through a 2x4.

Parenting month 65: kindness and confidence

We have always been concerned about T being too shy and quiet in public. Getting into kindergarten was a near thing, not because of his abilities or behavior (preschool staff could testify that was not a problem), but the fact that he had to be able to perform in front of strangers at some point in any assessment. In the end the kindergarten assessment was helped by the fact that the school took a very sane approach to how the assessment was done (observation over a period long enough for him to get comfortable with the setting, and long term assessments by the preschool carried weight), and the fact that he was changing himself (right around the same time preschool staff happily noted he went from a very quiet kid to someone who occasionally had to be told to be quiet.)  But the next step is how he would act as he got exposed to a larger world.

One advantage of not having many scheduled activities for my son is that I get a lot of time with him as he has been growing up. So we get to interact with many people and things. And he loves it. I think even from the beginning all of these outings have been mini-adventures and he got to practice being brave, even though he knew he was not.  As he has gotten older we've been giving him more space to interact with others (and his little sister).

This is my hat

This month was marked with play dates, a trip to Chicago, and some other events in new spaces. Some anecdotes:

1.  Playing with a couple of older and more rambunctious boys. At one point T told them that they needed to play gentler around his younger sister and be more provident (that is a word that they use at his Catholic school). That got a "what does that mean" type of reaction as they went on their way. We were surprised that he could be so confrontational.

Can you see the catfish in there?

2. Chicago. We went for my father's 100 day remembrance. There were a couple of times where we stationed him in front of a door to greet people. And he did (in a place where he knew almost noone, and certainly not any of the aunties and uncles who wanted to talk to him). Curtesy is turning into his way of dealing with the big unknown world. And there are worse ways to react.

Here is how to put on a wristband

3.  At a church event where we were invited by a chinese family who did not know what was going on, he  taught the kids the games and cheered when they won. Later at the Easter egg hunt, once he got his limit, he went around the field helping the younger kids find Easter eggs.

4.  Taekwondo. One of the moms commented that her daughter liked it when T was at class, because her daughter is also one of the smaller ones and T is closer to her size, and because T is controlled enough that he does not threaten to run her over during sparring.

Like a lot of asian american upper middle class suburban parents, we are somewhat ambitious about where we think our kids will be academically (*pause as people who know us, especially my wife, finish laughing*)  But as we learn what some of the practices in our area are like, we also want our children to be sane. When we watch T and how he has grown, we often jokingly ask "can we keep him?", because we realize that while he is still a kid, he behaves much better than we can reasonably expect kids of his age to behave. While in no way we are going to cut back on our quest to keep him academically challenged, we are very thankful that he is turning out kind.

Parenting Month 64: Focus and persistance

The parenting topic that has been on our minds the most this month was what to do about summer. We have not done any formal activities in the past, but we are aware that the other kids in suburbia have been sending their kids to various week long summer camps for art, music, dance, and a whole range of academic and semi-academic camps in addition to the outdoor activity camps. (to be fair, my wife runs one of these, so we probably are a part of that ecosystem, just not from the side of the consumer). But we had not done this with T, instead having mommy school (piano, chinese), daddy school (which involved museums, hikes, and something that had a strong resemblance to playing with LEGO), and grandparent school (swimming) supplemented with taekwondo. But we were aware this whole time that our neighbors (especially the asian ones) were enrolling kids in multiple programs.

So this coming summer, with the end of kindergarten we started looking at what the market had.  We found numerous offerings at various private schools in the area, a couple of colleges had offerings (alas, C-MITES at Carnegie Mellon University is no more), YMCA camps and a plethora of dance, sports, arts and crafts, and general activity camps. But what we noticed is that the majority of these were in one week chunks, and the ones that were longer had a large list of activities that they had planned for their campers. Which means that they will be moving from activity to activity throughout the day.

Our goal was to find activities that would reward focus and persistence (and make sure he got a reasonable amount of outside time!) So this summer will be in three acts. June is mommy and daddy school. July is a series of one week camps (piano, LEGO, and science) and August is decompression/getting ready to go back to school.  Mommy school is piano and chinese (with curriculum!), daddy school is going to be computers (Raspberry Pi and Scratch) and LEGO (simple machines and storytelling). And we are going to continue taekwondo.

Ready before testing

Other developments. We are starting to note a slightly more rebellious attitude in T (5yr old). Considerable resistance to mommy, grandma, and grandpa (oddly enough, daddy does not get to experience this very much) (And A(1 yr old) is like this too, we actually do not know who is feeding off of whom.)  Some of this may just be the standard testing of boundaries, another may be the fact that he is now picking this up from other kids (peer pressure really did not do anything to him in preschool). I remind mommy that this is incredibly mild compared to most 5 yr old or kindergartners. Of course, this does not help. Neither does the fact that teachers (school and outside) routinely comment about how well behaved T is.

Back stance during self-defense testing

Taekwondo is continuing along. He is still quite good for his age. One benefit of going up the ranks is that most of the kids in the middle color belts are a year older than him and better coordinated. So the standard surrounding him is better than him. Another development is that I started taekwondo as well, and once a week we go to the family class together. The general comment is that he is watching me with a big smile the entire time we are in class.  Since he is a few belts ahead of me, he gets a kick about going into teacher mode when we practice at home. We have been getting some training gear from the school because of students that we have referred to them. So our house is generating an overall background noise of martial arts and Star Wars. Mommy is not sure about how that happened in her house.

His sense of sequence still needs work. He essentially has three time periods, past, now, and future. And, consistent with age, all things past tends to get mixed together.

School is still working on finding his level. We are happy that they have continued escalating his reading. The books he is bringing home from the school library are getting harder. Actually, I think that they are too hard, because he discovered the Star Wars section of the library. Fortunately, we have a reasonable amount of appropriate books at home as well as what I read to him.

Round kick during sparring

A is adding willful to being a babbler. And that means she can express desires deliberately and strongly in two languages. I commented that with T we pretty much got a pass on the terrible twos and threes. While A can communicate (which does eliminate a good portion of tantrums), we are not going to get a pass on this one.

Parenting Month 63: Reading is fun

This past month both kids have been progressing in reading. The little one now recognizes upper and lower case letters on a pretty reliable basis. The next thing in line are colors. At the beginning of the month she only identified "purple". Now she knows "blue" "yellow" "red" "green" (which are the colors of her blocks that I carry around whenever we go out).

One of her favorite things to do is to read. There are books mommy reads, and books daddy reads. (unfortunately, she does not have a category of books big brother reads, or this would get much easier on us, he is certainly willing to take part on part of the work). Then, there are books she reads.  This tends to be a lot of fun to watch, and I could watch for hours (mommy would say that she would happily babble for hours as well if we would let her).  She also recognizes that my Kindle holds books, and can identify a few of her favorites that are currently loaded on it.

Reading in a coffeeshop. She can keep this up for a while, especially every night before bedtime.

The older one also reads regularly. For him, it is one of the things that he goes to for play. I remember being told that when kids learn to read, the parent workload drops tremendously because it means that kids can entertain themselves. This is the case with him as well (actually, once the little one gets going, she can be left for a while as well, until she decides she really needs an audience again).

One thing we are concerned about is that the reading is getting too easy, especially at school. There was a period where he was coming home saying that every class was too easy. Fortunately, they have been escalating the difficulty level for him and a couple of other kindergarten readers. And they have assigned staff time to do work with him (and the others) to check on comprehension (which has the effect of slowing them down). At the open house tonight, his teachers let us know that he has completed the first grade book series, and he is now on second grade reading material (at a school where the average second grader is a full year ahead of grade level).  He is probably aware that we are concerned that he is not being challenged by reading. This week he came home with a book from the school library (they have one book checked out each week) proclaiming to mommy "I got a difficult book for you." (and it turned out to be way too high level for him)

So, like other things, we are thinking about how mommy and daddy school will keep him progressing outside of school. Of course, daddy school looks a little fishy to mommy, as it involves reading graphic novels (Usagi Yojimbo) and talking about story lines (and activities that look suspiciously like playing LEGO and computer games). But we are in agreement that we don't want him to have the attitude of only doing things that are easy.

Parenting month 62: Culture, community, and raising children

The major milestone this month was the passing away of my father.  As the funeral was in Thailand, I had gone without the kids. We also had a small memorial service in the city where I grew up, so we took a week there.  It is probably the most intensive exposure to Thai culture that my kids have had to date. (My son had gone to Thailand as a infant, so he would have been too small to remember anything.)

Robes for an offering

One problem with living in Pittsburgh is a relative lack of diversity compared to other big cities. And one consequence is that there are not many Thai.  One estimate I heard at one gathering that there were about 40 Thai families in the Pittsburgh region. (Not counting students, who are considered transient) and only about half interacted on a regular basis. So we have been essentially raising our kids as Chinese, where we would have a reasonable number of other Chinese kids around for our kids to learn Chinese together.

To prepare for the service at the Thai temple, we subjected our kids to a crash course in Thai greetings and courtesy via YouTube. One thing my son (an introvert) can handle is curtesy, so he picked up on that and handled himself as well as can be expected for a Kindergartener who does not spend time in a Thai environment. He greeting people with a wai, and when it was time to perform his role in the service, he did his part (doing things alongside daddy is also something he can do). My daughter is also well behaved toddler in public, and performed admirably for a toddler girl, presenting a charming and well behaved face to the world.

Wai before pouring out water

Watering a tree

The main result of the trip was a lot of time spent with old friends, mostly a mix of Chinese-American and Thai-American families, now with children.  And we talked about the raising of children (and sometimes grandchildren). We talked about choices that we make, our kids personalities, and how they are different and lead to different challenges and opportunities. While I do have conversations about parenting in Pittsburgh with other parents at our kids school, day care, activities, and with others in community organizations I'm active in, the big difference with living in the place you grew up and being part of the mobile generation like I am is that those conversations are lacking in much of the context that comes from growing up in a community.

The conversations I have with other parents tend to be about immediate issues.  Getting in school, participating in activities, dealing with health issues. But the things that I talk with my wife, long term issues of guiding our children's growth in the context of their specific personalities, affinities, and strengths is done just with ourselves. But returning home, the conversations include how the personalities of the children compare to the personalities of the parent (current and past). And the conversations are more long term. How our children's personalities will help or hinder them in the future, and how it impacts how they deal with the world around them. And how to prepare them, not just what can be done now, but over the years to come.

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One year of taekwondo

Our son started Taekwondo soon after he turned four. We have had the fortune to be able to spend a lot of time doing activities with him, and being fairly competent ourselves, but also realized that there were things missing that we (and daycare) were not filling. One, we wanted him to be engaged in something physical and two, we wanted him to be engaged in the world apart from us.  At this point, while he was a very happy, engaged, curious, and reasonably empathetic child, he also was an introvert (not terribly surprising as both parents are as well). In his case it showed as shyness in the presence of new people, and no assertiveness of will (although this may be attributed to lack of attachment in things,) So we were looking for something that engaged him physically and grew his confidence in interacting with others. There are two sales pitches for martial arts for yourg children,  one is that it installs discipline and an outlet for rowdy, physical kids. That was not our problem.  The second is that it installs confidence. That was our goal.

Knife hand strike in Songham 2

We went to a relatively new school that was part of the American Taekwondo Association (ATA) . The impact of being fairly new are that it was still fairly small and it had not generated any black belts yet, so the first benefit was he got a lot of individual attention.  The first times he went he looked but did not do anything, which was expected. The school staff spent a lot of individual time with him talking to him and getting him comfortable. In the meantime he observed what was happening.  Eventually, he got onto the floor and started participating.

The first benefit we saw was increased confidence. Taekwondo represented a set of skills that he could learn and be competent in, and his attention span helped greatly here. He dealt with the instructors and interacted more freely with the other kids than he did before.   A few months in, he had an interview with a prospective kindergarten, and he warmed up to the staff much easier than he had to any other adult (e.g. Day care staff) before. (He usually took 3 months to warm up to new day care staff, either new hires or for when he moved rooms). The curtesies of the school have helped him navigate everyday life in interacting with adults.

Bowing before testing

The second benefit was concentration and focus, T always had a good attention span, his day care noted that he was a child who stayed in place while the chaos of preschoolers moved around him from activity to activity. Taekwondo added a long term focus onto this, coupled with his natural attention span, meant that the forms and patterns were something he could develop competency in. So, in contrast to the usual criticism of youth Taekwondo as being merely moving limbs, he learned to put power in his moves. And having an object of focus has helped in his usual shyness and tendency to freeze in public view.

Jump front kick while line sparring

The other thing we are looking at in the school is how the older kids are like. Once we figured out that T liked this, and we were in this for the long term, we wanted to know who would be influencing him. In a martial arts school, this would mean the kids who reach black belt and become assistant instructors themselves. We have had some interaction as some of the teens have started assisting with classes. But my real interaction has started when I started taking Taekwondo myself. The classes are small, as it is only  two years old, but you see the teens supporting one another, and also you see the older ones, who are approaching the black belt ranks, taking seriously the role of encouraging the others, it was a different experience to have a group of teens providing encouragement to an adult (me) in my first month.

Line sparring

One other thing that we are looking forward to is that as the years go on, he will know people in his life who have taken this path before, and unlike sports heroes, these are people he knows in the flesh. In addition to Masters level black belts he will meet in the course of his training, he knows people with black belts or equivalent in various disciplines, and people who compete at the highest levels. So the people he sees on YouTube or in other media are real people, and represent something that can be realistically aspired to.

21 questions to ask a child about daddy

T (5 yr old) decided that it was wakeup time. Note that today is a Saturday, and this was his school day wake up time.  So I decided that if he was going to wake up, he would (1) eat breakfast and (2) play 21 questions (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/169166529725642521/)

1.  What is something daddy always says to you?
I don't want to play that game

2.  What makes daddy happy?
Not fighting with T. (Note: fighting refers to the morning routine of waking t up, eating breakfast and getting to school)

3.  What makes daddy sad?
Fighting with T.

4.  How does daddy make you laugh?
Tickling T

5.  What was daddy like as a child?
Crawl a lot. When you (daddy) was really little you did not know how to walk.

6.  How old is daddy?
25

7.  How tall is daddy?
51 inches (T is 40 inches)

8.  What is daddy's favorite thing to do?
Play LEGO

9.  What does daddy do when you're not around?
Working or doing ATA (Note: taekwondo)

10.  If daddy becomes famous what will it be for?
I don't know

11. What is daddy really good at?
Pushing LEGOs together

12. What is daddy not very good at?
Playing piano

13. What does daddy do for his job?
Type letters

14. What is daddy's favorite food?
Turkey (Note: Thanksgiving was last week)

15. What makes you proud of daddy?
When daddy draws in the lines

16. If daddy was a cartoon character who would he be?
Superman

17. What do you and daddy do together?
Make LEGO

18. How are you and daddy the same?
We are both boys

19. How are you and daddy different
I (T) am short and you (daddy) are tall

20. How do you know daddy loves you?
Daddy reads to T

21. Where is daddy's favorite place to go?
ATA (taekwondo school)

Parenting Month 61: Sibling relationships

There is a giraffe up there

We've been fortunate that our kids get along well with each other. My son likes being a big brother and watching over her and showing her around places, and the little one adores her big brother. So they play with each other, they cheer each other on, and she has even started letting him read to her (she still has a strong preference for mommy or daddy).  About the closest thing we get to conflict is the fact that she is only 18 months old and at that age kids kinda hit each other without thinking about it.  And sometimes ge-ge (older brother) just isn't enough for what she wants.

Siblings running at the Carnegie Science Center Sportsworks

How do you like the art museum?

The other major issue of development is courage. A is an 18 month old who does not know fear. T, has always been the careful one. He was among the slow ones to interact with others in day care, and he was slow to socialize at his new school. And we note that things that he is quite competent in around us, he freezes when others are observing him. While Taekwondo is a big help in this area (competence does help in this), with testing and tournaments, this does not get all of the way there. Using the curtesies of TKD and catholic school has been one tool he can sometimes use to get over his general nervousness, and I'm teaching him some techniques from Red Cross Pillowcase Project training as well. There are a few opportunities coming for him to practice engaging the world in public, but this will a be something to deal with for a long time (both of us parents are naturally introverts, and we expect the same is true with him)

Trampoline at Carnegie Science Center

In other notes, T saw his first movie in a theater, The Martian.  A now knows a fair number of letters and numbers. While slightly behind where her brother was at this point, this is without putting in any work (we think she is picking it up from two alphabet books that are on her chosen rotation).

Tickets to The Martian

Parenting Month 60: Confidence and public performance

Some lists for the elder one.

1. Favorite book: The Martian.  Runner up: Rosie Revere, Engineer
2. Wake up song: Level Up by Vienna Teng
3. Favorite color: Yellow, Green, and Red are the current rotation. (The concept of favorite needs some work)
4. Favorite toy: LEGO
5. Favorite taekwondo move: round kick
6. Programming environment: Kodable Runner up: Scratch Jr.
7. Museum: Carnegie Science Center

Stretching before belt testing

We are starting to get some feedback from his first year in school (Kindergarten).  The first month, there was some concern that he was not really socializing (which we expected), but that has largely ended. He is still relatively quiet, but he does interact with the other kids and all of the other teachers more. We have noticed that it seems like all of the other students (K-8) at his school seem to know who he is. We think it is a combination of being the smallest one in the school, and that he now has an identity as the kindergartener who practices piano during the after school programming.

One of the effects of school is socialization and comparison. And it seems that he has figured out that he is ahead in most areas. His reading is at least a grade level ahead. Math is actually unmeasured, but in what they are doing he has pretty down (at least if he is paying attention). Robotics and art he is ahead (basically this means he is very good at interpreting and following instructions, he really is not that good in art, no creativity. But robotics (LEGO and Scratch) is probably justified. That is called the effects of daddy school.) not sure so about Spanish or gym, but I suspect he is just fine there. The real problem right now is that he knows he is ahead.

Reverse punch with pads

The big issue with kids who are ahead in school is that they start to put worth in succeeding at something. And it makes struggling at something doubly problematic. In the past, he was not paying close enough attention to the other kids to matter, and mommy and daddy school was pretty challenging. So success in the past was valued in part as a reward for the effort it took. And he developed the focus and value of work to make things happen. But what we have started to notice is that he no longer can keep focused on task, and we think it is because at school, nothing he is doing requires extended effort on his part. Daddy school (museums and LEGO, woodworking, and games), is somewhat rare nowadays. But where we really see the effect is in piano. He actually does not have the endurance he used to for practicing. And he responds much worse to difficult passages. So this is a danger that we have heard about, but now we have to think about what to do about it.  On the other hand, we are really glad we accelerated him and put him in Catholic school.  Another year of Pre-K would have made things worse, and we think that in a public school, they probably would not even have noticed he was ahead at everything (he is neither behind, nor does he act up or talk a lot, so he would go right under the radar of a Kindergarten teacher with 20 kids for 2 hours the whole day.)

Watching the others test

The other area that we are looking at is performance anxiety. While shyness is not overwhelming (he has started to learn to fall on the courtesies of taekwondo or Catholic school during regular interaction), he still freezes when he becomes the focus of attention.  We were hoping that had largely gone after a successful taekwondo tournament experience, but it is definitely still there. While he will never be the loudest or among the talkative kids in the group, we would like him to learn how to comport himself in the public eye, or at least learn methods of focusing on the task and ignoring a crowd around him.
For the younger, she now babbles with purpose. I'm convinced she is telling stories. Most fun is when she babbles while paging through a book, now we know what we sound like when we read to her :-D. Her favorite books are A Baby's First Book of Zombies and Hands, Hands, Finger, Thumb. And with those two she can do appropriate sounds effects for most of the page.

Parenting 59: First steps out into the world

One thing that makes Kindergarten such a major milestone is the fact that the kids start being comparable.  Now that they are in a setting where there are actual goals at the end of the year, we see the results of parenting and the time spent in play and exploring the world. And there is an outsider making assessments (as the Kindergarten teacher establishes where each child is and how to nurture them to be ready for first grade).

Two Kindergarteners watching a robot.

Some things are easy to establish because they are skills. Can the child count, read letters, read books, draw? But some things are harder to figure out by the parent, does the child show empathy, care for others, handle adversity, is the child eager to learn? These are harder to see because you cannot tell the difference between the child interacting with the parent and the child interacting with the outside world. In our case, we have to start off by admitting we think highly of our 4-yr old, seeing as we have accelerated him into an early start in Kindergarten. (specifically, a catholic full-day Kindergarten) But having the outside assessment is helpful.

Our Kindergarten teacher opened the parent orientation by telling us that they were going to be taking it slow the first two months so she could assess their levels. At that point, we knew we were in good shape because in two months in a fairly small environment (20 total Kindergarteners in two classes), we were pretty sure that T will have adjusted to give a proper accounting of himself.  At one month, they are still looking for his reading level (we note that the library books that he brings from school are gradually increasing in difficulty), math is focused on sorting and shape (no challenge yet). His robotics teacher stating that he is doing well (essentially, at this point it means he can follow instructions to put together LEGO Technic and introduction to Scratch, both of which daddy school has covered.) His writing and drawing skills are noticably better (yeah!).  He practices piano on his own (for some definition of practice), he has started playing with other kids, and his gym teacher states he is a joy to have in class.  And more interesting, since we are not Catholic, is him talking about being 'provident' (attitude derived from the name of the order that sponsors the school).

He is still an introvert, and we do not expect that to change (after all, so are we). But we want him to develop the skills of interacting with the outside world. And the small class that he is provides him a safe place to do that. And we see it in how he carries himself around us, and in public. We like watching him try to take care of others, teaching other kids how to do things at museums, being polite to adults, he has even started holding doors open for people. And we note that one thing that being taught curtesy does, it provides a framework for approaching the world. A child showing curtesy is not at a loss in how to act and removing uncertainty makes everything more comfortable.

Another major milestone is T's first taekwondo tournament.  T is in a American Taekwondo Association (ATA) class as a Tiny Tiger (4-6 yrs old). And our main concern was if he would completely freeze. I had even taught him the breathing technique for dealing with emergency that we teach in the Red Cross Pillowcase Project.  But what got him started was the fact the he had to deal with the judges, and judges were just like instructors. And T knew how to treat instructors with respect and follow instructions.

junbee! Ready to start his ssang joel baang (nunchucku) form at the tournament

What makes the tournament useful was not the prize (at this age, there are enough potential classifications of awards than there are participants, so everyone gets a prize, but some sound more 'real' than others), but the opportunity for him to be in an environment of strangers and perform. And for us to see how he is compared to the other 4-6 year olds.  Just like every other environment he is in, he is clearly one of the smallest. But he is also self controlled. I found it amusing that as they were waiting (having 4-6 year old boys wait without anything to hold their attention is a loosing proposition). He would go between the standard figiting and moving to almost an exaggerated version of attention when he remembered where he was.  We also saw him around kids from the various other area schools, and we realize that our school is just like all the others, and he gets compared in the same light. His memory (in the ATA, 4-6 yr olds are not expected to have memorized their poomsae, but he was clearly doing his with the leader instead of following as most of the kids did), focus (kicks and punches with snaps) and general lack of hesitation. Given that he was among the youngest of the bunch (the others were 5 1/2-6) he compares well. And doing well in his first tournament was a great confidence booster.

Bowing out after his form

Medals for "Best power" in forms, one-steps, and weapons

The other one is turning into a toddler.  She has always had a will, now she is trying to enforce it.  And for a toddler, this means being greedy, grabbing things (especially something that someone else has), toddler tantrums, and yelling. On top of that, she seems to be quite smart, able to precisely specify her desires, demonstrating a good memory, so she is very good at causing trouble.  This one is going to be a fighter, and we see ourselves having much more trouble with the little one than we did with T.

Parenting: Moving on to Kindergarten

This month was marked by another major milestone: Kindergarten, the point where the education system starts in earnest and where the effort of the school becomes comparable or exceeds the effort of the parents. In our case, the big issue here was T's birthday: his birthday is after the PA deadline. We wanted him to start Kindergarten because his cohort in daycare/preschool was all starting Kindergarten this year, so socially and academically he was ready.  (daycare/preschool promoted people based on age, so he already had almost a year of pre-K. And he maxed out on the pre-K assessment even before being promoted from the 3-year old preschool to pre-K (meaning they ran out of pre-K assessment material, they knew not to bother with the 3-year old assessment material)). The public school pathway would require that at some point, he would have to repeat a year, which seemed like a recipe for boredom.

For the two weeks before pre-K, we have been moving his bedtime and wake up time up.  From a generally 9:30 in-bed time we shifted to 8:30.  From a generally 8AM wakeup over the summer we shifted him to 7.  The week of pre-K we had him in bed by 8:30, and 6:30 wake up.  Sunday was the school welcome and orientation.  Monday I woke him up in the morning to get to school to play in their playground.  Wednesday was first day of school.  Yeah!

First day of Kindergarten

Main development for the past month:

We had a nearby neighbor from China that we got to know over the summer, which included two young girls. T and them played nearly daily as we were essentially the only people they knew who were not business related (and the only people for the kids to play with).  They eventually did so many things with us that we joked that they were copying our lives.

Playing on the Northshore Riverwalk Water Steps

T had another round of testing, so now he has a Yellow belt with Black Strip (in the ATA system, the Yellow belt is the third belt, after White and Orange).

Yellow belt testing - Knife hand strike

T has definitely been getting more confident and expressive over the summer.  He is better about  expressing what he wants and being forceful (i.e. taking his turn).  And he is better about expressing when he has an opinion, which will hopefully help when in school.  (Taekwondo definitely contributes here)

A has turned into a 15 month old babbling daredevil.  She is a determined child when she has determined what she wants, and is willing to climb over anything to get to it. Very amusing are her babbling episodes, where she can go on babbling for extended periods of time. When she develops language skills she is going to talk our ears off.

Looking forward we see settling into his new school and getting to know his place in the class.  We also have a first TKD tournament that T will go to in September, which is a new level of performing in public

LEGO Chain Reactions: LEGO for teaching engineering and reading

Lego Chain Reactions: Design and Build Amazing Moving Machines by Pat Murphy and the Scientists of Klutz Labs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very different LEGO product, it is about using LEGO system and Technic pieces to build simple machines, so it as much learning about simple machines as it is about building. And the fact that the end result is not a static object but a series of motions is a big plus in our book.

The LEGO Chain reaction set is a book with 10 plans for building a structure that supports a combination of simple machines. The assumption is that you have the LEGO system pieces (the standard bricks and plates) and it provides you with a few Technic pieces (beams and pins). For each project, there is an introduction to the project, instructions to build the project, instructions on how to work the project once it is done, and an explanation of how it works. What links the 10 projects together is use of either moving pieces or plastic balls that go in motion and becomes the trigger for the next project.

My four year old son and I have gone through all 10 projects. And we have done sequences of up to four of the projects in a row. In making the projects, we actually ran out of bricks and had to do substitutions and use Duplo blocks to get enough volume to build up the structures. With every project, I have him read the text on the project, then have him explain to an audience (mommy and any lucky visitors) what the project(s) are doing.

The fact that the projects are so different, and that after making them, they are very playable is the appeal of this. My son enjoys making the completed projects work, and especially making the chain, then trying to explain what it all means.

In the end, my assessment is that this is a great use of LEGO, build things that then have actual use, and use it to engage and educate the builder. It combines engineering and language (explaining why the projects work the way they do). And abstract enough that the builders may be able to apply these designs in new ways. Highly recommended

Explaining how a four stages chain reaction project works

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Parenting Month 57: The preschool years are ending

This summer is going by quickly. And in front of us we see that next month T starts Kindergarten, which is probably the point where others start to have a significant impact on his growth. (While his daycare and preschool staff are wonderful caregivers, we are clearly driving T's attitudes towards how he approaches his world as well as skills he develops, academic, social, and physical.)  Some touchpoints.

1.  He has learned to take pride in competency and the effort it took him to get there. This shows in reading, playing piano, taekwondo, building things (LEGO and wood), helping with cooking and chores around the house, and most facets of life.

2.  While we are reserving judgment on how smart he is (ok, we are pushing him into Kindergarten ahead of schedule, but that as much a result of the fact that preschools advance kids on their birthdays while the public school system advances people in cohorts as anything else (i.e. he has been in pre-K this past year since his birthday, but the standard public school timeline would have him repeating a year before he is on their timeline)), he does have an attention span and a pretty good level of perseverance (for a 4-year old). And we think the fact that he has the attitude that it is good to work hard to do something difficult as he starts his school years is a success on our end.

3.  We have had guests with us this week. One of their comments was he seems like he is the type of kid who will never complain about things being unfair because he did not get something. We are pretty sure that he has learned to value people over things (although, if the things in question are books, it is a close call), And I think that half of the attraction of usual rewards like candy, toys, and trophies is because he gets from others that he is supposed to like it. (we occasionally have candy laying out, and don't realize there is an issue until other kids come into the house, because T won't go after them)

4.  He likes helping around the house. Actually, when he makes a mess, he tries to clean up before we find out about it. It is really funny when he needs some supplies to do it. Last week he was asking me to help him get paper towels, "but don't come downstairs to look at the table"

5.  He approaches the world engaged and looking around. We see that in his visits to museums, when we go on walks in parks and trails, and especially in taekwondo (my impression that this is the biggest differentiater among the pre-schoolers is their ability to focus on the teachers and class.
6.  He is generally happy. The main testimonials are a couple kids that are in both his pre-school and his taekwondo school who have stated that "T is always happy"

7.  He plays with other kids.  This was a bit of a concern up to when he was around 3 1/2 or so.  One thing that helps is there are a number of kids just a little older than him on our street (mostly girls). Now, the preschool teachers say that our little turtle is out of his shell and they have to tell him to stop talking.  One of the joys about taking him to taekwondo is that we get to watch him interact with the other kids. And while we don't encourage it, he interacts with all of the other kids as they are waiting their turns for drills and such. As one of the smallest kids in the school (I think he is now the second smallest, one of the owners refers to him as one of their peanuts),  We don't ever see him being one of the really talkative kids in his class and we expect that he will always take time to get used to new adults (neither he nor his sister were ever pass around kids),

8.  He is learning how to present what he knows. Since we actually talk about what is going on at the museum or science center, we have been having him show the other kids and parents (advantage of having academics as parents, we actually know more than the kids volunteering there about whatever we are looking at, most of the time).  These past few months he has been getting markably better at it.

9.  He adores his little sister. (and she does likewise).  From day 1 he has enjoyed being the big brother and getting to play and help care for his baby sister.

10.  He still does not sleep on his own. Back when he was a baby with colic, the pediatrician warned us that he probably would not sleep on his own until he was four. Well, he is four, what's up (jk)  At this point he can sleep by himself and does occasionally, but he really likes to check every now and then that someone is around. And he likes the snuggle.  And, well, since I can pretty much sleep through the occasional check-in it does not bother me so why not. And I'm sure that there will be an end to this.

11.  He is very careful. In some sense this is good. There are a lot of things we never had to worry about. He tested things before trying to eat them, We never really needed baby gates with him (because he figured out how to go backwards down before he started getting to fast for us to catch him), we can let him cut food with a (plastic) knife.  We probably did not do a complete job on babyproofing things. But this goes along with not being daring in trying new things, until we go through with him first.

12.  Not very creative. This somewhat goes with being careful, but he never had the phase of coloring and drawing with abandon. So we went from scribbling to deliberate outlining shapes, but not the randomish stick drawings that are stereotypical of pre-schoolers.  I've started him on learning to draw using primitives (assembling basic shapes until they look like something) but the wild abandon that many kids keep through early elementary school never took with him.

13.  He is no longer the the island of stillness in the chaos of toddler daycare like when he was 3, but he still tends to focus on one thing for extended periods of time, even as all of his peers fly from task to task.

14.  He is becoming more expressive.  With people he knows, he is willing to express himself.

15.  In Fate Approaches terms, he would be Good at Careful, Fair at Quick and Clever, Average at Forceful and Flashy, and Poor at Sneaky.

16.  We pretty much skipped tantrums. He has occasional crying spells, but his tantrums seem like he is trying to imitate what he thinks a tantrum should look like.

17.  He has little sense of possessiveness.  His daycare teachers have commented he does not fight over toys, because he does not have that sense of possessiveness and greed. He has more of a sense that something is his, but it still is not that strong.

18.  He is pretty much what you see is what you get. No deceptiveness at all. Well, he is in the stage of saying what he thinks we want to hear (which would be considered lying if he were older), but even that is not that bad (exhibit: saying "I need a paper towel. But don't come downstairs, there is no mess")

Now we are getting ready for Kindergarten.  We are going to a local catholic school, because they are the only ones who would consider taking in someone early (with recommendations from his pre-K teachers and an assessment, of course).  They are going to get a kid who reads Dr. Seuss before entry into Kindergarten. Judging by their reactions, they can handle a wide range in a Kindergarten class.  We have found out in his daycare/pre-school that T responds well in settings with small sizes (also helped a lot in taekwondo) and we are looking forward to his starting school.

Lessons in teaching: teaching exploratory data analysis with R

Last spring, I took over a course labeled as information systems engineering.  This is aimed at sophomores in engineering.  Historically, this course focused on using the MS Access database.  I was asked by the department to take this over after several years of commenting that our engineering seniors have inadequate computer programming skills, as evidenced by the amount of effort they spend on their senior projects doing tasks that would have been much simpler if they tried programming.  Last year some of the faculty tried experiments in their classes where they had students code in an assignment (generally they asked for C). In every case this went very badly.  So they asked me to take this course and change it so that it covered programming and specifically to use R. (I am effectively the primary data analysis faculty here).  In keeping with the course title, I chose to focus the course on data analysis, with one month focusing on databases and how to think about data problems (and giving them time to gradually learn R), the rest on exploratory data analysis.  I used as the primary text Data Manipulation with R by Phil Spector, and as supplements GGplot2 by Hadley Whickam and An Introduction to Data Cleaning by Edwin de Jonge and Mark Van Der Roo. I presented the CONVO framework for thinking about data problems based on Thinking about Data by Max Shrum.

As freshmen, they would have has CS0 (the Association for Computing Machinery designation of introduction to computer science for non-computer science/electrical engineering majors) material covered over a two course sequence that also covers mathematics for engineering (primarily linear algebra).  The language of instruction is primarily Matlab, but they also cover C and, depending on instructor, Python (there is one module that is sometimes covered by Physics faculty, and they like to use Python).  For databases, there is another course on databases taught by an adjunct faculty who used to teach databases for information systems.

For tools I used SQLite (more on why this and not MS Access later), SQLite Manager, R, and R Studio. Prior to the end of the previous semester I sent everyone an email with links to videos introducing them to R and R Studio and encouraged them to introduce them to R through typing out a tutorial (I explained that they would actually learn R over the semester, the typing exercise was to ensure they had seen everything once before we actually needed it in class.).

For assessments, there were weekly labs for computer knowledge, exams mostly covered how to think through data problems. A semester project with two milestones (plus completed project) was the main way to assess how well they developed computer programming competency.  Each week, we covered one

We had three datasets that I used as teaching and lab examples throughout the course.

1. Titanic survivors
2. National Survey of Family Growth
3. American Community Survey (U.S. Census, Pittsburgh North PUMA)

Some observations and notes

1.  SQLite vs MS Access.  I was surprised to find out that MS Access has a relatively low size limit on databases. It was not able to handle either the National Survey of Family Growth (expected) nor could it handle a single PUMA for the American Community Survey (this was a surprise).  That meant we had to use SQLite for the entire course. (my Mac students were happy since this put them on equal footing with the PC students). Next time I will just use SQLite. (and use MS Access only to explain why we are not using MS Access)

2.  Learning R.  In a pre-class survey, the entire class indicated complete lack of confidence in programming to fulfil a task (expected).  I think that the standard programming language belief that it is always easier to learn a second programming language failed in this case, because I did not realize just how bad their first experience was.  While the first month was very intentionally a confidence building exercise, I think that for a portion of the class, they really needed to start from scratch.  Next time around, I will spend an entire period doing nothing but walking the class through R.

3.  Data manipulation.  This included covering data structures (text, dates, dataframes), regular expressions, plyr, reshape, and missing values imputation.  Essentially the Hadleyverse v. 1.  One issue here was the wide variety of potential topics. While I think every topic got used by someone in their semester project, some of the student evaluations complained about my teaching topics that were not on the exam.  Essentially, for people who are only used to computing on numbers, the entire topic of data manipulation seems to be a heavy cognitive load.

4.  Visualization.  I taught qplot, but I think that I should have gone straight to ggplot.  I think that either I go the traditional route and build every type of plot as an individual entity, or I present the grammar of graphics approach and build plots. Either way, now that I've taught it, I don't think qplot helps in either, and it is a lot less capable. (every groups final project pretty much had to transition to ggplot)

5.  Projects. I let  the students find their own datasets and questions, subject to the fact that they had to write the project purpose using the guidelines we covered in thinking about data.  The big division in quality of the projects was the richness of the dataset.  Next time, I will be a lot more strict on the dataset, in particular, I had a subjective guideline that they should not consider it practical to look at the whole dataset. In some cases, this still was a very small volume, and it made for a trivial and uninteresting report.

6.  Thinking about data. I used Max Strum Thinking about data framework where for a data project, one should identify the COntext, Need, Vision, Outcome.  Every week we read a contemporary news article that included a data component (mostly from the fivethirtyeight.com website)  Each discussion opened up with class discussion to summarize the article into this CONVO framework, then a discussion of the analysis in the article itself.  This actually worked out pretty well.  Each exam had at least one CONVO focused question, and generally they did well (and of the people who did not, there were no surprises based on class participation)

7.  News articles.  I had a wide range of news articles that we covered in a weekly discussion, drawn mostly from fivethirtyeight.com, the Upshot column from the New York Times, and the data series from the Washington Post.  Each article was assigned at the end of the week, for discussion in the Tuesday morning lecture.  Discussion opened up with a summary based on the CONVO framework, then we evaluated the data analysis presented in the article, followed by how we could change it to make it better or to answer a different question.  These class periods were fun. My goal was to take 15 minutes for each article, in a few cases we were on a roll so we let it go to 30 minutes.  I had good participation.  And it showed in the CONVO question on exams, and generally people did well when I asked them to imagine a data analysis based on data presented on a test (this was the last part of a multi part question, where the other parts were about the data presented). One disappointing thing was that when it came time for course evaluations, I was rated poorly with how the class material relates to the everyday world (like all engineering courses do). So I have to figure this one out.

8.  Course evaluations. When course evaluations came in, they were roughly a uniform distribution, which makes them very hard to interpret. In addition, comments that expressed weaknesses were mirrored in the comments that expressed strengths. So that meant that I had terrible averages and a chat with my department chair.  Fortunately for me, the generally accepted belief is that the broad diversity in the teaching evaluation is due to pushing the students harder (i.e. making them do programming again) and that this is part of improving the department as a whole. Hopefully when he meets the dean to review the faculty the dean agrees with this assessment as well.

9.  Class projects.  About a quarter of the projects (teams of1, 2, or 3) were genuinely impressive. Many projects with 100,000s of records, a few with millions of records, several dimensions, and data analysis that used layered visualizations to explore.  Most projects were a little more modest, thousands of data points and reasonable visualizations. Some projects were personal in nature (looking at issues in their home towns), others were fun (several projects revolved around music or sports) A number showed evidence of lack of confidence, shown in very unambitious data sets.  The issue with this group is how hard to push. One of the known problems with CS0 or CS1 is that they complete destroy people's confidence in programming, and a substantial portion of those who take one of their courses completely leave the field, or in the case of engineers, avoid programming at all costs in the future.

Next time around:

1.  Using a framework like CONVO (Max Strum) works. I am pretty sure everyone at least learned how to think about problems and settings.
2.  Skip MS Access.  I think I probably spent too much time on databases and working with the MS Access interface.  Next time, going straight to SQL is probably enough, given that the limits on MS Access means that we cannot do interesting datasets.
3.  I liked using three datasets the entire course.  Actually, some of them used the American Community Survey for their semester projects (after reading in multiple PUMA, e.g. an entire metropolitan area instead of only one PUMA).
4.  One question that I will have to think about is how much of a do-over of CS0 this course will be.  Clearly, as it is most of the class seems to get it the second time around and a good portion are pretty impressive. But there is a pretty large fraction that finished CS0 absolutely convinced that programming is forever beyond them.