Tony Hollowell's blog

Photo: Kevin Dooley

I have found that there is a very quick path to insanity: trying to control things that you cannot control.

I was reminded of this today when I went and observed my brother's fourth-grade classroom. The fourth-graders left for math class, but when they came back an hour later, half of them were crying and the other half was either mad or kicking their backpacks. It was an emotional train wreck. When my brother asked them what was wrong, they said that they all received bad grades on their test in the previous class. My brother was trying to assure them, telling them that "your parents aren't going to ground you for a month" and "no, it doesn't mean you are going to get an F on your report card", but this had no effect. These fourth graders were convinced that the end of the world was at hand because they had a piece of paper with a number lower than a 70%. The teacher who gave them the bad grades even came back into my brother's classroom and told the students that she had decided that the assignment was just going to count as extra credit, so they didn't have to worry. But this didn't matter. They were still crushed. continue reading this post

(Photo: 2composers)
You can know a lot about a person by the type of plane seat they pick.

The people that deliberately pick a window seat are different from people that pick an aisle seat. An aisle seat is about comfort, ease, and familiarity. A window seat is about discovery and adventure. And just like every adventure, there is a price, a “cost of admission” to the views. If you are in a window seat and you have to use the restroom or get something out of the overhead compartment, you have to inconvenience everyone in your row to get out. In a window seat, you are also sandwiched between the immobile wall and another person and so your legs do not have as much freedom as they do in an aisle seat. Worst of all, if you are in a hurry, a window seat is problematic because it takes you a little longer to get out of the plane. You never know how many time-pressured people are going to rush in front of you before you can even get into the aisle and remove your bags. continue reading this post

At the start of every semester in college, I trudged to the bookstore to purchase all of my books for the semester. This was in an era when most students didn’t buy books online, and bookstores had a virtual monopoly on how much they could charge for a book because they were the only store within a 200 mile radius that sold “Pearson’s Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry, 112th edition.” Sure, you might be able to find the 111th edition from someone who lived down the hall, but you weren’t allowed to have that in class.

So every year, I spent hundreds of dollars on books that I didn’t even want. This frustrated me, so I made a new policy: each semester, I was going to buy at least one book that I wanted to buy. My first book I bought was “Until we have faces” by C.S. Lewis, and it was by far the best book I read for the entire semester. This continued to be true for every semester: the little book that I wanted to purchase was always more informative and had a greater educational impact than every other “mandatory” book that I bought. I find it ironic that I would spend hundreds of dollars each semester on books for school, and yet the little $10-15 book was always more influential in the long run than the other books that I purchased. But the separation between what I did in school versus what actually proved useful did not stop with just the books that I bought. This separation showed up everywhere. continue reading this post

Millions of Americans play a game of financial roulette with their meager wages, a game called “The Lottery.” Even though 82% of all lottery tickets are purchased by low-income minority men, these low-income players continue to buy tickets. And after years and years of buying tickets, some of these people finally get their wish and win their millions. However, over time, the money doesn’t stay around. 65% of all lottery winners go bankrupt in less than 15 years. It is a sad reality that so many poor people play such a statistically foolish game, and furthermore, those who win the game still end up loosing.

The problem is that these people thought money would fix their problems. They thought that if only they had more money, they could finally “make it”. But in reality, money didn’t fix the problem. Adding more money only proved what had already been demonstrated: they were not good at keeping money around. They didn’t understand how money behaved, and unless they got their act together, the sudden influx of money, ultimately, was destructive.

With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, an extra $80 billion will be appropriated towards education in just a few short years. Education in America has just won the lottery. And that concerns me. continue reading this post

On a beautiful day in the summer of 2005, I hopped on my bicycle for a ride amidst the cornfields of Indiana. I always liked to ride my bike but I never rode more than 10-20 miles at a time, so I wasn’t going far. As I was riding, the thought occurred to me that the following summer would be a good time to fulfill my dream of riding my bike across the country. As I approached the end of my ride, I got more and more excited about the trip. I thought of all the adventures I would have, and I thought about how much fun it would be to ride across deserts, mountains, and cornfields and to go cross-country with a bunch of friends. I became more and more enthusiastic envisioning the whole trip until, finally, something within me snapped. I made a definitive decision: the following summer, after my second year of teaching, I was going to ride my bike across the country.

You must understand that I knew absolutely nothing about how this trip would work. I didn’t know how to fix a flat tire, I had never ridden more than 20 miles on my own, I didn’t know how much it would cost, I didn’t know if anyone else wanted to come, and I had no idea about where we would start, where we would finish, or the route we would take. There were so many unanswered questions that needed answering, but the decision had been made: I was going to ride my bike across the country, even though I knew absolutely nothing about how to make it happen. continue reading this post

I wish more people understood the simple fact that all measurement is approximate. Everything we measure has an inherent amount of error, a degree to which the measured value floats around the actual value. Furthermore, people need to understand that this actual value can never be known. Thus, you may tell people that you are 5 feet, 9 inches tall, but this is only an approximation, and furthermore, there is no tool in the entire universe that can determine your actual height! Sure, you can reduce the amount of error in a measurement by getting better tools, and you can use this super-advanced tool to find that you are 5 feet, 9.00342 inches tall, but even with its advanced technology, there will remain a degree of error in that measurement.

Unfortunately, your intelligence cannot be measured in the same way that we measure your height. Your intelligence is a "latent trait" which means it can't be seen or touched, so we create standardized tests to measure this latent trait in the same way that a ruler is used to measure your height. What is problematic is that many people seem to think that this measurement is definitive and static, but nothing could be further from the truth. continue reading this post

I have had the privilege of observing many teachers in my time in education. This was borne out of necessity because of the fact that I wanted to improve as a teacher but I had no idea what to do! So, I would just go around and observe any and all teachers. Sometimes I would ask permission and sit in on their class during my prep, and other times I would stalk outside their classroom and listen to what was happening and occasionally sneak a peak through the door or window. After conducting so many planned (and unplanned) observations, I have discovered that the ONLY variable that matters when evaluating the efficacy of a teacher is... continue reading this post

I know people who use their weight as the lone indicator of their health. They want to be “healthy”, and in order to reach “healthy”, all they look at is their weight. They focus on just a number, their goal weight, and they do everything they can to attain that weight. These people are “health nuts”, but instead of becoming healthy, they become some of the most unhealthy people that I know. The problem is that they have an inherently flawed vision of health and their goals are distorted from the beginning. They equate “health” with some arbitrary value of “weight”, and they only consider themselves “healthy” when they are at this arbitrary weight. Focusing solely on some arbitrary number, they completely neglect their cholesterol, blood pressure, mental stress, and their relationships. They become obsessed with the number but subsequently fail to attain their ultimate goal in the process.

What does this have to do with standardized tests? Read on… continue reading this post

The worst grade I ever received in college came from my Computer Animated Design class. I had a professor who had a “magic” briefcase, and out of that briefcase would pop up the most random overhead transparencies. He would pull one out, look at it like he hadn’t seen it in a year (because he truly hadn't seen it in a year) and then briefly scan the contents as he was placing it on the projector. I would always have to brace myself for what would come next… continue reading this post

So, the school year is about to start and everyone knows that this means you will be “busy”. But what does “busy” look like? Below is what my “busy” schedule used to look like at the beginning of the year: continue reading this post