Mitchell Tandy

School Setting and Context

Building for a new generation
Thompson Valley High School Mission
While Thompson Valley High School has served the community of southern Loveland for
over 38 years, numerous changes in administration and student demographics have made this a
very exciting time to be a part of TVHS. The current principal took over the position in July of
2014, following the retirement of his predecessor after 9 years, and more than one assistant
principal is new to the position. However, it is very easy to see that the administration cares very
deeply about both the school and the community it serves. Simultaneously to the administrative
changes, the schools student demographics have changed significantly. According to data on the
Thompson School Districts website for this school year, 36% of students at TVHS are on
free/reduced lunches, 11% are enrolled in special education, and 13% have been identified as
gifted and talented. This number of students on free/reduced lunches has increased from only
18% in 2005 (according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics found on highschools.com).
However, one cannot talk about any school in the Thompson School District without
mentioning the current school board controversy. In 2013, a group of conservative reformers
gained the majority of seats on the Thompson School District school board, following a trend
similar to that experienced by other Colorado school districts. Since then, there has been a
history of controversy over transparency of the boards actions and hiring practices (such as with
Colorado Spring attorney Brad Miller), but the conflict reached a critical point early this year. In
May 2015, the school board voted 4-3 against the negotiated teachers contract for the 2015-2016
school year, which 99% of teachers union members voted in favor of. The board majority stated
that the contract lacked a pay-for-performance program, reduction of union powers, and other
familiar topics from Jefferson County and Douglas County. In a public statement, TEA (teachers
union) president Andy Crisman expressed disappointment in the decision, given that it acts in the
face of over 37 years of good faith bargaining. Fortunately, even without a contract, the
teachers of Thompson Valley High School have remained as dedicated as ever to their students.
The delicate political situation is valuable to see first-hand as a teacher-in-training, especially
with my background in the Jefferson County School District.
The students at TVHS are engaged in an incredibly diverse range of sports and activities.
Over 100 students are enrolled in concurrent enrollment programs through the Colorado
Community College System, providing great experiences and connections in post-secondary
education. TV Athletics is comprised of 20 sports, some of which are even further split into
boys/girls and JV/Varsity teams, which leads to a total listed number of 40 teams. On the student
organizations side, Thompson Valley High School hosts 28 clubs, from culture clubs to academic
teams to hobby clubs. However, through my time helping to sponsor the schools anime club,
assisting and observing in my mentor teachers class, and just being in the school in general, I
have noticed something important about the culture of TVHSs students: inclusiveness. While
students certainly have their own social circles, the divisions between these groups is basically
non-existent. Regardless of interests or backgrounds, the students simply get along with each
other as necessary for the situation. This is an incredible community, and all of TVHS should be
proud to be a part of it.
I have been assisting and teaching in a 2nd-period Algebra 2 class. The average class
period consists of going through a guided-notes packet as a class, with practice problems
throughout the packet. First, my mentor teacher explains a new concept or skill with guiding

Mitchell Tandy
School Setting and Context
questions to check the class understanding. Then, students work together or individually on a
practice problem while the teacher and I check in with everyone, assisting where needed. Desks
are organized in a shoulder-partners format, so students have access to their neighbors for
additional help. Afterwards, the teacher works through the problem in front of the class. This is
then followed by a similar process of practice problem and solution until a new concept or skill
is introduced. Sometimes these practice problems are supplemented with small white-boards
with an x-axis and y-axis printed on them in order to better show work and solutions. The room
itself has whiteboards on every wall as well, but so far, I have not seen them used. The overall
setup can be seen below:

The course is comprised of juniors and seniors with varying ability levels, but most of the
class struggles with basic algebra concepts. I can tell from the types of mistakes that are made
that most students were taught algebra 1/pre-algebra through rote-algorithms rather than actually
understanding it, as many of the mistakes make no sense physically and logically; they could
only make sense from the perspective of what rule am I supposed to follow here? A couple
examples of reoccurring mistakes include using subtraction to remove multiplication and
mistaking the y-intercept for the slope. More generally, however, many students have lost all
faith in the subject. While there have been occasional murmurs of I hate math, one incident in
particular stands out: recently, a student was frustrated because she was behind on her
homework. Her exact words to my mentor teacher in the middle of class were, I cant do it at
home, because I dont know how to do it, and I cant ask my parents, because they dont know
either! As a result, I spend most of my time assisting students in the back two rows of the class,
who are desperately trying to keep up with the class, because they NEED the individual
attention. One girl in the back row is really trying so hard to do well, but she has so much
trouble with pre-algebra skills that it is making every day a struggle to keep up. At the same
time, however, students seated at the front of the class (and scattered here-and-there further back)
breeze through problems without difficulty. For me, these would be huge red-flags to have an
entire day of review with exploration activities for the advanced students, just to give students
the chance to catch up and succeed rather than survive.
The lesson that I will be teaching is an application of the calculator skills that students
will have gone over the previous two days in class: finding the best-fit line for a given set of
data. The main focus of the last couple weeks of class has been linear functions, so students
have been studying how to work with or create equations for lines. This includes graphing linear
functions, finding intercepts, creating parallel/perpendicular lines, and switching between point-

Mitchell Tandy
School Setting and Context
slope, slope-intercept, and standard forms. This leads into finding linear models for data using a
TI-84 calculator, which my mentor teacher will be teaching over the next two class periods. As a
result, my activity will be an application of skills that students have practiced with for several
days beforehand.
The lesson begins with a do-now with a problem using a very short list of data points to
find a line of best fit. Since the lesson will take place on a Thursday, it will have been a couple
days since students were in math class, so a quick refresher will be important to get everyone on
the same page. In addition, this will be a good chance to troubleshoot calculator issues before
the main activity starts (setting up windows, enabling scatterplots, etc.). Next up I will explain
the activity: students will first choose a partner and measure their height and wingspan (this is a
roughly linear relationship), then list their numbers (WITH NO NAMES) on the whiteboard at
the front. Once everyone is done, students will use this data to create a line of best fit, and then
use this line to predict the wingspans of famous people, figure out how tall a person would have
to be to reach out for something in a movies GRAB MY HAND scenario, and make up one
story problem of their own to give to someone else in the class. The lesson will finish by having
students solving the problems posed by their classmates and turning them in with both names.
I designed the activity in this way to target learning styles that may have difficulty in the
usual guided-notes format, with an emphasis on partner-cooperation and movement around the
classroom. The concrete data and collecting of measurements is designed to appeal to students
who need to experience concepts physically rather than abstractly, as many of the problems that
students have worked with so far have been purely abstract numbers and equations. This is
further expanded on by applying the best fit line to actual situations, and I want to at least try to
make math look like something interesting or fun. The reasoning behind the partner format is
that the classroom is designed for partners (with a couple groups of three), so students are
familiar with working with partners. As a side note, it also halves the number of measuring tools
needed. In addition, a very important part of the activity is to have students actually getting up
and moving. This class takes place at 7:30am, and students are oftentimes half-asleep. There is
no way I am going to be able to get them to really think creatively and try new things if they are
falling asleep in their chairs for the entire class period, so I need to get them to at least stand up
and move around to get the blood flowing.