Comments on: Why I Failed

By: If anyone’s reading this, this experime… « Microblogging my Workouts

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:47:30 +0000

[...] If anyone’s reading this, this experiment is over. For an explanation, see here: http://www.apaceofchange.com/2010/01/09/why-i-failed/ [...]

By: damian

damian — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 01:21:11 +0000

I think that if we didn’t have kids, it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal, but as things are, I can’t get 60 uninterrupted minutes until they go down between 6:30 and 7. My wife usually is in bed by 8, so by the time I was done working out, she was either asleep or well on her way there.

If you stay true to the program, I think the shortest workout day is 70 minutes (55 for workout + 15 for abs). Without kids, I imagine one’s day has somewhat more flexibility.

You make a good point about the current grading system not supporting what I describe in my post. Coincidentally, Ira Socol blogged about this idea much more eloquenter than me earlier today: http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/01/little-steps-history-anywhere-math.html

I wish I had an easy answer for that, but I don’t. The only thing I can suggest is to recognize the improvement as best you can (so the student knows that you acknowledge the improvement) and continue giving the student incremental goals to work toward and investigating why the student only completes 50% of his assigned work.

By: Ben Wildeboer

Ben Wildeboer — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:44:48 +0000

Yikes. We’re about to start the P90X business over here, and I’ve been worried that the time commitment will be a bit much. I haven’t committed myself to following the program exactly, but 60-90 minutes does seem like a lot of time. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it does.

As for expectations we set for our students: Within traditional grading practices, there just isn’t any easy way to recognize students who have improved. If Timmy was giving me absolutely nothing at the beginning of the year and is now doing about 50% of the work, he’s still failing- despite the huge improvement. Perhaps it’s just another reason why the whole grading system doesn’t work the way it should.
Ben Wildeboer´s last blog ..Science and Self-Directed Learning