Raising the Level of Reading Comprehension of Students at Community Colleges

Emphasis on Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) and grades should not divert us, the math faculty at community colleges, from our main goal: a meaningful and quality education for our students. SLOs and evaluations are necessary but we need to recognize that other factors are also important. One such is reading comprehension, the ability of students to understand what they are reading, particularly word problems. While students can answer straightforward questions like “Let A and B be events with P(A) = 0.8, P(B) = 0.1 and P(B|A) = 0.2, Find P(A and B)” or solve quadratic equations like x² – 7x + 11 = 0, they are sometimes unable to parse sentences in word problems to figure out what needs to be done, far less solve them. 

Yet it is word problems that help students connect with the real world, encourage them to think about relationships between numbers, and reveal interdisciplinary connections between mathematics and subjects such as English, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology and environmental science.

Here is an example from statistics that illustrates how a lack of reading comprehension becomes a barrier for students to solve word problems.

Statistics (section 7.2, Elementary Statistics by Navidi and Monk): According to the National Health Statistics Reports, the heights of adult women in the United States are normally distributed with a mean of 64 inches and a standard deviation of 4 inches. If three women are selected at random, what is the probability that at least one of them is more than 68 inches tall?

The first difficulty students face is the phrase “At least 1”. The second is with the meaning and implication of the word “random.”

Students had learned one of the probability formulas in a previous section: “Probability (At Least 1) = 1 – Probability (None)”. They have no difficulty running “normalcdf” in their calculators to determine the probability when the parameters are explicitly given. However, connecting the formula and the idea of randomness and “normalcdf” to this problem seems beyond the capacity of most students. It comes down to a reading comprehension issue.

After carefully parsing the sentence “If three women are selected at random, what is the probability that at least one of them is more than 68 inches tall,” they slowly begin to make the connections. To ensure comprehension, I ask students to write complete sentences describing the steps they use to solve word problems such as this “if you want full credit.”

That last clause gets their attention.

This is a typical writing sample from approximately 60% of the students (the other 40% struggle to express themselves) who write complete sentences to describe the steps:

a) Find the probability that any one of the three randomly selected women is shorter than 68 inches by running (TI-84) normalcdf (0, 68, 64, 4) = 0.841. That is, the probability that a woman picked at random has a height between 0 and 68 inches is 0.841.
b) Since the three women are selected at random (no connection between them, that is, they are “independent” of each other), the probability that ALL three women are shorter than 68 inches is, by the multiplication law of probability,
P (A and B and C) = P (A) x P(B) x P(C) = (0.841)³ = 0.595.
c) Apply the “At Least 1” formula: Since the sum of all probabilities = 1, and since “At Least 1” includes all possibilities other than 0 or None, “At Least 1” and “None” include ALL possibilities between them. They are complements of each other. Therefore,
P(At Least 1) + P(None) = 1; P(At Least 1) = 1 – P(None)
Probability (At least One Woman taller than 68 inches) = 1 – 0.595 = 0.405

(Occasionally, a few students will go further and fill in more details. This is typical of what they write: To calculate P (At Least 1) directly requires the calculation of 7 different probabilities for this particular problem.
1. A is taller than 68 inches but not B and C  
OR

2. B is taller than 68 inches but not A and C  
OR
3. C is taller than 68 inches but not A and B  
OR

4. A and B are taller than 68 inches but not C  
OR

5. A and C are taller than 68 inches but not B  
OR
6. B and C are taller than 68 inches but not A  
OR

7. A, B and C are all taller than 68 inches

The only other option is
8. All of them (A, B, and C) are equal to or shorter than 68 inches, that is, NONE are taller than 68 inches.

The sum of all 8 probabilities = 1. So a) either I calculate the probabilities for options 1 through 7 individually and sum them, which is tedious and can lead to mistakes, or b) I do option 8 and subtract it from 1, which gives me the sum of probabilities for 1 through 7. It's easier to use option b, a neat trick!)

One or two students who take meticulous notes of what I emphasize in class will also add something like this:
“Even though entering actual heights between two boundaries gives the area under the bell curve, which is equivalent to the relevant probability, the calculator converts the heights into their corresponding z-scores ‘behind the scene.’ The area under the curve can be interpreted as probability only when the actual values, the heights in this case, are converted to their corresponding z-scores.”

I insist on complete sentences to explain the solutions to word problems because it becomes a test for students to see how well they understand the problems, that is, how good their reading comprehension is. Reading carefully clarifies their thinking, which, in turn, leads to clear writing. Reading and writing reinforce each other in a creative loop. Since language is the basis of thought, reading and writing well allow students to think well too. Students discover that this is true not just for English but also for math. 

I find it helpful to emphasize to students that they can often figure out solutions to hard problems as they go along. Many students, at least initially, have the mindset that they can only start when they have figured out the entire solution, so they never start!

(Other examples from statistics: Write complete sentences explaining the meaning of a confidence interval or the implications of rejecting or not rejecting the null hypothesis in a given context. Explain why switching events in conditional probability (“confusion of the inverse”) leads to different probability results. Describe a “black swan” event and whether or not you have experienced one that had a significant impact on your life. Should you buy that warranty or that lottery ticket? Why or why not?)

There is a lot of resentment in the beginning (typical reaction: this is not an English class!) but gradually students come around to appreciate the symbiotic relationship between reading comprehension and clear thinking and writing.

Precalculus word problems are good examples of showing interdisciplinary connections. Example: Throwing an object upward to calculate the highest point reached and the time it takes to get there and fall back to earth under the influence of gravity shows the connection between math and physics. Exponential functions describing radioactive decay and carbon dating show the connection between math, physics, chemistry, archeology and paleontology. Extinction of species shows the connections between math, biology, environmental science and climate change. A mathematical model for how we forget what we learn over time shows the connection between time and memory. And so on. One writing exercise I assign students is to describe how the irrational number “e” harnesses the power of infinity in a limiting sense, in situations where things happen continuously, like birth and death in a population. (Unintended humor: A student wrote that “e” captures eternity rather than infinity!)

Some students ask for extra-credit projects because they are falling behind and want to bring their grades up. One project I often assign is to define the meaning of 10 words in both day-to-day context and mathematical contexts and to construct a sentence for each. Example: “irrational” usually means unreasonable or illogical but in mathematics, an irrational number, such as pi or e, is a number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers. As a decimal, an irrational number neither terminates nor repeats.

Example: Define the following words in their mathematical and
non-mathematical contexts and write a sentence for each: Function, Eccentricity, Rational, Random, Sample, Population, Outlier, Probabilistic, Deterministic, and Complex.

We faculty are constrained by time. We have to teach courses, grade tests and quizzes, assess SLOs, maintain and monitor Learning Management Systems such as Canvas, track attendance, tutor students, maintain office hours and perform a host of other activities. Where is the time to raise the level of reading comprehension and encourage writing with clarity and precision? How can we instill the habit of paying deep attention and cultivating such skills as patience, curiosity, discipline and grit, necessary for academic and professional success, when we are constantly juggling time to complete so many basic faculty duties and responsibilities?

There is no easy or single answer to this. Perhaps the first step is to recognize that we need to look beyond SLOs, grades, performance and achievement by integrating some habits and practices in our teaching that can help students think clearly and independently and live courageously and confidently. One such practice, in my opinion, is to improve their reading comprehension by paying attention to what they read (difficult, given the continuous digital distractions) and writing the steps clearly and precisely as they slowly work their way toward solving word problems.

Good mathematics, like good reading and writing, requires an appreciation of structure, beauty, rhythm, and pattern. If we can make this idea an integral part of our teaching, as best fits our respective temperaments, we may consistently experience the joy that comes from shaping minds, semester after semester.

Memorial Day 2023 At Oak Hill Memorial Park In San Jose, California

Memorial Day is a Day of Remembrance for our fallen soldiers and veterans. It is a day that transcends politics, partisanship and polarization. I attend an event in my city of San Jose every Memorial Day to remember, acknowledge and express my gratitude to those who fought wars and died so that we can bask in the sunshine of freedom and liberty in these United States.

It is often the Oak Hill Memorial Park at 300 Curtner Avenue in San Jose that I find myself on Memorial Day to remember and reflect. Veterans and politicians make moving speeches as the U.S. flag flutters in the breeze rustling the sycamore trees. I walk around the Memorial graveyard where heroic, selfless stories of sacrifices are buried beneath the earth that we the living must tell and retell so that future generations can learn that freedom, justice and democracy come at a price and must never be taken for granted.

Families of the fallen and the wounded continue to mourn, one or more generations deep. We must never forget these families too. A visit to the Memorial Park reminds me also of the veterans of our nation who continue to die by suicide. Memorial Day is a reminder of the critical issue of mental health that afflicts our young and old alike, leading to deaths of despair. We have to put an end to these deaths.

Photographs tell stories where words fail. Look at the event at the Oak Hill Memorial Park today, feel its sights and sounds, and remember those whose ultimate sacrifices made our life what it is today, in which the quest for justice, freedom and democracy burns bright.

California must reverse community college enrollment decline

 You can also read the article in the San Jose Mercury News

Enrollment at California’s 116 community colleges has fallen from the pre-pandemic peak of 2.1 million to 1.8 million, a decline of over 14%. It is critical that enrollment increases in the nation’s largest higher education system. Community colleges provide zero to low-cost quality education that gives students from struggling to middle-income families the skills needed to make a decent and meaningful living. If enrollment continues to decline, more Californians will miss out on the American promise than ever before.

How to increase enrollment at community colleges? As a math professor at San Jose City College (SJCC), I have three ideas based on my experience with students.

First, widen the scope of Community College’s High School Dual or Concurrent Enrollment.

In the summer of 2022, I had the privilege of teaching math at SJCC’s Milpitas extension, a collaboration between the Milpitas Unified School District and SJCC. To see students from 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades earning college credits while attending high school to get a head start in their college careers was inspiring. We had animated discussions about applying quadratic equations to describe the arc of a baseball, exponential functions to describe the growth of viruses and probability to quantify uncertainty.

As expected, some dual-enrollment students attend SJCC after graduating from high school each year. While many community colleges have similar collaborations with their local high schools, Kern County Community College District spanning the San Joaquin Valley, eastern Sierra and Mojave Desert being one of the largest, there remains room for growth. SJCC, for instance, can collaborate with more local schools through an effective outreach program to ensure a steady stream of new students.

Second, improve the quality of college websites.

This seems obvious but is often overlooked. Online users, particularly prospective or current students, spend on average three minutes and visit 2-3 pages per session during which they either find what they are looking for or they leave. Many community college websites are clunky and confusing. Finding information often turns into a wild-goose chase. Students complain, and I verified it myself, that it is easier to retrieve information from the SJCC website through Google than through the website itself. Even the basic task of enrolling for a class can be a challenge.

Effective websites have no clutter and have elements that spark digital joy, such as easy navigation, mobile friendliness, fewer clicks for information and accessibility for all. Build coherent websites, and they will come.

Third, California’s community colleges must become equal partners to the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems. With a population of just over 39 million and an estimated GDP of about $4 trillion, California is poised to overtake Germany as the fourth-largest economy in the world, behind only the United States, China and Japan.

California’s economy has a strong positive correlation with the quality of education it offers its residents. While the eight-campus UC and 23-campus CSU systems have a combined student population of about 750,000 from relatively well-to-do families, our 116 community colleges educate more than double that many students.

California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education that vastly privileges UCs and CSUs over community colleges is obsolete. Technology has transformed teaching and learning and the dynamics between research and career. To paraphrase Dorothy, “Toto, I have a feeling we are not in the ‘60s anymore.”

California’s community colleges do the heavy lifting of educating most of its students beyond high schools, especially those from disadvantaged families. By offering baccalaureate degrees without any constraints from UCs and CSUs, for example, community colleges can attract more students, one of the ways to ensure that the Golden State will continue to flourish for decades to come.

Top 5 Reasons to Vote in the 2022 Midterm Elections

1.   Voting is not just a right and a responsibility but also an opportunity for thanksgiving. Think of Russia, China, Iran, most Middle Eastern countries and other repressive countries where voting is either non-existent or a cruel joke with pre-determined outcomes. Yes, we have our own problems - gerrymandering, arcane laws (popular vote versus electoral college), suffrage suppression for the marginalized, bankrolling of candidates by moneyed interests, unchecked corporate power - but these are insignificant compared to countries where the “will of the people” is an oxymoron and where citizens languish or die in prison for daring to dream of democracy. We vote not only to decide the kind of government we want at all levels but also to express our gratitude for living in a free and pluralistic country, however flawed.

2 2. Casting the ballot makes a difference. Some say our votes will not make a dent in the status quo, so why bother? Of all the reasons cited for not voting, this one is the most damaging. Unless we make our multitudinous voices heard through the ballot, how can we expect the changes we want? If this is not persuasive enough, consider this: The simple yet profound act of voting can change the voter. The first step to changing a country, or even the world, is to change ourselves.

33. Honor the 26th amendment. We get into passionate arguments about the 2^nd Amendment for its implications on gun control but we rarely talk about the 26^th Amendment, ratified in July 1971, that gives Americans 18 years or older the right to vote. So, if you fall in this category or call yourself Gen Z, Gen X, Millennial, baby boomer, octogenarian, or centenarian, vote! While we are at it, why not shoot for the stars? In the 2020 presidential election, 67% of eligible voters - about 160 million Americans - voted, the most in our history. But that also meant that 80 million Americans million did not vote. In this midterm let’s set a record: 80% or 200 million.

44. Transcend political affiliations by voting for values and principles. If your values and principles coincide with your affiliations, you are among the lucky ones. For most of us, however, putting principles over politics and pocketbooks can be gut-wrenching. Yet this is what we must do if it serves the common good of the country. Be an informed voter by studying where the candidates stand and the pros and cons of propositions. Don’t fall for the flashy flyer, social media sensationalism or pre-election polls. Voting is an obligation that requires us to be knowledgeable about who and what we vote for or against, and how it aligns with our deepest beliefs. Read voter information guides and unbiased reports on the Internet. Informed voters put acumen over anger and facts over fear.

5 5. A consequential election. It is in human nature to think that our times are the most pivotal in history. Still, it is no exaggeration to say that the results of the 2022 midterm election will define the direction of our country for the foreseeable future, in particular, whether democracy will flourish or be on life-support. With our ballots, we can decide whether we will have freedom of choice, whether everyone will be equal under the law, whether candidates will speak truth to power or are too beholden to demagogues and lobbies to be not just useless but dangerous.

By voting as informed citizens we can ensure a bright future for our nation. Vote, so that through the fog of deception, despair and denial, the sound of democracy comes through loud and clear.

Deep-Sea Denizens at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Evoke Awe and Wonder

The bloody-belly comb jelly is a wonder of a fish, a flower-like creature that appears to be executing a choreographed dance in a diaphanous dreamscape. 

The reality couldn’t be more different. This heart-breaking beauty lives in frigid waters as deep as 9,800 feet (almost 2 miles) below the surface of the North Pacific Ocean where oxygen is low and acidity high, with a crushing pressure of 4,500 pounds per square inch (psi). (For comparison, pressure at sea level is about 15 psi.)

So how was I able to see this imagination-defying denizen of the deep sea? At the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Santa Cruz County, about 70 miles south of San Jose, that’s how. Thanks to the more than 5 years of painstaking effort and wizardry by scientists at the Aquarium and its Research Institute affiliate in recreating their complex habitats, wonders like the bloody-belly comb-jelly, porcupine crab, predatory tunicate, abyssal comb jelly and droopy sea pen that roam the deep dark are there for us to marvel at. Scientists have even found what they think is a new species of flapjack octopus that awaits a scientific name. “Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean” is the only exhibition in the world to offer this opportunity of a lifetime.

Seeing these sublime bioluminescent creatures filled me with a sense of the inexorable drive of life and the relentless flow of time. As the comb-jelly and its cousins ascended and descended in their respective aquariums, responding to the ancient rhythms of the sea innate in their essences, I felt in a visceral way the convergence of the streams of life and time. I remembered the stirring questions pioneering ecologist and marine biologist Rachel Carson asked in her lyrical book, The Edge of the Sea. Writing about the shell of a type of clam called Angel Wing that glows with a strange green light, Carson asked: “Why? For whose eyes? For what reason?”

No matter how much we study and observe creatures of the deep sea, answers to such questions will forever elude us.

The world is a mess now. On any given day it appears to be on the verge of collapsing. Covid, climate emergencies, including degradation of marine habitats, the exponentially rising cost of living, global food shortage, a genocidal war and an epidemic of gun violence have intensified our collective despair. Under such conditions, is there any room for beauty, mystery and wonder in our lives?

It is a valid question. Einstein provided an answer. “The most beautiful thing we can experience,” he wrote, “is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

Another answer came from Thoreau: “We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it, a little?”

So yes, we need to set aside moments for beauty, mystery and awe to remain human during turbulent times, especially during turbulent times. The good news is that we don’t have to travel far and wide to experience the mysterious. It is available when we employ ourselves a little, as when we take the time to observe a bluebird family raising its brood in the cavity of a tree, or a family of ducklings taking to the water with much quacking, or an egret patiently waiting for a meal at the edge of a pond, or observing the “morning star” Venus glowing with blinding brightness in the pre-dawn sky.

Or, if we are lucky, to observe the miraculous deep-sea denizens in a unique aquarium.

The Missing Piece in the Equity Equation: Excellence

You can also read the article in San Jose Mercury News

Equity is a keyword defining the educational philosophy of California’s community colleges. Unlike equality, which aims to give every student the same resources and opportunities, equity attempts to give each student what s/he needs to succeed. It recognizes that underserved and historically marginalized students, often victims of myriad injustices, need additional help to achieve educational and professional goals similar to their more privileged counterparts.

Equity is, of course, a noble idea but the devil lies in the details. No two students with special needs – physical, mental, academic, financial – are alike. Colleges with limited resources are hard-pressed to set each such student up for success. Tutoring, counseling, ease of access to facilities and resources help but some still fail because the equitable and inclusive services do not reach them until it’s too late.

My experience as a faculty member at a community college has convinced me that what also holds back differently-abled students from reaching their full potential is a missing piece in the equity equation: The summon to excellence.

Too often, we treat special needs students as if it is sufficient to provide some tools for them to somehow stay afloat. If they manage to pass a class with a ‘C’, we compliment ourselves with a job well done. That they can equal or even excel “normal” students is something we rarely instill in them.

Yet when we have great expectations, supported by attentive and rigorous care, miracles happen. Some teachers are born miracle workers who can motivate struggling students to reach for the stars. I am not one of them. What I have tried over the years, however, is convincing these students that they are as good as any other student, that they can still be peak performers with discipline and hard work and with a resilience that rejects setbacks and negativity.

My success rate with such students certainly leaves room for improvement, but when a miracle happens, I learn anew what teaching is all about.

Let me explain. Maria looked lost on the first day of my statistics class. I saw fear in her eyes, even tears. She emailed me after two weeks of instruction that she was already behind, unable to understand what measures of center meant. “Should I drop your class,” she asked.

After weighing the options, I finally replied: “Don’t drop. Let’s meet during office hours and see where you are.”

We met twice weekly over the next several weeks, going over problems step-by-step. “It’s not easy,” I told her. “I had the same difficulty you are facing when I was learning this.”

Slowly, Maria started making progress. She began taking charge of her learning and, by extension, her destiny. One day she shocked me by saying, “I had a brain aneurysm three years ago and still recovering from it. But it’s finally clicking in my brain.”

I was stunned. Here was a student I was about to abandon if I had taken the easy way out by telling her to drop my class.

Maria received a well-deserved “A” in my class and is currently majoring in psychology at a local university. Since that time and through the pandemic, Maria’s words, “It’s finally clicking in my brain,” continue to inspire me.

My experience isn’t the same with all challenged students. Some vanish into the void by dropping out, others barely hang on. But many persist and flourish and find joy in learning they never thought they would.

I have colleagues at my college who routinely perform magic on their students and at scale. I hope to gain insights from them but for now, the equation that motivates me to teach is simple: Equity + Excellence = Transcendence.

From the Battlefield of Gettysburg to the Storming of U.S. Capitol: Will American Democracy Survive?

A year ago today, America faced an existential crisis similar to the Civil War that raged from 1861-1865. But in a sense, the insurrection of January 6, 2021, in which ex-president Donald Trump tried to orchestrate a violent takeover of the country, was a greater threat to America than the Civil War because of its intent and purpose. The Republican Party, in thrall to a morally bankrupt psychopathic demagogue, went along with Trump’s incitement to the rioters to “fight like hell” to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the 2020 presidential election. The live-streamed attack on the U.S. Capitol, the bastion of our democracy, by the murderous mob known as Trump fanatics, aided and abetted by the conspirator-in-chief and by Republican sycophants, brought America to the brink. 

It may sound like a cliché, but Providence saved America from ruin on January 6, 2021, a day that, like December 7^th, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, will also live in infamy.

So, what now? What can we ordinary Americans do to ensure that January 6, 2021, never repeats, that the rule of law will still prevail in a viciously polarized country, that the tradition of peaceful transfer of power will continue to endure as the hallmark of our democracy?

Not much, really, unless the midterm elections this year propels Democrats to significant majorities in both Congress and Senate. How likely is that to happen? Not very.

The immediate issue at hand is applying the rule of law to the Trumpers who scaled the walls and smashed the partitions in the Capitol on this day last year.

 

Over 725 people have been arrested but only 71 – about one-tenth - have been sentenced so far. They include a company CEO, an architect, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, a gym owner, a former Houston police officer, a wealthy Texan realtor who flew her private jet with friends to join the insurrection, and a University of Kentucky student. One of the most notorious, Florida businessman Robert Palmer, was sentenced to 63 months in prison. Palmer’s tears of repentance did not sway the judge. “It has to be made clear that trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers is going to be met with certain punishment,” said the judge.

 

The elephant in the room, of course, is the ringleader and his acolytes. Unless Donald Trump and Republicans like Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others pay the price for their mendacity, instigation and active support of the insurrection, merely sentencing the fanatics and the foot soldiers will make a mockery of the law.

 

So far, not only has nothing happened to Trump, his star seems to be rising even higher among Republicans since his defeat. That is the reason why America’s experiment with democracy and the rule of law continues to be under assault, with no assurance that democracy will hold the fort.

 

From Lincoln’s Gettysburg exhortations to Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery and beyond, America has faced one crisis after another with courage, resilience and fierce loyalty to the foundational values of our nation. 

When historians peel away the layers leading up to the insurrection of January 6, 2021, they will find at its core one dominant idea: The fear of white supremacists, overwhelmingly Republican, that America is slipping away from their grasp. The original sin of America is not slavery but white supremacy. This supremacy monster has now bared its fangs in its possibly final attempt to put all non-whites in their places and reinstall white supremacy back to the throne.

 

Will this work? The tragic truth, given how hyperpolarized America is now, is that we don’t know. 

Yet, if Providence has been kind to America whenever it faced an existential crisis, perhaps Providence will be kind to America this time too. But, as the saying goes, God helps those who help themselves. It is up to us ordinary Americans who, despite our differences, still believe in our country as a shining city upon a hill, to make sure that government “of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Online Teaching Must be a Catalyst for Better Classroom Teaching

(Published in the San Jose Mercury News on August 22, 2021)

Until COVID-19, I never taught a class online. As a math professor, I found the idea of remote teaching as remote as the Milky Way. So, when forced to switch to online by the pandemic in the early spring of 2020, the sky fell on me. After the mist had cleared, however, I found to my surprise that I could do it, helped immeasurably by rigorous online training on the best practices of remote teaching by an expert at my college.

As students and teachers prepare to return to classrooms this fall, equally affecting parents because of the stress they endured with their children’s education during the pandemic, I want to share some insights from my online experience that may be useful for all three groups across grades and disciplines. Of course, the deadly delta variant can still blow away our best-laid plans with the force of a tornado,

First, online instruction en masse has gone through its trial by fire for almost two years and has proved its viability. Sure, it has drawbacks — screen fatigue, family fracture, unequal access to technology, widening performance gaps — but, by and large, remote education succeeded as a practical and scalable alternative to in-person teaching. Besides, there were advantages to virtual classrooms: “anytime, anywhere” flexibility, dispensing with the need to get ready and arrive in schools on time, and similar school-day overheads.

Second, and more importantly, online teaching has raised the bar for classroom teaching. If online teaching was good, in-person teaching must be better, a fervent wish of parents heightened by the pandemic. This requires that teachers be more deliberate in inspiring deep learning, critical thinking, and creativity among students. Deep learning demands greater depth on fewer topics instead of shallow discussions on many. Critical thinking requires students to think clearly, logically, and independently. Creativity requires dealing with uncertainty, seeing connections between disciplines, and solving real-world problems from different angles.

This can happen only if teachers invest the time and the effort to create empathic, engaging and equitable classroom environments, from kindergarten to postsecondary education. Some teachers have the gift of inspiring the joy of learning in their students but most of us, myself included, must work at it.

An example will clarify. Discussing hypothesis tests in statistics, I challenged my students to define false positive and false negative in the context of coronavirus testing and identify which one posed the greater threat. I gave them the sample sizes that Moderna and Pfizer used for their control and treatment groups and the number of subsequent coronavirus infections in each group to figure out the success rate of the vaccines. Students were animated and invigorated. They had taken control of their own learning. I realized that if I could do this in a virtual classroom, I should do even better in a face-to-face setting.

After almost two years of online experience, it is clear to me that we need to radically rethink the way we teach and students learn. We must challenge our students with real-world problems beyond the textbook that compel them to think, ask deep and imaginative questions, and reflect on what it means to live a life of meaning and purpose. Good teaching, the ability to teach a subject well, is hard. Great teaching, the ability to care for students and inspire in them a passion for knowledge, is harder. It’s the latter that must be our goal when normalcy returns, for “education,” as W.B. Yeats said, “is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

Summer Bridge Program Leads to Student Success at San Jose City College

Summer is the time to cool off, to read that page-turner or watch that thriller, take a walk in the woods or a stroll at the shore. With the likely easing of the pandemic’s stranglehold on our lives this summer, we hope to celebrate normalcy with backyard barbecues and family get-togethers. For students, after zoom fatigue and myriad online stresses, summer offers the chance to chill.

For some motivated students, however, summer offers the chance to forge ahead. These are mostly high-school students who want to take transferable college-level courses in Math, English and Ethnic Studies at their local community colleges to acclimate to college life and get a head start in their academic and professional goals.

For several years now, for six weeks (from the second week of June to the third week of July), San Jose City College has been offering a rigorous Summer Bridge program to help full-time (mostly high school) students complete an associate’s degree in two years. The degree translates to the first two-years of a bachelor’s degree in the California State University or the University of California systems (freshman and sophomore years).

The Bridge Program is the first step in the “San Jose Promise” launched by Mayor Sam Liccardo in March 2017 for the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District to ensure that community college was affordable and accessible to local high school students. Students continue their experience with a team of counselors, instructors, and peers to guide them beyond the first year of college to transfer and graduation.

With funding from “San Jose Promise,” students in the Bridge Program enjoy tuition and fee waivers, free textbooks, calculators and online access to coursework. They also receive personalized academic and personal counseling through a cohort of teachers, counselors, supplemental instructors, and administrative staff. The statistics tell the story. The overall passing rate for summer bridge program in math and English is about 88%, almost 38% higher than the usual passing rate.

I can attest to the success of the Bridge Program with an example. I was teaching a course on statistics in summer 2018. At the beginning of the third week, a student was absent. When he did not show the following day, I informed a counselor who immediately contacted the student. Because of a disruption in the family, he was depressed and had resigned himself to dropping out. The counselor visited him at home and spent time persuading him to continue. He did, and instead of becoming a dropout statistic, graduated from City College and successfully transferred to UC Santa Cruz. Early alert, combined with just-in-time empathic nudges via texts or visits, can do wonders for community college students about to fall off the grid.

The real issue is one of scale. Instead of offering personalized services to only a few hundred students because of limited grant money, how can such services be extended to all students numbering in the thousands at any given community college?

This is where President Biden’s $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan” comes in. A part of the President’s plan, to the tune of $109 billion, is to make community college free for all Americans. Currently there are over 5 million students, many from low-income families, in the nation’s 1,000 community colleges. California has the largest community college system with 116 colleges serving over 2 million students.

If the “American Families Plan” comes to pass, it may be possible to scale and replicate effective personalized services to help most, if not all, community college students stay on track, graduate on time and infuse their careers with purpose.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to teaching an Online Precalculus Algebra class as part of the 2021 Summer Bridge Program at San Jose City College. Founded in 1921, San Jose City College is the oldest community college in Santa Clara County, celebrating its centennial anniversary this year. I am eager to interact with curious and creative students and share with them how to use exponential functions to model the growth and decay of the coronavirus and how to explain “whispering galleries” by using the properties of a conic section.

Building A Multiracial Democracy in America

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln became the 16^th president of the United States, succeeding James Buchanan. Buchanan is generally ranked as the worst president in U.S. history for his tacit support of slavery and for allowing Southern states to secede, and Lincoln the greatest for abolishing slavery and preserving the Union.

One hundred and sixty years later, with Joe Biden succeeding Donald Trump as the 46^th president of the United States, we are witnessing history repeating itself. Biden may not dislodge Lincoln from his perch but it seems certain that the doubly-impeached Trump will displace Buchanan as the worst U.S. president ever.

More serious than ranking is the ominous parallel between the America that Lincoln inherited and the America that Biden has. The Civil War over slavery in 19^th-Century America has transformed itself into a Civil War over white supremacy in the 21^st.

America, and the world, breathed a sigh of relief when Biden won the presidency in a free and fair election. His immediate $1.9 trillion stimulus to vaccinate Americans and put sufficient money into the pockets of despairing millions unable to think beyond milk for their babies, bread for their sustenance and rent for the current month is already making a difference. Biden has picked seasoned professionals, not partisan hacks, to oversee his American “Marshall Plan.” Restoring decency and normalcy will take time after four years of indecency and autocracy but there is guarded optimism that good governance, accountability and morality will return under Biden’s administration.

But addressing such urgent issues as safely opening schools, climate crisis, immigration reform, wealth inequality and a global reset will falter if the administration and the American people do not confront the existential threat of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The armed mob that assaulted the foundation of our democracy on January 6^th was only a preview of what might recur if we do not confront this threat with the power of justice and the force of law.

Some myths, however, must be dispelled before domestic terrorism can be banished. First, that the “white” in white supremacy refers to all white Americans. That’s bigotry. Majority of whites reject the toxic ideology of racial superiority and do not subscribe to unhinged conspiracy theories. Second, that it’s the uneducated poor of rural America who form the bulk of white supremacists. Far from it. The January 6^th insurgents included lawmakers, police and military officers, middle-class urbanites, the wealthy and the privileged. Finally, that it’s an unchanging truth that Blacks do not vote even when the stakes are high. Despite Republican voter suppression and gerrymandering, it was American Blacks who were instrumental in delivering the presidency and vice-presidency to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It was also mostly Blacks who flipped the Senate for Democrats in Georgia, thanks to the massive voter enfranchisement effort by Stacey Abrams, continuing the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr, who led voter-registration drives in the South in the ‘60s.

So, how can we help the Biden administration defeat white nationalism that is tragically present in every community in America?

By mobilizing, protesting and convincing our representatives to act. After Trump became president in 2016, a national organization called “Indivisible” with local chapters in thousands of cities inspired millions of us to march against Trump’s xenophobic and demagogic transgressions in favor of a more humane America. We connected, created communities and compelled changes.

Such mobilization and activism must continue if we want to legally defeat white supremacy and right-wing extremism before national healing can begin. As historian Will Durant reminded us, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”