Career Math

Career Math is a course at Grandview Heights High School, covering financial literacy and other aspects of math that you will actually use as an adult.

[Career Math @CareerMath]

@will_devere Will, thank you for your kind words and for being such an extraordinary young man -- and a loyal, lifelong friend to Louis. I appreciate you.

[Career Math @CareerMath]

Today was bittersweet, as we bid farewell to the amazing seniors -- today is their last day of high school -- and, in fact, to the Career Mathematics course, which is not being offered next year. (I also will not be here next year, as I am retiring.)

[Career Math @CareerMath]

As today is our last class session, this will also be my final post to the @CareerMath Twitter account... at least for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for tuning in and for your likes.

Take care.

[Career Math @CareerMath]

As I approach the end of my 44-year professional career -- my last day of work is May 26 -- I shared with the class my 4 keys to career success:

1. Be reliable

2. Be positive

3. Be helpful (and kind)

4. Be curious (and keep learning)

[Career Math @CareerMath]

Although we talked quite a bit this school year about money -- taxes, borrowing, investing -- I left students with this interesting graph defining a life well lived (as chosen by those who have lived 55 years or more):

[Career Math @CareerMath]

For our final Conversation Monday of the school year, we reviewed our investment portfolio that we began tracking on September 1, 2022. The overall portfolio of 24 companies, chosen by students, gained 3.26% through May 12. Here's the final leaderboard:

[Career Math @CareerMath]

Yesterday, we discussed mental and emotional health, with emphasis on emotional intelligence and finding your life's purpose. Today, we covered health resources and the importance of annual checkups with your primary care physician. Also, we admired this chart:

[Career Math @CareerMath]

I also shared one of my favorite (simple) quotes from the late businessman and publisher Malcolm S. Forbes:

"While alive, live."

[Career Math @CareerMath]

Today's topic, healthy lifestyle, covered the therapeutic aspects of nature (and a walk in the woods), exercise & sleep guidelines, and risky behaviors to avoid.

[Career Math @CareerMath]

For conversation Monday, we discussed prom, the coronation, incarceration rates, pumped hydro storage, and senior night for the school's baseball team. We also displayed the following map, revealing that our state's population growth is predominantly negative:

[Career Math @CareerMath]

We also reviewed the simple advice of author Michael Pollan:

1. Eat food.

2. Not too much.

3. Mostly plants.

[Career Math @CareerMath]

In today's lesson on healthy eating, we considered food as fuel but also as joy, with emphasis on variety and moderation. We looked at food labels, caloric content, the recommended daily values of nutrients, and the dangers of excessive salt and sugar intake.

[Career Math @CareerMath]

We defined key health statistics today, including blood pressure and blood oxygen level. In our discussion of height, I dropped the name of a psychedelic rock bank from the 1980s: "When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water." We also compared average heights by gender:

[Career Math @CareerMath]

Students also calculated their body-mass index and their target exercise heart rate. They are all remarkably healthy!

[Career Math @CareerMath]

We introduced our new (and final) unit on healthy living today, and worked on our unit project: measuring and calculating your own vital statistics. With the help of the school nurse, students measured their height, weight, pulse, blood pressure, and blood oxygen level.

[Career Math @CareerMath]

We studied a graph depicting the average length of a Major League Baseball game over the past 40 years, and theorized:

(a) Why has game length increased over the past 40 years?

(b) Why has game length dropped significantly this season?

[Career Math @CareerMath]

For Conversation Monday, we reviewed last week's probability quiz and then discussed a wide range of subjects: poverty, education level by gender, depression, and baseball.

[Career Math @CareerMath]

Part 2: Then, you will be dealt another card, only this time you must guess its suit (spades, clubs, hearts, or diamonds).

You win if you guess correctly both times.

(I liked how several of the invented games involved different stages or multiple ways to win.)

[Career Math @CareerMath]

I was absent from class today, so students spent the period playing the games they invented to complete their unit project (without wagering any real money, of course).

Here are the rules to one of the games, entitled "Easy 700" (because you would bet $100 to win $700):

[Career Math @CareerMath]

Part 1: You will be dealt one card from a standard deck of playing cards. Before it is dealt to you, you must guess its color (red or black). If you guess correctly, the card will be replaced in the deck, and the deck will be reshuffled.