9th graders

I really like my 9th grade class.  They are full of energy and truly are nice students.  But man are they busy.  They just love to talk and get up out of their seat. They keep me on my toes to make a stellar lesson that keeps them engaged.  There is no 'work time' if it doesn't involve some sort of reason to stay engaged in the work.  A review lesson on a Thursday, a block day, where classes are 90 minutes, started out as a carousel.  In a carousel, students typically rotate in teams around the room solving problems.  The goal is to review tough problems as a team before a test and get a chance moving while doing so.  This lesson could easily take 55 minutes, equivalent to a regular day's schedule, but I knew keeping them engaged in this work for 55 minutes is a large stretch.  Additionally, they need to do these problems and I needed to harness the intelligence of the top students to support the low students in better understanding the concepts we were reviewing.  But there was no way just having them do the problems standing and rotating would be enough of a motivator to stay on task...until the magical popsicle sticks.

I don't know where I learned this strategy, but I'd be wise to never forget it's power.  Each team started out with a yellow, three point stick.  The instructions were simple.  Work together on the problems for 30 minutes.  When you finish a problem, check your answer and ask for another problem.  While the teams worked, I would swap out their sticks to move them up or down based on how well they were working as a team.  As a team their goal was to get up to a five point, blue stick. I must never forget the power of the sticks...

And, yes, this is a short post.  I created it weeks ago.  Life gets busy when you are passing on the classes you're teaching and starting a new role.  I'm going to miss teaching these 9th graders.  More on that later.

Finding Balance

Today I am struggling with finding balance.  I adore digging into a standard and determining how to teach it.  Being creative and thoughtful in my lessons is something I get excited about.  But I am presently struggling with a fine balance between using the structure of a curriculum and going it alone with only standards and resources.

The structure of a curriculum: Algebra 2

This course is my PLC and the bulk of the classes I teach.  I feel really stuck in doing what my colleagues are doing.  A student in my class should receive a comparable education to that of a student in the classroom next door.  Yes, the route there can look different, but the destination, the learning, must be the same.  This is at the heart of why we have standards to begin with.  But, I find the book all over the place with concepts.  I am constantly asking myself, why is the book doing this?  Knowing this curriculum often has a big build up to the key concepts, I want to give it credit, but if I can't see the connections, the why, then where does that leave my students?  Not following the book, however, could have dire consequences.  Well, dire might be a bit of an exaggeration! But, there will be consequences when a curriculum teaches in a spiral fashion often surprising a person with the why later on.  For instance, I taught diamond problems for two years before I finally understood their connection to factoring with an area model.  I had simply been doing the diamond problems because they were a good way to practice integer multiplication and addition, not to mention some number sense as students would find the missing value.  My mind was blown the day students learned how to factor using their diamond problems to complete the area model.

Today I am struggling with how to finish the current unit that has been all over the place in Algebra 2.  I know where students need to be, but I don't like how the book is presenting the learning experiences for these standards.  How do I pick up the pieces of a disjointed curriculum with one week left of the unit?    How can I prevent this from happening again?

Standards and resources: Probability and Statistics

I purposefully chose to teach this class because it lacked a good curriculum.  Yes, there is a textbook, but I'd hardly call the typical math examples and practice problems of a traditional textbook a curriculum.  This course allows me to be creative and teach the standards with inhibition.  This comes with problems.

1. Time:  Where can I find the time to build a course from the ground up while teaching it?  
2. Priorities:  If I want to spend more time on one concept over another, is that ok?  What are my priorities and what I am bound to?  
• I spent more time on the first two standards than I thought I would need to.  Without having the whole course planned, how will I know if I can get teach what students must learn?
3. Rigor:  Am I teaching this course to the right level of rigor?  How can I be sure?
• I am the only teacher teaching this course at my school which makes determining expectations for learning difficult.   There is no data to compare, no common assessments.
4. Obligations: To what extent can I let my personal beliefs play into what and how I teach?  
• I believe in creating informed citizens armed with the skills necessary for life outside of school.  This elective course seems like the perfect place for me to build those skills with students.  Collaborating, digging through information, using the internet in all it's glory to analyze data seems like a no brainer in this course, but it is against the norm of the closed book, device powered off assessments students, teachers and the community have come to expect in schools.  What are my obligations as a teacher?

I can't decide which dilemma I am struggling with more.  Being completely free in Probability and Statistics (while being completely fearful I am not doing what is best for these kids), or being bound by a curriculum (while being completely fearful I am not doing what is best for these kids).  

This is my 10th year of teaching.  I just keep thinking I shouldn't have to work so hard/put in so many hours, but I don't know how to do my job any other way.  

My biggest question is this:

What can school systems do to fully equip teachers to teach their classes?  

This question is completely loaded and pretty much impossible.  I know school systems are bound by funding, time and people, not to mention countless expectations of the use of those three resources.  

So maybe I should ask: 

How can school systems better equip teachers to teach their classes?  


I still hate that I am asking what the school system should do, since I have no power to change it, but after my years as a curriculum coordinator, I can't help but ask this question.  For two years I worked outside of the classroom seeking to do just that, better equip teachers, but I know my work fell short.  So, now that I am back in the classroom, I can't help but wonder what an effective school system/school/department could do to ensure teachers are prepared to teach their classes.  Spending an average of 12 hours a school day during the school year preparing, teaching, assessing, grading, etc. just isn't sustainable and that is what our best teachers are doing each and every school year.

Until they burn out.

Let's pray they don't burn out.

Feedback

I had the best time this week.  Well, let's be honest.  Monday and Tuesday were rough, but man, by Wednesday, I felt on a roll, making the magic happen. And then there's Friday where I overslept by two hours, but man I felt well rested!

We're at that point in the year where students can start demonstrating they are learning which gets me thinking: how am I going to give feedback to all 150 of my students? I mean, seriously!  I know feedback not attached to grades is powerful.  I know feedback is one of the best ways to improve student learning (duh!).  But what type of feedback is sustainable?   Sustainable implies I don't spend 12+hours at school each day to give them meaningful feedback.

Itechnology 

I understand that too often technology gets in the way of learning.  Sometimes teachers spend so much time trying to figure out how to use some piece of technology that they forget what the students should be learning.  My love of technology isn't regularly clouded with such cloudiness.  Technology represents an outstanding way to give feedback swiftly and more regularly.  Here are three different ways I used technology in my three courses to provide feedback to students. And, trust me, I didn't spend inordinate amounts of time prepping these things, but I am very up to speed on tools available to me and I am relentless when figuring them out.

9th Grade Intermediate Algebra

Seriously, look how adorable they are talking to each other about math!
Aren't they the best!

The two units we start the year with are review of concepts they have seen in 8th grade algebra.  I've been grappling with how to get them engaged and recognizing their common mistakes and misconceptions yet also learning to work together in pairs and teams.  Today we were working on simplifying expressions where students need to distribute a -1 to all the terms inside of the parentheses.  To get them talking about the math and working together, one student had a marker and one pulled up a "Unicorn Race" on Socrative.  The game had 10 questions with multiple choice answers (not ideal), but the goal was to accurately solve your problem and your unicorn would move across the screen.  If you were incorrect your unicorn would stay put.  It was the perfect mixture of competition and collaboration to get them talking about how to simplify the expressions.    What I found the most powerful was the learning that happened between the day of the Unicorn Race and when I asked the same question the next day, this time without the answer choices.

Here's the original question. When I posed the question on day two, I didn't reveal the answer choices.

The graph below shows the results on day one when they worked with a partner.

As you can see, over half of the students selected the same wrong answer on day one.  But the next day, in a quick show of hands and after visually scanning student's papers, ALL of my students got it right.  I mean c'mon!  How awesome is that!  We celebrated and moved on to good old pencil and paper for our next concept of solving equations with distributive property. 

If you aren't familiar with Socrative.com, it is worth your while.  It has four options for creating your own assessments, you can share them with colleagues and get spreadsheets and item analyses of the results.  The interface is very user friendly and it is quick to get your students to the site and enrolled in your class for an assessment.  Next on the list to explore feedback in this class: PLICKERS!  

Algebra 2 and the Google Add-On AutoCrat

As I investigate ways to give students feedback on their homework without grading each homework, this week I gave a Homework Check on google forms.  This worked well because the questions were around evaluating functions and describing a domain.  I asked three simple questions from their homework a few nights prior.  I can't say they did very well on the problems, but the goal was to give them feedback on their learning meaning the assessment was formative.

There are some strong misconceptions formed when our high school went to gradebooks that were required to have 80% of grade be Summative Assessments (commonly thought of as tests and quizzes) and 20% of the grade be Formative Assessments (commonly thought of as homework, classwork).  Many people assumed that meant the Formative was less important since it represents less in the gradebook.  I cannot stress enough that formative only equals 20% because we are bound to make mistakes when we are learning something.  Formative assessments aren't worth less, they represent less in our gradebooks because we don't want to penalize students for not knowing something early on in the learning.  Instead their grade will represent what they know and can do once a summative assessment appears.  If I had it my way, the grade would be 100% Summative and we would find a way to get students to do the daily work (formative work) necessary to be successful on the summative rather than enticing them with points in a gradebook.  

OK. Rant over.

Back to the homework check.  I asked three questions and the spreadsheet looked like this after students submitted their solutions:

Conditional formatting is one of my favorite quick tools.  I set it up to automatically highlight many of the correct answers so I could do a quick scan and see how students were doing with the concepts. This gives me, as the teacher a pulse on the class.  I now know in general how well the students understand the concepts.  

But, formative assessment shouldn't stop at the teachers.  Using the google add-on Autocrat, I sent the results back to the students in a google document.  The document populates itself with the students' responses and had the correct answers already written up.  Each student received an email and they were instructed to reflect on how they did.  Here is a sample of the student work:

Bam!  Student Self Reflection sheet created with the click of a few buttons!

The documents also organize themselves into a folder in my google drive account so I can follow up and leave additional comments for students if necessary.  

I can't stress enough how easy this all was.  Yes, I am good at technology and I persisted even when the documents didn't send out the first time, but after getting over those initial bumps, the benefits far outweigh the little bits of extra work and headaches encountered.

Probability and Statistics and Google Classroom

Google Apps for Education is, perhaps, my favorite little piece of amazingness that has rocked my teaching world.  I'm not talking about the fact that it rocked my world when it began and I've been in love ever since.  I'm saying it rocks my teaching world regularly.  Most recently, I have fallen in love with Google Classroom.  What a phenomenal tool that I cannot begin to imagine what it will become.  I've been using this tool extensively in my Probability and Statistics course.  As a first period class with mostly seniors, we had our first Hybrid day on Thursday.  Students were able to log into their google classroom, see the assignment and begin the work.  On Thursday morning, I peaked at my google drive folder with the assignments and could see who had started the assignment:

Because, you know, google is awesome like that, I can see all the assignments I've assigned in a nice little folder.  Anyone that knows me knows that I am a scatter brain.  In fact, I think my close family wonders how I successfully create lessons each day without forgetting something.  Google Classroom is making my organization so peaceful and painless.  All I have to do is create the learning opportunities and Google Classroom keeps it all in order.  Thank you google.  From the bottom of my heart, for being so darn amazing and making FREE tools for education that simplify our lives and let us focus on the learning and the teaching.

Week 1

First of all, it was a LONG short first week with the kiddos.  We were on a special schedule that put us at only 4 minutes of passing time for our three days with students.  I have prep last hour, and let me tell you, not having a moment to breath from 7:50a.m. to roughly 1:30pm each day was rough.  Not to mention the only time I sat down was for a thirty minute lunch.  Whew!  It was a doozie.  With a pep fest on day one that highlighted academic clubs (outstanding work KHS Student Government!) and chromebooks being distributed to each and every student on day two, the week felt a bit too out of my control.  But it reminds me of the advice from my mentor teacher, Sharon, who encouraged me during my first year of teaching to never for get the f-word... flexibility.  Flexibilty was key this week because I had no power to change the circumstances.  I needed to just go with the flow.  Regardless, here is how I spent my first week with students and how the MathTwitterBlogoshpere shaped this week.

Day 1

First of all, freshman are so adorable (and quiet) on day one.  I mean, seriously!  They were so attentive, curious, and just downright cute.  I need to remember this when they don't appear so cute in the future!  I've got one section of Intermediate Algebra and I'm glad I do.  In the past,  taught a support class at this level for many years and it will be nice to be their primary teacher for a change.

I also teach three sections of Algebra 2, 11th graders.  This is a course entirely new to me.  I've taught the two courses before and the Honors course that comes after, but never Algebra 2.   My PLC had come up with "about you" questions to get students sharing who they are on day one.  This proved to be a great success.  The best two questions were "What did you have for dinner and who did you eat with?" and "What is one thing I should know about you?".  The insights into these students backgrounds from these questions was perfect.  I loved being able to get a glimpse into their lives so early in the year.

In all of my classes, the students completed the "Broken Circles" team builder from the book Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogenous Classroom. Dane on his Math Happens Blog describes it very well.  A colleague and I participated in this team builder last May at MCTM's Spring Conference and were excited to try it out with students.  I will admit, I appreciate the moral of the activity, but it was just too easy.  The students were done with the circles so darn fast!  This was true for all my classes and a few of my colleagues as well.  Before I feel comfortable capitalizing on the moral of the activity, I believe I need to have the students complete a more challenging 'broken circles' activity. More pieces, maybe squares instead of circles, but definitely something that takes more than a minute or two.  I still was able to get them to make conclusions like "We needed to pay attention to what other people needed" and I was able to determine who my talkers were because they were the first to pipe up with "I hated not talking!" but I feel there was more that could have been accomplished from the activity.

Ironically, the night before school started, while half asleep, I realized I didn't prepare any "rules" for my classes.  I am quite a planner, but I am also quite easy going, so I couldn't believe I hadn't thought through setting up "norms" for the class! Ironically, while falling asleep it came to me: Be Kind, Be Present, Be Appropriate.  These 3 Principles seemed very fitting for a high school math class.  Student: Can I go to the bathroom? Me: Is now the appropriate time?  Student: fiddling with phone scrolling through twitter while team is working at the boards. Me: Are you being present right now?  I didn't call them rules, just principles and introduced them with examples similar to the examples stated above.  I'm no longer that teacher who decides to rip a phone away from a kid because the rule is no phone.  We have to find a way to teach students appropriate use of all tools so they are truly prepared.  Being present is also a common, day-to-day challenge for many adults.  I promised my students that if we can be present in class and learn what we need, we won't have the obligatory homework.  And being kind is sort of like a Duh!  We don't have to love everyone we meet, but we need to be kind.

What a great 1st day!! #EaglePride Go directly to your advisor in the morning tomorrow for your chrome book! 💙💛💻

— JFKEagles (@JFKEagles) September 1, 2015

DAY 2

This day felt really out of my hands.  Each period was assigned a 10-15 minute Chromebook lesson, a bootcamp for day one going 1 to 1 at the High School.  Chopping into a 55 minute class with a 10-15 minute video/activity made it difficult to get much done in class.  

MTBoS to the rescue!  

While I had what I thought were adequately long lessons planned, I didn't have nearly enough to fill the time.  So I tapped into a resource I have been dying to use from the MTBoS.  I had students play "Which One Doesn't Belong?" If you haven't seen this resource, it is definitely worth your while.  The beauty lies in the simplicity of the question.  The challenge is in creating a situation where all four choices have a chance at being the outcast of the group.  We did the Shape #2 from the website and it was truly eye opening to see students all navigate to the pentagon corner.  

Shape 2 from wodb.ca

 I was flabbergasted by how they were all searching for that right answer.  (I even attempted a photo of my fifth our all standing in a single corner, but darn blurry iPhone made a photo not worth sharing) In turn I asked, "Why might someone go to the corner of the shape in the top right?"  "Or the bottom left?" They had great arguments for going to these corners, but they weren't comfortable being the person to chose that corner.  It was fascinating.  After doing a few from the shapes page, students became more comfortable choosing out of the ordinary corners and creating arguments for doing so.  I look forward to continuing this activity with all my classes throughout the year to not only build their ability to 'construct viable arguments' but to reinforce math concepts we will be learning.  

Day 3

Finally, a bit of normalcy.  In Algebra 2 students were tasked with a very team-worthy task of stacking functions so that when you input a given number into the first function, you then use the output as the input for the next function, repeating the process until all four functions have been used and you end up with a given output.  This created the ideal situation to put the team whiteboards to good use.  VNPS here I come! Each team had images of four function machines created by the CPM (College Preparatory Mathematics) curriculum.  Teams set off to complete the function machines after giving each team member a role and some general expectations for working at the boards.  Very quickly some teams fell into some old habits: working solo on their notebooks, disengaging from their teams, or taking over on the whiteboard and not explaining to their team what they were doing.  Thankfully, my first two sections are a bit smaller and I was able to get to these teams to remind them of the expectations and support them in doing the math.  The fun part was that this struggle wasn't true of every team.  Some teams fell into a groove with all team members finding some way to support and engage in the work and boy was that fun to watch.  I can't wait to do more with the whiteboards, but I know I need to ensure the problems are truly team-worthy and warrant the interaction of all members.  Additionally, the more opportunities I can give them to build their communication skills, the better, so I hope to incorporate some strategies from Powerful Problem Solving in the near future.

Next week

First I need to dig into the Probability and Statistics Course!  I am excited to have freedom in this class, but it comes with a lot of pressure I put on myself to do great things.  So, while I need to and want to dig in, it's important I do so realistically!
Additionally I need to find a way to build some challenge into the Intermediate Algebra course.  Units 1 and 2 are mostly review.  There's this weird balancing act of giving students a low enough entry point, but also not making it seem as though they've already done all of this.  I'm not quite sure what that will look like, but I know I've got to find a way to challenge them without scaring them off!

A Happy Beginning

Sorry, but I'm not excited.

As I enter back into the classroom after two years as a TOSA one question keeps popping up from all those around me, "Are you excited?" (I sure wish I had kept count of the number of times I've been asked that question in the last week.  There have been other questions that have perpetuated my return, but those aren't worth mentioning here.)  I have had a tough time answering that.  I would say around a month ago, or maybe a couple months ago, I was excited. But lately I'm just happy.  Happy that I'm going back to the classroom. When I hear the word excited, I feel a bit overwhelmed because of what I think excited means. (I'm so excited and I just can't hide it.  I'm about to lose control and I think I like it....) For that reason, I can't say the word excited when it comes to describing how I am feeling. Should I be more excited at this point in the year, a day away from students arriving?

But, I am Happy.  

After a particularly tough year professionally and personally, I am happy to get back to the root.  To the why.  Why do I do this work?  I look forward to the day I can look around the classroom and see so many students doing math, talking about math.   I get to orchestrate that in my classroom and that makes me happy.  I am grateful for the autonomy, purpose and mastery that being a teacher entails. (Thank you for your research, Daniel Pink!)  I've learned this past year that these traits in a job are key to my happiness and ability to thrive in a job.   I have the autonomy to create Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces (insert: whiteboards) in my classroom to get kids standing, talking and working together each and every day.

I can transform how I do homework to make it meaningful to students. (Anyone have a strategy here?  Still unsure on what that looks like, but I refuse to give up searching for a better way.)  Purpose: there is an obvious purpose in being an educator.  Mastery is a trickier one because, as most veteran teachers know, there isn't an obvious level a teacher reaches where she can say "I've mastered teaching".  I'm sorry, but that just doesn't exist.  Teachers live for the little opportunities to show mastery.  I mastered this lesson today.  I mastered getting student X to ask a question before giving up.  I mastered keeping all the kids alive today. (See, it's the simple things.) These mastery points are readily present and keep us going, not to mention keep us coming back year after year.

So here's to another year filled with opportunities to learn and be happy.

What do you do all summer?

Often times, when I meet new people in the summer, and they find out I am a teacher, they ask "What do you do all summer?"  I find that question hard to answer with a quick sentence or two.  How do you sum up all the experiences that one has in a couple months of "free" time?  That's like asking people who work 9-5 (and leave work at work) what they do every evening and weekend.  "What do you do with all that time?"   From now on I will direct them to this post because it is pretty telling of how I spend many of my summers as a teacher.

Summer 2015 by the Numbers, of course!

0 times mowing my yard. Yes, that's right, doctor's orders!  Much gratitude to my sister and neighbor! 1 tumble off a cliff. 2 trips to California for conferences (and family time).

San Diego--you are magnificent!

The Kennedy High School AVID Conference team.

Lake Arrowhead is looking a little dry!

Anyone need a roommate in CA?

My aunt and I visiting the old family cabin in Lake Arrowhead

3 weekends sleeping in my own bed.  4 knitting projects completed.  5 days in Kansas City for the Fourth of July with family.  6 books read.  7 hours spent prepping and painting my kitchen.   
8 four hour class sessions of "Strategic Financial Planning for School Leaders" at the University of Minnesota. 9 Minnesota lakes visited. 10 doctor appointments for torn ligaments in my knee after a bike accident.  
11 skeins of yarn transformed through knitting. 12 hours spent preparing my classroom before workshop week started. 18 hours spent with colleagues collaborating on curriculum for the upcoming school year. 20 hours spent traveling to conferences. 30 days of preparing and eating real, delicious food re: Whole 30. 

 40 internship hours at an Elementary Summer School. I have a new love for 1st graders and a ton of respect for their teachers!   
42 sunfish caught while fishing on a beautiful July morning.   
55  hours spent learning at

professional conferences.   81 days spent away from routine.  100+ math problems solved in preparation of new classes ahead. 

#TMC15

What I learned at Twitter Math Camp 2015

I’ve got to keep this short and sweet because I just have way too much to do before teacher workshop week is upon me! EEK! Because of that, I am going to fall back on an oldie, but a goodie, the Triangle-Square-Circle reflection thing-a-majig that I’ve had my students use in the past to reflect on their learning.

1. Triangle After a lesson, have students draw a triangle and next to it write down three important points from the presentation or reading they just saw or completed.
2. Square Then, have students draw a square and next to it write down anything that “squares” with their thinking or anything they agree with.
3. Circle Finally, have the students draw a circle and next to it write down anything that is still “circling” in their head or questions that they have.

1.  Make a safe space in my classroom using Social Circles. This represents a TOP priority for me this year and is my #1TMCthing
2.  Fawn Nguyen’s keynote represented one of the most important parts of this community--the love for the work and the quest to never stop learning.
3.  TMC and MTBoS is where I want to be for professional learning. I am going to strive to be less of a lurker and more of a contributor in the coming year.

To Learn is to DO!!!!

I know I just said this when talking about past conferences.  But it is necessary to say again, and again.  Just like when I teach my mom how to use her smartphone, if I'm the one doing it, she won't learn a thing.  We have to get the learners doing in order for any learning to happen. Some of my favorite takeaways from #TMC15 all involve student's doing:

Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces and Visibly Random Groups

I didn't even go to this session, but the twitter talk got me latched on to this idea.  Funny enough, I had made a note to myself 7 months prior to make this happen after seeing it on twitter back then.  I can't wait to share classroom pictures of students working and talking this year, while I bask in the glory of so many diverse kiddos doing math!  My skin tingles just thinking about it.  (I even got a colleague to join me in the adventure of decking our classrooms in homemade whiteboards. Score!)

From my Google Keep records

Math Talks

It's official, this is going to perpetuate my Senior Math classroom this year.  This elective class that I am teaching could be taught as a classic test prep course since it was designed as such.

4195 Senior Math

Course Description: The student will review math topics such as fractions, percents, ratio and proportion, integers, and basic algebra. This course will review math skills needed for post high school jobs and education options. The student will be able to problem solve using basic math computations and basic algebra solving techniques. Evaluation: Grades will be determined by tests, quizzes, class assignments, projects, and the final exam.

I cannot wait to create better math thinkers through Math Talks.  I've added a new book to my bookshelf and I look forward to diving in head first in trimester 2.

Still circling around in my head: How can I incorporate Socrative Seminars?  I know this could be a great learning structure, but I am still trying to think about how it would look in my classes.  Bottom line is, however, that I have to create a classroom environment where students are talking and doing before I can ever think about Socrative Seminars.  So, for now, I hope to accomplish that while I mull over Socrative Seminars a little more.

BONUS:

Whoa--twice I incorporated the Mullet lesson prior to leaving classroom for two years and low an behold it was @MrVaudrey whom I had the pleasure of learning from again with the Barbie Bungee and Music Cues (a my favorite presentation).  It made me realize that I have been lurking in this MTBoS for three full years.   Enough is enough, I am going to engage in the MTBoS instead of just lurking.  At the very least, I want to reflect back all the great stuff I have the pleasure of stealing and using in my classroom!

And, yes, that was a short post. There is soooooo much more I could say about the inspiration and momentum created after attending Twitter Math Camp ‘15. But, by golly, I’ve got too much darn work to do now to make it all happen before the kiddos arrive on September 1st.

Our ultimate task as educators: Continuous Learning

Recently I've been reading a lot. Reading academic books. Reading books for fun. And it has reminded me that reading is one of the most powerful ways to learn.  But, reading alone is never enough.  How will I apply what I learned? How can I connect it to what I already know and have already experienced?  Combine the books I have read with the conferences I have attended recently and my mind is exploding with ideas, thoughts, concerns, excitement and horror! How the heck am I going to do justice to all these opportunities to learn when I reenter the classroom this coming school year?

While I am excited for this upcoming year to apply what I have learned the last two years, I'm also planning (hoping) to remain realistic that I won’t be able to accomplish all that I hope to in terms of improving my teaching practice. There just isn’t enough time in the school year (or my life for that matter) to make that happen. In that way, knowledge can be so very disappointing!  I may know what best practice looks like, but that doesn't mean I have the capacity to make that happen in a single year, teaching three preps that I've never prepped for before.  It takes years to get to that point and I will need to learn to be ok with that.

Regardless, here are my key takeaways from these learning opportunities that I hope will manifest themselves in my classroom this year...eventually.

MCTM Spring Conference, May 2015

Minnesota Council for Teachers of Mathematics (MCTM) Spring Conference is an annual tradition for Kennedy High School Math teachers.  Being in the spring, it serves as an outstanding opportunity to gather new ideas to catapult us into the next school year.  I love this conference because of the quality of sessions and the opportunity to network with local Minnesota math educators that I might only see once a year.  I've also been blessed to present three years in a row.  This year's presentation served as an outstanding opportunity to learn about not only presenting amidst technology snafus but also how patient and kind math educators are.  I could not have felt more supported during such a nutty loss of internet while presenting on the power of digital tools to improve our students' math experience.  Talk about productive struggle. 

When we rush to help we send the messages that the S can't do this. Promote productive struggle in math-Matt Larson #MCTM #TRUTH

— Jessica Rice (@JesRice) May 1, 2015

Minnesota Summit: Google Apps for Education, May 2015

Needless to say, the Keynote, James Sanders, provided plenty of entertainment and food for thought at this annual Saturday GAFE conference. His success, he’ll claim, has occurred through opportunities to “Fail Forward” and embrace those “undo-say” moments that are bound to occur. At the end of the Summit, Sanders won the Demo Slam with a demonstration of Timesify (for transforming any old article to look like a NYT article) and the Panic Button (to magically clear all your tabs in a tizzy but then reopen them when the threat of someone seeing has passed). I’m sure he won not only for the magic of the tools, but also for his showmanship.

The Bloomington Team at the Minnesota Summit (and this wasn't all of us!)

While Sanders seemed to steal the show, the best learning opportunity came when collaborating with a colleague, a special education teacher named Kelly. I am guilty of not regularly seeking out the expertise of our special education and EL teachers, but I was reminded at this conference how invaluable their perspective really is. During a session that provided adequate time to digest and move all the new ideas forward into action (my favorite time during any session), Kelly and I talked about math homework (insert dramatic music here).  Math homework, to most math teachers, is a non-negotiable that must be assigned nightly. I continue to be baffled by our students’ lack of interest in the monotonous homework we assign. I suppose I shouldn’t say that I am baffled at that. Of course they are uninterested! I am baffled by why we, as teachers, continue to assign something we know students aren’t doing. Zeros in the gradebook do not magically inspire students to do their homework. I’ve known this for years. Yes, practice outside of the classroom is important, but what will be the motivator for students to do this homework? The opportunity to discuss ideas with Kelly on how to motivate students to practice outside the classroom was extremely timely as I have been wondering how to do homework this coming school year. I will teach four core classes, which means more than 100 students who I could, potentially, assign homework to every night. I cannot imagine the headache of assigning, grading, and returning, so many assignments simply to put zeros in the gradebook for a vast majority of them. That might be the definition of insanity.  After this conversation with Kelly, I think I have an idea to make homework a true formative assessment for students as well as myself. More on that in a later post since the idea is still brewing.

AVID Summer Institute, June 2015

Kennedy High School has had an AVID cohort since 2012.  Since then I have learned a bit of this and that about AVID, it's mission, it's strategies and it's successes.  The Summer Institute provided a great opportunity to get grounded in AVID before reentering the classroom this fall.  A strong parallel to MCTM was the focus on getting students DOING!  Seems like a DUH! realization, but too often we, as teachers/givers/caretakers, do too much of the work for our students.  AVID reminded me (while providing me with strategies) to get students doing the thinking necessary to be successful.

I will admit, I had trouble engaging during this conference.  A bike accident a few weeks prior caused me to navigate charter buses, stairs and lots of sitting with a immobilization brace on my left leg and crutches.  I've never been so out of my element, asking for help, an extra chair, special assistance at the airport, but similar to the MCTM conference I found that educators are truly the best.  I learned that my colleagues at Kennedy are truly a great bunch of people who were so accommodating and kind not to mention engaged in doing great work for our Kennedy students.  I should also send gratitude out to the strangers from all over the country who helped me navigate the conference.  I am blessed to be an educator, surrounded by the best of the best!

Conferences yet to come!

Twitter Math Camp, July 2015

Words cannot describe how stoked I am to be surrounded by math educators that I have secretly been cyberstalking for two years!  Careful--the cyberstalking I am referring to is pouring over the blogs and tweets in the amazing MathTwitterBlogosphere that exists purely to be cyberstalked!  I am excited (and a bit apprehensive) to dive head first into this network and absorb as much as I can while attending camp at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California starting on Thursday!

Moodle Moot, August 2015

As a professed lover of the power of technology to transform and improve how we teach, this local conference seemed like a must do this summer.  Our Learning Management System at Bloomington Public Schools is Moodle and it appears here to stay!  I never dug very deep into Moodle during my years teaching, but I have watched many educators around me do so and speak highly of the tool to support their work.  Moodle, here I come!

BOOKS!

I'm presently enjoying: 

Since 2014, the books I've read: