Navigating the World Around Me

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!