Today I went to a TERRIBLE training provided by our district. I can honestly say it was the worst training I've ever witnessed in the last 15 years of my career. All secondary teachers spent two hours of our lives in an auditorium attempting to learn. The content may have been valuable (it's hard to tell), but the execution and delivery of the content was bad. Thankfully during the training I read the Marshall Memo and completed some housekeeping.
Books continue to provide such an inspiration for me and open me up to changing my teaching practice. I've been reading Necessary Conditions by Geoff Krall and Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You Had by Tracy Johnston Zager over the last year and they get me excited to add on to my skills, to expand what I do with students to become even better year after year. I don't need a training when I have amazing books to improve my practice.Commitments for this year
None of them will be easy. They don't happen naturally, but I'll do my best!- Students will talk more than me in class (about math, of course!)
- Students will truly work together on difficult math.
- I will reflect here, on the blog, monthly (at least).
Relationships and Expectations
Week one of school I will use the Name Tents and 1-100 activity as detailed on Sara VanDerWerf's blog to start the year off on the right foot. The goal is to show students I care about a relationship with them and we will learn to work together and talk in this classroom. I want to actively care, not passively care as described in the book, Necessary Conditions. Geoff Krall thankfully explains the difference here if you don't have access to the book.If I want students to talk I need to make opportunities to do so and teach them how. A quote that stood out in Necessary Conditions was a teacher reflecting on doing arithmetic Number Talks in an algebra class. She stated "...I certainly find a through-line between the Number Talks we have regularly and the conversations that occurs while students are working on a more complex problem or in groups" (page 73) By Friday we'll do our first round of number talks to make it a weekly tradition at the very least, with more occurring in the beginning of the year.
Each week I will introduce a few more norms that I adopted last year from Sarah Hagan's blog, Math Equals Love. I want to build upon expectations (not dump them all on the students in a day) and reinforce them as I go. I've learned that reinforcing quality group work and teaching expectations does wonders in the classroom. I'll bring out the sticks by week two to reinforce the norms and create accountability as a team.
So there it is, my commitment to start the school year. Onward! ~Sawubona~
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