What I Read This Month - May 2023

This blog originally started off as a way to reflect on my math teaching, but has evolved (at least for now) to include my thoughts on being a mom of two and my love of reading - all things I consider a big part of my personality.

As long as I can remember, I have enjoyed reading for fun and going to the library. Understandably there have been periods of my life where I have done more or less reading, and since 2015 I have participating in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. The first few years, as a young-ish adult, working full time, I read about 20ish books a year, and have slowly increased that number to 40ish books in 2018 and 2020 and then 80ish books in 2021 and 100 books last year. I set my initial goal for this year to read 52 books and will likely reach that goal sometime this summer, and set a second goal of 101 books (because except for 2019, when I had my daughter, I have always read more books than the previous year). 

For me, reading is my self-care. I don't really watch much TV and I love when I come into contact with another book lover. I currently read on my Kindle Oasis and follow several book clubs: The Gloss Book Club, Reese's Book Club, Read with Jenna, Spivey's Book Club, Bad on Paper Podcast, Target Book Club, GMA Book Club, Read with MC, Oprah's Book Club, Literary League, BookClubish, Mindy's Book Studio, as well as some local book clubs.

I wasn't sure how having baby #2 would impact my reading time, but I am happy to report that one month in, I am going strong (thank you parental leave). My five star favorites this month (in no particular order) were:

1. Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
2. Adelaide
3. We Are Not Like Them
4. The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise 
5. The Echo of Old Books

Here is the complete list of my 2023 reads so far.

Math Dispositions, Norms & Habits of Mind

What Math Is... And Isn't

One of my takeaways after reading Necessary Conditions last summer was what math is... and isn't from chapter 2 (page 18):

• Mathematicians persist through challenging problems.
• Mathematicians communicate their ideas as clearly as possible.
• Mathematicians don't always get the answer.
• Mathematicians are creative.
• Mathematicians try several approaches to a problem.
• Mathematicians encourage each other.
• Mathematicians find beauty in their work.
• Mathematicians find meaning in their work.

I liked this breakdown of the dispositions of what it means to be a mathematician. During the first week of school I had asked students what they thought mathematicians do and then shared this list with them. My goal was the use these as guiding statements & practices throughout the year. I will admit, they weren't used as much as I would have liked, but I think they are important and I hope to use them more meaningfully in my classes nest year.

Math Norms

After I shared these with students, we discussed our math norms, which I modified from Sara Van Der Werf:

• We do math every day (also from Math Equals Love)
• Make your thinking visual
• Solve multiple ways. Make connections.
• Convince me

This was my first year using these norms and I think they do a great job of encompassing what I want my students to be doing every single day, no matter the content or activity. 

Habits of Mind

Lastly, this school year teachers in our district read Students At the Center and attended professional development on incorporating the Habits of Mind into our classes. We had used the HOM at my previous school, so I was familiar with them, and wish I could have done more with them, but unfortunately wasn't able to this year. I did give my students a survey in the middle of the year about which habits they thought were most important in math and to explain why they chose what they did. Overall, their top three were: thinking flexibly, striving for accuracy & persisting.

Overall I would love to have these discussions next year, but want to find a way to be more student centered, rather than just a brief discussion and then telling the students the dispositions, norms & habits. I would also love to really extend these ideas beyond September - I did have posters with the norms up all year and would refer to them, but I would like to do more with them in the future.