Teacher Summer Camp aka the MfA Summer Think, Part 2

Like almost all of the teachers & moms that I follow on social media, I cannot believe that it is already August. Luckily here in New York City we still have more than a month of summer break left. I didn't want to much time to go by before reflecting on the rest of my MfA Summer Think experience. 

My first splash session was on creating our Teacher Bucket List. Not only was the session being facilitated by the amazing Brian but the description had me hooked right away - "Close your eyes and envision your perfect lesson. Eliminate all limitations placed on you by your school, administration, the DOE, and just dream. What are students doing? What are you doing? What does the room look like? Are you even in a room? What do you feel? How do the students feel? This workshop will make space to explore such imagining. Join us in rethinking our teaching, classroom, schools, and careers possibilities. By dreaming big, together, we will reflect on what matters most to us and create our Teacher Bucket List: a list of things we want to accomplish as a teacher before leaving the profession. The list will be concrete and aspirational, and get us to imagine what could be beyond what’s in front of us. It will reflect what matters most to us and the teacher we hope to become in the years ahead. All are welcome."

Check out my list on the right, which I have already started to use as I begin thinking of my 2023-2024 goals, which I hope to write about in the coming weeks before the new school year starts.

My second favorite splash session was on KenKen Meditation & Exploration where we did KenKen together & talked about ways to use it with our students.

My other splash sessions included How to Color War Your Classroom where we did summer-camp-like activities & games that we could use with our students to infuse camp joy into our classrooms and as someone who has never gone to summer camp, I loved the vibe it gave me and was inspired to try some new things in my advisory this upcoming school year.

Lastly, for my last splash session, I broke out of my algebra comfort zone & connected with my geometry roots in Fun with Flags! where I used a compass, ruler & Desmos (always) to play around with geometric constructions, which is something I do not do a lot of as an Algebra 1 teacher.

In addition to all of my sessions, some of my other Summer Think traditions included getting stamps in our Summer Think passport, starting our days together as a whole community and practicing mindfulness, doing math together and meeting new people in the MfA community, MfA pizza (obviously),and closing circles and ceremony. Considering that this was my 6th Summer Think, I also signed up to (potentially) help plan out next year's Summer Think, which I think would be a nice way to step up my MfA Summer Think game. Lastly, on a side note, our Deep Dive group has reconnected together via What's App because we had gotten so close over our three days together, which is just another reason why I am #MfAProud and so lucky to be a part of the amazing community of STEM teachers.