Quick 2023-2024 School Year Reflection

It is officially the first Monday summer break, which is lovely! School ended last Wednesday and boy what a school year it was. It's crazy to think that I have taught for 17 years now. I still so clearly remember counting down the weeks/days/minutes until I was no longer a first year teacher, and now here we are. This year was a rough one, mainly in the trying to balance a full teaching schedule with a full mom schedule. I was constantly behind in planning & grading this year and with the Algebra 1 regents being so early this year, I was both mentally, physically & emotionally checked out for most of June.

This year was my first full year being a teacher and a mom of two and like in "The Pursuit of Happyness," "this part of my life is called running." I will acknowledge that I hasn't in as bad of a place as Will Smith's character, but quite literally, I spent a lot of time this year running... running to work after dropping off my daughter at school, running from work to pick up my kids. This was the school year of no time to breathe because I would get to work, and have to be in front of students. Luckily I had a really lovely homeroom first period every day, which made the chaotic transition easier, but man, as a introvert, with no time to pause & breathe, it was rough. 

I did want to share some updates about the school year overall (and since I only have a few minutes before I have to wake up my son from his nap & pick up my daughter from summer camp, they will be brief, but I do (hope) to expand on them later on...

• Once again, being a part of Math for America really made a direct impact on my classroom practices, specifically in playing math games. I participated in a PLT on the book Math Games with Bad Drawings and had a lot of fun playing games with my students. My personal favorite is Teeko, but we also played The Con Game, Dandelions, Sprouts & a few others. 
  
  
• Speaking of MfA, I am excited to participate in the Summer Think again next week, which is also an inspiring three days of learning and reflecting. This year I will even be leading a splash session on team building for the first time. In addition to the Summer Think, in August I will be part of a cohort of teachers in a CSEd Program, where I will learn to teach Computer Science Discoveries through Code.org. This will be totally new for me, but I am excited to learn something new and to try it out with my classes next year. Next school year I will also be co-facilitating a PLT on FALs at MfA again, so lots of new things happening.
  
  
• I wasn't totally happy with how my Memory Makers elective turned out this year. The yearbook wasn't bad, but I don't think it was our best work. This was my seventh year running this elective and I am always in awe that we are able to make it happen, but I feel like I could use some more structures in planning so I signed up for Camp Yearbook later on this month, which I hope will help with that.
  
  
• I loved using the Desmos 6-A1 curriculum, especially for Algebra 1, for the first time this year, but there are definitely some things I would like to do better next year, in terms of pacing and overall lesson delivery. It is not confirmed yet whether or not we will be using it next year, but I really hope we do.
  
  
• With the Algebra 1 regents being new this year, the test was super early, and I have not gotten any results yet, even though I think my students did finally get their scores. I am curious to see how they did, but I am nervous, with it all being new this past year.

That's all I have time for right now. I haven't had a chance to look at my student end of year survey results, so hopefully I will have a chance to look at that and then reflect some more on here later on this week. I also have to pick out a summer book to read about math teaching, since I always try to read at least one book on teaching during the summer... maybe I will get some ideas during the Summer Think next week?