Glows and Grows

Here we are in the middle of October, and it sure feels like it.  I wanted to take some time to reflect on my own glows and grows of this school year so far...

Glows

• For the most part I have been keeping up with #teach180 on Twitter, where teacher's post daily pictures about what's going on in their classrooms 
• I started incorporating WWDB puzzles into both grades, as warm ups.  I don't do them every day, but I have done a few with each class, and they are fun ways to get students talking.  I also done a couple of Visual Patterns as warm ups and hope to also include some Estimation 180 eventually too.
• I've also kept up with the POM and done a 3 Act Task w/ 8th grade and hope to do one with my 7th graders soon.  A template for 3 Act Tasks hat I got from a PL this summer seemed to really help students stay organized.
• Every Friday, students have either answer a Regents or state test question Warm Up or had a quiz w/ several Regents/ state test questions, as a way to include test prep without it really being test prep.
• My 8th graders are currently doing their Lunar Rover Proposal & my 7th graders started their Stock Market Game Challenge this week, so both grades are on final unit projects, are they have been coming out pretty good so far.  My 8th graders also completed their Wheel of Theodorus projects and they were really creative.  I am also planning out a potential trip with my 7th grade class to the MoAF, and am waiting for approval from the principal.  I've never been before, but it looks like it would be a good experience.
• This year I have taken on the role of the NJHS advisor.  Our chapter has been approved, and our faculty team met for the first time this week.  I really think that this will be a positive addition to our school culture.  Right now, it looks like our induction ceremony will be in the late winter/ early spring.
• MfA has been good so far.  I am participating in a math & social justice PLC and hope to bring at least one project into all three of my classes this year.
• My Memory Makers (Yearbook & Scrapbook) elective is adorable.  The members are really into it and I love that it gives me an excuse to go to Michaels every week. Our October project are squash books!
• Since getting our new online grading system, Skedula, up and running only last week, I am still behind in grading (but getting better!) but I did send out my first weekly parent math newsletter email this week, with updates about what's going on in math class, and I am proud of myself and hope I can keep it up.

Grows

I know these are probably more important to reflect on, but I am running late to my weekly meditation group, so I am going to just post these on here for now and hold myself accountable to writing about them more in depth soon...

• Still behind in grading (but getting better especially this week!)
• Timing of lessons still needs to be tweeked... 40 minutes is not enough time
• I want to do a better job of using data to make decisions
• Being that the math team is just me and another teacher, and that we have co-planning time three periods a week, I want to formally set up our math PLC 

A4ANYC, MfA, MTBoS Goals & First Day Plans, Google Certification, 100 Problems, Swimming, & Teach180

A fellow teacher friend of mine posted this on Facebook earlier today:

"Oh Pinterest... its that time of year again... time to get my creative juices going!"

Yes, indeed she is right.  Don't get me wrong, I am loving this summer break, but with many teachers in other parts of the country setting up their classrooms and starting up the new school year, it's hard to resist that spark of excitement that comes with a new school year (especially when technically it is still a month away and there is still lots of time for fun summer non-work-related adventures!)  I have been tweeting a lot more this summer, and I have done a lot of work-related things, but there has definitely been a balance between work and life, which is always the goal (now if only I can make that last all year and not just July & August...)

Algebra for All & Math for America
Last week I finished up the Algebra for All Summer Institute, and next week I have one day of professional learning at the Japan Society.  Overall, the 12 sessions at Algebra for All were really good.  We also have five sessions throughout the school year and then we come back together again next summer.  The sessions were a good balance of content and pedagogy, which was a nice split between between being a math student and being a math teacher.  It made me really excited that I will also be starting my first year as a MfA Master Teacher Fellow (I officially signed my Fellowship agreement last week) and I will continue to grow as a math teacher and learner between the five A4A sessions and the 7+ MfA sessions.  Part of the last week of A4A was planning for the first day, week, and month of school.  September has 15 school days, and as of right now I have half of them outlined.  Since we are going away the last two weeks of August, I have this week and next week to get as much planning for September in before we go back after Labor Day.

MTBoS #SundayFunday #PushSend Goals & First Day Plans
Speaking of the first day, the MTBoS is bringing back #SundayFunday.  I did one of their blogging challenges back in January and found it to be very helpful to "force me" to take a step back and write on here each week.  Last week a lot of MTBoS teachers posed about their goals for the 2017 - 18 school year, so here is mine: problem solving.  I want the focus of this upcoming school year to be all about problem solving.  Going into this year, I will (probably) only be teaching 7th & 8th grade Algebra 1, and I feel good about it - I mean last year I somehow managed to juggle teaching 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade Algebra 1, Math Club/ Photography Club, and 6th grade Advisory and all my 8th graders passed the Algebra 1 Regents, so I felt good.  I was inspired by a lot of things at A4A including SVMI's Problem of the Month, the new Illustrative math curriculum, YouCubed's positive math norms, math routines, math talks, and using the mathematical modeling process to explore problems and at the heart of it all is problem solving.  To help support my goal, currently my first seven days of school include: Get it Together problems, intro to our first POM, reviewing the syllabus and positive class norms or Algebraic Habits of Mind, our first math talk,  possibly a three act task, a Week of iMath problem or two, and lastly our formal baseline assessment.  Last year, my students took their baseline on day 4, and this year I moved it back to day 7, especially after reading this article, The Math-Class Paradox.  We won't even look at textbooks until day 8 and I am proud of that.  The nice thing about looping with students is that you already know them and they know you, and since I was their teacher last year, I know what was covered and what wasn't.  My new 8th graders are a full unit ahead of where my 8th graders were last year, and I plan to use that wiggle room that I built in for myself last year as problem solving time this year, so I am excited for the things to come.  I do want to be mindful that saying and doing are two different things, but I am fairly confident going into this year that I can make problem solving in my classes a real priority.

Google Certified Educator Level 2
Last year I decided I wanted to finally be a Google Certified Educator.  I started the Level 1 modules last summer and never got around to finishing them until two weeks ago.  I took the Level 1 certification test and passed.  Then, another teacher in a Facebook group that I am a part of posted about how she dad taken Level 1 and Level 2 back to back and passed, so I decided why not go for Level 2?  As a teacher who has used G Suite for Education for the past six years or so, Level 1 made sense.  Level 2 though introduced me to so many new features that I had never even heard about!  I learned so much, like Google Arts & Culture and Google My Maps, so Friday I went through the modules, and took the certification test and will be going into next year as a Level 2 Google Certified Educator!

#100Problems in 100 Days 
Still loving Brilliant.org's 100 Day Summer Challenge!  I appreciate being a math learner.  Something I have noticed about myself is that sometimes (very much like my students) I know how to get an answer, but I don't know how to "show my work" or justify my solution.  I will be working through a problem, come up with a solution, but not necessarily be able to explain that solution or show my process in a way that would make sense to another person - I mean, it makes sense to me, but I doubt it would be fully clear to someone else.  The math teacher in me says to "show my work and make it clear", but the student in me (sometimes) says "if it makes sense to me, and I know it's right, why do I have to?"  It has made me mindful when working with my students that doing math takes work, not just in content, but in practice.  Learning something new has been a pretty powerful experience.

Learning to Swim
Speaking of learning something new, earlier this summer, when I made my Summer 2017 Goals, one of them was to learn how to swim.  Yes, I really didn't know, and decided that this would be the summer to change that.  So I signed up for four one-on-one classes at my local pool, and could definitely could see progress, but I still wasn't fully there, so I signed up for a month-long membership at my local pool, and have been going on my own as often as I can.  I am definitely not ready for the Olympics, but I can happily (and proudly) say now that I can do several laps on my own, even in the deep end.  Like the 100 Problems in 100 Days, this whole experience has really made me aware of what it takes to learn something new, specifically that I needed the support, encouragement, and feedback of a teacher and time to actually practice on my own.  I had to take an active role in the learning process.  I needed the guidance of a teacher who supported me and then I needed to get in the pool on my own and practice, practice, practice.  Also, I was actually in the pool, with my teacher for each of our sessions together.  Learning math, like learning to swim requires supportive, encouraging teachers who can give useful feedback while you are actually doing math.  I would not have made as much progress as I have if I had a teacher who demonstrated for me how to swim and then expected me copy her.  I also would not have made as much progress if I hadn't actually continued to practice swimming on my own.  There are just so many parallels between learning math and learning how to swim and I am grateful that this experience has put me in the learner seat.  If you had asked me two months ago, if I enjoyed swimming, I would have said "not really" because I didn't know how and there was no way I was going into the deep end of the pool, but turns out, I really do enjoy it.  I enjoy seeing how far I have come, building on my skills, and having something to work towards.  My goal is to be mindful of this experience of learning something new all school year and allow my classroom to be the "pool" - where we are *doing* meaningful problem solving, and I am supporting my students, each at their own level, encouraging them, giving them the feedback they need to push their own learning, and at the end of the day, having fun.

#Teach180
Lastly, one of my favorite math bloggers, does something called #Teach180 which is a challenge to post one picture from your classroom each day in order to inspire and learn from others.  It is a no pressure challenge, but I like the accountability, since blogging everyday is unlikely, but tweeting is doable.  I am excited to see where this goes and to see what others are doing.  Making my twitter account professional and public last year really was one of the best forms of professional learning I have done.

My Failures as a Math Student

So of course after I posted my week 4 post for the MTBoS Blogsplosion blogging initiative, I thought of some more failures of mine, only this time not as a math teacher, but as a math student.

Failing One of My HS Math Regents Exams
Growing up, I was a fairly good student.  My parents always emphasized the importance of getting a good education and I got good grades pretty easily.  It was right around 8th grade, when all of a sudden, these good grades I was getting started to slip, particularly in math.  That was also the year that I wasn't just taking 8th grade math, but also 9th grade (Sequential 1) math after school.  For the first time in my life, math wasn't coming easily to me anymore.  But I get through it, and did well on the Sequential 1 Regents that June, which meant that in high school, I would be taking all freshman classes, except for math, where I would be a year ahead.

My failure came in my second year of high school, when I was taking Sequential 3 (again a sophomore taking a Junior year math class) and I got lazy.  I wouldn't say my behavior wasn't typical.  I was a sophomore in high school whose priorities wasn't really school.  Also, by now, I had gotten used to math just not really making sense, so why put in the extra effort for something I just wasn't going to ever understand (or need)?  And that June, I failed the only Regents I would ever fail... Sequential 3.  And it broke my heart.  That was definitely a wake up call.  All my friends would more on to pre-calculus the following year, but I might not.  Luckily, I was able to get into pre-calc with the expectation that I would take the Sequential 3 Regents the following January.  And boy did I put in work for it.  I don't remember what I got on it, but I passed and I had learned my lesson.

Failing the Math Content Praxis
I continued to struggle with math in high school and college, which just always meant that I had to put more work into it than other subjects.  Even in college, being a psychology and sociology major, I ended up taking math and science classes all four years in college because I wanted a Bachelor of Science, not a Bachelor of Arts.  I even took classes that were part of the math major sequence.  But I got through it.  The irony of all of this is that at the end of college I would be accepted into the NYC Teaching Fellows, as... you guessed it, a math teacher.  I was able to pass all my certification exams (including math) easily and I became a certified 7th - 12th grade math teacher.

Last year, I was introduced and fell in love with Math for America.  From the moment I went to their first open house, I knew I wanted to be a part of their organization.  So, I applied.  Being a middle school math teacher and being certified 7th - 12th grade, that meant I had to take the Math Content Praxis Exam, which I hadn't ever taken, since NYC uses another exam for teacher certification.  Every free moment last Spring was spent studying number and quantity, algebra, functions, calculus, geometry, probability, statistics, and discrete mathematics.  I even got in touch with my old math tutor from college to work with me for a few sessions.  And I failed.  My heart was once again broken because I wanted to get in so badly, and wasn't going to be able to because of a math test.  I was a failure.  Luckily, I still had a small window to take he test again before the application was due.  So, again I went back to immersing myself in all of it, and went in, still feeling shaky, but knowing that I was giving it my best shot.

The day of the test, I felt more confident with my answers.  I paced myself better, and when I didn't get a preliminary score at the end (it's a computerized test) felt good that at least I hadn't already failed.  Sure enough, a few weeks later I got my score, and I had passed.  And damn, it felt good.

Both of these experiences stay with me because they are both living proof that I am a tough cookie when it comes to mathematics.  They also make me sensitive to the students who may be sitting in my classroom who feel like failures themselves sometimes, or simply have a hard time passing a test.  I wanted to share these experiences because the best math teachers are also math learners, and sometimes that comes with failure.  But that's OK.  I am always mindful that if I had let my early failures in math shut me down, I would, quite literally, not be where I am today.

"Take Chances. Make Mistakes. Get Messy."

This week's MTBoS Blogsplosion theme is all about reflecting on and proudly sharing a mistake/error/failure we made.  I'm not going to lie, I was not super thrilled when I first read about it.  It's not easy to admit when we are wrong.  But the more I thought about it, I tell my students every day to "be brave" and "give it a try" and that "it's OK to not know something... yet," so here I am.  Now, I could very well blog about my whole first year teaching ten years ago because I am pretty sure that most of that year,  I felt like a failure.  But I survived.  It wasn't easy or pretty, but here I am ten years later, still teaching middle school mathematics, and still enjoying it (most of the time).

I=prt
When I think back to a specific time I felt like a failure as a math teacher, a couple different things come up.  Once, in what had to be my fourth or fifth year teaching, I was going over interest with my 7th (?) graders, and of course, was being observed by my Bank Street advisor at the time, and I confidently taught my students that interest = principle times rate times time (I even had it written on my slide) and even emphasized to them that it's principle not principal, which, of course, is wrong, and was the first thing my advisor pointed out in our debrief.  I felt mortified.

Integer Chips
Another time, also around the same time, is when I was trying to move from direct teaching of integer operations to conceptual teaching, using red and black integer chips to model addition and subtraction number sentences.  Growing up, I was taught the algorithms for these, and knew that when subtracting integers, you simply just "keep, change, change" or keep the sign of the first integer, change the subtraction operation to addition, and change the sign sign of the second integer.  All of a sudden I was supposed to use these red and black chips, to model subtraction.  Not wanting to introduce them to the tool before fully understanding it myself, I spent many a lunch period trying to make sense of the chips until one day, it all came together.  Zero pairs!  Yes, I can put in as many zero pairs as I need without changing the value of the number sentence, and then, once I have enough chips to subtract, I can then follow through with the subtraction.  It was so clear!  And it was kind of nice to see the algorithm in a whole new way.  I think what stuck with me the most however, was an important reminder that sometimes, understanding something in math just takes time, and that is OK.

This Year
Although there are many more examples of mistakes/errors/failures I could mention throughout my teaching career, I would be lying if I said that they are all a thing of the past.  I still make them, and will still make new ones in the future.  Luckily, I can say will fair confidence that I solidly have middle school math down, and so not much surprises me in terms of content, but every once in a while, I will come across something I said, that mathematically turns out to be untrue.  The nice part about that is then, I can proudly admit to my 6th, 7th, and 8th graders that I was wrong (if they haven't already caught me) and that mistakes happen and they are OK.

As for feeling like a failure, I can't think of one great teacher, who, doesn't think of themselves as a failure sometimes.  How can we not?  Even the best of us (I'm talking way better than me) still have bad lessons and bad days.  I feel like a failure when I have tried everything I know to help a student make sense of something, and they still don't.  I feel like a failure when it takes me more than a week to grade an assignment, because teaching five classes across three grades is a lot of prep and grading work.  I feel like a failure when I know I wasn't able to give a lesson 100% because I didn't have the time to plan better.

But mistakes don't mean the end of something.  Mistakes give us the opportunity to change our thinking.  After all, if we all thought the same way and always got everything right, we might not be creative.  We might not see different perspectives.  We might not be afraid to try new things, out of fear of failure.  To borrow a phrase from my favorite cartoon teacher & hero, Ms. Frizzle, mistakes give us the freedom to "take chances... and get messy" ;)

Mistakes are messy.  Math is messy sometimes.  And that's OK.

Reading & Sharing in the #MTBoSBlogsplosion

Round #3 of the #MTBoSBlogsplosion is all about reading & sharing, which really, is what the MTBoS is all about; collaborating with and ultimately learning from other math educators.  Since going public with my twitter account over a year ago and got introduced to the MTBoS, I have connected with so many other amazing math teachers all over the world, and have brought things into my own middle school math classroom, that I never would have thought of on my own.  So here are some of the specific blogs and posts that have helped me become a better math teacher:

Math = Love is one of my favorite go-to math blogs.  I even used this Broken Circles task that Sarah posted about last July for my first day of school activities for my 7th & 8th graders this past year!  I also was inspired to bring the game of Set into my math club after reading this post. I cannot wait!

Crazy Math Teacher Lady is another one of my favorites.  I was really inspired by this post from this past November on what is good teaching.  I find that I can relate to so much of what she says, especially about trying real hard to be awesome, just ask any of my students.

I was introduced to Vi Hart  just this year.  I shared her videos on doodling in math for my Fibonacci Day celebration with my 6th, 7th, and 8th graders this year.  I will also be sharing her videos on hexaflexagons with my 8th graders in our current unit on geometric transformations.

Math with Bad Drawings is a new blog that I started following because of this post earlier this month on Why Mathematicians Are So Bad at Math? which was a very interesting read.

I love Math Easy as Pi because she is a fellow middle school math teacher, with really great classroom ideas.  I am also really interested in her Books Worth the Read list.

Communicating Mathematically and I Speak Math are two other inspiring middle school math blogs that I love to check out.  Ironically both have referenced Desmos activities lately, which makes sense because Desmos is great and a tool I am using more and more in my classes this year (my 7th & 8th graders use it pretty regularly, and it is my goal to introduce it to my 6th graders before the end of the year).

Another great middle school math blog to check out is Middle School Math Rules especially when I need organizational tips.

Last but definitly not least is Roots of the Equation.  This is the blog of one of my friends, and current high school math teacher.  He is an amazing math teacher, who has helped tutor me in math in college, and this past Spring when I was studying for my Math Content Praxis.  I would have loved to have been a student in one of his classes.

The Soft Skills of Teaching Middle School Mathematics

This week's theme in the MTBoS Blogsplosion blogging initiative challenges us to reflect on the soft skills of teaching math.  As a middle school teacher, this is something I think about often.  What makes a great math teacher?

#1 I think is content knowledge.  A great math teacher is first and foremost, a math learner themselves.  Now, I know, strong content knowledge doesn't really fall under "soft skills", but they have to be willing to put themselves in the (sometimes uncomfortable and messy role) of learning.  I think this is true of any good teacher really, but it is especially important for math teachers.  Being a life-long learner, not being afraid or ashamed to ask questions, and wanting to make sense of problems and persevere in solving them (as the first Common Core math practice states) are all soft skills.  A passion for learning is truly a beautiful thing.

A question I ask myself often is "how am I deepening my own content knowledge?"  I've been teaching middle school math for ten years now.  I have taken advanced math classes in high school, and college, and I have passed several math content teacher certification tests, including the Math Content Knowledge Praxis Exam last year in order to apply for a Master Teacher Fellowship at Math for America.  I know what I need my students to know, but, I am sad to admit that rarely do I make the time to explore mathematics outside my classroom.  Don't get me wrong, I love exploring things with my students.  Ask any one of my current or former students, and I truly believe that they would say that I enjoy exploring math with them (which is another essential soft skill of a great math teacher, I believe), but rarely do I venture outside exploring something mathematical not related to my job.  I'd like to say that this is because of lack of time and the demands of balancing work and life, but what it comes down to, is that sometimes it is just not a high enough priority of mine.  And that is something I want to consciously change over the course of the next few months.  I want to push my own mathematical thinking and learning.  Great math teachers are always learning, not only in their craft, but in their own depth of content knowledge.

Some of the other soft skills that I think are essential to great math teaching, especially in middle school, are the ability to balance that fine line between teaching children and teaching young adults.  My students are different people every single day, and that can be challenging.  Middle school teachers have one of the highest teacher turnover rates, and almost every time I tell someone new that I teach middle school math, the response is usually one of pity (or insanity), but I genuinely love what I do, and I know that what I do is important.  Teaching (and enjoying teaching) middle school math requires a very unique set of soft skills, including communication, again, balancing being able to talk about the (often) silly things that entertain teenagers that and then the beauty of linear or quadratic equations.  We need to be mentally strong, and stable, because being a teenager is not.  We need to be forgiving, but also not shy away from consequences.  We need to be genuine listeners, because a middle schooler will do almost anything for you, if they realize that you do indeed care about them as individuals.  And lastly, we need to be (appropriately) human in front of them, which means admitting when we don't know something, disappointed in them when they are not being their best selves, and their biggest cheerleader when they deserve it.

Teaching middle school math is hard.  But man is it worth it ;)

MTBoS 2017 Blogging Initiative: My Favorites

As a math teacher, and fellow member of the MTBoS, this week they posted about the MTBoS 2017 Blogging Initiative.  This week's theme is "My Favorites," so here are some of my favorite go-to resources that I have used so far this year:

• Mathalicious - Great real-world, engaging middle & high school math lessons.  My $10/month subscription is totally worth it.  I have used it in all three grades that I teach this year.  A great resource!
• Illuminations - How could anything by the NCTM not be great?  Great tasks and lessons I have, again, used in my 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Algebra 1 classes!
• Illustrative Mathematics - Great tasks, broken down by Common Core Standard.
• NRICH - I have used the tasks on here both with math club and just yesterday, with my 8th grade Algebra 1 class and with one of my 6th grade classes.  Very engaging, especially for differentiating up.
• Mathematics Assessment Project - I have used some of these as homework problems this year.  Tasks are broken down by standard and come with rubrics.
• Inside Mathematics - Great grade-level performance tasks, also with rubrics.
• TED-Ed Mathematics -   Interesting videos on a variety of topics.  I mostly use the math or science ones, usually as a launch for lessons or to make connections.
• Desmos Classroom Activities - I've used Desmos with both my 7th and 8th grade Algebra 1 students so far this year, and hope to introduce my 6th graders to it by the end of the year. Perfect for graphing linear and non-linear functions!
• My favorite project so far this year, besides the Stock Market Game, has been the Road Trip Project that came from Carl's Teaching Blog.  My 7th graders definitely have had the best projects this year - this one was perfect for out linear relationships unit.  So much fun! My 6th graders also made their own Fraction Cookbooks, which they really enjoyed.
• Lastly, a resource that I haven't used yet, but am very much looking forward to using this year are Dan Meyer's Three Act Tasks (hopefully to blog about in the very near future).