Glows and Grows from Year 10 and Goals for Next School Year

Here we are at last, the last "week" of school ("week" being actually only 1.5 days since we are off today and our last day is Wednesday). What a year it has been!  Busy for sure, but we made it.

Wednesday will mark the end of my tenth year as a teacher, which kind of blows my mind because I can still very clearly remember counting down the hours until I was no longer a first year teacher, and now fast forward a decade, and here I am.  I had my EOY meeting with my AP this past week and I thought it would be fitting to share my own glows and grows from this past year, and my goals for the upcoming school year:

Glows:

• I survived planning, teaching and assessing 5 classes across three different grades, not to mention planning and running an advisory, and an elective class
• 100% of my 8th graders passed the Algebra 1 Regents exam and the mean score was an 87.  I had these students last year in 7th grade too, and I was proud to see them graduate this past week... they will definitely be missed.
• Facilitating one of the challenges at the STEM Family Fun Night at the NY Hall of Science last month was a lot of fun and something I am looking forward to continuing in the future
• I enjoyed mentoring a new teacher (and a half) this past year (see Grows below)
• I included more Mathalicious, MAP, and Desmos work in my curriculum this year across all three grades
• I followed through with my assessment schedule this year, starting with a Baseline, three Interim Assessments, and an End of Year exam, in all three grades, all with exams I created using released 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Algebra 1 Regents questions (see Grows below).  Although we haven't gotten the state test scores back yet, I know all my 8th grades did well on their Regents exam. 
• I participated in the Spring 2017 NYC Teaching Lab Demonstration Cycle and am considering applying for the Teaching Lab Fellowship
• I shared at the Chancellor's Conference on Designing Instruction to Challenge Students in January 

Grows:

• I was consistently behind in grading, giving student feedback, and updating my bulletin boards this year
• I feel like I did not do a good enough job supporting my lowest level students in class this year.  I taught both the 6th and 7th grade ICT classes this year (with a co-teacher) and it was challenging to support my lowest students during our regular class time.  This is not something that is exclusive to teaching at a G&T school, but it was definitely a challenge for me to give every student what they need (including my time and attention that they all deserve)
•   Although I enjoyed mentoring a new teacher this year (and then another new teacher half way through the year) it was hard spreading out my time equally, especially when we only had opportunities after school to do so.  Trying to keep up with my own planning and grading and then making the time to support my mentees was a challenge.  Also, both of my mentees were not math teachers, so although I could share with them my own experience, content-wise, I'm sure I wasn't as helpful as I could have been.
• Our elective schedule was fuzzy this year at my school.  We were supposed to have smaller cycles, but ended up having one long first session, and then one short cycle at the end.  I did the National Math Club for my first cycle, and then Photography for my second, and with everything else I was planning for, these (as well as advisory) were never a main priority since they were not everyday classes.  Although we did reach the Gold Level in Math Club again, we didn't participate in any math competitions this year (last year we went to two) and didn't participate in the St. Jude's Math-a-thon.  In advisory, we also didn't do a service learning project this year and student-led conferences were only OK.  Although I did the best I could, I know I could have been doing more in each of these. 
• I didn't do as much cross-curricular collaboration this year as I would have liked
• Even though I followed through with an assessment cycle, I don't think I used the data from it as effectively as I could have
•  I only went on one trip this past year, and it was only with my 7th & 8th graders, to see Hidden Figures through a DOE promotion

Goals for Next School Year:

• To continue my 100% Algebra 1 Regents passing rate, with a higher mean score, or at to at least have no score lower than an 80
• To use data more effectively, by using Student Profile, EOY Student Survey data, and possibly SchoolNet.  I am also thinking about adding another interim assessment into my assessment calendar.
• To give my students more effective and timely feedback on their work
• Better curriculum planning and homework, especially focusing on the the Common Core Math Shifts - focus, coherence, and rigor
• Use Math for America Professional Development Resources to support our small professional learning team
• This summer I will join the Algebra for All initiative, and I hope to be able to bring things back into my classroom
• Be more strategic and thoughtful in planning with my grading system to make sure that I plan for equal opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning
• Possibly find outside teachers to collaborate with on projects
• Embed more inquiry problem solving into my curriculum using Illustrative and NRICH tasks.  I also hope to have my students participate in Global Math Week in October and the Global Math Challenge in November.
• Lastly (for now) I would like to continue to work on becoming a Google Certified Educator, which is something I started doing last year, but didn't follow though

Twitter, MTBoS, Kagan Cooperative Learning, Maker Faire, 5 Summer Secrets to a Stress-Free Fall, and the TED Ed July Challenge

Like most teachers, most of my Sundays from September to June are usually spent lesson planning and preparing for the week ahead.  Luckily it's July, so my next nine Sundays can be spent blissfully having brunch with friends and catching up on my reading instead.

The beautiful thing about summer vacation is that I don't *have* to do any work.  For two glorious months, the immediate pressure of teaching is off.  But again, like most teachers, just because I don't *have* to work, doesn't mean that I don't do any work.  In fact these past few days, I've been exploring the MTBoS and other teacher resources and have been pretty inspired, so I wanted to take a minute a digest what I've found.  I know a fault of mine is I tend to want to do too much at once, and then what inevitably happens is that nothing really gets done well.  So here's what I've been exploring...

Twitter and the MTBoS Directory

I've known about the Math Twitter Blogosphere for a few years now, but this weekend, I officially added myself to the MTBoS Directory.  I'm telling you, making my Twitter account public a few months ago, has been such an eye-opener.  I have gotten exposed to some many other math teachers that I cannot help but be inspired!  I think that this is so important because it's so easy to get "tunnel vision" as a teacher, especially in a small school, so I am grateful that I get to learn from and collaborate with other amazing math teachers all over the world through this form of social media (seriously if you check out the Map page, we are all over the place).

Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures

Through the MTBoS, yesterday I learned about Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures, which are essentially protocols for student collaboration.  Students work together to learn and responsible for the teammate's learning as well as their own.  Now, I already do a lot of group work in my math classes, but I am very interested in learning more about these specific structures.  I found this resource through Google and have reached out to other via Twitter about it and am excited to see how I can incorporate these tools into my math classes next year.  Also thanks to a new blog that I found through MTBoS, I think I found my first day of math activity for this year, Broken Squares.

2016 Maker Faire

I bought a one day ticket to this year's Maker Faire in October at the NY Hall of Science.  I've never been before, but I've heard good things and the science teacher is also going so you know it's going to be awesome.

5 Summer Secrets to a Stress-Free Fall

Yesterday morning I participated in a free webinar hosted by Angela Watson on the 5 Summer Secrets for a Stress-Free Fall, and found it to be inspiring.  My biggest takeaway was that I am the type of person who needs structure.  I am completely guilty of being totally lazy when I don't have a set schedule.  Don't get me wrong, I love free time, but my free time can very easily spiral to hours of time wasted if I don't give myself some sort of structure.  In the beginning of the webinar we were asked "What do you want your life to look like when summer is over?"  My personal vision includes easy-to-maintain organizational systems at home, first quarter lesson plans sketched out, and great memories with people I love.  In order to make my vision a reality, I am going to decide what my priorities are and break down those priorities into tasks and schedule them into my to-do list.

Ted Ed July Challenge

Something that has been fun the past 3 days has been the TED Ed July Challenge - to learn 31 new things this month.  So far I've learned about writing introductions, the behavior of cats and the science behind The Odyssey. The videos are less than 5 minutes long, and who doesn't love learning new things?

Summer Reading

I added another book to my summer reading list in addition to Flip Your Classroom and Mathematical Mindsets,  Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, just because it sounds like fun.  But here I go again, I am taking on more than I can chew, and what I don't want to happen is to end up not finishing any of them, so I must prioritize and plan out a schedule.  How about I commit to finishing Flip Your Classroom this month, and then picking one of the other two for August?  After all, I also have non-teaching books I would love to read this summer too, on yeah and the books for my Hunter classes.  Ahh, the beauty of summer <3