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.