What I Read This Month - May 2023

This blog originally started off as a way to reflect on my math teaching, but has evolved (at least for now) to include my thoughts on being a mom of two and my love of reading - all things I consider a big part of my personality.

As long as I can remember, I have enjoyed reading for fun and going to the library. Understandably there have been periods of my life where I have done more or less reading, and since 2015 I have participating in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. The first few years, as a young-ish adult, working full time, I read about 20ish books a year, and have slowly increased that number to 40ish books in 2018 and 2020 and then 80ish books in 2021 and 100 books last year. I set my initial goal for this year to read 52 books and will likely reach that goal sometime this summer, and set a second goal of 101 books (because except for 2019, when I had my daughter, I have always read more books than the previous year). 

For me, reading is my self-care. I don't really watch much TV and I love when I come into contact with another book lover. I currently read on my Kindle Oasis and follow several book clubs: The Gloss Book Club, Reese's Book Club, Read with Jenna, Spivey's Book Club, Bad on Paper Podcast, Target Book Club, GMA Book Club, Read with MC, Oprah's Book Club, Literary League, BookClubish, Mindy's Book Studio, as well as some local book clubs.

I wasn't sure how having baby #2 would impact my reading time, but I am happy to report that one month in, I am going strong (thank you parental leave). My five star favorites this month (in no particular order) were:

1. Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
2. Adelaide
3. We Are Not Like Them
4. The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise 
5. The Echo of Old Books

Here is the complete list of my 2023 reads so far.

13 Rules that Expire NCTM article

Just read an awesome NCTM article posted on the Google Community Math with your PJs on and I had to share.  It is truly a must read for any K-12 math teacher, but it is especially important for elementary school math teachers:

13 Rules that Expire

I know, especially in my early teaching years, that I've used little (sometimes meaningless) math tricks to get kids to "remember" a procedure or computation rather than a concept.  Did it make me a bad teacher?  No, I don't think so.  I really believed that it was my job to make the material as easy as possible for my students.  Now, not so much.  It's not my job to make the work any easier, it's my job to know how to get my students to where I want them to be.  It's my job to constantly ask them questions what what they are thinking and to challenge their thinking to push them forward so that they can make sense of math on their own.

What I found most interesting (and not that surprising when I think about it) about this article was how many of the "rules" "expire" in 7th grade.  As a 7th grade teacher, I have seen the faces of students so many times, when I am teaching them something and all of a sudden something they thought was "true" turns out to not be as true as they thought.  For example, leaving improper fractions as improper, or using the number line to show how you can subtract a bigger number from a smaller number.  The article also made me aware of some of the things that I have presented to my scholars as "true" and how I can catch myself in the upcoming school year.  I am so grateful for having taught 8th grade and Integrated Algebra in the past because it gives me a frame of mind when I am teaching my 7th graders for where they will need to eventually be.

In addition, someone shared this free resource, Nix the Trix, which also does a good job of describing tricks, rhymes, etc, that are commonly used by teachers that "rob students of conceptual understanding."  Had to share!