CMP3 Summer Institute, My Goals, and the Planning for the First Day of School

Two weeks from now, I will have my 10th first day of school as a teacher.  It's kinda crazy when I think about it.  It's a mixture of excitement from getting a fresh start, to nerves about about what they year will bring, to pure exhaustion from setting up your classroom and setting the stage for the year ahead.

Last week I finished my G & T classes at Hunter, which, for the most part, I found helpful.  My next step is to take the certification test, which I plan on doing in the next few weeks.  My main takeaway from my classes was that if we are to be truly equitable, my G & T students deserve as much of my time as my IEP and general ed students, which was a challenge for me last year.  As a teacher, I know which of my students are gonna struggle the most and our natural instinct is to go and support them because we believe G & T students will "get there on their own" and that is just not equitable.  Speaking of Hunter, I literally have like eight Post-its of things I want to blog about on here - so any things would come up in our classes that I'd make a note to reflect on it when I had more time.  There'd be no way I could meaningfully write about all of it at once, but I hope to cover a lot of it as the school year goes on.

This week I have been attending the same CMP3 Summer Institute that I attended last year, only this time level two for 8th grade.  Next year I will be teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, and even though I am excited about it, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't stressed out about the amount of work that comes from teaching three different grades.  Overall, the PD has been OK.  I am definitely looking forward to teaching new content like irrational numbers, laws of exponents, exponential growth/decay, transformations, and quadratic functions.  I haven't taught 8th grade in a few years, and am looking forward to the new content. Here are my personal notes/takeaways/things to remember from the last three days:

• It's OK if not every student has gotten through every part of the problem every single day, but I must make sure that I am giving them enough time to "muck around" with it.
  
• The problems in Investigation 1 of each unit are all about setting the stage for the rest of the unit and I shouldn't let the misconceptions in Investigation 1 derail my plans.  In other words, I don't need to fix every misconception that shows up in the first few days of a new unit, but rather take note of those misconceptions and make sure that they are addressed as we move through the unit.  This made me think a lot about the practice that I used to have where we would always spend the last 5 minutes of class "taking notes" generated by the students.   For some reason (maybe the shorter class periods last year) I stopped doing this, and it is something I would like to bring back this year.  This also includes introducing new vocabulary during the summarize, after the students have, again, had a chance to "muck around" with the math.
  
• I need to change up the way I do my written reflections in order to keep my students engaged.  Typically, I post the reflection questions after most Investigations on Google Classroom and my students choose one and post a response to it, but that can get boring after a while, so I would like to find other ways to incorporate those written reflections so that they are more engaging.
  
• In the Teacher's Guide in each unit, there is a section on the mathematical (content) background and I need to start reading these.  I usually skip these pages because I feel pretty confident in my content knowledge, but there might be something in there that I hadn't thought of or perhaps didn't even know.  I think reading these will also be a way to support my own growth as a mathematician, which is another personal goal of mine this year.  Speaking of professional growth, the CMP3 website has videos of lessons, which I should probably look into, again in order to perhaps get new ideas to bring into my classroom.
  
• I need to stop having my students read directly from the textbook during the launch part of the lesson.  It can be boring and I am sure that I lose some kids when I do it.  My main reason for doing it so often is that I am afraid that I will miss something key in the launch, but facilitators this week warn against it, so it is something I will work on.  My goal is 5 minute launches so that within 10 minutes of class starting, students are exploring... yes, I will make this happen!
  
• We had a guest speaker yesterday talking about ELLs and my big take away from him is the idea that in order for something to be a "quantity" it must have three things: a sign, a number, and units.  I love this because it emphasizes two big mathematical ideas that students tend to forget - sign and units, so from day one I will be drilling this into my kiddies, because it is an important part of thinking like a mathematician.
  
• The CMP3 facilitators also suggest not cutting out any whole Investigations, which is something I struggle with, mostly due to timing - we physically don't have enough days before the state test to do it all (especially since I will probably only being seeing my classes four days a week for 40 minute periods).  I need to come back to this as I plan out my units this year.

Some other ideas that have crossed my mind over the past few days:

• Get rid of unit tests or rather, give out unit tests for homework as a test grade.  To give a formal unit test at the end of every unit can waste precious time that again, we don't have.  I would still keep my interim assessment (IA) (made from old state test/Regents questions) every marking period, but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of no unit tests.  I think this would also help with the standards-based grading because my IAs are already aligned to standards.  Again, I did something similar a few years ago, and think I want to bring this practice back.  Although I would be curious what students would say if I asked them if they wanted more or less formal tests - I don't think the answer is as obvious as we would think.
  
• I must incorporate more problem-based learning (PBL) and social justice issues into my classes.  Some of my favorite resources I want to include more of are: BIE, Radical Math, 2030 Schools,  Three Act Tasks, NRich, and Rethinking Mathematics.  

And lastly, I've been thinking a lot about the first day of school, and though I like how I've structured it in the past, with reviewing the 5 Ps & SLANT, and a Getting to Know You survey (followed by the syllabus and a Get it Together puzzle on day 2 and baseline on day 3), this year I think I might try Broken Squares (variation 1, variation 2) on day 1 (which would also tie into our school's core value of inquiry) and then maybe some kind of station work on day 2 to cover the syllabus/survey.  I want to be able to get right into work at least with my 7th & 8th graders since I had them last year.

So here's what's on my back-to-school to-do list:

• Print out student photos from some of the activities from last year - to make my classroom more personalized this year.
• Create the 8th grade/Algebra 1 baseline assessment and update 6th & 7th grade baselines
• Outline curriculum maps with PBLs & social justice issues to incorporate
• Plan out which standards I am going to track as I try to incorporate standards-based grading.  I've decided that I am only going to track a few big ones from each grade because it would be impossible for me to track all standards for all grades right away - this way I am starting off small.
• PTA Family Welcome Picnic this Sunday, followed by two optional days to come in offered by the principal next week

It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good...

I finally feel like I am getting into the groove of things.

Routines are feeling more natural and I really feel like I am finally owning the school year.  I find myself leaving work (most days) feeling successful, accomplished, and looking forward to what the next day will bring.  This doesn't mean that every day is perfect.  In fact a few weeks ago, I left work feeling dejected because I had not one, but two 6th graders cry during math class.  This also doesn't mean that I am 100% on top of all the things things that teachers must do (parent emails, grading, etc...) but still, I leave work knowing I accomplished a lot, and proud of my hard work.  I mean, after all, if you're a teacher, there is *always* more work to do.  As happy as I am with all my new challenges pushing my thinking and practice, I think I big part of it, is simply I have more time.  My official school day  is 30 minutes less than my old school, and not commuting for an hour on the subway in the AM and PM, is amazing.

Last Friday was amazing!  My math club did their first engineering design project, my 6th graders (and I) did our first Socratic Seminar, and in art, my 6th graders discussed Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans.  Next week my 6th graders will finish their first CMP3 unit and I'll get to go on my first school trip.

Something I think is going well is using discussions in Google Classroom for my students math reflections.  In previous years, I have used Schoology, but the science teacher taught me how to do discussions via my Google Classroom page and it's been working out well.  Keeping up with grading has been hard, but I am able to give my students individual feedback on their math writing and they are able to comment on each other's thinking, so I am proud.

I am also feeling closer to my Advisory.  We did a bag project where they decorated paper bags on the outside with things that represented their outside personality, and then inside they put things that represented who they are on the inside.  I have learned so much about them, and am glad we did it.  I feel like we are slowly getting there.

A couple of things that have come up that I don't have time to go into too much detail now:

• I want to incorporate social justice into my math curriculum.  I bought this book a few years ago and would love to actually incorporate some stuff.  I might start with freerice.com.
  
• I have an iLearn account!  My amazing social studies teacher, who uses iLearn, is going to give us a PD on it next Monday, and I think it might have potential.  I watched my class today for a few minutes, and I was just so inspired, not only by by physical classroom space, but what the 7th graders were working on!  I have so much I can learn from her!
  
• I'm gonna be bring student-led conferences to my school!  I sat down with my AP and school social worker yesterday afternoon, and they are on board.  I am going to give a PD for the whole middle school staff on Election day and we are gonna make it happen for our first round of Parent-Teacher Conferences next month.  I am so excited to bring this great practice from my old school to my new one!
  
• I was introduced to Genius Hour this weekend and I think it has potential (maybe during study hall?) - I need to look more into it.
  
• I also want to look into Makerspace -  one of my 7th graders shared that he attended the NY Maker Faire a few weeks ago, and he was excited about it - another thing I need to look more into.  I also have these resources: MakerCamp, and Maker Space at NYSCI.
  
• I still want to teach my kids mindfulness and yoga.
  
• I found this NY Times article about the importance of recreational math, which is just beautiful.

So many things coming up with work that I am looking forward to.  I am really grateful that I was mindful enough last spring to know that I needed to push my thinking professionally, and then actually brave enough to make a change.  After all, "sometimes change can be scary, but life without no change at all is terrifying."