Blackboard Notes

What?  How can you be so excited for math?  Well, for one thing I am starting at an awesome district in southwestern Minnesota (Butterfield-Odin).  It's a new opportunity for sharing my love of math with how I struggled with math (I was considered too simple to understand programming by my math professor at MSU who worked with NASA). Secondly, in my last post I listed my summer goals, which I have accomplished 90% of them!!  I am now a Level 2 Google Certified Educator.  I've also learned, as I have been transitioned into this phase (not exactly a voluntary choice), to be excited for others and their accomplishments.  If for example, an acquaintance shares their enthusiasm for a dream job or moment, share in that celebration!  Kayla Delzer promotes, promotes, promotes this; just find @topdogteaching.  Another one to check up with is May Vang @vangmay1.  When you watch her talk on video, or read her blog, you would NOT guess she's been teaching for 30 years! Yet

Since I started blogging (not as well as others I admit-- see my first post HERE ), I have tried improving communication about what math is (and IS NOT- wish I could remember that post by Tracy Zager).  My new focus involves what I have found successful in students (while not necessarily successful by the district standards I've had to work with).  The students crave something new, not something old, while inspirational storytelling can get the job done no matter how old the story is.  Also, I am focusing more on intuition, reasoning, and sense making and not just the "rules of mathematics," which many students have turned off to once they hear Theorem, Proof, or Justify. I admit I have not researched methods lately, but have kept in contact of people whose pedagogy and scholarship I trust to do that.  As mentioned before, I have outsourced ideas from Making Math Moments , Lane Walker's Blog , NCTM , and many of the resources listed in my previous blog. My plan

While I had quite an experience getting to get the students at Martin County West to see math in terms of problem solving, and not routine exercises, I will not be returning. My season there is done, and I can only hope students gained a better understanding, and that he mission God sent me there was completed. (Maybe more for the struggling students than the “good” ones?)  It seems my method of productive struggle was not well received. This is understandable if they have been hand-fed from elementary on up. It’s not their fault, nor is it necessarily the teachers’ who had them previously. This is an industry standard which companies look for in potential employees. I can attest to this given my years of experience in (and leading in) the manufacturing and farming industries. Therefore when I implemented it in terms of games and intuition, it was initially accepted; however, when I threw in Algebra vocabulary, they acted like it was completely different! (It doesn’t help if the ado

I decided to try the beard again, especially since we have gotten cold weather this last month. I used this picture to create a composite pic that Richard Byrne recommended (look up Practical Ed Tech). I used the Hawaii beach background to create it after running the pic through remove.bg. Then put it into a Google slide over a background of your choice, and depending on the lighting, voila! However, that’s not the reason for this post. I’m trying new things, decreasing the amount of work students do (though I’m sure they’d tell you no), and increasing critical thinking. This seems to be (slowly) working, though some of the better students would rather have it back to traditional way of doing math.  It is given the students that don’t normally like math, or normally have a voice in their learning to express themselves better.  I’m working with sources like Jo Boaler (youcubed.com), Kyle Pierce and Jon Orr (makemathmoments.com), and Jennifer Gonzalez (cultofpedagogy.com), and any

I am working like a 1st year teacher, having a new district to work at. As challenging it is re-establish my set of curriculum, procedures, and communication habits, it’s refreshing to form new ideas. It just takes time to hammer out the new things I’m trying....and I am teaching subjects I have not looked at for six years (Algebra 1 and Geometry). The students are excited to try new things (at least until the honeymoon phase wears off). Update: for some reason this never posted, so will post now and put in a new post.