The math team at MCMS is performing. We solve problems (and make terrible puns). When we review student work as a department, we share ideas round-table-style. Even as a first-year teacher (and the only new member of the team this year), I feel comfortable and confident in contributing my ideas about teaching and learning mathematics.
We are a group that shares. Oh! The e-mail threads of "Look at this cool activity I found!" We share the good stuff, but we also share ideas. A lot of those ideas center on how to teach integers and when students understand that fractions are their friends. My grade-level partner and I are really performing. We are in-sync. We meet multiple times a day, sometimes just to check-in. We share workarounds and victories. Sometimes we meet in the hall with the same look of trepidation - we should reteach the distributive property. When we plan, I drive a lot of the conceptual framework while my partner brings major pedagogical knowledge. The planning tasks seem to naturally delegate themselves to either of us. It is lucky that I get to teach with my student-teaching mentor everyday. I'm so fortunate to be in a performing team this early in my career. While I cherish this bliss, I know that there is always room for improvement. As we grow as a team my hope is that we can build more interdisciplinary projects. I would love to collaborate with other teams that exist in our school.
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Ahh, back in September I was but a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed first year teacher full of goals and ambition. I wrote some professional development goals for myself, including the following: Student-Based Goal By October 28, I will develop and implement a PBIS system for supporting positive student behaviors in my classroom. This was always part of the plan. Over the summer, I upcycled some pickle jars - one for each class period, color-coded with the number for a class period painted on each one.
First things first, I need to update my timeline for this. I will be launching my class system in coincidence with the school-wide launch set for January 7. In preparation for the launch, we've been passing out tickets which are entered into a weekly raffle for a Sonic drink. When I passed (remembered to pass) out the tickets, I noticed that both students and myself were more pleasant. I could do with a lot more pleasantness. But then I ran out of tickets; so we reverted to our survivalist instincts. And when I went to get more tickets from the office, I learned that a group of students had gone to Walmart and purchased their own with which to flood the market. Ah! If only they applied their genius to my math quizzes. I like the tickets; they're tangible, they remind me to be positive. But I need a real system for handing them out, and I still need to figure out what to do with my cute lil pickle jars. So, over my less-indulgent Winter Break I plan to make a plan. I will align my ticketing system with the school-wide expectations. I want to create a class-level reward system, mostly so I can use my pickle jars. Today we're here to ponder that age-old question:
Which came first - the annotated bibliography or the literature review? When reading this excerpt from the UNA Writing Center, I felt validated in my own process. Yes, the annotated bib and the lit review are two different pieces of writing with different structures and purposes, but I have almost always created an annotated bibliography when I'm working on a literature review. I like organizing my notes in annotated bib form when I'm starting the research process. This helps me keep track of citations, and the summaries remind me which article was which. When working on heavy-duty research this organization is super important. However, the annotated bibliography fails to show the connections between readings. So, eventually, when the reading is done, even though the reading is never really done ... My annotated bib morphs into a matrix. I reorganize things according to theme - my preferred organization method. From the matrix the words of the literature review flow. The literature review exists in long-form prose. Readers gain an understanding of how ideas are related or how those ideas have changed over time. My big trouble with the literature review is my urge to insert my own voice. The prose form lends itself to my criticism of the literature, but I should only act as a curator weaving together established research. This summer I was introduced to Quizizz, and I fell in love. Quizizz has all the gamification power of Kahoot. On top of all that technological goodness, teachers can create their own meme set to let students celebrate their success or find some humor in their mistakes. Quizizz has really awesome data features - full reports of student answers, class accuracy ratings, and questions can be sorted by the percentage of students who answered correctly. Quizizz also connects with Google Classroom.
Needless to say I was really excited to try Quizizz in my classroom. For my first foray, I picked out a pre-made quiz that fit the subject matter we had been studying. I did my whole set-up about how we would be playing a quiz game like Kahoot. Students worked with a partner, and the answers started rolling in. I kept watching the leader-board during second hour, and we never seemed to top 60%. Holy cow! Either I had really not taught the material well or students were just clicking answers or some combination of the two. During 4th and 7th hours, I was more conscious about telling students to take their time and to use their resources. The scores during these classes were a little better, but we still weren't passing. I thought that students were totally ready, but using Quizizz opened my eyes. Using Quizizz as formative assessment helped me pinpoint the topics I needed to reteach. I am interested to see how students perform on the same quiz now that we've done some more work with the subject. I might officially be a researcher now. I began this summer focused on continuing my redefinition of mathematics education. Math is art. Math is a language. Math can be culturally responsive. I read a number of articles - maybe going down a few rabbit holes in the process. I wrote a literature review and I designed a methodology all about how I was going to design a new student-centered math curriculum. The process was intense and at least a little frustrating. I seemed to be spending all my time reading. When I tried to start writing, I felt like I still hadn't read enough. Then there was the whole process of crafting my methodology. In the beginning, qualitative data seemed farcical to me. What do you mean "I can keep a journal and that counts as data"? I am still learning how to validate qualitative data, at least to myself. However, teaching is a reflective practice. We get better at teaching by looking back at our experiences and deciding how to improve those experiences according to what others have done. So... Surveys, journals, observations are in fact valid data. Ensuring that there are check and balances to our own biases - aka triangulating the data - is the key. Qualitative data has to be matched with quantitative data. Suppose I'm reviewing some test scores and I notice that students who usually do well on tests are performing at lower rates. I refer to my journal and realize that the week before the test I had been worried about some life things and didn't have my best days of teaching. There is probably some relationship between my feelings and student performance. Qualitative data adds some flavor to the numbers.
Back to me being an official researcher: I will be changing my topic. Which means I need to begin my reading, writing, and research process (almost) all over again. I'm going to focus my energy on Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports. I'm already gathering information. I'm hoping to be less worried about reading everything. I want to just go with the flow of the process. I have this lofty vision of transforming grade school mathematics education. I see a future where higher level mathematics is no longer an affluent-white-male space. Big, lofty goals can be hard to break down. I've been having trouble envisioning what the curriculum might look like. How can I do this? What am I even working towards? As I begin to think of this goal in a more serious, action-research oriented mindset, I am certainly feeling overwhelmed. This week I found a little bit of ease. Working with the Engaged Teaching Approach from The 5 Dimensions of Engaged Teaching by Laura Weaver and Mark Wilding, I finally felt like I could chunk my grand vision into actionable steps. As I thought through the worksheet, I began to notice this pattern. I am already "integrating [my outlined] principles and practices." I have strengths to take into my daunting research projects. I also have noticed my tendency to want to do and control e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. As I begin my research and continue working for my vision, I want to be able to remind myself that I'm not in this alone and that I don't have to reinvent the wheel. There exist educators working towards these same goals. I know some of them personally. I need to take my own advice: Just like math IS collaborative, so is mathematics education. I am not alone.
So this is a call to all the educators who see the need for change, to the educators who have been working and crying towards the same goals, to the educators like me who need a push to get out of their own headspace: share this post, comment, reach out. Together, we CAN!
Short answer: That's impossible.8th graders find potty humor to be the height of comedic genius. (I mean, I do too. I don't teach middle school for nothin'.) However, requests for restroom and water fountain and "I just need a break" become time-eating distractions. So after mulling over how to limit hall passes without appearing to be "the man," I came to a choice between two systems - either a sheet of hall passes for each student or a sign-out system. While I like the idea of students keeping track of their own hall passes - a lesson in responsibility, a way to encourage limits - I felt like I would probably end up doing a lot more work in the long run. So, I went with the sign-out system: Hall Passes
Abuse of this privilege may lead to restrictions. And the policy as written worked ... for about a week. This experiment in freedom proved to be too much writing. Also, students were not aware enough of their surroundings to know (slash didn't care) whether or not someone else was already out of the room. SO, I made a permanent hall pass - because it's math class, the hall pass is a protractor. Since then dawn of the protractor, things have been better. Students are still asking permission - a harder habit to break than you might think. But we're getting closer to eliminating hall pass related distractions.
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AuthorI'm just a math teacher, trying to figure it out. Archives
December 2019
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