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. |
AuthorI'm just a math teacher, trying to figure it out. Archives
December 2019
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