A Day in the Life:  9/26/16

6:15am:   Husband woke me out of a dead sleep – I had no idea what planet I was on.  Apparently I had slept through my alarm; great way to start Monday.

7:30am:  Arrived at school already late for morning duty.  Sent an email to my PLC that we would not be meeting at lunch today because 3 of us are going through class changes again after 7 weeks of school.  Yes, that’s right, classes not balanced yet.   We have a big test coming up this Friday, so I instructed the team to work on lesson that can really help to review and reinforce content for the students.

7:45am:  Went to morning hall duty all way across the school and roamed up and down stairs and 2 floors of the 2000 building.  I was checked up on 3 times before I was done at 8:15am.  Ship is tight here folks! 

8:20 -9:20am:    Started my planning period by running off interactive notebook pages for Accelerated Algebra 1.  Even and Odd Functions abstract proof – definitely not a favorite, but planning for visual tie-ins as much as possible.  Scrambled the rest of the hour to start putting together activities and homework for both classes as they are all testing on Friday.   Emailed for a quick meeting with my principal this week to talk to her about going out in December.   Meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 8:30am, and I can say with all honesty I am not looking forward to it at all.

9:30-10:25am:  2^nd period Algebra 1 and compound inequalities.  I started by making reference to compound sentences and coordinating conjunctions in language arts and explaining that they would now take the same idea with only 2 coordinating conjunctions to connect inequalities/math sentences.  The classwork/homework I gave on Friday had them graphing compound inequalities from interval notation and graphs, so that part was waiting for them to assign a meaning to.  The lesson went really well, and they worked in pairs with their assignment for the remainder of the period with me there for help.

10:30-11:30am:  As much as 2^nd period was a success today, 3^rd period was an epic fail, or at least in my book.  3^rd period is my “scared to wonder/explore” class, and I have not been able to crack through their shell completely.  Because of that, they retreat right back into the shell when things are tough.  Abstract proof of even and odd functions, even with a graphical lead-in, was not received well at all.  I attempted to tie the symmetry to the geometric transformations they learned last year with y-axis symmetry and 180 rotations.  They just could not make the connections today, which I am fine with, but they are a group that lets anger and discomfort impede their attempt and progress.  They might be the toughest group of accelerated students I have encountered.  I assured them that practice will help, that we will go pattern exploring tomorrow with their findings, and I now am planning on bringing DESMOS to the rescue.

11:35am-12:35pm:  4^th period – my wonderers and active questioners!   They did not love the even and odd topic, but they were willing to approach it and bring it down to their own words.  They pushed my thinking and helped me to verbalize the proof of odd functions better.  It is crazy how different one class is to the next.  I somehow have to push 3^rd period to be more comfortable with the uncomfortable.

12:40-1:24pm:  Lunch.  My Algebra 1 colleague Ben came up to my room to talk about the next quiz we are writing and to vent about the state of our 6^th period.  A little explanation:  due to over-enrollment, we have had to staff another math teacher, which took a while to find.  We found and on-boarded the math teacher, but they have yet to completely dissolve my 6^th period support class and split his class of 41 students, which was the plan.  They were supposed to do this at the latest last Friday, and we have not word of when this will happen.  Meanwhile, we are trying to prepare students for a test on Friday with as little disruption as possible and greatly concerned about it.  Hopefully the situation is resolved tomorrow, but it is frustrating to say the least; especially for him.  I am just looking forward to meeting new kiddos!

1:30-2:25pm:  5^th period Algebra 1 and the compound inequalities again.  They were equally as receptive to the lesson and applied the preparatory work from Friday to extended inequalities.  They are still a little wary about when the inequality symbol switches direction, but they kept at it at a good pace.  Some of them were not happy with the shared grade on their partner’s quizzes from last week, but they learned that partner’s quiz means helping each other rather than dividing the problems.  I told them they would have another stab at that this week.

2:30-3:30pm:  6^th period, which is currently not a 6^th period.  Some of my support students still have not been moved to their new elective courses, so the 5 that remain worked on their math homework for today, and I answered questions.  I am hoping that my new class is in place tomorrow, so we can wrap up inequalities and start preparing for Friday’s exam.

3:40pm:  I have a student in my room waiting for his mother, and we will have a parent-teacher conference.  My department chair arrives to inform me that he has no idea when the schedules for the new math classes will be changed and to try and hang in there.  It is hard for me to do this because it is affecting the students.  The overloaded class of 41 needs to be downsized to 2 of us, so they can better receive instruction in a smaller environment and subsequently more support.

4:00pm:  Parent-teacher conference for one of my Algebra 1 students struggling with the transition to high school math.  He is good about keeping up with classwork and homework, but needs to work on seeking extra help and reviewing a little each night to keep the concepts alive rather than waiting until the test.  The parent is asking for extra resources at home too, which is awesome.  The meeting was light-hearted as much as serious; when parents are open to collaborating, it is always better for all involved.

5:00pm:  Just arrived home and started the blog – hard to believe I kept track of everything.  Ate a quick dinner and chatted with my husband.  We have tutoring tonight.

6:00-8:00pm:  Tutoring appointments for AB Calculus and Geometry.   From limits and derivatives to classifying triangles, the math continues into the night!

8:15pm:  I am now finishing up this blog with a dish of smores ice cream – nice, sweet end to a long day.

9:00pm:  I am going to watch the presidential debates – just cannot bring myself to miss it no matter how tired I am.

Reflection Questions

1) Teacher make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels 

     overwhelming.   When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher movr you made that 

     you are proud of?  What is one you are worried about?

     Today I am glad that I canceled our PLC meeting for lunch to give us all a chance to breath

     and plan. As an Algebra 1 team, we have come a long way in recent weeks and are rolling along 

     nicely.  We have fallen into roles that reflect our strengths, and we get that chance to breathe, 

     we can start enriching our meetings with more sharing of teaching and strategies.

     I am concerned about the decision I need to talk with my principal with on Wednesday.  I do not

     want to elaborate today much as it was a long and tough decision.  More on this in future blogs.

2)  Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us  some of what that is  like as a 

     teacher.  What  are you looking forward to?   What has been a challenge for you lately?

     Today the highs and lows came in different periods back to back.  From the push to explore even

     and odd functions in 3^rd period to the willingness to explore and redefine in 4^th period.  Two 

     different  classes, same course, two different ball games.  People may assume the same course 

     does not change from period to period, but any teacher knows it does.  This might be a more 

     extreme case than what I am used to, but it has been my challenge lately, and I tend to make 

     challenges my mission.  I am hoping to get my 3^rd period class to a point where they will not 

     fight  back tooth and nail at being uncomfortable in the learning process.

3)  We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build 

      relationships with teachers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone 

      lately.  In the beginning of the school year, my Algebra 1 colleague and I were at odds on the 

      PLC.  Lately, we have taken a step back, started learning how to work with each other, and now

      we are able to lean on each other in the wake of all the stress with our class changes.  They say 

      that relationships that take more work tend to be the most worth it in the end, and that is turning 

      out to be true for us.  We are both experienced teachers from different schools coming in this 

      year.  We both are passionate about teaching and had to find a way to make a big enough arena

      for all of our ideas, and in this time of stress, I think we stick together to draw on our shared 

      passion of teaching and working with kids  to get us through. 

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and are often have specific goals for things to work on

     Throughout the year.  What have you been doing to work on your goal?  How are you doing?

     I pushed on both of my teams to push the next test back a day or two, so I could incorporate some

     Meaningful activities into our review.  Lately I have felt like the passenger on an non-stop over-

     Informative highway with no room to breathe on any one concept.  I know if I feel this way, the 

     kids are probably going crazy.  I am happy to say my teams agreed, and I have some fun and 

     reinforcing things planned for Wednesday and Thursday.

     Per my goal of spiral review, I have really been working that into my Accelerated Algebra 1 class 

     and will hit the mark on every assignment with it this week.  They are working with topics that are
     pretty tough for them at this level, and I know I am over-preparing them, but I want them to be 

     able to sustain for future honors math courses.  Because I have taught and tutored every level and 

     course except AP Statistics, I know the concepts they are headed for.  It will be a delayed 

     gratification for them, but I know they will be glad when they are able to use what they have 

     learned later.

    

5)  What else happened this month that you want to share?

       I got to have dinner with two of my colleagues from my former high school just last Friday night.

       They are teaching the Algebra 1 support block class that I taught last year and doing the 

       interactive notebooks   They told me that I had totally changed the support class for them by 

       teaching them to do this, and that they loved teaching the course and watching how much the

       students used the notebooks as a resource in class and were such hard and confident workers in 

       math.  They said they had never seen that before.  My heart melted.  I know how much I loved 

       doing the notebooks with that class, so I know the joy they are experiencing, and I am glad that 

       I was able to influence that.

Hanging in There by Creating Resources the Old-School Way…

For those of us that start in early August, it is a tough pull through the fall months.  A lot of us joke that if you make it to Thanksgiving, the year is over.   I am feeling the pull right now as we are ending the first 6 weeks, and progress reports with all the surprises and additional tasks that can go along with that.   Last week was parent/curriculum night, so that always makes for one long day and somehow a longer week. 

So last week was pretty blah with instruction.  Not my intention, but lost the time to do as much with activities as in previous weeks.  Still, I got a surge of need to put something in that was going to push student thinking.  We are working on functions in Accelerated Algebra 1, which is one of my favorite things to teach, and I was missing the chance to do cool activities while strapped for time going into a quiz.  About an hour before curriculum night began, a synapse fired, and an idea I wanted to embrace.  I did not want to lose it, so I opened up my graph notebook and started drawing graphs…

I wanted to do an activity solely on whether or not to connect the points on a graph that are generated by a function in a real-world situation.  In the past and still this year, I always incorporate this concept within task-orientated problems.   This is still a great portion of a task, but I really was feeling like it needed sole attention.  The title of the activity was “To Connect or Not Connect”, and I drew out 8 graphs with points and labeled the x and y axes with situations.  I then prompted the students to circle yes or no, and then in the spirit of Sara Van Der Werf, I told them to “convince me”.   I then drew two  empty graphs for problems 9 and 10 and asked the students to create one situation that would result in a connected graph and one graph that would not be connected.

I scanned the paper and loaded it into their OneNote assignments for the next day.  I had the students work in pairs during class to make the “connect or not” decisions.  There was great discussion and debate among the students – kids realizing that there could be more than one argument for many graphs, and kids realizing that sometimes more than one explanation could work if they argued their ideas on an assessment.  It was nice to hear my class come alive again in a time of the year when the lessons tend to fall flat due to lack of time and increased exhaustion.

It was a last minute thought, and I went old-school with constructing the activity because I did not want lose the idea in the wake of lack of time.  It is handwritten by yours truly who does not have great handwriting, and it looks like something that came off of a mimeograph copier, but it worked just as easily to generate great conversations and dig deeper into concept development.  The file for this beauty is attached below

To Connect or Not Connect Activity

My takeaway from this is to not let those great ideas get away from you if you don’t have the time to type, generate, format, edit, repeat.    Our hands can relay meaning in content just as well when we are in a pinch, and I almost felt freer to organize my thoughts.   This was a critical concept in this unit, and I believe this activity helped them to think about what part of the input/output scenario drives the decision to include connectivity into things like domain and range, whether both domain and range should be considered, and what are some of the things around us that do not exist in life as partial quantities.

It was a great activity, and I am glad I allowed myself to free-write a document rather than declare the “no time to electronically generate or search” and keep them from an engaging activity.

Now for this week.  My favorite activity of all times:  Transformations of Functions Discovery Activity.  I developed this 2 schools ago, and have taught it at all levels.  It is fascinating to see them search for all the patterns that come together to create different types of transformation.  More on this later with pictures and explanation.  This activity alone makes me so excited for this coming week.  For the first time, I have multiple days to use and keep the activity and discussion going over several days.

Until next week – I will look forward to sharing it.

Zen Places

As teachers, we are very busy people and our jobs can be just as stressful as they are awesome.  This past week was the end of week 4 of a very hectic school year.  I left school last Thursday tired and with many frustrations.  I was having a hard time seeing past the day, but luckily it was a long weekend with a trip planned to one of my favorite places.   I call these places my Zen places.  These are places where I can calm down, completely relax and let go, and inevitably end up in a positive place of reflection.  I have 3 of these places, and I visit them all at least once a year. 

1. St. Simon’s Island, GA

I am a lover of beaches in general, but this beach/beach town is definitely my favorite.  It is a small little town lined with Mangrove trees and such a laid back way of life.  There are lots of unique little shops and eateries with fresh seafood and local flair.  We always stay at a relaxing resort in a pool-side suite (totally spoil ourselves once a year).  The patio in the pool and lounge area overlooks the ocean and beach.  I love the incredible sunrises and sunsets there, and I ended up taking a lot of Oceanside snoozes on the veranda this year.  So peaceful, so calming, and I was totally able to re-energize.

2.  My Best Friend’s Condo in Minneapolis

I lived in Minneapolis for 16 years after high school, and I love this city!  I still go back at least once a year.  Although I was not able to be in Minneapolis in July for TMC16 because of surgery, I was able to make it up for Sara VDW’s professional development during an annual visit in June.  I am also planning a trip for November again.   Because I ended up as a suburbanite in Atlanta, I miss all the biking and cool eclectic shops, dining, lakes, and theaters that are so accessible in Minneapolis.  Every time I am there, I stay at my best friend’s condo in Uptown, which always calms me the minute I walk through the door.  She is the most artistic and creative I have ever known, and her condo is a reflection of her in every corner- from the colors on the walls, the cool pieces of furniture, to the many plants and wind chimes lining her balcony.   A picture of that balcony is shown below.  Notice the wooden bird wind chime – she bought that while she was staying with me last year in Atlanta.  We had taken a weekend trip to Helen, GA- a German-themed tourist town in the mountains of North Georgia.  I love that she has that one up there because it is perfect for a balcony in Uptown Minneapolis, and an icon of a memorable weekend!

3.  Battery Park Book Exchange:  Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville, NC is an awesome mixture of Uptown Minneapolis and Southern Culture for me.  It is like having an uptown in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.  The views are gorgeous, the streets are full of life, cool little shops, often live music, and street chess.   My favorite place here, and maybe in the whole world, is the Battery Park Book Exchange.  This place is a combination of used books for sale, coffee bar, and wine bar.  I mean, who could ask for anything else???  It is two stories with room after room and nook after nook of books and comfy couches to sit and read the books and drink coffee. The ambiance of beautiful dark woods and warm painted walls is so relaxing.   I can and do spend hours and way too much money here, but the level of happiness I reach in the 4 walls of this place is hard to beat.  Pictures below are of the inside of the Battery Park Book Exchange I pulled from the internet.

I left school 4 days ago with an electronic grade book that I am locked out of after only being cleared to put in grades during week 4 of school, a frustrating co-teaching situation, and many other loose ends untied.  I am now back from a weekend in Zen Place #1, and I am ready to go back and try new things again this week and see the kids again.  I was able to re-connect back to some of my favorite things I learned over the summer and use in my classroom that I had put into a collage to wear on the back of  a school name tag that I made for my lanyard.  Both of these I made weeks ago, but lost track of waiting for a new laminater and being swept away the first weeks of school.  Tonight I made it a point to crop, print, and laminate them so they are close by to keep me going during times of stress without a Zen place to be in.

One last reflection I made this weekend was that getting last Friday off for my Zen place was not easy to do, but I fought for it because I knew I would need it.  In reflection of this over the weekend, I remembered my former principal at my last school.  He was a leader who believed in balance for students and for teachers.  He never questioned time we requested off if we had the appropriate amount of time allotted for it.  He treated us like the hard-working professionals that we were and knew that we put the time we were asking for off and so much more back into our jobs.  I never realized just how valuable that was until this year.  I mean, I never thought he didn’t care or appreciate us, but I did not understand how much.  I wish I would have thanked him for this, but I am sure I will see him again at some point and do just that!

Teacher friends, never forget to re-visit your Zen places, particularly during the school year if you can, so you can take advantage of the energy it can give you back.  We give so much of our lives to our students and our families and stretch ourselves so thin that it is hard to remember our happiness counts to0 and must be nourished and revitalized from time to time.  Take your time off when you need it – fight for it tooth and nail if you have to –it is so worth it.  Get to your Zen place and let it revive you!!!

Step one:  Stop and identify your Zen places!!!

Step two:  Blog about them and post pictures - so fun!!!

I would love to hear other people’s favorite places to rejuvenate – what are yours?