The Impact of a Teacher

Readers! I can't get rid of them! And that's fine. Clearly they don't plan on getting rid of me anytime soon and it looks like we've found a place in each other's hearts. That lasts forever. It's amazing to see the impact I made on this cohort whom never stop short of entering my room (it's like a party!) to chat and kick it!

Never Say You Can't!

Meet "Z". He's a student that struggles and feels as though math is "impossible" like plenty of other adolescents. While it took an immensely long time to get the job done, he managed to solve it all on his own, and his reaction is priceless. The following problem:

Mr. E has 7 packs of sugar and 14 packs of tea. He wants to make groups using the same number of sugar and tea packs, with none left over. What is the greatest number of groups he can make?

How many packs of sugar will be in each group?
How many packs of tea will be in each group?

Parent Teacher Night 11-20

The first parent-teacher conference of the school year went (unsurprisingly) well!! I have been collecting a decent amount of test scores, important homeworks and classwork to show parents. This has been very helpful in addition to having Skedula handy. My biggest takeaways:

A) A decent (50%?) of parents showed up. This says a lot about their support and that they care for their children. I was happy to be able to see so many parents and discuss student progress and next steps.

B) Many of the students talk positively about me outside of school and a decent amount have commented that this is their favorite class. Great! This was a delight to hear, especially for the students who have had a difficult time with math in elementary school. Some of them have commented that now, they get it. I think this is a big thanks to visual models and trying my best to get students to feel safe enough to ask questions when they don't understand a concept.

C) Tokens are a big motivator and plenty of students talk about them outside of school or have shared how it works with their parents.

D) There is such a difference between Common Core and how parents (and even me) were taught math, so sometimes, there is little support at home for homework if a student is struggling. Parents are trying their best. I am not quite sure about what to do here.

MY next steps:

A) Find a way to balance homework. While I think it's okay to not give homework if students haven't fully understood the lesson (or we didn't get to complete the lesson for that day), that doesn't mean that they can't practice what they DO know. There should be some kind of backup homework or practice in case we don't finish the lesson for that day.

B) There should be some more signs around the room. Perhaps this can be done Wednesday?

Overall, it was a great experience. The next few units are not difficult compared to proportions and number sense. We will be done with number sense by the end of next week (or in two weeks depending on progress). We will finally move on to integers and we'll get to use our real-life coordinate plane!

A Class Discussion...

While I tend to be a perfectionist, I'll admit that no one has perfect days. Perhaps even veteran teachers do not have perfect days. Yesterday was the first day that I had to speak to class 605 about expectations. Let's face it: students are completely different when they walk into your classroom after lunch. Before lunch, you have angels. After lunch, you have kids that want to go back to finishing their football/basketball game or game of tag. At the end of class, we had a discussion about what we did wrong and what needed to improve. As a result, they earned no tokens yesterday and they understood that this course of action was fair.

You have to be firm with students, but you also have to be fair. As a rookie teacher, sometimes it's very difficult to pinpoint the source or cause of off-task behavior. My first question is always "was it MY fault? Was there something that I could have done better to prevent what happened?" Sometimes it is our fault. Perhaps lessons could be structured a different way. Perhaps we talk too much. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes the students are just rowdy after lunch. Sometimes they prefer to talk over getting their work completed. Sometimes they are bored. Sometimes they don't understand what to do, so talking to the person behind them is a sound plan. Unlike yesterday, 605 was spot on today. They were all prepared, worked well together and solved all of their questions while explaining their thinking.

They were able to earn the tokens they lost yesterday along with today's token. They were very excited that they made up for yesterday. I took advantage of this and made sure that we discussed as a class the difference between yesterday and today, so that they are more aware of the contrast in their effort. They were able to easily pinpoint these differences and I was very proud of them. I want kids to understand that we all work together and contribute to our classroom environment. If someone isn't doing the correct thing, it affects all of us. I have huge faith in this class and I know they will all succeed. Congrats 605!

Why Is Math Important? Starring VSC Staff

Another tool in my efforts toward increasing student motivation. Part 1 of the "Why is Math Important?" videos I'm choosing to make in order to try to get students motivated. Who knows what kind of effect it will have? When I was in junior high, nothing like this existed. But I know I would've been interested in knowing how some of my favorite teachers used math in their daily life. Thanks to Ms. R, Mr. C and Ms. M for being apart of this and sharing!

Note: I've chosen to make a series instead of one video because of issues with length and student (and even adult) attention spans.