End of Year 3

Year 3 with my students was honestly a blast. My district began Common Core implementation, and I saw a significant difference between the "old" and "new" curriculums. Algebra 1 was 100% Common Core aligned (granted, we did not get through the entire curriculum), and I was definitely impressed by how much my freshmen rose to the challenge of writing and explaining their thinking.

College algebra, on the other hand, did not have a new curriculum. However, they ended up doing more writing and analyzing as well because the Common Core bug hit me. It was while teaching college algebra that I realized how much skill and drill these kids have endured in their high school careers. I was dumbfounded and devastated that these seniors (with a splash of exceptional juniors) were seeing concepts like solving equations, graphing lines, etc for the second or third time, and they still hadn't mastered these concepts. I was forgiving on exponential and logarithmic functions, but linear and quadratic functions should be something that is mastered in both algebra 1 and algebra 2. What depressed me more was when it came time for their university or college math placement tests; these kids were not testing into college level math courses.

This devastation is what got me thinking about teaching. I put forth an extra amount of effort during my third year (though I failed to blog about everything) because of the shift in curriculum. I didn't mind that part, because I saw these freshmen grow more mathematically than I had in previous years. But what bothered me was that in some regards we were still just teaching to a test. The pressure was on for the math department, and I think admin expected us to just be able to flip a switch and adjust our teaching style overnight. The Common Core implementation wasn't gradual; the learning curve was challenging and teacher frustrations were high. I tried to stay positive as long as I could, but the negativity finally got to me. I became a jaded teacher after only teaching for three years, and I decided it would be best to take a year (or so I tell myself) off.

End of Year 2

It has been a month since school ended for me, and it has taken me this past month to really reflect on how this year went. I was hoping for a better year than my first year of teaching, but with everything that was put on my plate this year- I know that year 2 was rough, ugly, but definitely a good learning experience.

What I learned in Year 2:

Positive things

• Having guest speakers for my accelerated algebra class. The kids enjoyed it. Some students even became interested in STEM careers. I am excited to teach college algebra this upcoming school year, because I think this will be great for my seniors. 
• Incorporating technology was another win for me. I believe I was in 2nd or 3rd in regards to usage of the math department's laptop cart. Woo! The district has me piloting speakers in my classroom...not sure if my students really want to hear me in surround sound ha ha.
• Setting a discipline plan and sticking with it. I think I finally figured out what works for me in regards to discipline. Better late than never. This has me most excited for Year 3, because finally, finally I have developed a practical classroom management plan.

Things I need to change

• Never accept 3 preps. Ever. Part of my struggle this year was balancing my three different classes. I felt like there would always be one class that went neglected. I never figured out a good balance.
• More blogging. I know I had at least one great lesson per week. I get so many great ideas from fellow math teachers that I really should do a better job of returning the favor. Year 3 will be the year I make blogging part of my to-do list.
• More reading. There's many great discussions going on on Twitter that I want to be a part of, again I need to actually commit by including this in my to-do lists. Here's a list of books provided by a fellow math teacher that I plan to read...at least one book before school starts!

Semester 2 Begins Tomorrow!

I have sadly abandoned this blog after my crazy, hectic first semester. Tomorrow, our school resumes which gives me an opportunity to get back on my feet with blogging.

As I was prepping for my classes, I found that the biggest weakness in my Algebra 1 students is still order of operations. I've spent the night going back and forth on deciding what to do with the students tomorrow. I don't want to make it a difficult day, but I definitely don't want it to be a boring math class.

Anyways, here is what I finally decided to have my students do for tomorrow. Check it out here: Order of Operations Crossword

Another thing I might try for an exit ticket is this Apple app called 5Dice. I am fortunate enough to have received an iPad from my school in December, so I am trying to incorporate more of it into my class. I plan to start off with easier levels, and then each day this week step it up a notch.

To all my other colleagues resuming the school year, best of luck and happy new year! :)

My Typical Day (2012)

I feel like I have abandoned this blog, but a new challenge arose a couple weeks ago (read here). Basically, we are challenged to describe a typical day for a math teacher. Here is my Tuesday (11/13) in a nutshell:

6:00am Second Tuesday of the month means we have our faculty meeting, so I had to wake up 20 minutes earlier today. Wake up, eat breakfast, prepare lunch, get ready for school.

6:45am Left for school only to find that my windshield had cracked over the weekend. Great, add one more thing on my to-do list. School is about 30 minutes away. I go against traffic, so my commute is laid back.

7:15am Arrive at school, drop off lunch, and print off progress reports for 1st hour. Leave stuff in classroom before walking over to the lecture hall.

7:35am Faculty meetings start at "7:30", but I've quickly learned that nothing starts on time here. We went over our new emergency handbook (fire drill, lock down procedures, etc). Our school is implementing a positive behavior intervention, so discipline vice principal went over those numbers (# of referrals). Lastly, we were reminded to get grades done by Wednesday afternoon. 

8:10am Faculty meeting ends, and I go to pick up my progress reports. To my luck, the copier jammed. In a school of 1800 students, 80 teachers..we are down to 1 working copier (UGH!). I unjammed the copier, but my files deleted. 10 minutes wasn't enough time to get the progress reports printed, so I gave up and walked to my classroom.

8:20-9:18am 1st hour is my advanced freshmen (algebra 2) group. About five minutes into class, I hear a scream in the classroom next to mine (in that classroom is a long term sub for a math teacher on maternity leave). I leave my classroom to investigate the noise, and I basically had to yell at these children. I walk back to my classroom, and of course my students are scared (they don't like to hear me yell). Class went on as usual.

9:19-10:16am 2nd hour is my prep, and it consisted of making copies for my classes this week and inputing some grades.

10:17am-12:12pm 3rd & 4th hour, I have the same group of kids for two class periods. And by the way, this class is in another classroom.They are my algebra block class (the lowest level of math for freshmen). I had a drop in observation by our math coach. Things went as usual in that class. I taught writing equations from a table. Students were shown their grades and got their quizzes back from last Friday. At the end of class, I remembered to get caught up on my attendance.

12:13-12:36pm Finally some me time with the colleagues. We have one microwave in the teachers lounge, because our superintendent thought two microwaves wasted too much energy. Let's keep in mind there are about 13 math teachers who use the lounge. We can do the math; lunch can be chaotic depending on how many teachers need the microwave. Luckily today I was able to heat up my food with about half of lunch time left.

12:37-1:03pm On Monday's (Tuesday's when we have holidays on Monday's), we have an advisory period before 5th hour. So off I go back to my first classroom. Today in advisory we talked about making an impact on our community. My kids wanted to focus on keeping the campus clean for this week. We'll see how they do next week.

1:04-2:02pm With no time to set up for 5th hour, I have students pass out bellwork sheets while I write the bellwork problems. My afternoon classes are co-taught (me + special ed teacher), so she passed out progress reports while I passed out last week's quizzes. Taught class as usual (writing equations from a table). We had a group of students struggling, so I made a small group in the back of the room to work with them more one on one.

2:03-3:00pm 6th hour was basically the same as 5th hour. This group is more chatty, so it takes a little bit longer to get our groove. The talkativeness resulted in spending time after school. Sent a student outside as well. I made a small group again and worked with the struggling students.

3:01-3:03pm The class only had to stay after class for one minute, but they kept talking so I had to stop the time five times. It ended up being two minutes after the bell before they were released.

3:04-4:00pm After school tutoring, I had three of my own come in for help and to make up tests/quizzes. I had one student from the neighboring teacher (the one that is out for maternity leave) come in to work on his test corrections as well. Even though there is a long term sub, the students for accelerated algebra see me since I teach the class as well (that adds about 60 students that I am looking out for).

4:01-4:55pm Students are finally gone, and I start inputting more grades and finish planning for accelerated algebra. I make the rest of my copies. 

5:00pm I am finally leaving school, and I am not the last one to leave. There were still about 8 cars in the parking lot. That always makes me feel a little better, because I try not to spend too much of my time at school.

Evening: My cousin is visiting from Peru, so we had the family over tonight. They left at about 8, so I was finally able to start uploading grades in our grade book. Then I took a nap. Watched some tv shows. And now just finished a blog post. Typically I try to go to bed by 11:30pm, but I just had to finish this! Repeat everything tomorrow!

I really tried to keep this brief. Some days I have a lot, more going on. Today wasn't too bad. I would like non-educators to understand that our job is rewarding, time consuming, and not mundane by any means. We are constantly making small and large decisions, but I think that makes the profession all the more exciting.