I’ve been an absentee owner of this blog to start the 2016. If this blog was a house, dust would be everywhere, the shutters would be hanging loose and the weeds would be out of control. To be fair, I did start the January Blogging Initiative, and my “Drafts” section has two of the posts which have only gathered a light coating of dust. Talking about teaching and learning has been pretty absent here, but that is going to change tangibly, for a number of reasons.

The number one reason things will change on this blog is that I’m going to be teaching math! As an AP, I am lucky to get to teach even one class, and so far this year that has been Exploring Computer Science. ECS has been a lot of fun. Watching kids’ eyes light up as they make an HTML page or a scratch animation is pretty nice, but it’s nothing like seeing a student connect mathematical concepts in their head. As my students leave to college, a well-crafted math experience could be more valuable than the computing in my opinion. Let’s hope that I can craft that math class into the experience my students need.

A very interesting math class has been rolling around in my head since around thanksgiving. After sitting on the sidelines and watching teachers roll out lots of new techniques in there lesson I have collected a number of ideas for teaching. I also read Jo Boaler’s new book along with a number of other posts and articles. The time away from teaching has also given me time to reflect on a number of things from previous classes that I want to do in a different way. With all of these ideas swirling around in my head, writing about them well ensure that they can get into a tangible form well before the period starts.

The big thing is, it’s time to try harder. After honestly taking a step back from the digital world after the birth of Julianne, and from starting this new job, I think it is time I hold myself accountable towards what I plan to do. I have been writing a lot at home and work about other things, but I haven’t written about my teaching. The act of putting my ideas on paper has proved to refine my thinking in ways that I might not get otherwise. Also filling a role where my growth as a teacher is not a high priority, it is important that I make it a priority to write about it so I can ensure that I am thinking thoroughly about each lesson.