It’s been a long, rough, couple of months since my last post. I can briefly fill you in on all the stuff that has happened.

• Our second baby is 4 months old!!!
• My last class ended in wonderful fashion. I had a solid pass rate and I got lots of good feedback about the number talk routines that I began each class with (which I’ll write a blog post about soon).
• I’ve wrapped up a PD that uses the problem solving and helps teachers learn using video (which I’ll write a blog post about soon).
• I took a month to come up with some pretty good New Year’s Resolutions (one of which is to write more blog posts, soon).
• I also started this Eczema Diet after  jump to two kids triggered the worst flare of my lifetime with the disease.
• After a fall and winter full of audits and external pressure, our school finally has a clear path forward for some of the things I oversee.

This time was rough largely because of my own difficulties shifting to having a lot less free time, but all of the same problems at work. There was an idea that I just should sit down and focus, causing my blog to get a little dusty. This wasn’t really working. Now I just feel bad for all the things I’m not posting, and I feel all alone because I have no one to talk with about the things that happen on the job. In the next year I’m going to try to put more things on the blog, even though they may not all be of the highest quality and hopefully improve that part of my work life.

Ok, so now that we’re all caught up, let me talk about what is going to happen.

• I’m going to give a black history event with my school’s librarian. It is tentatively called building intergenerational wealth and is going to involve the next version of this Desmos activity.
• I’m going to teach a class about the lottery, which will talk about probability through the lens of the lottery and how it operates in our neighborhoods.
• One of my New Year’s resolutions is to write more about the administrative part of my job, and figure out how to make it interesting and valuable, so that will be good.

I’ve got a lot to look forward to, and I’m going to get as much of it on this blog as possible. If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback let me know in the comments below!

So there I was enjoying time with fellow TMC newbies at a dinner. We had just finished singing Moana’s theme when my attention was drawn to my phone by a recent new blog post that read like a charge to fracture end of the group that I was happy to be dining with, or at least the name that the group has called itself for the last 4 years. I had trouble making sense of what this was, and naturally assumed it was a broadside at the whole thing. So I replied…

Do you want #Mtbos to be called #iteachmath, or do you want MTBoS to BE something else? Just notation, or norms, or this whole thing here?

— Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter) July 28, 2017

…and then my phone died. And my phone backup charger was at the hotel.

Because of that I had some time to think and reflect as I waited for the check, and to get on the bus, and to get up to my room. Reflection seemed good, so I kept reflecting, and decided to write this post instead to organize my thoughts.

First off, I’m going to assume the best of intentions behind Dan Meyer’s post. The name #MTBoS is confusing. If the name was easier, it would make it easier for people to understand what is going on. There is a larger world of Math teachers who exist outside of the hashtag and perhaps creating a new one will help those teachers connect to the ones who are currently inside of #MTBoS, and because we all think #MTBoS is great for teaching, that influx will help improve math teaching as a whole. That is my positive ‘reframe’ of the claim, I think it makes sense.

However, the post “Let’s retire #MTBoS.” can be heard as kind of inflammatory, and perhaps be interpreted as having some potentially stark conclusions. It is hard to interpret what someone else on the internet is saying, and instead of trying to psychoanalyze why this came out, and how it came out, I’m going to talk about the only interpretation of this that makes sense. That this is a strongly worded tweet and post to start a conversation that will eventually lead to a community-wide decision about a contentious issue.

If this is to be a conversation, and eventually a decision, then we should have a conversation about process. If things are going to be decided, it’s good to include the stakeholders in the decision. At least in part. With the internet it’s very easy to put out a conversation to talk about an idea, but how do you come to a decision? What are the norms of the group and how does everyone’s opinion get heard? The internet is rife with really bad examples of this.  Other online communities have conversation full of strong positions, selective listening, name calling and worse. If this community is going to go the process of conversation and making everyone feel heard, it will probably require some kind of clear process that can make sure people don’t feel hurt. On my device-less bus ride home from dinner I saw that emotional hurt on the faces of a lot of people that perhaps could have been avoided. If this was to be a conversation, it happened in a way that left a lot of collateral damage, and brings up a number of questions about process, decision making and leadership in this community that probably need to be addressed alongside this particular question about our less-than-inclusive acronym.

We do have the opportunity of enough people being in one place to bring up one or all of the issues that seem to have been brought up. Perhaps there can be a way to start this conversation in the #TMC17 flex sessions or something else and perhaps skype or periscope or webinar or other technology. If not it will have to live on the internet which will probably be difficult and lead to misunderstanding. Either way I will probably save my best my arguments for the name #MTBoS and for how large conversations like this should go down for another time.

But I will say this.

The #MTBoS is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. It’s made me want to engage in this ongoing process to be a better teacher and a better person. I think that name, while slightly antiquated and unpronounceable, means something. The fact that people in many Math Ed circles are using the term #MTBoS seem to make a testament to that. It is hard to guarantee that those same people will immediately jump on board whatever the new term decides to be.

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So I wrote most of that last night, and I decided to sleep on it and then send it. Then I had this stupid hotel alarm clock go off at 6 in the morning, so now I have time to include this story as well that is like 80% relevant.

After I finished my bachelor degree at Michigan State University, which was amazing and I loved it, I ended up screwing up some paper work, requiring me to wait a whole year before starting my whole year of student teaching. That was two full years before I could actually start teaching. “I could get a Masters in that time!” I thought, but not at MSU unfortunately. They didn’t have a “1-year certification + Masters” program, but some other schools did. Instead I applied to HGSE, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a few others. After getting my acceptances, I narrowed it to HGSE, and another, less intimidating school visited and came back torn. My Dad weighed in with very terse fatherly advice. “You don’t ‘not’ go to Harvard.” I ended up going to Harvard.

So I went to HGSE, and it was a little elitist, it largely wasn’t. It was largely amazing, I met some of my best friends, cut my teeth in the teaching, and met the woman who became my wife! There was some discord that year about how some people in the program faced different treatment. A program asst director heard the frustrations and offered this advice, “If you don’t like the way an organization is going try to change it, if you can’t change it, then you got to move on.” During the program some other students and I sat down and came up with a proposed change to the program that we thought would help. It might not have fixed it, but I like to think it helped a little bit.

First off #MTBoS is not Harvard. #MTBoS does not promote 1% acceptance rates, I get it, it’s a bad analogy. Sorry about that. Bear with me.

#MTBoS may not intend to be elitist, it’s not Harvard AT ALL, at the same time it can freak people out. So you mean to say the person that you saw speak at your district’s PD session is there? Just chatting away about daily stuff with the world?!? Of course that is crazy. At the same time ny outsider of any conversation asks the question, how do I jump in, how do I join, how do I engage with this? So a problem could arise. If I have placed those people on a pedestal because of their talent and track record, I’m going to conflate the question of “How do I join with them?”, with “Am I as talented and established as these people?” So then the question errantly becomes “Am I talented enough to join?” or “Does my track record warrant my joining?” No one is asking those questions, but it exists in the heads of people on the outside of anything. Of people about to go to Harvard, and people about hit the send button. If this is happening in the minds of people on the fringe of the #MTBoS it certainly isn’g because people in the #MTBoS are making basking in their status as an “elite” group. Just yesterday at Twitter Math Camp, there was a whole conversation about how not “elite” and deliberately welcoming they are trying to be. So if something isn’t working, despite all of our best efforts, the next step it seems is to unpack the reality of why it isn’t working. That conversation is important whether that was the intention of Dan Meyer’s post or not, and will need to include the amplification of voices that aren’t often heard. Any scenario without a conversation, where we can surface any feelings of elitism being felt by the fringes of our community will not help at all.

Side note: I’m giving this whole talk about #MTBoS and in the process I ended up downloading every tweet that ever was posted to #MTBoS. I’m going to talk about it tomorrow but if anyone wants to like analyze the information in hopes of helping this conversation, feel free. Just so you know, the replies, retweets, and likes data didn’t work, and there is a chunk missing from January to February of 2015

My class today ended pretty much exactly like it ended the last time. That class also ended exactly like that lesson from the previous year. They all weren’t very good, and I can’t be surprised.

Planning for my classes this year feels like foraging through the wilderness for the first time since I started teaching a decade ago. As an administrator, I only teach one class, 3 days a week. I did this last year, but I wasn’t teaching math. This year it still feels like I am throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks even when I have done these things before. The weird thing is these lessons have been used over and over for years, it has been difficult for me to get in a rhythm when teaching them. Some materials I have date back to before I used google drive, yet when I teach it I end up making all sorts of mistakes. I’ll emphasizing the wrong things, I’ll drive the class into discussions we need to avoid, and I often don’t see really interesting follow-ups and extensions until after class is over.  Pacing has also been off almost every class, forcing me to rush the lesson’s conclusion and leaving each class with regrets.

It’s not all sadness and rainstorms. Kids are passing my class, some are even excited to come. Other teachers still look to me for ideas for their class. This isn’t a diatribe about how I feel I’m a terrible teacher. This is a reasoned analysis about why I’m not a better teacher, and why this blog is also the first step towards becoming a better teacher.

A place for talking about teaching and learning

After walking away from today’s class I remember thinking how come everything felt so clunky? Why did I wind up in the same spot that I had in the last lesson? Why did the clunky group work structure from today go as poorly as the group work in a similar lesson from last unit? How am I not learning about my teaching?

During my time as a 5-period-a-day teacher I could learn through my clunky first period. My classes would get better through the day, and then I would go home feeling like a champion. My growth was just built into the schedule. Now that I am only teaching one class I am realizing that I need to take a more deliberate approach to my growth as a teacher.

Anyways, I’m walking away from today’s class, feeling upset about how it went, and I thought to myself “I need a place to think about my teaching,”  before thinking:  “Duh! You’ve got a blog!” If I had been blogging about my classes this whole time I would have been able to reflect back on my old classes! If I had a regular blogging practice during the day I would have an outlet for my lesson frustration! And, if I ever do figure out how to get things done well ahead of time, I could get feedback on ideas from all the teachers in the #MTBoS! (I really did think through all of this stuff, btw, as if it wasn’t staring me in the face the whole time).

Why didn’t I think of this earlier?

Blogging about my teaching seems stressful, especially when I had a day that was bad. Pushing the submit button has gotten hard lately. This year I have more partial posts in my “Drafts” than I have actual Class Logs (Clogs). Having a new job, and a new baby has given me less time for writing, but if I have time to write drafts, or write posts about non-teaching related stuff, I can’t write anything about what I’m teaching, or what I plan on teaching? Other bloggers like Michael Pershan make it work with similarly aged children. Justin Aion has been blogging for years and he has two kids. It seems like time for me to spend more time writing and thinking, and then thinking and writing.

To get started I want to do one of those one month challenge. I think seeing as how December is right around the corner it would make sense to start now and start doing it every day. I want to make time during the day to write some mathematical thoughts each day. I may also write some thoughts about administration or other things in order to keep the momentum going, but I should be able to start something. This daily plan should work, maybe it is even worthy of some kind of hashtag, but maybe I can talk about that tomorrow since I’m going to be writing.

I’m pretty excited about #MTBoS30, it was only 2 years ago when my blog was less than a month old and I decided to take this challenge on. At that time I started doing #MTBoS30 because I wanted blogging to become a regular practice. Now as I am posting this my 100th blog post(100!), I find myself approaching the 30-day blog challenge with the goals in mind:

1. Establish blogging as a regular practice,
2. Allow that practice to inform and improve my teaching
3. Support other bloggers out there that are doing the same thing.

Establishing A Practice

There a number of reasons why I want my blog to be a practice. Not a journal, not a scrap book, and certainly not the definitive resource for all the world’s math education needs. It can’t be all of those things, for a lot of reasons. What I do want to get in to is why it can be a practice.

Teaching is a difficult job and it already has so much day-to-day chaos involved, it is hard to stay grounded. This year I am adding on to that the ball-of-whirling-overwhelm that is being an administrator, making each commute home feel extra exhausting.

The blog for me needs to be a place where I take a second to remind myself that all of this stuff that I am doing is worth something. I want to pull whatever positive nuggets out of my crazy days, like a prospector pulling nuggets of gold out of, you know, those trays full of murky water. The nuggets of gold are there, the moments of wonder and sparks of brilliance are scattered throughout, all day long. I just need to get in the habit of putting on my boots, and my little prospector screen-tray thing, and get those nuggets out and into the world so they don’t get lost down river.

The Practice Should Help The Other Practice

Did you ever play the game maelstrom? It’s where you move around in a spaceship and shoot meteors before you crash into them. The game starts and you’re grounded, and all you have to do is swivel in either direction while shooting. I was good at this part of the game. At some point, you have to use your rocket boosters to avoid a meteor. These boosters lazily direct your ship in any direction, but not responsively enough to stop on a dime and avoid a meteor.  So now  you have to not only worry about what direction to swivel and shoot, but also what direction your ship is headed in. Once the game gets hard, you always have to use the rocket, you always have to learn how to control what you’re shooting at in the short term, but also where your ship is drifting in the long run. To be good at maelstrom you have to be good at both your long-term direction, and moment-to-moment meteor blasting. I suck at this part of maelstrom.

As we approach May every year, I feel like I’m the spaceship in that game maelstrom that has been set adrift and can’t get back to normal. The daily or at least regular practice of blogging can help me keep my spaceship in the middle of the screen, maybe all the time in the middle. It can help me sort out what I just finished doing and also help me clarify what I am going to do next. Having a practice of pulling out the important ideas and being able to look at all of them over time could help me with that long-term thinking that evaded me in middle school. In that sense my blogging work is a actually a part of a larger process of me being able to do my best teaching/adminstrating work, but not my best work in and of itself (although on some days I think my writing might be pretty good). 

Diving in to the community

My favorite part of the #MTBoS30 is also all of the community. Knowing that there are a lot of people in the same struggle as me is always helpful. I hope to let people know that I appreciate their work by commenting on all of the blogs that I read, and I hope who ever read mine feel free to do the same (even if the comment is like 3 words or whatever).

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