Ok, so want to hear something weird about this school year.  I’ve been going to school for every day that wasn’t a holiday since the week I got back from my honeymoon (August 15th).  That means I’ve been working for a month when half of that was supposed to be vacation.  For many of the past two weeks of the school year, I haven’t even gotten home before 7, some days I’ve gotten home at 10, and one day after helping my wife’s school we got home at 12:30.  The weirdest thing about that?  I’ve only taught two (two!) classes so far this year.   I have developed an acumen of sorts for putting spreadsheets together, and using those spreadsheets to upload schedules.  Our school has wildly unique schedules for each student, so I have been helping out a lot with that.  Since our school is also running a rolling admissions situation, they are going to let in a group on October 1st, and I am going to pick up my teaching load with that group.

Since this year started, it’s been pretty dark and lonely for me and my spreadsheets, and I don’t think I should wait for it to end so that I can get back to my passions.  For the next two weeks I decided to pick up one class, to help with some of the school overflow so now I can talk about teaching and learning!

What I’m teaching this week

This week I am teaching problem solving for my “Mathematical Thinking” class.  I aim to work on the curriculum that I did last fall.  One thing I am surely going to do is work in more estimation. One question I had today was “How many flourescent light bulbs are there in the school?”  Last friday I asked “If I turned 33 on Sept 1st, when will I be 1/3 of century old?”  I like doing the big problems, but I think I am going to work on having a big discussion as a group about them.

What I’m blogging this week

Something.  I’m going to try to emerge from my excel tabs and write something.  Baby steps.

What I’m thinking this week

This week I’m wondering what is the thing I’m missing.  I always watch basketball players and think “If you just get a 3-point shot” or “If you just get a left-handed layup”, as if a couple hours in the gym would make them an all-star.  Assuming that it’s more or less true, what’s the thing that I’m missing?  I think it’s having productive, amazing, Magdalene-Lampert-esque classroom discussions, but I don’t know exactly how to get into the “gym” and work on that.

Read books?  Moderate other people’s subway conversations?  Do Squats?

This is the week before school starts.  For our school, that means we run a large new student orientation to welcome our school’s crop of 150 or so fall admits.  Running sessions for students a few days before school is actually a nice, low-pressure, way to kickstart the school part of my brain.  Before I worked here, this time of year would usually be spent wondering things like, why I am missing one of the boxes I packed last august, and whether or not I should keep looking for my numberline poster or make a new one.  Any thought about actually teaching would usually be as preced with, and followed by, and interreupted periodically throughout with small moments of curling into a fetal position on the ground along with some light sobbing.  Hopefully not this week.  Once I go through 3 days of welcome activities and role playing school policies, I’ll have shaken the rust off from a summer without being in front of kids, and all that’s left will be to plan out my actual teaching.

What I’m teaching this week

This week I am teaching students about the basics of our school.  These are kids who have been accepted to our school and are goign to be in either my advisory, or the advisory of two other teachers in the school.  This group is not going to be together in it’s entirety for more than just this advisory group, so it is a good chance to try out some new ice breakers.  This week I think I will try to do a “Think, Pair, Share” writing activity about why they are leaving their old school and coming here, but I am open to suggestions.  Have you heard of any good and unique ice breakers?

What I’m blogging this week

This week I want to wrap up talking about the book Mindset.  So far I have talked about what Mindset is about, and strategies for student feedback.  What I haven’t talked about yet is what Mindset means for teachers, as they approach their own teaching.  Given how difficult teaching can be, perhaps a growth mindset can help teachers remain positive about their practice.

This week I will also talk about what one more of my goals for the year, and what I plan on teaching this year (the blogging about these topics may happen whilst in the fetal position).

What I’m thinking this week

Nothing.  It’s probably the last week I can say that, so I’m going to enjoy it.

This week is going to be interesting because when it ends, we’ll be at be the halfway points of both this cycle, and of this 30 blog post challenge. Halfway points in life are kind of getting halfway through a movie, you know that the most memorable part of the story lay ahead. Unlike a movie, it is unclear whether or not the this is a feel-good film, or a horror story, or a comedy.  I like the way my movie’s are going, but I think there is a lot of undue stress which makes it hard to think about the big picture.

What I’m teaching this week:

This week I need to figure out where kids are at, so the big story is assessing kids’ thinking.  At this point the kids know about basic probability, but we have been experimenting with Expected value, and also the law of large numbers.  We’ve payed Deal or NoDeal, as well as asking all the kids to flip a bunch of coins which are really unfortunate for her.  My big goal is to figure out how to get kids to demonstrate their thinking around those concepts, and then suck that thinking out of their heads somehow.

I also need to figure out how to get them the most immediate feedback I can given the constraints.  I might use a poweroint slide that has an instant check button or something similar.

What I’m blogging this week:

Last week I learned about a number of blogs because they filled out my #MTBoS30 roll call sheet.  I plan to go to the respondents blogs to read and comment on them.  From the few I read on Sunday, I realized that I have a lot to learn, both about the lay of the land in the blogosphere and about teaching well.  I keep getting humbled by the work and the thoughtful discussion of all the teachers I’ve seen who were really impressive.  I am very aware that I have a lot to learn, and I am going to document that learning on this blog.

What I’m thinking this week:

I can’t get over how little I accomplish when I am at school.  I stayed at school to 9:00 again, doing all these menial thoughtless tasks that I spent the last week putting off.  Why?  Well, I’m crazy, and I think the answer might be multitasking.  After school hours, when there are no kids, or staff needs, or fresh emergencies to deal with, it ends up allowing me to apply singular focus.  Similarly, during the school day, there are so many different things to deal with that I can never really apply the singular focus I need to get things done.  Perhaps I should restructure my day…

Check out this infographic about Multi-Tasking

Read More