Full disclaimer: I’m writing this blog post for very selfish reasons. I’ve already highlighted the positive effects of blogging. This post serves as somewhat of a scrapbook for me.
As my 20th season of teaching wraps up, I finally found a moment to breathe and reflect. I’m a big believer in the mentality of “what you put into life is what you get out of it”. It’s been an extremely grueling, yet rewarding, year. I am thankful that we were face-to-face for the entire year (during peak-COVID mid-year I believe we were close to shutting down). I am also grateful that the COVID numbers dropped to a level that allowed our masks to be “strongly recommended”. It continues to amaze me how different students look when have their masks on/off. There were a number of times this year I saw a student who was in my class last year (face-to-face with masks) and they look completely different than what I expected them to look like with their mask down. I speculate they feel the same way about me!
This season was the first season since my rookie year that I didn’t teach a geometry class. Two recent retirements in our department created openings that needed to be filled. I taught three sections of advanced algebra 2, one section of algebra 1, and one section of AP Statistics. By our department absorbing those positions, our class sizes ballooned to volumes higher than ever before. At the start of the year, my algebra 1 section had 31 students, my AP Stats section had 24, and my advanced algebra 2 had 31, 33, and 33. I only had 30 desks in my room, so I had to borrow 3 desks from a colleague down the hall just so everyone could have a seat. Increasing class sizes from 24 to 30+ may not sound like much, but I can’t overstate how much more of a challenge it is to be an effective teacher.
Even though I’ve taught advanced algebra 2 and algebra 1 in the past, our district adopted a new textbook series last summer. Traditionally, I’m not one who follows the textbook step by step; rather, I use the textbook as a resource to help develop the lessons, activities, and tasks that students experience. The series we adopted at the high school is the latest Carnegie Learning series. I’m in love with about 80% of the series, which is a huge upgrade over our previous textbook. The lessons are designed to develop conceptual understanding by being inquiry-based and student-centered. Did we still need to tweak and supplement some of the lessons? You bet. Did we still write our own assessments? Yes, we did. Do I still need to improve my delivery to put more learning in the hands of students? Absolutely. The neatest thing about the series is that I learned a lot about the mathematics in those courses and some really mind-blowing connections between main topics.
Using a new textbook series takes a lot of preparation time if done correctly. Analyzing the content of each lesson, planning the pacing, identifying where modifications should be made, creating / finding supplemental resources, building the Canvas modules, etc. all take time. Some of that work was done prior the school year starting, but many of those decisions include a reactive component that require me to know my students and their strengths, weaknesses, interests, and abilities. In other words, those decisions shouldn’t be made during the summer prior to even seeing my rosters.
This was the first time I have ever taught AP Statistics. I felt like a first year teacher again. To help prepare, I attended (virtually) a week long course last July. It was very helpful and connected me with the right people to help me on my journey. Was it a challenge to teach something for the first time again? Absolutely. I’ve always believed that you don’t truly understand something until you can teach it to someone else. There were a number of nights that I was up late preparing (& learning) the lesson I was teaching the following day. Did I enjoy teaching the class? Immensely. I really enjoyed teaching seniors again (for the past 5-6 years, I have mostly worked with 9th & 10th graders). There were some 11th and 10th graders in the class as well. Overall, it was an excellent class of students who are far brighter than I ever was at their age.
I wouldn’t have survived without Stats Medic and the resources on their website. I love their philosophy of EFFL (Experience First, Formalize Later) and how open to sharing the AP Stats community is. I think it’s extremely helpful that all AP Stats teachers are teaching toward the same targets and that most of the major textbooks and resources are aligned on things like scope and sequence of the curriculum. Because a majority of AP Stats teachers are teaching the same units in the same general timeframe, there are relevant, rich conversations happening online. Each day I would skim the posts on the AP Stats Twitter and Facebook groups. I learned a lot and knew where I could go to ask questions if needed.
I enjoyed working with two student teachers this past fall. Mr. Venner and Mr. Pierzinski were awesome and will both be strong mathematics teachers. I love helping develop the next generation of mathematics teachers.
This year I also got back into coaching high school basketball. My oldest child was a freshmen and I was able to coach the freshmen boys basketball team this year. I hadn’t coached high school boys basketball since 2006 (I coached many years of girls since then). I loved being able to coach my son and be a bigger part of his high school experience.
Being a high school coach takes a lot of time and commitment. Adding that to my plate meant that something else had to be removed. As a result, I scaled back in the realm of math leadership. I decided to pause my pursuit of National Board Certification for the school year. I was not able to attend the SDCTM conference in Huron this February. I attended only one (of four) regional math circles that I had intended to help facilitate. I have not written a blog post in nearly a year. The list of articles, journals, blog posts, etc. that I had planned to read continues to grow each day. I decided to “say no” to a number of opportunities that I might have previously taken.
I did have the opportunity to present at the TIE conference this spring. It felt to great to share my knowledge of Desmos in a face-to-face conference again. I did complete the written test portion of National Board Certification last June and scored extremely well. I’m excited to resume pursuing that goal.
As I write this post, I am actually on my way back from the NCTM HQ in Reston, VA. I have served on the NCTM Classroom Resources Committee for the past 2+ years. We have done all of our work virtually since I began serving prior to this weekend. It was great to finally meet in person and gain a clearer vision of the work ahead of us. [This was the first time I was on an airplane since COVID began.] These past few years of not having in-person professional development & networking opportunities has truly made me realize how much I rely on those events to put wind in my sails.
To recap, this has been a grueling, yet rewarding year for me for a number of reasons.
Looking ahead, I’m excited for a number of reasons. Next year, it looks as though I will be teaching the same classes as this year. I’m excited for year 2 of AP Stats and how much more confidence I will have in my content knowledge. As our district begins to transition to a Competency Based Educational model, we will be implementing a form of target-based grading once again. I’m excited to bring that back into my classroom with my advanced algebra 2 students next year.
If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with me. I invite you to put pen to paper and reflect on your journey as well!
P.S. You can still vote on your favorite graph from my advanced algebra 2 Desmos art project!
