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Another school year is over. This marks my 16th year as a teacher and I must say that it was my most difficult year in recent memory. There are a lot of things that made this year more difficult: my son started his first year in school and his transition to full day school from a lot of playing outside at daycare (which is awesome!) was difficult and eventually successful; our school went to 1:1 technology this year and I am now reinventing how I teach (in Geometry, in Algebra, and how I started ). We are also redoing our curriculum (it's a good time to do it).
Notice how "working with kids" or "helping students" or "being a part of the school community" are NOT the things that make teaching difficult. In fact, I love working with the students and I feel they still enjoy working for me during the day.
My draft of this blog, was a list of things that I accomplished this year as well as the things I need to work on. Sooooooo boring. So I will say that I need to start taking more pictures and screen shots through the year as part of a weekly reflection so this end of year celebration will pop!
I think that I did a good job of incorporating technology into my lesson plans to support student understanding, exploration, and reasoning. Still can do better, but who can't?! I started using Google Classroom this year, but I am thinking about a more serious LMS for next year. I love how Classroom integrates with a single login for our GAFE school, but I can't help but think that I'd like a way to organize things a little better. I'll be exploring Canvas this summer because it supports Math Type for both students and teachers out of the box (does anyone still buy software in a box?).
Because of my work this year, I now have students that weren't considering a career in math, considering it! Those that weren't considering a career in math, excitedly (sadly?) realized that they would in fact need math, and high levels of it, in their chosen fields (business and meteorology). This just reinforces what I tell students every year: Push yourself in all areas. You won't realize what you really need until you already need it. A former student of mine is going to school to work in a NASCAR pit crew. He just finished an intensive 3-week course on fuel and exhaust and realized he should have paid attention in chemistry more!
Next year, I'm looking forward to starting collaborative classnotes in Google Classroom/Drive, a classroom blog (each student required to do three blogs during the trimester on the class blog), and helping students set up a positive digital footprint with either a web page or blog. I'd enjoy suggestions in the comments below for a web service that my students can use well beyond the classroom--I have my favorites, what are yours?
Happy summering!
Notice how "working with kids" or "helping students" or "being a part of the school community" are NOT the things that make teaching difficult. In fact, I love working with the students and I feel they still enjoy working for me during the day.
My draft of this blog, was a list of things that I accomplished this year as well as the things I need to work on. Sooooooo boring. So I will say that I need to start taking more pictures and screen shots through the year as part of a weekly reflection so this end of year celebration will pop!
I think that I did a good job of incorporating technology into my lesson plans to support student understanding, exploration, and reasoning. Still can do better, but who can't?! I started using Google Classroom this year, but I am thinking about a more serious LMS for next year. I love how Classroom integrates with a single login for our GAFE school, but I can't help but think that I'd like a way to organize things a little better. I'll be exploring Canvas this summer because it supports Math Type for both students and teachers out of the box (does anyone still buy software in a box?).
Because of my work this year, I now have students that weren't considering a career in math, considering it! Those that weren't considering a career in math, excitedly (sadly?) realized that they would in fact need math, and high levels of it, in their chosen fields (business and meteorology). This just reinforces what I tell students every year: Push yourself in all areas. You won't realize what you really need until you already need it. A former student of mine is going to school to work in a NASCAR pit crew. He just finished an intensive 3-week course on fuel and exhaust and realized he should have paid attention in chemistry more!
Next year, I'm looking forward to starting collaborative classnotes in Google Classroom/Drive, a classroom blog (each student required to do three blogs during the trimester on the class blog), and helping students set up a positive digital footprint with either a web page or blog. I'd enjoy suggestions in the comments below for a web service that my students can use well beyond the classroom--I have my favorites, what are yours?
Happy summering!
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