Thank You For the People That Helped Me Along the Way

       Now in my 29th year of education, I'm so thankful for the people who have helped me to improve and to grow into the educator I've become so far.

• Thank you to my colleagues who have taught me through the experiences that they have been willing to share.
• Thank you to my students who have smiled with me and frowned with me; questioned me and responded to my questions.
• Thank you to the parents who have worked with me and worked against me.  I've adjusted my actions with every contact I've ever made with a parent.  And (I hope) I've become a better parent to my own children through these interactions as well.
• Thank you to my superiors that have guided along the way.  Some were strong leaders and some were less strong.  I appreciate your efforts and continue to appreciate the difficult job you have had and continue to have.
• Thank you to those who have complimented me for my efforts.  Sometimes I deserved it and sometimes I didn't.  Compliments are never necessary or required; so I particularly appreciate it when people have gone out of their way to do so; be it in person, via a written note, or via email or a phone call.
• Thank you to the people who have disagreed with me; sometimes kindly and sometimes with great anger.  You made me think about my decisions and you helped me to be well prepared for future decisions.  You'll never know how long I've thought about these exchanges; long after they ended.
• Thank you for my family who are not educators.  It is so very helpful for me to hear the thoughts and ideas of non-educators.  You've been influenced by your experiences and the people you are surrounded by; and your opinions help me to think about my opinions.
• Thank you to the speakers I've heard at venues great and small.  Your willingness to share your expertise is a valuable part of the learning process for me as an educator.
• Thank you to my Twitter educator contacts that I have come to know via the miracle of the computer who live all over the world.  It's amazing how a few words can lead me to an hour of research on a topic.
• Thank you to the dedicated professionals and to the folks that have been counting down the days until retirement for the past ten years.  Every voice is valuable; every point of view is a piece to the puzzle.  Every idea helps to shape my thinking.

EdCamp

       EdCamp is sweeping the nation!  Have you heard about EdCamp? Check out this quick (1 minute) video:

       EdCamp is like a huge faculty room with teachers from all over your school district (or state) coming to one place to talk about whatever education topic they want to talk about; and to do so with other teachers who are interested in sharing ideas and hearing from others on the same topic.

       I often tell our new teachers that an important way to grow and to improve professionally is to talk with and hear from other teachers.  Everyone has ideas; everyone has something to contribute.  Different teachers have different experiences; different teachers hear about and use different resources.  One teacher uses Desmos (for example) to demonstrate attributes of graphs and equations; another teacher uses PearDeck to gather quick formative information from students (and to enhance student engagement); a third teachers uses TenMarks to determine the level of understanding her Algebra 1 have of a particular standard.  (And so on.)  The teachers using these resources may feel like they don't have anything special to share, but these resources that they use everyday might be completing new to someone else.  Everyone gets better at what they do when they hear from other teachers.

       EdCamp brings together teachers to talk about teaching.  And the teachers that come to EdCamp are the teachers that want to share their knowledge and want to hear from others.  Contact your state education office or your district's Office of Professional Learning.  See if there is an EdCamp being planned near you.  Or host your own EdCamp.

       Better teachers make better students; and EdCamp makes teachers better.

Education that REALLY Prepares Our Students

 
       This week I've had the great fortune of attending the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Annual Meeting.  Many subject areas hold these types of large, national conferences to help teachers and supervisors and school board members and principals to grow professionally and help students to achieve.

       I attended one particular session that discussed the need for our schools to examine the needs of the world that we live in and to make appropriate changes to the education that we provide to our students--the adults and workforce of the next generation.  The speaker was Diane Briars; President of NCTM.  She referenced the book Education for Life and Work (2012) that discussed the sort of competencies that will increase in the near future.  These include:

• non-routine analytic skills
• non-routine interactive skills
• thinking
• reasoning
• expressing information to others
• interpreting information and responding appropriately

       Math teachers know that we teach reasoning and problem solving and analytic thinking.  But we currently teach these skills under the guise of Algebra and Geometry courses.  Is there a better way?  Would it be better to teach these skills within a context rather than strictly in the abstract?  And what about the actual teaching strategies that are employed when presenting such content to students?  Ms. Briars cited a study from 2014 that stated students learn better in active learning classrooms than they do in the traditional lecture-type classrooms.  Active-learning classrooms would use strategies such as: (i) Occasional group problem solving, (ii) Tutorials completed during class, (iii) Use of personal response systems, and (iv) Increased emphasis on student discourse including student-to-student discourse and teacher-to-student discourse.

       Finally, in the report titled, A Common Vision , the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) states that the status quo of teaching mathematics to our undergraduate students is no longer acceptable given that so many students struggle to complete the first one or two mathematics classes offered to them.  We need to see cooperation between the P-12 system and the collegiate system to create courses and course pathways that help students to learn the skills they need to learn to be successful in the world they will inherit.  One possible solution is to offer math courses that are not based on Algebra or Calculus--considering that the content learned in these classes is not necessary for the majors that some of our students seek.  For instance, Journalism may not need to know Calculus, but they will need to know statistics and how to interpret data.  

       From time to time, great institutions need to examine their work in light of the goals that they seek to achieve.  Education is one of those great institutions.  Such change should not be rare but (indeed) should be ongoing.  We no longer live in the 1920s or the 1960s or even in the 2000s.  We have an obligation to prepare our students for their world.