#MTBoSBlaugust Day 7: Let's Talk About "Teacher Shoes"

So I've spent the majority of my day (the non Olympic-focused section of it, at least) immersed in back issues of NCTM's Journal for Research in Mathematics Education and finally reading Jo Boaler's Mathematical Mindsets. I know....I'm late to the party. I am trying to really focus this year on bringing more best practices from research into my classroom and my pedagogy. Needless to say, my mind is spinning. I can't wait to write about everything I've been thinking, but my brain hasn't had enough time to synthesize yet.

So, in lieu of a more academic topic and in order to distract myself from texting my brother a million different warnings about praising his toddler into having a fixed instead of a growth mindset, a post about the dreaded "teacher shoes" seemed appropriate. 

My first few years of teaching I was that person who walked into Target, bought every different color flat I could, and walked out. I always had shoes to match any outfit and I always had foot pain from having absolutely no arch support. When we left NC, I threw away all of my cute, uncomfortable hold outs. I'm starting to care more about my foot pain than my fashionability, a true sign of my age and surviving my first few years of teaching, and have amassed a small collection of "teacher shoes" that I'm hoping haven't put me too far "over the hill" yet. Here's my field guide to the teacher shoes I have left: 

Shoe #1: "Never Letting My Early 20's Go" Sandals

The Story: Teacher Work Days, Running Errands Around Town, Refusing to Say Goodbye to Summer. These are on their last legs and are my hold out pair of Target shoes under $20 #neverletgo

Shoe #2: "I'll Only Wear Them If They Don't Hurt" Wedges

The Story: When you want to wear heels, but you are secretly rocking a comfort brand (Aerosoles FTW). These have gotten me through a few awards nights, school concerts, etc. I feel weird about wearing open toes during the academic day, but these shoes have seen some students in one environment or another. 

Shoe #3: "Grown Up" Flats

The Story: Let's be honest, you weren't going to be able to float between classrooms and monitor student groups in those 4 inch heels you tried on. Flats that cost over $15 and have real arch support are a much more reasonable choice. You have a Master's Degree. Buy some reasonable shoes. 

Shoe #4: "I'm Feeling Preppy" Boat Shoes

The Story: I said I'd never own a pair, but they are so comfortable!!! Once I bought my first pair of orange chinos, I knew these would be coming soon after. 

Shoe #5: "I'm Totally Going to Start Wearing Heels This Year" Heels

The Story: You guys, these are SO COMFORTABLE. My husband convinced me to buy them yesterday when I put them on in the store and basically started jogging up and down the aisles. They are Clarks and have tons of support and cushion. Ask me again the 3rd week of school how I really feel about them. So far, so good. 

Shoe #6: "You're the One That Thought Moving Back to NY Was a Good Idea" Boots

The Story: I bought theses before we left North Carolina. I've admitted defeat. #WinterisComing

Has anyone discovered the magic teacher shoe that truly gives comfort AND style AND is affordable on a teacher's salary?!?!?!?! Share if you have! 

P.S. I've gone a little overboard on the beige shoes. Seeing them all like this is a little too real. 

#MTBoSBlaugust Day 6: Scaffolding Student Study Group

One idea I've been tweaking for years and never quite been able to get off the ground is taking an active role in scaffolding student study groups. As most people who've experienced a truly challenging college course can tell you, collaboration is often the key to success. It's the definition of the word synergy...

I'm thinking of piloting a form of this with my AP class this year for a few reasons:

1. Many of these students are college bound & could benefit from seeing beneficial collaboration in action
2. The skills needed to be a successful member of a study group aren't always in line with the social goals of being in a study group and it's better to learn these lessons early
3. There is often nothing better for someone struggling than to learn from another student or (even better) have to explain to another student

This is a group norms contract that I drafted a few years ago (read: that I spliced together from lots of other wonderful sources and thinkers- feel free to claim some credit if you were one of them. I honestly made don't remember my exact inspirations). I meant to to use it with my blended learning class to build online study groups for message boards and group discussions. It didn't pan out as we had some trouble with our learning management system, but this is what I'd like to use to get my kids started. 

Group Norms Contract Draft

Here are my ideas:

• Day 1: Give kids a questionnaire to identify with whom they work well in the class (emphasis on that these may not be the same people with whom they hang out on Saturday nights). Teacher forms groups based on these answers and class observation. 
• Day 2: Give students a group task with pre-assigned groups to see how they function and re-assess. Tweak members if needed. 
• Day 3: Ask students to think about their individual strengths and areas for growth in group work (to be prepared for a classroom discussion the next day, where they'll be filling out this chart from the document)

• Day 4: Share specific expectations about study groups with student, including having time to collaborate in class on various tasks, online discussions of homework problems and content, responsibilities for review tasks to their group and the class as a whole, and a judgement free zone where you can discuss content freely and help each other. Then, have students work together to fill out the group norms contract. As groups are working, teacher would have time to meet with each group to make sure they are clear on expectations. 

I need to come up a more specific layout of group tasks and responsibilities, but finding this old contract lying in my forms has gotten my wheels turning. Last year I saw the kids in AP who formed study groups thrive and the kids who didn't struggle alone, often trying to break into an established study group before it was too late. I am hoping to build that "math family" from early in the year so students always believe they have a team helping them succeed. 

Has anyone done this with wild success or wild failure? Anything you've learned from working in study groups yourself? Share, critique, and brainstorm! 

#MTBoSBlaugust Day 5: Student Unit Organizers

Happy Day 5! We've made it through an entire work week of MTBoSBlaugust! 

I've been really digging into my unit plans and am now getting down to some day to day planning for the beginning of the year. In year 1 of teaching any class, there is always some element of day to day planning. But this year is round 2 of AB Calculus for me, so I'm pushing myself to use everything I've learned to get a bit more organized. I still struggle with creating plans that are too solid, as I always want to be flexible enough to work with whatever my kiddos need. However, here is my new (tentative) approach for some organizational changes this year. I plan to hand out a paper/packet to the kids on the first day of the unit with:

1. Daily Unit Overview

These are, of course, subject to change. However, these will give kids a good idea of what's coming or what they miss if they are out. For longer units, I will probably just go week by week, but this particular unit is a short one, so I'm going all in here for Unit 0. 

2. Unit Reminders

For other units, I'm sure this will get more content and date specific. However, for the first unit I wanted the "big expectations" somewhere accessible daily. In addition, that AP Exam date gets talked about from Day 1- eyes on the prize! 

3. Homework and Extra Help Tracker

I'm thinking of using this like a stamp/signature sheet where kids can keep track of their homework submissions and extra help. I have made the mistake of "trusting" honors classes too much at first in the past and seeing kids fall behind until I start holding them more accountable for homework. I will collect this on the last day of the unit for a homework grade. I can also use extra help as an incentive here since it's tracked via teacher signature. Obviously I'll need to go somewhere exotic to get stamps so they aren't easily forged. Still a work in progress. 

4.  Review Sheets

I'm working on attaching the review sheets for each unit to the Unit Organizer so students have them from the beginning and can see to what level they will be assessed. The challenge here is going to be amping up my review sheet game, as I had 1 review sheet per unit last year. I'll have to write a few more for each unit before the start. I think it's a task that is worth it though- UBD and backwards design in action. Also, kids can work around their busy schedules to get work done and not be cramming review in just the night before the test. 

Sooooo, has anyone used a system like this before with their kids? Pros? Cons? It's new for me, but I feel like it's a worthwhile tool to help keep students and families organized, build some accountability, and give students confidence going into assessments. Feel free to share your experiences! 

#MTBoSBlaugust Day 4: Home Office!

Quick post today as I am ACTUALLY digging deep into lesson planning for next month! 

Today I finally finished setting up my home office space, which has been a work in progress since moving in last month! I love how it turned out (hence why I'm actually getting some work done today).

One of the perks of not having my own classroom this year is that some of my favorite decorations can be at home. Thankfully, I married a science teacher who isn't opposed to having unit circles decorating our apartment. 

"You'll be able to do this in your sleep!" was always once of my catch phrases during unit circle time. One of my amazing kids took this literally and made me this unit circle dream catcher! 

Another amazing unit circle from a former student....she made it from blow drying crayons on a canvas. 

The "CC" was an award passed from teacher to teacher at my old school each month and the STM dish was a 6th grader's version of a "pi" plate- my favorite gift when I left my first ever teaching job! 

 And the very best part of all?

This room doubles as our guest room, so I have the very best PLC member ever when I'm working....

#MTBOSBlaugust Day 3: Celebrating Summer

I tend to think that it's less that teachers get summers off, they just control their own hours.  Sure, I'm not working 40 (60....80....) hours a week in the summer and fighting rush hour traffic home, but there is rarely a day that goes by without my doing something school related and often entire weeks are spent in professional developments or conferences.  Last summer I only had 2 weeks "off" and they were the week of my wedding and the week of my honeymoon. But in the summer, my life is definitely not controlled by bells and for that I'm thankful. Choosing when to snack, when to use the bathroom, when to check my emails- it's liberating. This summer, for the first time in my teaching career, I've not gotten a paycheck or worked in a supervisory role of kiddos in any way. I've taken the time to do a whole lot of things that I haven't in summers past and I am feeling completely reenergized! Now that the end is in sight, my school-related work time is amping up and my control of my own hours are winding down. Just as my body (and my dog) re-learns how to sleep past 6 am, I have start slowly reconditioning it to 4:30 am alarms.

So in celebration of my first non-teacher teacher summer, here are my favorite highlights of the summer. I have....

• Slept on an air mattress for almost 3 weeks
• Moved 778 miles (into an apartment sight unseen....it turned out awesome thankfully)
• Eaten my way through my new town at amazing new places
• Learn to navigate said new town without a GPS
• Introduced my dog to squirrels (our neighborhood in NC didn't have them) and watched her mind explode with possibilities. She has tried to climb multiple trees. 

  

  First sniffs above the Mason Dixon

• Actually gotten close to having all my paperwork in my married name, if that's possible
• Bought real grown up furniture from somewhere without "-kea" or "-arget" anywhere in their names
• Learned to apply false eyelashes
• Learned to properly fill in my eyebrows
• Finally watched Game of Thrones. All of it. In 3 weeks. 
• Developed a (somewhat regular) gym routine
• Visited my alma mater with the hubs and immediately took on personalities of nerdy old couple that asked undergrads to take pictures of us, marveled how everything changed

  

  My house for a glorious 12 months of college

• Discovered spiralizing zucchini was a thing
• Read for leisure
• Watched an entire season of The Bachelorette. Knew it was stupid. Loved it anyway. 
• Almost mastered making homemade ravioli
  
• Celebrated our first wedding anniversary 
• Bought a huge floppy summer hat, even though my head is too big for almost any women's hat
  
• Donated my last article of clothing left over from high school....finally.
• Lived close enough to family to actually have a family barbecue, just because it's Sunday. 
• Been able to call a barbecue a barbecue without being told it's a cookout (Sorry, NC)
• Actually got to go to my niece's 2nd birthday party
  
• Got my niece to voluntarily say my name, even if it's "tait-yn" right now
• Eaten way too much NY pizza and bagels (hence previously mentioned gym routine)

It's nice to take some time to rejuvenate and do things you love during such a big, exciting summer. Ready to jump into a new and challenging school year at a new school, but definitely going to miss such a life-changing summer.

#MTBOSBlaugust Day 2: Communicating with Home

I am one of those people with a never-ending to-do list. I put items on my list that I know I've already completed just for the pleasure of crossing them off. It's sick, but it's how I've always been. During the summer, I enjoy leisurely checking off things on my to-do list between random adventures and Bravo marathons. However, during the school year, my lists get out of control. Pages and pages long. And some of the most important tasks on that list are making sure that I'm connecting my classroom with my students' families and life outside my walls. 

Last year, in an effort to both involve families more in our classroom and cut down on having to repeat myself constantly to both kids and parents, I started sending out a weekly newsletter to my class community. I know, not groundbreaking. I did this as a first year teacher, working with middle schoolers. However, it's something that is almost never done in my experience with high school classes.

Here's why it made a big change in my classroom:

• Families felt more informed about the routines and expectations of our classroom.  Parents often didn't know how to access all the resources or information I had available to kids, especially if their busy work schedules prevented them from coming to meet the teacher night or they didn't have regular internet access at home. I was able to include helpful parent tips that cut down on the repetitive questions I'd often get via email. 
• Math-phobic families had a lifeline. The number of parent phone calls I've had over the years that started with the parent calling themselves stupid or helpless is truly astounding to me. The sentiment was always the same...."I never took (Pre-calculus/AP Calculus/insert any other upper level, scary sounding math here) and I'm just no help to them." To combat this, I often included content-specific information for families if they wanted to access it and include links to my own personal library of instructional videos. This way, if a parent didn't know quite how to help they at least knew where to send the students to get help. And let's be honest....it let me nerd out and share math with a wider audience.  
  
• Families of the "sometimes overlooked student" still felt included. I was able to include news, updates, and photos to make every feel like they were involved. It wasn't just the families with a student in danger of failing who heard from me, it was everyone. 
  
• My classroom truly became global. It was amazing to track the views on the newsletter and see how it was spreading. Some parents told me they had forwarded it to someone who was babysitting their kids for the week so they'd be in the loop. Others were able to share it with parents who might live in another state or country so they felt involved. I was able to share it with administrators and pull from it if I needed artifacts about our classroom. And it made all of these people feel like they had a relationship with me....one they wouldn't have been able to have it I was trying to scratch off a to-do list of emailing each one individually. 

As I begin my year at a new school, this is definitely something I intend on continuing. I use the website Smore, which is free and extremely user friendly. In addition, it provides analytics and is easily integrated with social media. Set an alarm on my phone for a Sunday reminder, write my message quickly, and BCC it out to a parent email list I create during the first week of school! 

Want to see a basic weekly newsletter from my classroom?

PRE-CALCULUS WEEK 10 NEWSLETTER 

#MTBOSBlaugust Day 1: The Blame Game

I am lucky enough to be the aunt of the sweetest toddler in the whole world and one of the biggest blessings of our big summer move has been living close to her for the first time. I spent my Saturday galavanting around town with her (and her parents) and I was entertaining her while my sister-in-law browsed some clothes. We went from shirt to shirt in the store, identifying every color along the way, and she soon spotted a baby across the store. She walked near the carrier and said "Baby!" and waved at her and then walked away. It was adorable...everyone nearby swooned.  A few minutes later, we made our way back towards the baby and before I could swoop down and pick her up, she had grabbed a toy attached to the baby's carrier. The baby's mom didn't take this well and I apologized and removed the now screaming toddler from the situation. 

Not a huge deal, right? The mom reacted strongly to a curious toddler when the baby was in no danger and the toddler was promptly corrected and removed. But after saying goodbye to my brother and sister-in-law, giving my niece a million kisses, and watching them drive away, I spent about 30 minutes walking around the mall trying to calm myself from a panic that had been stirred up. 

That same panic came back to me later that evening when my (calm, gentle, "everyone is my best friend") dog tried to jump on someone on a walk. I've walked this pup every day for 3 years and this has never happened. Again, I apologized to the man and he was very understanding. I went home and stress ate about a week's worth of Goldfish crackers and drowned my sorrows in Real Housewives. The dog and the man were both no worse for the wear. 

So why the panic? For me, it was disappointment in myself. In both situations, I was charged with overseeing someone who didn't always have the knowledge to succeed.  They each behaved inappropriately and I placed no blame on either of them. Instead, I was beating myself up for not anticipating where they might not meet expectations and setting them up for success. If I'd only shortened her leash more or walked a little further off the sidewalk, she wouldn't have had the opportunity to jump on him. And if I'd just anticipated that a mom would be super-protective of her baby and a toddler might grab the nearest toy she saw, I wouldn't have been carrying a screaming toddler out of a store or getting death stares from a woman I'd never met.  It was on me. I was the facilitator for people who were trusting me in this situation. I placed the blame on myself.

Summer is always a time of reflection and re-focusing for me both personally and professionally. The longer I teach, the more I am learning to embrace the "messiness" of it all and it's reshaping the way I approach my pedagogy and my kiddos.  In certain circles of teachers (especially ones that are burned out and tired of change), you start hearing blame getting put on a lot of things. Kids these days, parents, technology, economic circumstances, apathy, etc. I understand where it comes from- so many expectations are placed upon teachers today and conveying content through all the "noise" can be an overwhelming challenge. But that's literally my job- to cut through the noise and give those kids the best opportunity to succeed. 

As I'd been thinking of some of my goals for the upcoming school year, having time to reflect on my Saturday stress-fest provided me with some clarity. On Saturday, the only thing I could control was my own choices to anticipate where someone who depended on me might falter and try to make the best choices to facilitate their success. My classroom is no different. As a more experienced teacher, I have the time and the knowledge to anticipate these struggles more than I ever have before. 

So that's my big idea. More posts coming this #MTBoSBlaugust on how.