'tis the season

Happy New Year everyone! May 2014 bring you joy, peace, and adventure!

Over the past week, I have had the opportunity to spend time with my family and I am overwhelmed by the life God has given me.  For someone who does very little to deserve so much, I truly am blessed. 

     I started my Christmas break with a trip to pick up my younger sister in Dayton.  We stopped off to see our aunt and uncle, and then had a lovely trip up north, to our parents’ house.  The car ride was anything but relaxing… driving through a deluge and taking the wrong turn twice… but the conversation was just grand.  In a world of confusion and chaos, it’s easy to get lost in my own problems and forget about the important things.  Anyone who has met my sister can tell you, she has an inexhaustibly positive outlook on life, and she’s always reminding me of what’s important.   Our conversation was refreshing and a great way to start off my break from school.

     There have been so many wonderful moments throughout the last few weeks and it has been so good for my soul.  Whether I’ve been cuddled up on a chair, watching Love Actually, or sipping hot tea while reading by the glow of our Christmas tree lights, I’ve felt at peace for most of this break.  For some reason, this Christmas, more than those of the past, has reminded me of how close God is and that He is the reason for peace in my heart.  Everything seems to revolve around His name: Emmanuel.  He truly is with us.

~born to be our friend~

     Christmas Eve was one of those moments I could feel the peace and joy of the season.  We were standing in church, holding candles and singing Silent Night.  For just a few seconds, everything seemed suspended and I felt an overwhelming sense of joy.  Tim was gently holding my hand, and I could hear Gram, singing in a soft soprano voice.  My nephew was to my left, carefully watching his candle flicker, while my year-old niece was looking up at the lights onstage, her eyes wide with wonder.  There we were, four generations of family, sharing a precious moment of anticipation.  We were waiting for our King.

<<The world in solemn stillness lay>>

     When we were little, our Christmas morning always started the same.  Before we opened presents, we had a beautiful little tradition that started with our baby Jesus nativity figurine (which we never had out before Christmas day) and Mom and Dad’s ring pillow from their wedding day.  We would put the little baby Jesus on the white, satin pillow and then the five of us would walk to the nativity scene, singing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  Something so small could easily be lost in the hustle and bustle of the excitement of Christmas day, but even now, that small reminder of why we’re celebrating stays with me.  My parents had us thinking of Jesus first on Christmas, and I know that the tradition will continue with my kids one day. 

…born a child, and yet a King…

     A new tradition my parents have started is inviting us to a rented house/cabin and spending two nights after Christmas… just our immediate family.  This is quite a change from the boisterous Weibl-family gatherings we use to have.  At first, I resisted the change; our yearly Christmas-day party was something I loved about Christmas and I was reluctant to change the tradition.  Now, after the second year has come and gone, I have to say I’m grateful for the change.  There are so few moments when the five of us siblings can get together for an uninterrupted time and this has become a wonderful chance to be with my best friends.  For 23 years of my life, I was surrounded by the noise, humor and exuberance of my family… and when we are together, the world seems crazy, loud and wonderful once again.  Most people might cringe at the thought of three days with family and no hope of escape, but for me, it’s a fantastic time.  There are always little bumps and no one knows how to push your buttons like your own family, but those rough moments are totally worth it for the chance to be with my siblings, who have grown up to be people I genuinely like.

**LOVE and JOY come to you**

So with this remarkable year coming to a close, celebrate the past and look forward to the future.  And as you make those new-years resolutions, focus on Him and the wondrous life He has given you… because isn’t that what it’s all about? Bettering ourselves for His glory and praise.

And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year!

-Kate

Reflection

At the beginning of this course, I described my personal theory of learning as one of relaxed, differentiated qualities. Now, at the end of our 8-week journey, I find myself editing this initial idea of how best my students will learn.  I had a lot of great ideas, but most of it was generalized and unintentional.  I use many different instructional strategies in my classroom, but after researching the differences between those and learning strategies, I realize there is so much more I can be doing to differentiate in my classroom.  I have learned of so many different ways to incorporate technology and use it to enhance the learning process for my students.  Not only have I been given great ideas, but I’ve learned about the theories that back up each one of the strategies I should be using.

In the immediate future, I see myself inserting more technology into my lessons.  Even if my goal is to use a new technology once a month, it’ll be more than I was doing before.  The one instructional tool I really want to start using regularly is the concept of a ‘flipped classroom’.  The more I read about, the more I want to implement it in my Calculus class. So often, my students struggle with their homework and they end up coming in to school for study tables because they got stuck on number 2 and were unable to finish the homework.  I’ve already started creating lesson plans for the Calc II curriculum so I can try out this technique.  As for the day-to-day lessons, I plan on adjusting some of the little things I do in my classroom. I am going to focus on dual-coding and have my students use visual AND audio learning strategies to secure concepts in their memories.  For example, just by having students explain their answers to a fellow classmate, the material they are working with will just solidify in their minds as they explain how they worked to get the answers.

One of the technology tools we worked with in this class was concept maps.  I would really like to use this tool with my students to reinforce the dual-coding theories I already referred to.  I also would like to use Prezi or another form of presenting (such as PowerPoint) to get my students aware of how they can display the information they acquire.  There are so many options out there and I now feel like I have a solid base of tools and techniques I can pull from in order to enhance my lessons.

My first long-term goal for my instructional practice is the use of more ‘learning strategies/techniques’ rather than just instructional strategies.  I want my students to become more hands-on with their learning and definitely move in the direction of teaching their peers rather than always listening to me teach.  I want my students to use their knowledge to teach other students and maintain a very student-based atmosphere in my classroom.  The second goal I have is, as I said before, to integrate more technology into my lessons, little by little.  I have a long way to go, but I accept the challenge and look forward to putting my new knowledge to good use.

VoiceThread

          Just to get a few things out of the way… here’s a big apology for my voicethread.  I am definitely still pretty shaky on creating them, and I felt very limited on what I could do with the program.  Simple edits and cuts all need to be made before creating the voicethread and that became problematic.  After I created this one for our class, I spent more time creating a second (with calculus problems) and it seemed a little easier.  Perhaps over time I will grow use to the setup and find ways to incorporate threads into my lessons. Click for my voicethread: HERE!

Now… on to the blog topic!

            We research a few instructional strategies this week which correlated with our study of social learning theories.  Of these strategies, the first was social constructivism which Dr. Orey (2010) states is “based on specific assumptions about reality, knowledge, and learning” (p. 56). This strategy (if not already evident by it’s name) is very centered around social learning.  Constructivists think learning happens through social means when people work together to create their own knowledge.  Everything about it lines right up with the social learning theories. 

            Cooperative learning was another one of the strategies we read about this week.  This one is often used in my room and is definitely the key to helping students understand.  Students can work together to solve problems and lead each other through barriers.  This works best when groups are small and I like to keep my groups as low as two or three when they are working together on problems. 

            These strategies all correlate to social learning theories in the fact that students learn best when working with and presenting to their peers.  By teaching a lesson to someone else, a student can grasp so much more than they could just learning individually by way of lecture.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program eight: Constructionist and constructivist learning theories [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology.

Orey, M. (2010). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

working in the "Real-World"

            One of the toughest things about being a math teacher is finding activities (such as virtual field trips and webquests) to facilitate the curriculum we need to cover.  History and English both have so many avenues for discovery in the writing world and through field trips; it’s difficult to find a place for math classes to go.  On the flip side of that, math teachers are really lucky when it comes to problem-based and project-based instruction.  Nothing feels better than giving a students a problem with real-world applications… because so often they’ve already made up their minds about the usefulness of math! 

            After reading through our resources for class this week, I found several ideas through a few amazing websites.  The first was Webquest Design Patterns (courtesy of our professor: Kathryn Arnold) and another was the virtual filing cabinet of Sam Shaw, a teacher from New York.  These websites have great ideas for project/problem-based instruction and I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through hundreds of great ideas.  Using the constructionist views Dr. Orey (2011) talked about, it makes sense that students will understand and focus more when they are creating and building their own problems.  People learn more when they are involved in some kind of building process with a concept.  A real-world task not only gets our students building solutions, but they also find the information to be more important when it is attached to something concrete in our world.  Finding the volume of a rectangular prism is one thing, but creating a swimming pool with maximum volume while on a budget, is something students will connect meaning to.

            In Pitler, Hubbell, and Kuhn’s (2012) book, they talk about different techniques for testing hypotheses and technological tools to enhance these experiences. Spreadsheet software can help students gather and analyze data much quicker in real-world situations.  In the end, these spreadsheets help the students learn the content by letting them predict and analyze the outcomes of different problems. Technology can really boast our lessons by providing incentive for our students to collect and analyze data, hypothesize and prove trends through problem-based instruction. 

-Kate

"An expert problem solver must be endowed with two incompatible quantities: a restless imagination and a patient pertinacity."

~Howard W. Even 

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program seven: Constructionist and constructivist learning theories [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

cues and questions and summaries... oh my!

Well folks, here we are again! And of course, you can’t read my blog without submitting your opinion in my survey (over on the left side).  I kept the results to my last poll posted- so if you voted last week, check it out! 

      Just as a recap (in case you’re not one of my fellow 6711 classmates), we’re reading through a few chapters in Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works (here’s a PDF version) and discussing the relationships between these instructional strategies and cognitive learning theories. 

       In the first section, Pitler, Hubbell and Kuhn discuss cues, questions, and advanced organizers; these strategies focus on “enhancing students’ ability to retrieve, use, and organize information about a topic” (p. 73).   When seeing these strategies, it’s easy to come up with example for each strategy, but the trick is to create questions and cues that encourage higher-order thinking.  For example, if you were to use brainstorming software and ask students to create a concept map of different types of triangles, every kid will only have three or four pieces.  But if you ask those same students to create a concept map of everything they know about triangles, there will be many more connections and it would look something like this:

http://sheilamorr.weebly.com/triangle-unit.html

     Summarizing and note taking were the strategies from the second chapter our class reviewed. These strategies are significant because students have to understand that the content they are reviewing is important.   Dr. Orey talks about how every piece of information is linked to another and that is how students retain concepts in their brains.  Other senses can help enhance memory (dual-coding), such as smell or sight.  We should use different visual presentations to help students enhance their long-term memory. Students store information in their long-term memory when they deem it of some importance, and when they see the information presented in a multitude of ways, it helps create links from one application to another.  As Novak puts it, “in rote learning, there is little or no integration of new knowledge with existing knowledge” (p. 6); without these connections, students will easily forget the concepts they learn.   For a fun example of how it feels when your instructional technique is NOT working… CLICK HERE!

     By using multiple forms of note-taking, instructing with higher-level questioning and cues, and continually having students summarizing what they are learning, I can ensure that they are learning the information I present.  And on the other hand, by switching up our instructional strategies, we’re helping ourselves too!  Nothing is worse than falling so deep into a regimented pattern that you don’t realize you’ve become one of “those” teachers.

-Kate

"The one real goal of education is to leave a person asking questions."

-Max Beerhohm

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program five: Cognitive learning theory [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology.  

Novak, J. D., & Cañas, A. J. (2008). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them, Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 01-2008

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Behaviorism

     Alright folks… weigh in with your opinions over on the left side of my blog.  The question: Is homework necessary for our students? Quick! Vote before you read my post! I don’t want to sway your mind in any way!

       Okay. Are you done voting? Great. How do I feel about it? Well, as a math teacher, I would shout it from the rooftops, YES! I really believe that homework is the best way for students to practice concepts they learn and commit those concepts to their memories.  Experience is the best way for the brain to learn, so when students are doing problems on their own, without the help of a teacher, they are having little experiences with each question and are slowly binding things to memory.  It’s no secret that doing something multiple times helps someone master a task.  This notion goes hand-in-hand with those ideas of behavior theorists like Skinner, Pavlov, Watson and Thorndike.  For those of you who don’t know the basic concepts of behaviorism, operant conditioning, and positive/negative reinforcement, you might wish to take about two minutes and watch a fun example… click HERE!! 

       Now, while I agree that homework is a great tool to use for practice, I don’t believe it should be the main focus of every class.  Behaviorism (if your still a little fuzzy on what ‘Behaviorism’ is all about, check out this great article by George Graham of Stanford) is one of several learning theories in education; the main argument is that learning can happen best through repetition, practice, and conditioning.  When students are practicing concepts, they are creating a sort of ‘muscle memory’ for the brain.  Practice makes perfect because the more someone practices, the less likely that person is to make the same mistake twice.  In math, most students learn by making mistakes.  Once that mistake is corrected, the student is much less likely to make the same one again. 

       Using feedback and recognition was the second part of the resource we were to link to behaviorist theories.  This one, to me, is a no-brainer.  Not only do students perform better when they are given recognition, but they also learn better.  Going back to the short video at the beginning of my post, by recognizing good behavior, Sheldon was able to reinforce Penny’s efforts to be respectful.  Now, of course we’ve all seen negative reinforcements, but it’s obvious that students will respond better to positive reinforcement. Having students brag up their talents on a website will push them to give more effort.  Here’s a great example of high school students collaborating with teachers for a math video and then setting it up on their YouTube channel. CLICK ME!

      Recognition and reinforcements bring a lot of students a long way, and as for homework and practice, we have to remember that there are other alternatives to homework that also stay consistent with the behaviorist theory; group work is a great way to get students collaborating while using practice to reinforce the information they are learning.  Homework should be used to help the students, not punish them… so if we as teachers keep that in mind, then the practice will be beneficial.  If we abuse this power of conditioning and practice, the benefits go right out the window. 

-Kate

“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”

-B. F. Skinner

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD.

looking back to move *forward*

            A few short weeks ago, I started a class, which has totally changed my perspective of incorporating technology into my lessons.  I learned how to set up and use a wiki, blog (obviously), podcast and other resources.  A few of these things, I already knew how to use, but I had no idea how to incorporate the use of them into my lessons and classroom.   Now, I have so many new ideas for using these different technology skills with my students.  I have wanted to get my class headed towards a more student-centered, project-based learning atmosphere and these skills have really pushed me further in that direction.

            Most of the research I did for this class helped me understand the advantages to using these technological skills with my students.  Technology is a second language to most of my kids and it only makes sense that they would learn much better with the assistance of this language.  At my school, students have more access to technology at home than at school.  To me, this is a little disheartening but I want to rise to that challenge.  What good is a room full of students with smart phones if they only use those phones to text/tweet/post while they’re suppose to be paying attention to lectures?  Instead, I want to focus my classroom in on the benefits of educating WITH these devices, rather than fighting against them. 

            This past weekend, I attended a math conference (OCTM annual conference in Dayton) and was bombarded with the same ideas, over and over again.  The focus of our classrooms needs to move beyond the teacher and more to the learners.  An amazing statistic from one of the presenters gave me a glimpse into the reasoning behind learner-centered teaching; visual and audio help us retain somewhere between 15-30% of what we learn, but teaching helps us retain around 95% of the information.  This is HUGE!! I need to make my students the teachers so they can learn the material inside and out.

         

            So what do we do about it? Well… that’s the question I keep asking myself.  Over the next few years, I am hoping to change up the entire structure of my Algebra II class.  My first goal is to incorporate a “flipped classroom” at least once or twice a chapter.  The process of a flipped classroom starts with students reading/watching some kind of lesson on their own, as ‘homework’, then coming in to class to work in groups on the actual homework of the chapter.  I think this will significantly help infuse my class with student dialog and a higher conceptual process.  My second goal is to focus on at least one project per unit, with both my Algebra II classes AND my Calculus class. 

            In a small, rural district, it can be difficult to find the resources I would like to use in my classroom, but that’s no excuse to avoid the resources I CAN have… especially if it keeps my students more engaged and better prepared for life after high school. 

Isn’t that what it’s all about?

-Kate

“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.”

-Rabindranath Tagore

Mission #1

My very first year of teaching, I remember walking into my classroom and imagining everything that I wanted my room to be.  I rearranged the desks, put up my posters, and covered my own desk in pictures of family and friends to make me smile…

Then the first day happened.

Finally, after everyone left and I was sitting in my room, it hit me! I spent all this time making the room my own, but I didn’t prepare to make the class my own.  So I changed it up!  Hundreds of things have altered since my first year and I like to believe I’ve gotten a little (a very little) bit wiser.  That being said, I have a few things that make my class special and uniquely mine.  Out of all of these, my favorite is…

 HUMOR!! 

My students figure it out the very first day they walk into my room.  I start with a serious face and roll call.  About halfway through, I say something completely ridiculous and make a joke.  Then comes my favorite part: the kids have no idea whether they should laugh or not and my face gives nothing away, so there’s this awkward, smiling silence that fills the room and I finally crack a smile.

After breaking the ice, I let them in on a little secret… I absolutely love math and I want to share that love!  Nothing is fun to learn when you’re sitting in a boring classroom with a sober teacher.  I also have found that kids are a lot more willing to talk to you about the important things when you joke around with them and keep the atmosphere laid-back. 


Math is such an awesome art and I have a strong passion for sharing all the amazingness!  These high school kids come in with a lot of negative things to say about math.  My goal is to get them to acknowledge the wonders of mathematics and hopefully enjoy the whole ride through Algebra II and Calculus!  

"One of the most amazing things about mathematics is the people who do math aren't usually interested in application, because mathematics itself is truly a beautiful art form.  It's structures and patterns, and that's what we love, and that's what we get off on."

Danica McKellar

A Student Questionnaire

This week, in my technology course, I needed to conduct a survey of my students and compile a bit of data regarding their technological strengths and weaknesses.  Click on the following link to listen to my podcast:    

Kate's Podcast

Enjoy!
-Kate

don’t humiliate... heal

Today I reminisced about my days in Algebra II. No, not teaching Algebra II, taking Algebra II.  As a math teacher, I think it’s funny to see the looks on my students’ faces when I tell them I hated Algebra II in high school.  I did!  Couldn’t stand to be in the class.  I use to get an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach, an overwhelming dread, at the end third period because I knew what was next… Advanced Algebra II.

It wasn’t the content that I dreaded- it was the atmosphere. The math wing had been my favorite place for class.  It was down a side hallway, so it was generally quite, and math was the subject that came easily to me.   Those happy feelings quickly changed when I started Algebra II.  My teacher was incredibly smart and he knew the material inside and out, however, he lacked the compassion to teach.  He easily became exasperated when we didn’t understand and it was clear that we never asked scholarly questions, only ridiculous ones.  The tone he used with the class was condescending, and almost every day I walked out of his room feeling like an idiot. 

~~~~~~~~

I have reasons for just about everything I do in my classroom:

My high school Calculus teacher is the reason we have 12 days of bonus questions right before Christmas break and a huge celebration on Pi Day.  My history teacher inspired me to use historical dates for bonus questions and collect money for a good cause.  I credit my dry humor and overly enthusiastic attitude about my subject to my choir professor in college. 

So many people have influenced my life!

Every moment in my classroom reflects my relationship with a teacher and the lifelong lessons he or she taught me.  On the negative side of relationships, my Algebra II teacher taught me the importance of flexibility and spontaneity.  By refusing to upset his scheduled lesson, or slowing down to reevaluate a concept, he taught me exactly what NOT to do. 

So today, when my Algebra II students came in to my class with blank homework assignments and the utter look of defeat, I improvised.

We scratched the review that was planned for the day, and I re-taught the lesson from yesterday.  We went around the room and everyone helped me finish a problem on the board.  By the end of class, my students were not necessarily jumping for joy, but they weren’t looking sad and crushed either.  I may not have passed on my enthusiasm for solving 3-variable equations, but I gave them a second chance to learn something they didn’t understand the first time. 

While my own Algebra II teacher didn’t offer second chances, I know that if I found myself sitting in class, with a blank homework assignment in front of me and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I would like to be given another chance… and maybe a reminder that a tough lesson is not the end of the world.

-Kate

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”

 ~Haim G. Ginott~

Living in the 21st Century

What are 21^st-century skills? This week for class, we had to explore the website for The Partnership for 21st Century Skills and give our own evaluation of the information presented.  This partnership is pushing to educate every student on the 21^st century skills we need in order to compete in a global economy.  For me, as a math teacher, I focused in on the framework and concept mapping for mathematics skills. If you feel like reading along- Click HERE!

The mathematic skills included were; creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration, information literacy, media literacy, information/communication/technology literacy, flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, and finally, leadership and responsibility. Most of these skills, I already teach in my classroom, but I was made aware of some concepts and skills that I need to practice more with my students.

The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21) has its own initiative here in Ohio and it looks to be a good thing.  The only issue I have with the initiative is the “21^st Century Assessments” section of the plan.  The fifth strategy (about assessment) talks about the international effort to modernize assessment.  I agree with the idea that assessment needs to become something new, and more modern.  Expecting every student to be assessed the same way is a complete contradiction to their individual learning styles.  Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing that the U.S. will make the right decision in regards to assessment.  Education has been on a downhill slope for quite a while and it seems that new standardized assessments are coming out every few years; the previous test eliminated because it set the bar too low for the students. 

The expectations of this program are not overwhelming or unrealistic and I think these skills are what students need to be focusing on anyway.  In math, there are so many more important things to learn than finding the square root of a number or factoring a polynomial.  Students need to learn to prioritize, and evaluate their work; they need to understand data and have the ability to reason and articulate their own thoughts.  The 21^st century is a fast-moving, technology-saturated place and students need to feel prepared for the real world before they leave high school.


Feel free to leave me your thoughts! If you're a teacher, definitely check out the website... it's worth the visit.

-Kate

*something about airplanes*

Planes.

Most people see a shiny jet, soaring through the sky and they start to think of things like clouds, or flying… I think of the destination.  I daydream about where those planes are flying to and the characters aboard.  Maybe there is a little boy, traveling all alone to go visit his grandparents in Oberndorf, Austria for a week.  Perhaps it is a businessman, flying to New Delhi with the intentions of spending less time working and more time sightseeing. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a college senior, traveling to Ireland to finish her student-teaching requirements abroad.

In October of 2009, that college student was me.  I took the biggest leap of my life when I stepped off that plane… my family, friends, teachers and even my country were suddenly thousands of miles away.  Within the first few hours, my luggage was lost, I took the wrong bus, missed my stop (after finding the correct bus), and ended up soaking wet before I even made it to my host family’s house.   Throughout the next several weeks, I had hundreds of mishaps, but within every mistake there was a spectacular experience.  My confidence increased ten-fold and I also learned to love the stillness of being alone.  I found the thrill of getting lost and relying on the kindness of strangers.  I spent an afternoon, sitting on the edge of a cliff, with a magnanimous view over the Atlantic; finally realizing how small I was in such a big world.

I got the chance to truly discover who I am.

My students haven’t had those chances.  I work with kids who never get the chance to travel outside of the county, let alone the country.  As high school students, they are constantly battered with ideas and images that are not their own.  They preach their parents’ opinions and race to conform to the social norms.  They speak with hate towards others, but have no defense when asked why.  They are offended by the thoughts of others, but can’t give a reason or rebuttal.

These are the students I most want to teach, and it has nothing to do with math.

I had a young man, let’s call him Joe, who made a very hateful comment about a certain group of people… let’s pretend it was about brunettes.  Joe said that he hated all brunettes.  As a person, I wanted to rip his statement apart and make him look absolutely foolish in front of the class, but as a teacher, I took it as a learning opportunity.  I calmly asked Joe why he had such resentment for brunettes. 

       The first words out of his mouth?

"I don’t know"

That’s what it all comes down to.  They don’t know!  And how could I expect them to know?  Joe only knows what he has learned up until this point.  He has never ventured out to discover his own thoughts or learn how big the world really is.  Right now, his world is the size of a pea; there is no space to grow, no adventure to be found… it’s just too small.  I want him to have a fighting chance at discovering the world and his own ideas and beliefs, but how do I do that?

I teach.

Even though these kids will probably never see another quadratic formula after high school, they will remember how to solve problems.  I will make sure of it.  I will teach them to laugh when they make a mistake, not cry.  I will teach them that the road to success is tough, but very worthwhile.  I will teach them to memorize, and visualize, and strategize.  I will teach them to accept challenges as they come instead of complaining about them.  I will teach them that there are more important things to life than school… and yes, even as a teacher, I strongly believe that.  A ‘B’ isn’t the end of the world and the ‘F’ doesn’t mean you get to stop trying.  I will teach them to have compassion, or at the very least, tolerance.  We are all sinners and everyone has done something they are not proud of.  Rise above it.

When I have a really tough day as a teacher, it’s usually has nothing to do with math.  Teaching math is easy.  Teaching life is impossibly difficult. 

-Kate

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”  

-Mark Twain

To blog or not to blog... is there really a question?

I teach high school mathematics- Algebra II and Calculus I & II to be specific.  By starting this blog with virtually no experience, it’s difficult for me to think of ways to use blogs in my classroom.  As a teacher, I am always looking for new ideas out in the blogging world, but I’ve never really thought about using blogs with my students.  That being said, I had a lot of fun brainstorming different ways to use blogs in a ‘perfect-world’ classroom (enough devices for everyone to access the internet, and no misuse of blogging).

In my calculus classes, I could set up an online blogging forum where students could discuss their struggles and their triumphs.  We could have a blog focused on a problem of the week and the first student/students to post the correct answer would be the ones to post (on their own blog) a new problem of the week.  Our annual roller coaster problem could happen entirely online and have the student use their blog as the posting site.  Then other students could access each roller coaster and vote/grade them completely online.

Algebra II could use a blog to create projects and share information with the class.  With younger students, I would want to create one blog for the class to use as a whole and acclimate them to that before I have them create individual blogs.  In that case, the blog could also be private and only allow students in the class to post on a blog topic and discuss.  I could post hints for homework questions and example tests/quizzes for the students to access before the actual test or quiz. 

          
In a perfect world, I could use a blogging site to really help incorporate technology into my lessons.  It’s sometimes tough to see other schools being showered with technology and iPads/computers for every student when I work in such a small, struggling district.  I’m looking into different grants to see if I can get a few extra things for my classroom.  The benefits are endless… now we just have to get there.

-K

The Beginning...

As usual, it's the eleventh hour and I'm finally sitting down to complete my homework for the first week of my new class.  The assignment: to create a blog.  Yes, it was that simple.  But here's the problem... I hate the thought of creating a blog as just a requirement for class.  Instead, I'm creating this blog for two purposes; #1- to (obviously) avoid failing this course on technology, and #2, (most importantly) to create a place where I can create, learn, occasionally vent, and more importantly, discuss (which is probably the goal of my class... but why get hung up on the details?).  So my goal is to continue with this blog, even when the class comes to an end. Maybe this will lead to a surge of educational posts, a way to channel my artistic thoughts, 'talk math' with other nerds, or even perhaps discuss my faith.  Regardless of what it becomes, I'm excited to start creating!

If you have any suggestions for me, being a blogging newbie, feel free to leave comments!

-K