Teaching in December

The past couple weeks have been an adventure in my classroom. I'm never really certain how my students will act or when things will go right or wrong. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this past week, for instance, were horrible in fourth block (think everything from chatting all class to skipping for most of the block to fighting in the middle of the classroom) but wonderful in first block. Thursday we were let out 45 minutes early due to an approaching snow storm. I thought that fourth block would be out of control, since the announcement about the early release was made at the very beginning of the block. Instead, my students were quiet, took notes, asked good, thought-provoking questions when appropriate, and quietly completed their classwork. In the meantime, first block was out of control due to the possibility of getting out of school early, or... dare I mention it?... a snow day the following day. (Which, of course, didn't happen.)

At the beginning of this weekend I was upset by how unfocused the majority of my students have been. But as I continue to reflect upon my week and my students, I'm reminded that, despite how old they all look, they are, in fact, still children. Few are even old enough to drive. How can I expect children to be focused when a 2 week vacation is only moments away? So I've decided to simply "go with it." My goal for this week is to take each day one moment at a time, and to enjoy the momentum of teenagers as they prepare for the second-best time all school year: Winter Vacation.

Snow Day

We had our first snow day of the season today. It couldn't have come at a better time. I was definitely concerned about having everything ready that I'd promised to my students for Monday. I had time today to grade and enter a lot of the stuff I'd been putting off. There's still a lot to do tomorrow morning before school, but I feel more prepared than I did.

Comparisons

A high school freshman friend of mine from a nearby school district was in his very first high school drama production tonight. He, along with the rest of the cast, did an incredible job with very difficult material (Shakespeare). I was thoroughly entertained. However, before the play began I couldn't help but compare the students at my friend's school to the students at my school. What I noticed was the stark contrast between how old the students look. The students at my friend's school look like high school students. The students at my school, however, look more like adults to me. (This is part of the reason I get so frustrated when they don't act like adults.) I wonder if this difference comes from the socio-economic backgrounds of the students (semi-urban vs. suburban), or if it just has to do with the population of students attending and performing in the show. (From my experience, drama kids tend to be a little less mature than the general population... I can say this because I was a drama kid.) I suppose I'll have my answer when I attend the play at my own school.

Feeling Prepared... sort of

For a couple weeks I've been feeling sub-par about the lessons I've been creating. I feel as though every day is a little bit rushed, and as though I'm making it up as I go. That's not how I usually am. I like being overly prepared. So today I made a big effort to be completely prepared for tomorrow (including writing down all the important, thought-provoking questions I need to ask). As a result, I feel more relaxed tonight. I'm able to enjoy my night because I know that I don't need to worry about tomorrow.

It is nice to know, however, that I'm able to sort-of "wing it" when I need to. Not that I ever actually teach on-the-fly. I always have an agenda in mind. But not knowing all the details of how I would present information was nerve-wracking at first. It's becoming less and less of a big deal.

At the same time that I'm beginning to feel more prepared on a daily basis, I know there are a million little things that I have yet to do. It's taking so much effort keeping up with the daily stuff, that I can't seem to make time to do the once-a-semester tasks I need to get done. Part of this is due to the busy weekends I've been having. Today I got to walk through my city for the first time in weeks. I realized how much I missed doing that. I think I need a weekend at home, just catching up on work and being in my city.

Getting Sick

I'm getting sick. Complete with a runny nose and a cough. But with only 4 school days left until Thanksgiving break, I want to make sure I get to a good stopping point for each of my classes. That means a big push to finish up quadrilaterals by Friday, then review on Monday and test on Tuesday. I think it's possible. But it means my students and I need to buckle down and get some real work done. Since we'll no longer be spending 20 minutes each class on the midterm project, I think we'll be able to do it.

The point is that I feel like I can't take a sick day. It's just not a good time to get sick, so I'm deciding I won't. It's all mind over matter anyway, right?

On an unrelated topic, I needed to hit up staples tonight, and I forgot. Oops. Guess that's a project for prep block tomorrow... Which means I need to go in early again... ugh.

Camera Phones

Today's lesson using the camera phones went REALLY well!!! The kids were so excited to use their cell phones, and they were reasonably good about getting back on time. (Not great... Most were a couple minutes late. But reasonably good.) I set up a new email address through gmail and had them text me their pictures. They look great. My favorites are here.

Did you know that the bottom of an exit sign is a hollow triangular prism? That's how my students got the first shape here. Then there's the rhombus, which I never thought they'd get. And I love the kite that they found on the floor. I also like the picture of the triangles and rectangles together, just because it's kinda cool.

Really Cool Lesson Plan Idea

I've got such a cool lesson plan idea. I want my kids to go around the school and find examples of the special quadrilaterals we've been talking about and take pictures of them with their camera phones, and then send the pictures to me. The question is, will administration go for it? After all, if I even see a cell phone I'm supposed to send the student with said phone to the office to give it up. Also, it's not necessarily good practice to have my students just randomly roaming the halls (even if they do this during their bathroom breaks anyway).

So, I guess the next step is to email or just talk with my headmaster to see (1) if it's ok to do, and (2) what steps I need to take so that my students don't get in trouble during their search. I'll let you know how my conversation goes.

Shakespeare on Classroom Management

A little fire is quickly trodden out;
Which, being suffered, rivers can not quench.
-William Shakespeare
King Henry VI

See? Even Shakespeare understands that classroom management has to do with staying on top of the little things. A couple of my girls decided to create a water gun out of a Dasani bottle today. What a great way to end the day. (In case you're mis-reading the previous sentence, read it again with twice as much sarcasm.) I suppose I should have had my eyes open for something like that... But then again, why? Why should I have to be prepared to deal with a situation like that? I mean, shouldn't these kids know better than this?

Yeah, yeah... they're kids and they're learning to know better. But by the time I was 15 or 16 I know that I wouldn't have pulled a stunt like that in the classroom. (Ok... re-reading that sentence, I feel a couple decades older.)

I've instituted a policy that my students can no longer stand by the door before they leave because too many of them (read greater-than-or-equal-to 1 of them) leave early and disrupt other classes in the hall. This policy has worked well, though they're beginning to come closer to the door each day. I need to remind them that they should be at their seats until the bell rings. So, I'm slowly (very slowly) getting this classroom-management thing down.

One of the "best practices" of teaching involves the phrase, "Don't smile before Christmas." For those of you who aren't up on your teacher lingo, this translates to "Be strict at first because it's always easier to lighten up than it is to gain back some control." This is a ridiculous thing to tell first-year teachers. They don't (or at least, I didn't) have any way of knowing how strict is too strict/ not strict enough. I was a "good kid" in high school. I didn't get into trouble. I never had a teacher have to call home. I never even got detention. So, I don't completely understand what to do or say to kids who aren't like that. My experience gives me no precedence to follow.

What I have learned is exactly what Shakespeare is talking about: if you catch problems early, they can be "quickly trodden out." I've also learned that by cutting the learning into smaller and smaller pieces, students are less likely to become frustrated or bored. So they do their work and cause minimal problems.

Grading

The picture on the right is the stack of work I need to grade this weekend. Ugh... Never again will I leave grading until the last minute.

Stacking Squares... Again.

Today I gave my honors students the stacking squares activity I'd already used with my middle-level students. As I'd hoped, they did very well. I did my best to not give much (if any) information about how to solve the problem. And I'm noticing that they're using many different strategies to solve. We've only spent about 20 minutes on it so far. Tomorrow will be the real test.

Frustration

I'm just getting frustrated now. I feel as though my fourth block is just walking all over me. As though I have "WELCOME" stamped on my forehead. I'm getting tired of talking about it or thinking about it, but I can't stop.

So I talked with the professional development guru at my school. She's been very helpful, and I've got a couple ideas. Tomorrow I'll be starting a "Cool Down" in my class (to offset the "Warm Up" I do each day) where students self-evaluate. I'll let you know how it goes.

Moments That Make Me Smile

"Ms. Kimball, take a look at this," said one student, taking out his wallet. He showed me his license, just earned yesterday. I shook his hand and looked out the window with him at his truck that he drove to school for the first time today.

Constructions Project

Rather than give my students a test on geometric constructions, I chose to have them complete a poster project. They were required to think of a theme and find ways to incorporate the 10 - 12 constructions we've studied into the theme. The ideas is that students are looking for geometry in the world around them while they learn and perfect their constructions.

The projects were due today, and they spanned the entire range, from awful to amazing. (I'll show pictures when I get them.) So during class today I had my students grade each other's work. This is partly intended to give them practice following a rubric. But mostly it's to allow students time to appreciate each other's hard work.

Favorite student quote of the day: "I'm sick of grading." ~Honors Geometry Student after 90 minutes of peer assessment. ("Just imagine how I feel every day," was my response.)

A Safe Learning Environment

Yesterday was the type of day that makes you want to drown your sorrows at the local pub. In fact, the first thing I did when I got home was call a friend to meet out so I wouldn't be alone with my thoughts. Even today I can't stop thinking about everything from yesterday and worrying about Monday.

(Have I sufficiently built up my story yet?)

I don't understand how my students can sit in class and listen to me talk about the Pythagorean Theorem or squares and square roots of numbers when they have so much going on in the background. Yesterday I learned about the many troubles of several of my students. Without going into too many details, let me just say that the information I learned has made me re-evaluate what I want my classroom climate to be. I've always wanted a safe environment in which my students can learn, but prior to learning about the details of my students lives, I thought that meant that everyone should feel safe to ask questions and suggest answers without the possibility of being made fun of, etc. Now I'm thinking that a safe environment needs to begin with students understanding that they won't be physically or verbally attacked in my classroom.

One of the situations I "handled" yesterday was a screaming match between two of my female students. I didn't know the cause of the screaming, but my objective was to make the screaming stop, so I sent girl #1 out into the hall and kept girl #2 in the room. Talking with girl #1 we decided that she needed to go talk with guidance. Worried that girl #2 would run into girl #1 in the hall or the office, I decided to keep girl #2 in the room for the remainder of the class. I think this may have been the wrong choice. If I had it to do over again I would have sent for an administrator to come get girl #2 from class and escort her out.

I learned the cause of the fight later on, and it breaks my heart. How can students concentrate in class and see the point of learning anything in school when they're being attacked from all sides?

I'm worried about Monday. My goal is to use this incident to change my classroom for the better. Though I'm not entirely sure how. Maybe I'll begin class by having a discussion about what it means to be in a safe learning environment, and what actions I will take if I see or hear any thing that I perceive as creating an unsafe environment.

Investigations, Part II

Time for an update.

The Stacking Squares investigation I mentioned in a previous entry went very well while they were making the posters. Students got a good feel for the concept of a square root and where it comes from. The project really helped them understand how to simplify radical expressions.

As I predicted, my students definitely balked at trying a problem where they needed to be creative about their mathematics. I could see that my students were becoming less engaged the more frustrated they became. Because of this, I definitely gave them too much information while they were trying to solve the problem. I think I'll need to give less information when I do this activity with my honors students... Well, I hope I'll need to give less information.

I tried to create a worksheet for students to fill out as they looked at every one's poster today. The first couple questions that had to do with the posters were useful. But students became less engaged when they had to think through questions that had less to do with the posters they were looking at.

I also had a difficult time closing out the project. In general, I think this is something I'm bad at. I'm not good at concluding things. Maybe this should be one of my professional development goals for this year.

As a whole, I think I'll use this lesson again. I just need to make a couple adjustments to the questions I pose and help I give, and to the closing.

Mathematical Lens

How cool is this?

Imagine using an image like this to introduce mathematics in the classroom.

The NCTM journal Mathematics Teacher includes a monthly segment called Mathematical Lens. It gives interesting photos that can be used to investigate mathematics and link mathematics to the world around us.

The picture here is an image of stairs leading to a shrine for the Buddha in Angkor Wat, Cambodia. It was taken by Ron Lancaster (an editor of Mathematics Teacher), and it's a fabulous example of where extreme slope can be seen in the real world.

Investigations

If I had my way I would run every class as an investigation for the students. Students would be given a task or a topic to explore, and would need to complete this in the time given. In fact, I often use this teaching method, and it works very well with my honors students.

Too often, however, I've found that when I give my middle-level students an investigation, they don't understand either what the task is, or how it relates to the practice problems we work through afterward. I'm beginning to wonder if that's because I give too much structure to my investigations, leading my students through a series of steps in order to "discover" the solution.

Tomorrow I'm planning to try a very unstructured activity with my middle-level students. By unstructured, of course, I simply mean that they will be given little instruction as to the manner in which they should/can complete the task. I found the lesson (Stacking Squares) through the NCTM website, which has been a valuable resource for me throughout this and previous years.

I expect I'll hear a lot of whining about not understanding what to do or how to do it. But with a little luck I think they'll get through it. I'll report back on how it went.

Symbols and Vocab

I don't think my middle-level students really understand what the geometry markings mean. Last week I marked the legs of an isosceles triangle with tic marks to show that they were equal, and my students didn't understand what the tic marks meant. (Actually, they thought they meant the lines were parallel... "How can sides of a triangle be parallel??" I asked... At least they've learned not to trust their eyes with the figures we use.) In the future I'll need to spend more time being very explicit about what the different markings mean. If I stop writing the words out on handouts or on the board and just use the symbols, that should force them to create meaning for the symbols as well.

I think another part of the problem is that I haven't been going through the book in order. I've been organizing sections into my own units. My reasoning for this has been that chapters 1 and 2 have so much vocabulary. Students learn all the basic vocabulary for points, lines, planes, triangles, quadrilaterals, other polygons, circles, and angles. (And I'm sure there's more that I'm missing.) What's nice about spreading out the first two chapters, then, is that students don't have to learn so much vocabulary all at once. Additionally, I'm not forced to teach them about the parts of shapes twice. What a time saver, right?

The problem with spreading out this information is that the vocabulary and markings from future units are sometimes used within the current unit. For example, there are interesting questions about isosceles triangles that use the radii of circles. But since we haven't gotten to circles yet, I can't expect my students to understand how to solve these problems.

Maybe next semester I'll try going in order in the book and see which way works out better. I just need to come up with a way to introduce all that vocabulary without lecturing all class...

Good Choices

A couple years ago I found myself in a dilemma. Having recently realized that I could no longer continue in my Ph.D. program I was forced to decide between several different paths. After a lot of discussion with a councilor, my very supportive ex-boyfriend, and my mother, I decided to work toward my teaching certification rather than continue in another doctorate program.

Two years later, here I am; part-way into my first teaching job. And after this (admittedly short) period of time, I've concluded that I made the right decision. Maybe it was just a really good day. Or maybe it was the breakthroughs I made this week with my block 4 class. But I truly feel that teaching high school mathematics is the right choice for me right now.

So I want to say thank you to everyone that helped me get to this point (even when I didn't realize this was where I wanted to be).

Thank you, Mom & Dad, Evan, Melissa, Jon, Megan, Sue, William, Liza, Heidi, Karen, and everyone else I'm missing right now.

Fortunate Discovery

I got angry at my block 4 class on Monday. Very, very angry. I was so angry, in fact, that I decided I wasn't going to teach them on Tuesday. They were going to have to teach themselves. So I created investigations and worksheets, and (surprise surprise) the class was fabulous. The students had a great time working through the problems.

I think part of the success of the class was the threat (or was it a promise) I made that if they didn't finish either of the worksheets, they would get a zero for the day. The other promise was the three-strikes rule (three times asking them to get back on track, and they would be spending their Thursday afternoon in detention with me).

The students worked hard. I was excited to see that. The investigations almost worked. The students didn't seem to understand how to relate the investigations to the worksheet problems. Even so, by the end, everyone had some idea how to do most of the problems.

Wednesday we went over the basics of the concepts for Tuesday, and the details of some of the trickier problems, before I set them loose on another investigation. This whole investigation-short discussion-example problems routine seems to work well with them. They love working together, and they actually work. (My fear prior to today was that they wouldn't work, but only socialize during group-work time.) Before class on Wednesday I had students coming up to me to tell me how much they liked Tuesday's class, and how every day should be like that.

So I suppose this is my new plan: to have some sort of investigation in order to teach the concepts they need, then to quickly discuss the concept and a couple example problems before letting them loose to work on their own problems. As I write this, I'm remembering that this was my style of teaching all last year during my internship. I wonder why I ever stopped. Why did I think lecture was a better way to get the material across? Maybe it's because these students look so much older than my freshmen last year. I need to remember that I'm teaching children, not adults.

Post-Test Questionnaire

It seems a little ridiculous when I'm writing about it, but there are so many times when I'm teaching that I assume my students already know the material. Maybe it's because I already know it. Or maybe it's that they have seen information like this in previous grades. But I'm always afraid I'm teaching them something they already know.

What happens then is I begin to think, "We should move quickly through the material so that I don't bore them." So I begin going faster, working through fewer examples, and going over less of the simple problems.

Of course, my students don't know the material. So my faster pace is too much for them, and since I'm doing fewer examples they have less idea about how to use the information given to them. They become confused and frustrated and begin to ignore me, and that's when my discipline problems pop up.

I think that was the biggest problem with my block 4. How do I know? Because after their test yesterday I had them fill out a questionnaire telling me how I could improve as a teacher. I was surprised that the students were as nice as they were. (I had been preparing to read about how horrible I am.) But it turns out that all they really wanted me to do is slow down, explain things more thoroughly, and do more examples. It was nice to read.

I think they appreciated being a part of my learning process as well. Today we had a pretty good class - in part because I didn't assume they knew anything. (I gave them a pre-assessment for the triangles unit along with the questionnaire.) It made me feel good to know that I was actually reaching their needs.

The other piece on the questionnaire was about their participation in the class. They answered honestly (mostly-I think-because they didn't have to put their names on the paper), and came up with good ways of solving their participation problems. Perhaps that reflective piece is what made today so much better than usual.

MathPad

I went to a lecture at my alma mater tonight called "When the pen is mightier than the keyboard" given by Andries van Dam of Brown University. What an incredible talk! The main idea was that the interface between a person and a computer (generally a mouse and a keyboard) hasn't changed in over 40 years, but that we should be investigating ways to make the computer more "natural" to use. This is a very popular idea right now. The iPhone, even with its unpopular, single-service capability, is a very hot item right now, and is probably the most wide-spread example of good implementation of a computer that's "natural" to use.

I've heard this rant many times, though, from many different people. (You know who you are.) And, while it's definitely both valid and interesting, it was not the most important part of the night for me.

Van Dam spoke about using computers more effectively in the classroom with the use of a program he and his colleagues at Brown are working on, called MathPad. He demonstrated (in real time, even) the incredible capabilities of this program, which uses a stylus rather than a keyboard to enter information. (Thus making the program more natural to use; like you're actually writing math on paper rather than typing it in as on a calculator or in mathematics modeling software like Maple.) The program recognizes your writing, translates it into mathematics, and solves problems or graphs equations or runs mathematical models with a quick strike of the pen. It was very cool. (When's the last time you heard an entire auditorium ooh and gasp for the creation of a graph?)

This lecture made me very excited about technology in education. I really believe that by using technology, teachers are able to truly reach most students of the current high school population. Their entire lives they are inundated by technology, after all. It's how they communicate and how they relax. Why shouldn't it be incorporated into how they learn?

Despite these strong opinions, however, I have yet to include so much as training in using calculators into my classroom. I'm beginning to feel like a hypocrite. So I'm making it my mission to try to incorporate some form of technology into my lessons at least once each week.

... These resolutions are beginning to stack up.

Professional Development Meeting

I had a professional development meeting today with other new-to-district teachers. It was very low-key; something I was thankful for. And I left feeling as though I was in a similar place with my students as the other new teachers were. Even those teachers who were new-to-district but not new-to-teaching were having their own difficulties. It was nice to be reminded that just because I don't have perfect classes each day, that doesn't mean I'm not doing an O.K. job.

I had a great day with my fourth block class today, which is a strange occurrence. Aside from the moment when half the class was called down to the gym for an announcement, I felt as though I was actually getting through to them. Everyone seemed to understand the material. They seemed to be interested. Perhaps this is due to the nature of this new material. Perhaps it's the full moon tomorrow. But I was very excited when I left that class.

The leader of our professional development, D, left me thinking about the idea of perfect teachable moments: those moments in time when dispositions are perfectly aligned so as to be receptive to new knowledge. Today's class was one giant teachable moment.

Thinking back on it now, though, I feel as though I was more excited about today's material. I was definitely bouncing around at the front of the room. Not that that's out of place for me, but generally by fourth block I'm running low on energy. I think maybe I was so excited about the material that my students couldn't help but watch and listen.

I left my professional development meeting today thinking about an idea that I've heard many times before. "Whoever is working the hardest in a classroom is doing the most learning." It's always nice to be reminded of this, and I've always believed it to be true. But I think that I need to reassess my understanding of how to implement the idea. I generally have my students lead themselves through investigations in order to discover important postulates and conjectures. The same is true for block 4. But I've always assumed that once my students have gone through the investigation, there's no need for me to repeat what they've already learned. This is certainly not the case with block 4. While I don't want to be the "mathematical authority" in the room, I've realized that my students won't believe a concept is true without my say-so.

I need to investigate ways to lead my students into trusting their own discoveries in the classroom.

The Importance of Reflection

Ok, ok. So I had high hopes of coming home each day after work with my head full of new insights into the teaching profession. I would sit in front of my Inspiron 6000 and let my newfound knowledge loose to the world; enriching the lives of all who seek wisdom about the field of mathematics education.

Clearly, that has not happened. Finding time for just about anything other than planning for the next day has been difficult as of late. (See previous blog entry.) But my resolve, at least as far as reflecting often on this first year of teaching, has recently returned.

I am fortunate to work in a school system with a strong professional development program. One of the perks of this program is having a veteran teacher, D, whose current and sole responsibility is to help other teachers by giving them guidance or at least ideas. I've been having classroom-management issues with my fourth block class. And, after expressing my frustrations to D, she volunteered to observe the class.

While I didn't gain much from this observation in the way of suggestions for classroom management, what I did gain was an understanding of the need to step back and view the class as a whole. At one point during the observation, D called me over and asked whether my students were always vigorously engaged in their tasks the way that they were at that moment. Up until then I was thinking about the 4 or 5 off-task remarks I'd just heard. But her comment forced me to step back and look at the class as a whole. What I saw truly amazed me.

My students, almost all of them, were thoroughly engaged in their tasks. Some of the boys in the front of the room had even begun to argue about the mathematics! I was taken aback, to say the least. That moment forced me to remind myself of the importance of reflecting on both the good and the bad in my classroom each day. I've felt discouraged too many times after school when I've only thought about all that went wrong during the day. Thankfully, D's comments during her observation and in her email afterward reminded me of why I love to teach.

Furthermore, D's observation reminded me of the importance of reflecting on my daily teaching. When I truly sit down and think about each day and each lesson, I gain insight that I can always use to improve my teaching. So here comes another resolution...

I resolve to use this online journal at least twice each week to reflect on topics pertaining to my own teaching and to education in general.

Cutting Down the Over Time

As most teachers probably know, the first year of teaching is ridiculously time consuming. For a while I felt as though my entire life was spent planning, creating handouts or tests or quizzes, responding to parents' or other teachers' or administration's emails or phone calls, and photocopying like a madman. I would get to school at 6am and leave at 8pm. After a couple weeks of that even a work-a-holic like myself begins to feel as though they need to schedule time away.

Last week, however, events in my district forced me to arrive at school no earlier than 7am and leave no later than 3pm. While I still planned at home, I needed to use my planning period efficiently in order to prepare myself for the following day's lessons. (For those who know me, the ToDo lists were abundant.) To my surprise, I was able to accomplish most of my in-school work in time.

Now, don't be fooled into thinking that I was able to finish everything at school in my one prep block. I still planned and graded and recorded information and emailed from home, but there were no early-morning or late-afternoon copy sessions. It required a little more forethought on my part, but in the end I was less stressed out about the next day because I'd already planned for it. It's funny when extreme circumstances can force you to raise your expectations of yourself and perform better than you thought you could.

The best part? I was able to spend a small amount of time each evening on relaxing and doing the things I needed to do for myself. I found that, by doing this, I was better rested and happier when teaching classes.

Easy Vocab Review

While looking around for review day ideas I found the Discovery School's website, which has great resources for creating vocab and math puzzles. I created a crossword for my Tools of Geometry unit. It was very easy to use!

Definitions Galore

The problem with the beginning of Geometry is the sheer number of definitions. My students have started to groan when I say we have more definitions to talk about. There must be a better way to get these definitions down. I feel as though I spend so much time trying to get them to copy down notes that they have no time to actually try to work with the concepts. And that's the part with which I feel I would be most helpful. Perhaps students' homework time would be better spent by getting the definitions for the next day. Then they can work on solving problems in class.
Perhaps I'll try that approach for the next unit.

On a semi-related topic, I just received an email linking me to a page that piqued my interest in using technology to teach. This one was about wikis. The podcast, found here , talks about using a wiki to communicate and collaborate with students and parents. It's not a bad idea. I'm just not sure how to use it within mathematics. It would be interesting to try it, though. Apparently teachers can get free wikis at http://www.wikispaces.com. Even more of a reason to try.

Technology Seminar

I spent this morning in a “technology seminar” designed to teach teachers new to the school system the basics of the technology (read email system) we’ll need to use over the course of the year. I’m reasonably technology literate, so I wasn’t looking forward to it. But I have to say, it was a little worse than I expected. They reminded us how to use Microsoft Word. Personally, I would assume that anyone who was intelligent enough to get their teaching certificate could probably figure out Word, but perhaps I’m wrong.

There were two men “teaching” the seminar. One of them had been a teacher before and one of them hadn’t, and you could definitely tell. It was clear that the teacher believed we were intelligent, capable people. The other man watched over our every move, assuming that if we didn’t do exactly what he said exactly when he said it, we must not have understood or heard him. I kept imagining my own students from last year. I know that there were times when I jumped on their lack of immediate reaction to my directions and explanations. This is one more thing I’ll need to keep in mind for my classroom this year.

Meet Ms. Kimball

Like so many teachers, I’ve known I wanted to teach for most of my life. I’ve gotten somewhat distracted along the way, but it seems I’ve finally arrived in the place where I should be.

I’m beginning my first year as a high school mathematics teacher next week. For my first teaching position I’ve chosen a New Hampshire high school that, at first glance, seems to aim toward progressive. That was something I looked for during the interview process. But the more I learn about the school, the more traditional it seems to be. This probably isn’t all that bad of an idea for my first teaching position. But I find myself wondering about the other positions I was offered, in schools at which I’d be able to have a bigger influence. I suppose I’ll just have to wait to see how this first school year turns out.

In the academic spirit of recording and disseminating knowledge, this journal is meant to be a record of my first year of teaching. I welcome any insight from other educators, or even from those outside of academia.

Wish me luck!