Just because I am a mathematics teacher does not mean I dislike reading and writing. In fact, I remember as a young student, one of my dreams was to be an author and illustrator because escaping into stories opened up the universe in the palms of my hands and I wanted to be a part of that creation. As my education progressed, my writing developed from a fictional foundation to analytical in a variety of subjects:
My learning philosophy is rooted in Jean Piaget’s cognitivist theory, identifying and applying patterns and my experience has strengthened my ability to connect the abstract with vivid imagery as I build particular connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. Just the other day, a student was struggling with remembering how to square a binomial. She kept distributing the square to the terms rather than distributing the terms to each other. I tried showing her a numerical example, yet every time I checked in with her progress, she kept making the same mistake. This simple conversation changed everything.
Mrs. Lee: "You are in wrestling right? How many shoulders do you have to pin to win?" Student, smiling: "Two." Mrs. Lee: "Think of these squared binomials like shoulders, you have to pin both down to win the match, so write both of them to pin them down." That stuck. All I have to do now is walk by and say PIN THEM DOWN, she smiles and builds her confidence in her math abilities. I find myself making analogies, similes, and metaphors constantly to connect the abstract to the concrete for my students and the same is true for my writing. As I have strengthened my voice through my master's program, I am finding myself being bolder with my writing in the sense of sharing my story and journey through life and education with a balance between the creative components of writing and the analytical side. One of my assignments is writing with the intention to submit the work for publication. Some considerations for publications I have found include:
All of these publications have stated that the use of AI is discouraged but if it is used, it needs to be explicitly mentioned. Most require a short biography as well as evidence of other publications. The documents need to be in Word with APA references. Submissions are done via email or directly on the publication website. My writing can go in a variety of directions and with so many options, if rejected, I will adapt writing to meet other publication requirements and needs, but the Texas Council of Teachers of Mathematics Call for Voices from the Classroom fits nicely in my big picture. Thus, I began with an outline and started writing a rough draft about my journey in transforming my mathematics classroom from the past to the future with the practices of Building Thinking Classrooms to build 21st century skills. My Community in Collaboration is diverse, as we serve in a wide range of roles in education, so encouraging each other and providing valuable feedback/feedforward meant establishing a rubric that could easily apply to our various topics and writing approaches. When creating rubrics for students, I have used RubiStar but after exploring ChatGPT, I used AI to generate a rubric for a publication in education. With some adjustments and review from my group, we agreed upon the categories and their breakdown into components and points. These included overall content, organization and structure, writing style and clarity, evidence and support, critical thinking and reflection, and conclusion and implications Not only did we provide comments in each other's rough drafts with all sorts of fixes, adjustments, and considerations, we filled in our rubrics with points and overall feedback/feedforward. Part of the requirements for publication submission is not publishing your work anywhere else, so it would not be appropriate for me to post my rough draft here but you can get a sense of my work from my rough draft peer assessment. Overall, the feedback/feedforward I received validated my perspective but provided meaningful insight on how to enhance it, including fixes to some grammar and punctation, suggestions on how to rephrase ideas to be succinct, and recommendations to bring in more research and literature. The average score I received was a 48.94/50 and honestly, I think my group was generous. Because my imagination and connections are wild and widespread, I tend to be verbose and add unnecessary detail so my clarity can improve. There is also opportunity for me to add more research beyond my classroom setting to demonstrate that my journey is not a fluke but a reality many can experience in their own classroom. Moving forward, I am going to be even bolder and seek feedback from peers at my campus and the district who do not know the context of the graduate school assignment to receive a more comprehensive review of my work. Maybe I will fulfill a childhood dream of being an author in a way I could have neve imagined and be an official published writer!
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What is fantastic about my collaborative group is that not only do we influence our social ability, we delegate our time and conversations between the courses we are taking together. While there are a lot of similarities between how we approached our course on Leading Organization Changes to the Growth Mindset course, there were also distinct differences. These differences can be categorized into leading, organizing, and changing, just like the class covers and they apply to my individual approach as well. Leading Leading for me is not necessarily attached to an official title, but rather being the example or role model for others to see, hear, and act like to be better themselves. Being actively engaged in the weekly class meetings as well as in the discussion boards were some ways I led, but something I know I can improve upon though is my timing and being proactive in completing readings, reflections, and posts in case of setbacks. This term's setback was getting the flu. Could I have foreseen the illness? No, but I could have not procrastinated to the point where I needed to ask for an extension on my Big Picture Growth. If I had been intentional about spacing out my work and not relying on being able to complete it in a short amount of time, it is likely I would have been fine. Even after my submissions, I would go back and adjust components based on my new learning and perspective.
Organizing What felt like the most intense reading expectations so far in our master's program, we identified that splitting the work and becoming mini-experts in a section was best. We agreed that everyone would be expected to read the introductory and concluding chapters, otherwise the reading was divided amongst us by chapters or topics and we would summarize we have read in a shared document. Choices were made based on our innovation plans and education roles. A screenshot of our Influencer book notes. A screenshot of our 4 Disciplines of Execution book notes.
We also looked to include examples we found in past student work, articles, or other professional blog posts that included the fundamentals of the four disciplines of execution or explaining the why. It did not hurt either that Hillary's husband found a great summarization of 4 Disciplines of Execution and that Amanda reads Crucial Conversations every year (I think she has some fancy certification as a trainer for it). Even if I did not always participate in the discussion boards during the appropriate weeks, that did not prohibit me from reading what others shared to start formulating my own connections and ideas. This also led me into a routine of revisiting assignments or blog posts to integrate my new learning and connections from other's viewpoints or ePortfolios. Changing A lot of changing happened during this class too. There were times when the readings, assignments, videos, and discussions were deprioritized. Even now, when writing this, I am fully aware there is a discussion board I have not posted to... yet... but my self-responsible nature will nudge me to getting it done. I sometimes become figuratively paralyzed due in large part to the juggling act of all of my professional and personal roles especially in the midst of a NOW culture. Reflecting my journey from where I have left to where I am headed, including my mental health journey, helps me remember that we exist in a gray world and depending upon the day and circumstances, we could be anywhere in that spectrum of gray. It changes every day. Ultimately, the course on leading organization change incorporated each word: changing in the form of Big Picture Growth, leading and organizing in the form of Big Picture Goals. We often let life and the whirlwind can take over but once the storm clears and the rainbow comes, we can keep moving forward together. While I was never at 100%, I would give myself a 93/100 to my contributions to learning in my Leading Organization Change course. If I keep leading, organizing, and changing, it will only get better. References Covey, S., McChesney, C., & Huling, J. (2018). 4 Disciplines Of Execution. Simon & Schuster Ltd.
Grenny, J. (2013). Influencer : The new science of leading change. Mcgraw-Hill Education. I am still working on feedback though and my response to it. I accept all constructive feedback and prefer when people have suggestions or recommendations on how to proceed forward. Even prompting my thinking with questions helps. Typically though, others believe I am mad at them because I get upset, then the reality is I am upset with myself for not thinking of the ideas sooner.
This can be the same for our students. When a student has devoted a lot of time and energy from their perspective into solving a problem or completing a task, and then they get feedback on how to improve and adjust, their response is a reflection or deflection. When they reflect and understand intrinsically that it helps them learn and grow, the response comes out in a positive manner. When they deflect and the response comes out negatively, I am not sure it is because a student does not care, but they are building up a wall for some reason. Reflecting is uncomfortable, realizing that we could have been better in the past "if only we had done this before" is humbling, but our response to the feedback and having a growth mindset in which to receive and accept it makes it less uncomfortable. I tell students I ask they show their work so I can see their thinking... and then I add that usually if a student gets the wrong answer, it's not because they don't understand anything. It's because they maybe made an error in one small step. When we can identify those small places to improve, then it doesn't seem so daunting. This came from my 7th grade math teacher Mr. Fishpaw. He helped me realize that my errors came with switching positive and negative symbols every so often. Once I knew where my common mistake was, I could focus on that aspect and the rest would fall into place. Do I still make this mistake? Yes! Do I check over my work and take my time to check that I didn't make this common mistake of mine? Yes! Students often see wrong answers as complete failure but really it's small adjustments. When you are telling them what they did right, it removes that failure feeling and turns to small growth that adds up to big results. We should be intentional about leading students to this realization too... the destination always seems to be the emphasis, but really the journey is where we create lasting memories that impact our future. We get into a fixed mindset because we don't want to take risks... risk getting hurt, looking stupid, being judged negatively, etc. When others mess up, how often do we jump to give our "solutions" and think negatively? How awful does it feel when we are on the receiving end of this? There is not much more impactful than someone having grace when we mess up and acknowledge our human nature but then give us an opportunity to learn and grow. I say opportunity, because it is then up to us to seize it and produce the fruit of growth. Finding faith in feedback brings about belief in oneself to learn, grow, and improve every day. |
My husband lovingly teases me when I reflect on my day with him and say "I learned something new today!" because he would be surprised if I didn't learn something new.
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