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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While I have never sat through the entire movie Back to the Future, I am well aware of its premise and some of the famous lines...
Being comfortable with being uncomfortable takes time, and with the help of discussion boards for my master's program, peers have really opened my eyes to seeing bigger pictures from different perspectives. I am a firm believer that we need to move away from the factory-model structure and towards innovative practices in education but that requires change. Someone mentioned the analogy of a time machine, and if you read any of my other posts, such as I Want to Be a Butterfly and New Digital Age, New Learning Culture, you will notice how I thrive on analogies. They help me connect the dots. Sometimes, it feels as though we are in the present and choose to go back in time by continuing to implement the same educational practices that we were a part of our personal experiences. But, consider this - do we choose to go back in time year after year from the present, or have we been perpetually stuck in the past and need to climb into the time machine available to us to jump forward? Past is comfortable in some regards because we can anticipate what is going to happen. The future is what scares us because we do not know if it will follow the patterns of the past (and actually I think we know it will not follow those past patterns) so when everything around us is zipping forward and it becomes overwhelming, a way to find comfort is sticking with what we know, even at the expense of others. Monica Oslo gracefully challenged my thinking by posing questions to my reply:
She also made me consider how to teach the past to understand what mistakes we made, what is cause and effect of certain events, and how we can learn from the past perspectives to move forward into the future. For me, it is more about using the tools of today and the future and the tools of the past can be used as a bridge to the here and now. We should not necessarily force students to use the past tools just because that is what we are comfortable with or "how we were taught", only using them as they were used in the past. I teach math so the tools of right now include Desmos graphing calculator and tools like PhotoMath, SymboLab, Wolfram Alpha, etc. Why not embrace these tools? There are still a number of teachers who think students should not use calculators ever. I actually was one of those teachers a few years ago because I thought WHAT! They do not know math if they type in 2+2 to get 4, the calculators will just give them the answers!!! What needs to change in my classroom (and with my mindset) is that structures can be put in place to have students use the tool but still understand HOW and WHY the produce the results they do. This could go back to visual representations and talk about the history of computation devices (i.e. abacus, slide rule, etc.) so when the technology does fail, we understand how and why it works the way it does and rely on our brains and experiences. We can then conceptualize how to create our own work without technology through a pencil and paper. We also can discern whether or not the technology is accurate. Technology must be utilized in a way that does not just generate answers. We need to have students generate questions and justify, explain, validate or discredit a resource or "answer". We need them showing their thinking with pencil and paper, through dialogue, through motion, through any medium, but also include technology as that medium. A really great video I revisit from time to time is the 3 M's.
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There was a particular topic I asked ChatGPT to help me check my work on an equation. While at quick glance everything looked accurate, there was actually a huge error in a calculation that resulted in a way off answer that I got. I compared my work to it, was able to tell ChatGPT exactly where its error was. It "apologized" for the error, made the correction, and bam! Our results matched. I have also asked it to make me problems and an answer key, just to see what it could do, and it created what looked like an amazing worksheet but all of the answers in the key were horribly wrong! It is not about relying on the technology to do all the work for us, but how to leverage it to build our thinking further, and we need to give students the opportunities to experience this because this is the reality of society. Another example I have heard of initial resistance but eventually embrace is spell check (check out spell checker history). I know I had weekly spelling tests in elementary school but do those still happen? Honestly I have no idea but we rely on spell checker for a lot of things. Does it catch all of our mistakes? Absolutely not, especially when we misspell a word that is another word! One of my biggest pet peeves is when people use the word "loose" for the word "lose". I do not want to loose my job! Wait, what? But as thinkers and learners, we use this tool but criticize it, analyze it, and even ignore it at times because it is not always right and we know and understand the bigger picture. Technology is only as "smart" as the user, so let's give our students and ourselves the opportunity to get smarter by seeing that technology is not replacing thinking, but we can adapt it to extend our thinking and perspective beyond what we can fathom.
References
3 M’s - media method modality and their roles in educational technology use. (2018, August 24). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ56_tcvocY&t=1s
Minions - what?! (2013, July 27). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfylJy_nMbM pajak2d. (2015). Roads?! Where we’re going we don’t need roads!!! In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3AfIvJBcGo After watching Angela Lee Duckworth's video for the thousandth time (this particular video seems to come up a lot not just in this program, but a lot of professional development workshops I have attended), I wanted to explore more. What has she been up to the past ten years? Is she still engaged in education and teaching students about these other traits that develop their character? She is!
I wrote about it in another blog post, My Name is Ashley, and I am a Recovering Procrastinator (believe it or not, it's true), and a new perspective I am starting to see is how growth mindset and learner's mindset can apply to procrastination. Growth mindset and learner's mindset is not something that you can implement in a day; it requires continuous, small but substantial incremental steps that add up. Growth mindset really impacts those learners who struggle in the traditional academic setting but not so much for high achievers. They see growth mindset is just another thing they can be smart about, which follows a fixed mindset perspective. Often times, my high achieving students stop trying when problems or questions become challenging, because then their intelligence cannot be questioned. You can't say someone is wrong if they never made an attempt in the first place, right? That's their viewpoint. They will believe they have a growth mindset, but it requires intentional reflection and metacognition to realize that no, you actually don't. Lately I have been privileged to witness some beautiful student character. I teach level and honors Algebra 2, and in level Algebra 2 I have a wide range of students. Students who have had to repeat every math subject in summer school or credit recovery up to this point, students who have major discipline and attendance issues with constant disruption to their engagement in the classroom, and students who at one point were in honors classes but decided for a number of valid reasons they needed to "level down". When students finish assignments early, I introduce them to the honors content for that day, which typically extends the knowledge just applied or enriches their knowledge with additional topics. Usually, students just smile and nod, going about working on tasks for other classes. A few of my students though have been more engaged, pushing themselves to complete the required level work so they have more time to explore and try the honors material. In fact, I have shared with them the honors OneNote and OneDrive folder so they can independently review the material and track their progress and understanding through my posted keys. What stinks is they cannot "level up" at this point; our campus and district policies do not allow that during the school year, so they technically will not receive any additional credit or grade points for learning honors material. What is incredible though is witnessing the growth mindsets they have to choose to learn because learning and challenging oneself to go further is what really matters. This same experience happens for those students who historically have not been successful in a math class, except with the level content. For them, that is the chance to explore and try, push themselves to deepen their mathematical understanding, and finally feel success through hard work and effort. My activities are at different levels within a class and I assign them the one that meets their needs. If they finish, they know they can move to the next level activity to keep growing. At first, there is moaning and groaning because "I finished already!" but soon they realize that learning is never over, and they can build their confidence further and improve even more than before because they have established a background and foundation to build on. These experiences make me consider the lead versus lag measures too, which I have written about in my Big Picture Goals. Our culture is a now culture - instant gratification and we want to see results instantaneously. A growth mindset requires lag measures, reflecting back on where we started and the journey to where we are today, as well as being inspired to keep moving forward towards more transformational growth. Our students deserve the time investment to show and model what growth mindset looks like, sounds like, acts like, and feels like so they can carry it into their futures. I am realizing that I need a growth mindset on what growth mindset looks like for different people and different students. Meeting people where they are at and modeling for them how they can respond to grow is another way to positively impact lives. As educators, we need to model what being comfortable with being uncomfortable looks like and acts like. The way it feels is different for everyone, but as we show them how we respond when things get messy, they can see a way out. It reminds me what a classmate of my masters' program, Danny Hernandez, said in a discussion: "If we ask for rain we must also prepare for the mud." The picture on the left is the runoff creek connecting to Clear Creek, pictured on the right, when the raining finally stopped after Hurricane Harvey. Sometimes, the rain is overwhelming. Not only is there mud though with the rain, there can be lightning, flooding, tornados, the works. We have to remember though, THE STORM ALWAYS HAS AN END. The clouds will clear, the sun will come out, and a rainbow might even be the cherry on top. Having faith in the storm that fighting through it will lead to the end can keep us going. It also doesn't guarantee that there won't be another storm, but we can learn how to handle these storms and mud for the future. Students will follow a teacher's lead in how they respond to a situation. Earlier this year, my projector's bulb went out and when the technology support came to fix it, a piece broke off inside the projector so it wouldn't register a lid closed and therefore never turn back on. This required dismounting my projector from the ceiling, ordering a new one, and installing it. That day, I was supposed to cover graphing. Now imagine, trying to graph on a whiteboard... not ideal. Did I panic? No. Did I throw my hands up and say oh well, since that lesson is for our calendar today, we just have to wait? No. We just did lessons "out of order" and guess what, we still learned! Students didn't panic or ask if we would have a free day, they just reacted to my calm reaction: "this is a first-world problem... if this is the worst thing that happens today, then today is a good day". Now, there are other times when it is much more serious than a projector bulb going out. A few years ago, our school went into an actual lockdown because a student reported her older ex-boyfriend threatening to hurt her, that he had access to a gun, and he was seen on campus. Having a retired police officer and retired ER nurse for parents, I learned to stay calm in these types of situations and assess my surroundings. Here's me dressed up like my mom for "career day" at school, my mom at Christmas, and my dad acting like a bossy firm teacher at my desk the first year I started teaching high school. We went through the lockdown protocol and sat in silence. Initially, I thought it was just a drill, but five minutes turned into ten, ten into twenty. When the shadows of police officers with bulletproof vests and AR-15s could be seen outside my classroom windows, I knew this was serious. Students started to quietly ask, "is this a drill or is this for real?" and it turned into a teachable moment. Yes, it is for real but let's consider what we see and hear and how we could act. We see officer presence, we don't hear any screaming or weapon fire, we will remain calm and quiet unless we need to defend ourselves by throwing chairs, laptops, desks at anyone who tries to enter. Were we uncomfortable? ABSOLUTELY, this was only something we saw on the news happen to other people. Did we learn how to be a tad more comfortable in that moment? Unfortunately yes. We cannot plan for everything that happens but hypothetical situations do arise for us to consider how we might respond. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable means understanding the world around us from our previous experiences, recognizing that a new situation is in front of us that we may not have experienced yet, considering and analyzing how we can use our past to adapt to the present, and move forward. This is why I strongly identify with a cognitivism learning theory. This also means relying on the past experiences of others can really enhance our response. If I did not have parents with the service professions where they saw disorder, lawlessness, and trauma almost daily, they would probably not have had the experience to teach me how to consider responding to these situations, and then I would not have responded the way I did in the classroom. When we look at our classrooms and students as part of a community that can support and enrich each others' lives, then we all benefit. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable makes life that much sweeter when we get the rainbow after the storm. References Magee, J. (2020, December 14). Friendswood applies for $78 million grant for local drainage project. Community Impact. https://communityimpact.com/houston/
pearland-friendswood/government/2020/12/14/friendswood-applies-for-78-million-grant-for-local-drainage-project/
When being VOCAL, choice is the hardest for me and it's rooted in my mindset towards teaching math.
Fundamentally, I acknowledge and recognize that there are multiple correct mathematical ways to approach and solve problems. Encouraging this in the classroom is so impactful for student growth. What makes this challenging is when students choose something I am not as familiar with. The first concept that comes to mind is factoring polynomials. Does anybody remember how they learned to factor? I learned the "guess and check" method or "trial and error" and it relied on understanding and recognizing patterns in numerical factors. When teaching factoring came up for the first time, my gut wanted to go with the way I was taught and what made sense to me. Fortunately, my mentor teacher showed me the "ac method" or "splitting the middle term" so I went with that to provide procedural steps... it was fortunate until students asked about the square method, the XBOX method, the fishing method, geez Louise there are so many methods and I had NO CLUE what they were talking about. I felt inadequate to support them in understanding why they got an answer wrong with a method I could not follow. At our district professional development today, we learned about this "new" concept called "accelerated learning" and "just-in-time interventions"... haven't we always tried to do this? With my content colleagues, we looked at a progression of area models and how they can be utilized from elementary math to precalculus. With experience, I have found articulating to students that their perspective and my perspective might be different but both are equally valid because we just have different backgrounds and experiences that have brought us to this place. We attempt to explain to each other the different methods of factoring, and then develop our voice through the process. When we can teach others the perspective that we see and they incorporate into their repertoire or we include their voice in our mental tool box, we build connections. We also build a sense of self-worth when we can collaborate and communicate our ideas to others that they adopt into their knowledge bases. There is meaning in multiple perspectives, because those multiple perspectives belong to individuals who are valuable and their life and experience matters. Giving students choice in how to articulate their perspective.
References
Mashup Math. (2017, March 29). Area Model Multiplication Explained! https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=MVZRD4Fa1OY
I think it was around nine years old though that I experienced my first panic attack. I was in our big green van with my mom, going home after running errands, and suddenly, an elephant was sitting on my chest, and I was being internally crushed with no room to externally move. I could not breathe, I felt numb all over, and my mind went to the worst place possible – I am dying. Going through an intersection, my mom asked if I was okay and the moment passed.
At age ten, I remember playing in the living room with a plastic bag, acting like it was a parachute and jumping off the chair like a skydiver. Out of nowhere, a thought popped into my head: “there will be a day I am not a kid anymore and I do not get to play”. Even turning ten was traumatizing, because the realization that my age was DOUBLE DIGITS meant I was getting old, and my morality was quickly approaching. It reminds me of the first few lines of lyrics from Katy Perry's song, Firework.
Junior year of high school, I started experiencing extreme vertigo. The best way I could describe it… do you know how you can swirl water in a water bottle or blender around, stop, but the water keeps spinning like a tornado? That’s what vertigo feels like, the swirling water in your head when everything else is standing still. Telling my mom about this, I went to doctors and neurologists and endured MRI and EEGs to see if I had a tumor or was having seizures. The results? Nothing, nothing was wrong and thankfully the figurative water was not spilling out everywhere...
Senior year of high school is really when my symptoms started to rear their ugly heads. Working my entire life to be involved in the highest academic program in the district while managing cheerleading, band, and a plethora of other organizations and volunteer work, to then graduate in the top twenty students of the class of over 500 and just be done was overwhelming to say the least. Suicidal thoughts, unexplained moments of panic and extremely draining crying sessions, those became normal. In the summer between high school and college, I went to my mom and told her I thought I needed help. She understands now what I was going through to an extent, but at the time, she just told me it was normal to feel this way when being close to going off to college. Fortunately, that did not stop me from getting help. I went to my best friend’s mom, Lillie, and asked her to take me to a psychologist appointment, scrapping money together from birthdays and graduation gifts to pay without submitting insurance. There, the psychologist told me after one session that they thought I had been suffering from anxiety and depression since I was around eight but had been so busy that I became what we now call a person with “high-functioning anxiety” so now that I did not have much to keep me busy, the symptoms were surfacing because my brain had the capacity to play its tricks. With this diagnosis in hand, I went back to my mom and explained. From there, we came up with a plan together to get me the professional help I needed. Twice-a-week therapy sessions in college, combined with medication and the support of my family and friends, helped me work through the struggle, identify triggers, and learn how to cope healthily when experiencing anxiety and depression. Do I still experience triggers and symptoms of anxiety and depression? Absolutely! Nail biting will be a habit I do not see breaking any time soon (maybe I need a growth mindset on that...) but I have the resources, tools, and voice to speak up when I need help and advocate for myself without feeling selfish, stupid, or broken. This includes my support system: my mom (pictured on the left), my best friend who is now my husband Scott (pictured in the middle), and Lillie who is now my mother-in-law (pictured on the right), as well as my other friends and family. I had teachers who cared for me, absolutely, and they taught me so much more than the academic knowledge I took to college and beyond, but they also taught me other skills, now defined as 21st century skills. Occasionally teachers, like Ms. Patak, would check in with me, but there was not much emphasis in the educational system on addressing the non-academic needs. I do not even know who my counselor was in school because my class schedule was pretty much set from 6th grade through 12th. The only time I might have met with them is for scholarship applications and getting a transcript ready to submit in college applications. Now, in light of the pandemic, employing counselors that address academics as well as the social, emotional, and mental needs of students is being prioritized. With this shift in focus, students are being treated more like people and less like factory workers who we get to churn out a specific, monotonous set of tasks. The reason I am in education, my why, also connects to my journey in my mental health. My ePortfolio and blog posts are a continuously evolving exhibits in living museum of me, math, and more. Today, talking about mental health and sharing my journey, is another new addition open for others to explore and experience. What is your journey with mental health? May this be an encouragement for you to share your journey with others so we can all keep healing and growing together.
References
Basic Fun! (2023). K’NEX Ferris Wheel. https://www.basicfun.com/product/knex-thrill-rides-3-in-1-classic-amusement-park-building-set/
Katy Perry. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/436551 Plante, C. (2016, May 5). This Is Fine creator explains the timelessness of his meme. The Verge; The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11592622/this-is-fine-meme-comic Sick Science! (2009, March 5). Tornado Tube - Vortex in a Bottle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv6vQU94wws
My Why: The Purpose
Everyone deserves access to opportunities that nurture the deeply intrinsic human desire to make the most out of life by learning and growing daily through experiences as individuals in a global community.
My How: The Process
Supporting students to become the better people they desire to be by pouring into them the love, encouragement, support, and feedback that has been poured into me comes from teaching 21st century skills in a blended learning environment through the lens of mathematics.
My What: The Result
Students will learn connections between mathematics and the characteristics that set them apart to be positive contributing adult members of society with more opportunities to continue learning and growing in college, career, and/or military.
Education and learning has been my safe space for as long as I can remember. While my parents provided me the foundation for Maslow's Pyramid of Needs, including the physiological and safety needs, it was through my friends and teachers in school that I progressed towards self-actualization from belongingness, love needs, and esteem needs (The School of Life, 2019). I have had the deficiency needs met almost daily and the growth needs fulfilled almost daily as well in some capacity (Hierarchy of Needs, n.d.). I also recognize that I come from privilege and I have been called to use my privilege to provide others opportunity to move from the deficiency needs to growth needs. For most teachers, we get a group of students for only one academic school year while they sit in our classrooms as students on an official roster. We also recognize that our students become a part of our hearts forever, even after they leave for the summer, graduate from high school, and move into adult life as a college student, career person, or military personnel. Because we are invested in their livelihoods as well as academic content, we cannot just spend time focusing only on the subject knowledge. Students who buy into your classroom are the ones who know why we do what we do - we care about their well-being and their future. Our actions of what and how we operate in our classrooms, lessons, and interactions are rooted in this belief in them. We urgently need to meet students where they are at in their hearts first to create deep, meaningful impact on their lives because they deserve the opportunity for someone to invest in them and this very well may be the only chance. We cannot assume students have this in their lives yet through parents, coaches, or other teachers. We could literally be the teacher in their life that they reflect back on and see a monumental shift in their future. We can know that students need this but feel like it is too much work. It is just like, you can know you are smart but feel dumb. You can know you are beautiful but feel ugly. You can know you are valuable but feel worthless. Just because I know something to be true doesn't necessarily change how I feel 100% of the time. This reconciliation of heart versus mind is something I personally struggle with in certain capacities in my life, but part of my personal decision and intrinsic motivation in moving towards change is that I have been able to convince my heart and rely on my past experiences to acknowledge the disconnect between logic and feeling and keep moving towards a goal. It makes me consider all the times when I have tried to build relationships with challenging students. Daily battles, feeling like I did not matter to that child and nothing I could do would change that, did not stop me from continuing to try because I knew that at some point, whether in my classroom or not, they would have an opportunity to reflect back and know that I cared deeply about them as a student and a person. I know this to be true because I have had a student or two who would, at the end of the year, express their appreciation for my role in their education and life. In contrast, there are students who have also expressed their elation for never having to step foot in my class again... but those moments of clarity and reflection from the positive provide me memories and reminders that even when the head doesn't agree with the heart, keep moving until they do. Rather than asking why, we should ask why not now? Tomorrow may be too late and yesterday did not have this opportunity. Today is it.
References
Cassie . (2021, December 21). 23 Inspirational Quotes for Teachers to Lift You Up When You’re Down. Teach Starter. https://www.teachstarter.com/us/blog/10-inspirational-quotes-teachers-us/
Hierarchy of Needs. (n.d.). Www.wichita.edu. https://www.wichita.edu/services/mrc/OIR/Pedagogy/Theories/maslow.php#:~:text=Maslow The School of Life. (2019). Why Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs Matters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0PKWTta7lU Jr, M. (2017). Know Your Why | Michael Jr. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ytFB8TrkTo Each year in education brings a new chance to invite the excitement and wonders of the first year teaching with the experience and knowledge of all the years after. New schools, new colleagues, new administration, new subject areas, new students, new opportunities. The school year is about to start back up and as my eleventh year in the classroom begins, I start by unpacking my room, putting everything in its place, and recreating my desk space. This zone is my comfortable blanket of encouragement and passion, where I can pour my heart into my students through my work outside of class as well as get reminders of why I do what I do. These heavenly nudges come in many forms: a sticky note from a teammate, an inspirational quote from a daily calendar, holiday cards from students, to name a few. In the beginning, it is usually pretty bare but as I get little sparkles of joy, I add them to my physical space so my heart can continue to be filled. There are a few constants though, and one of them is my personal point-of-view I had to write when I first applied to be a teacher for the 2012-2013 school year. The prompt reads "In your own handwriting, describe what you as a person will bring to teaching. Explain how that will support your development as a teacher throughout your first year teaching." My response? "I will bring a fresh perspective to teaching mathematics through my ability to explain topics from different view points. I will also provide an exceptional sense of patience and determination to help my students inside and outside the classroom. … Respect will be created through the perseverance I have and students will give that to a teacher who is willing to work with them and help them no matter what the circumstances might be." Every year up to this point, it seems as though I have accomplished this perspective to an extent. I initially wrote "teaching high school mathematics" because that is where Teach For America (TFA) projected I would be placed in... but obtaining a middle school teaching position did not change my point-of-view. Having first taught sixth grade science, not only was I instructing students to making connections between concepts like atoms and molecules, the rock cycle, thermodynamics, and the solar system and space, I created an inviting classroom the children could safely learn the academics and all the other components of adolescence... cooties become hormones, people. My patience was tested most days, but another artifact I have posted in my room every year is from the parents of a student I had. This student has Down syndrome and she was placed in my general education with an Individualized Education Program, including major modifications. For any teacher, differentiation can be challenging, but a first year teacher surrounded by a dozen other first year teachers (our campus had a majority TFA presence), it seemed like an impossible task that my colleagues also had never experienced. Constant communication, as well as many parent/teacher/administration meetings about proper placement after observing her overwhelming frustration through a smile and tears, I felt like a failure. At the end of the school year, I got a copy of a letter with a note from my principal written at the top... These two papers find their way to my desk space every year because they epitomize my first year teaching and remind me that I have made a difference and I still can. With this year being year eleven, I have made a conscious decision to continue to share and adapt my point-of-view, still embracing the essence of first year Ashley by Teaching 21st Century Skills in a Blended Learning Environment. The teacher nightmares have started because of my subconscious fear of having an out of control classroom where students are not learning and I am not making an impact. Despite these sleepless nights, I keep moving forward down the path I know I am destined to stay on right now. If I had to sum up my experience in my educational calling so far, it really is the quote on my Home page. I first saw it on a PostSecret postcard so long ago I can't find the original postcard image anymore. It's not about me saving the world when I wrote about Masters in Educations Means Changing the World... it is must more profound. This year, I plan on living this mantra a little more boldly so that first year teacher me can continue to live her truth and positively impact lives with the help of my current experience and support. References Frank Warren Quote: “Be wise enough not to be reckless, but brave enough to take great risks.” (n.d.). https://quotefancy.com/quote/42301/Frank-Warren-Be-wise-enough-not-to-be-reckless-but-brave-enough-to-take-great-risks
Stumbling upon a Reddit post about New York City and the reputation of being rude, someone clearly articulated why there are people who agree with this stereotype and others simply don't see it. The response was about ask culture versus guess culture. The moment of new perspective and clarity hit me so hard that I have to share it and connect it to my classroom. The following video is a great explanation of the two different cultures.
Personally, I lean more towards ask. Being direct with me eliminates any ambiguity of what you might actually mean and it is not my fault that you did not clearly articulate your needs or desires. The superpower of mindreading is one of the last things I would want, especially if I don't need it when you can just tell me what's on your mind if you feel comfortable to do so. Being direct can also mean actually telling me you aren't comfortable to share. Around certain people, I become a guess because it's my attempt to mirror their style and not be offensive. Now, when in my classroom, I have to consider how my students live with these different perspectives and how our interactions are a result of these cultures. Naturally, like-minded people tend to get along well with each other. It's when an ask person and a guess person start to communicate that trouble could happen. Every year, I start the school year off by sharing with students The Yet Mindset but this has me thinking there could be more this or that perspectives worth exploring and sharing, starting with Ask or Guess. Being aware of your own perspective, other perspectives, and how all of them come across to others really opens up better communication and collaboration between students, building a positive classroom culture. Initially, I thought about simply fostering an ask culture in my classroom because that's what I am comfortable with. We tend to follow confirmation bias, especially as we grow older, so rather than restrict students for my benefit (I am literally rolling my eyes with how selfish I sound by saying that) , embracing both viewpoints is another opportunity to incorporate 21st century skills: communication, collaboration, metacognition, and reflection. We can start Teaching 21st Century Skills in a Blended Learning Environment and really building the whole student while also learning and growing ourselves.
References
Therapy in a Nutshell. (2022). Are You Ask Culture or Guess Culture? This Communication Skill Is Life-Changing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OXlZUfbsPI
With some downtime between summer graduate school classes and the week of professional development before school starts, naturally, I spend time... doing more reading and professional development, all while watching Netflix Korean romantic comedies. Part of my reading includes required readings for my fall semester classes (basically the Not Read YET on my School Shelf), trying to finally read through The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, and a bunch of articles and resources for the online GT trainings I am completing. One of the trainings included the Eight Great Gripes of Gifted Students and I felt seen not only as a student, but as a person. An assignment including creating an "infographic" about something we learned, so I used the concerns in the image below. Side note, did you know that Word and PowerPoint have great infographic templates? Being overwhelmed by choices on color schemes, fonts, and all other things that go with creating these things is common for me, but the templates provide relief. When going through any trainings, it is important to consider that while they are usually designed to target a specific student sub-population, the information and strategies we learn about can apply to any student, regardless of the label. Does a student have to be labeled GT to feel different and wish people would accept them as they are? Are students feeling overwhelmed by not only the number of things they can do, but also all of the things they are expected to do? Have you had a student in a "regular" class get teased for being smart? Another side note... we should get away from calling classes regular classes and start calling them level, but that will be for another post that I will eventually link back here. These gripes have come from explicitly surveying students with the GT label, but I wonder how many students would identify with most, if not all, of these. The techniques suggested to address these concerns should apply to everyone. In fact, I am not considering everyone as just GT students or students in general, but our colleagues and administration as well. Which concern do you identify the most with? Are there any concerns that you have learned how to manage? |
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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