Late Night Reflection

I think back to my second year as a homeroom teacher.  A mere 4 years ago.  I was a different person.

I was seeking out some sort of routine or structure for my math time.  It was the first part of my day and I remember thinking that as long as I could get my kids through to snack, we were going to be able to survive the day.  It was survival mode.

I was living in a small, rural, touristy town on the top of a mountain in the Cloud Forest of Costa Rica.  The school was a tiny, non-profit, sustainable school with very limited resources.  Most students are on scholarship and 95% are English Language Learners.  My classroom was literally surrounded by rain forest.  I would frequently have to stop my lessons to check out the birds or monkeys hanging from the trees outside our windows.  We had a view of the Pacific Ocean from 5,000 feet up.  It felt like you could just jump right off the mountain into the ocean.  I had never ever seen the sun set into the ocean from above.  It was amazing.

But still, I was in survival mode.  I sought out my good friend and principal of our school, Kris, and told her I needed some help structuring math.  Because I thought structure and routine was what I needed.

We ended up with the following plan: Number of the Day routine (thanks to Pinterest, of course!), mini lesson (I do, We do, You do), go back to your desk to practice, some challenge problems with bigger numbers if you finished, and an exit slip before snack.  Well, I thought I had nailed it!

Kids knew what to expect, I knew what to plan for, standards were covered.  It was manageable.

Kris wanted to push me even further as the year went on and I developed Math Mix Up Day when we did something totally different than our routine.   Maybe we did it once a week.

Kris then wanted to push me to think about creating UbD units and that was the first time I thought to use the internet to actually help me create a more cohesive plan.  (Remember, this was rural Costa Rica and I still had a USB internet device that I paid for by the hour!)  It was my first sampling of really seeing what other teachers were doing.  I was hooked. 

I ended up leaving that school after that year and went to a big, international school in Panama, where I currently teach.  One of the main reasons I left was feeling like technology in education was moving at a faster speed than I could keep up with on top of the mountain.  I had to catch up.  My first year in a new country and at a new school was again survival mode.  We had Everyday Math and it felt like a minor miracle to just follow along what the teachers book said to do.  I felt relieved when many of my students already knew what we were talking about thanks to the spiral structure of the program.  The pressure was finally off to actually teach my students math.  (Never mind the fact that most teachers were not teaching it to fidelity and the general consensus was that we didn’t really like the program.  At least there was something.)

About three quarters of the way through my second year at this school, I got an email saying that a math coach from the U.S. was coming down to teach us how to be better math teachers.  Ugh!  From the U.S.?!  We are an international school.  How could someone from the U.S. teach us how to be better math teachers?  I was skeptical. 

But damn, my mind was blown the first moment Graham Fletcher starting talking.  I don’t even remember what he said.  Maybe it was a funny math video.  Maybe it was taking out some math tools and having us do some math.  But damn, my mind was blown.  Those little dendrites grew in a way that I didn’t even know was possible (I didn't even know what dendrites were!).  He taught me how to change my math class right now.  Changes I could put in place tomorrow.  Ways to talk to kids, ways to structure my time, places to find resources, multiple ways to solve problems, Twitter.  He introduced me to it all.  My mind was blown.

Since then, I’ve been on Twitter daily, encountering new ideas daily.  Something I can do with my mathematicians tomorrow.  (Case in point-Clothesline, Estimation Station and Meatball Surgery.) I share with my coworkers, I lead a weekly informal math gathering, I am excited about math daily.

Every once in a while, someone comes into your life and just blows it wide open.  Kris was spot on with what I needed at the time.  But I always knew something was missing about the way I was teaching math, I just didn’t know what it was.  Graham came to my school at exactly the right time and influenced me in exactly the right way.  I have become a better mathematician.  My students have become better mathematicians.  And to quote my 2^nd grader Paulina: “Ms. Talia, I think I get it, my head hurts and it was awesome!”

I still have math first thing in the morning and now it literally propels me through the day.  I haven’t taught a mini lesson in forever!  I do a Number Talk everyday and my students know it's okay to disagree respectfully. We are explicit about the Standards of Mathematical Practice that we are using to become better mathematicians.  We play math games and use tools and explore 3 Act Tasks.  My kids love math.  And I do, too. 

I think back to those 4^th grade students who struggled together with me through long division and decimals.  I wish I could go back and do that year again.  Let Fabian and Cristian and Ashanty know that I made a mistake, and let’s try to learn math together again.  I always keep those students in my heart and know that going forward I still have so many more mathematicians to influence.

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I’ve never blogged before-never thought I was the type to do it.  It requires you to be a bit vulnerable (will anybody actually read this and care?!) and a bit proud (I have something important enough to share with the world!).  Perhaps I am the only one who will read this and I may never write another post. But this, this reflection, I needed to get it out.