I love teaching Trigonometry. It has an arc that my brain can follow. It feels rigorous, but knowable. Here is how I plan out my introductory lesson for Integrated Math 2 or Geometry: If you just want the project, skip to the end.  Day 0: Any Pythagorean Thing you want to do. I found a hokey Alpine Skiing Slalom course that the Ss had to figure out the side lengths for going down a hill. From TES. Link here (so you get all of chapter 4 that I don’t use, but the PDF is in there). This was an assessment day for similar triangles and proportions, so that is why I called it Day 0. Da ..read more

 This is a heartwarming story. We don't get to tell them often enough.  I used Geoff Krall's (Author of Necessary Conditions) Where Does a Letter Occur in a Word matching activity as a soft open to our after mid-winter break first day back in my small 9th grade Math class.  From Geoff: Think about y: Followed up by his next question: Think about Q. List Words: (perfect for a country where there is a mandatory 15 day quarantine for anyone arriving on island).  Some whispering happened, J says "I don't think I can say that." After some back and forth, and it is r ..read more

 New School. My year feels like it starts in August. That is the "new" year for me. After 24 years in the same huge comprehensive public high school, (with two odd years, one for a leave where I ended up starting this blog and teaching 4 sections of Algebra 1 in my daughters' local high school, and one for a year teaching in Ghana) I returned to my dream job of teaching overseas for good. Accepting a job for as long as they will have me.  How to go back over 80 days of lessons to look for the highlights? How in the heck do you do that? My lesson plan book isn't detailed enough, and ..read more

Note, this was written On October 25, 2020. I will update for my new year's blog bc @druinok is the queen of inspiration. Hello Dear Friends! I don't know what will be the outcome of this post, will it be more math-y or more adventure? You will have to read on to see. Being At A New School: I highly recommend it. There is nothing to up one's game then being the new teacher. I haven't been the newest to a school in my-daughter-just graduated-from-college-and-I-had-her-after-working-at-the-same-school-for-two-years years. I am more gracious with myself and making a greater effort to ob ..read more

Hello Friends! I hope you and yours are healthy and taking care of each other. Yesterday we conducted teaching interviews online. From years of experience both on interview panels and being a successful interviewee, I thought I would share some pointers with you. Please share and please let me know when you get the job! PS These are all real examples, I did not make any of them up! Please do NOT: 1) assume teaching is causal and show up in jeans or wrinkled clothing. (Many re-entry programs offer free professional clothing) 2) start every sentence with Me, My, I as in "My students love ..read more

Today, K came to class after lunch reeking like weed. (Yeah, I live in California, I know what it smells like). I call the campus supervisors and ask that they come get him, his smell is that distracting. I am about to text that he left his phone (Why would he leave his phone? How many kids would forget a phone, unless the consequences of what is on his phone is worse than it getting stolen or him having to live without it for 24 hours?) when I get this text from the supervisors, "He admitted smoking. We gave him something to eat so he wouldn't smell, can he come back to class?" What! No he ca ..read more

Write first, title later. Part 1 This is a two part post--the learning piece is second, so if you want PD and to learn more about writing rubrics for understanding, skip to the second half, I completely understand, time is the one definitively limited resource we have. The first half is how I got to be so awesome. Joking aside, I must give credit for how I have become a more conscientious teacher/human. How do I know this? I feel it. I can feel it within and from the relationships I have with my students. And my husband, who has been my partner for all but my first year of teaching, has ..read more

Happy New School Year! Sam over at https://samjshah.com/ (You should check out his blog because, he is Sam and he is awesome!) reminded me us that there is a hashtag for folks like us: #MTBoSFD (Math Twitter Blog O Sphere First Days). He also promised to blog twice for Thanks to @druinok. So here are my our First Days Stations inspired by @magicalmsmurphy. This is Danielle: She is the most amazing math  teacher ever. See that precious bundle on the right? Danielle is so creative, she made a baby and took a year off from teaching. I am so over the moon that she will be my neighbor onc ..read more

Ever since I read about Stand and Talks on https://www.saravanderwerf.com/ (The amazing Sara Vanderwerf's website) they have become the single most important routine/device/exercise/strategy I use in my classroom. You can also hear about them in this Global Math Department's webinar: Just like warming up before exercising in earnest, like if you take a class at a gym or are getting ready for a race, the coaches ALWAYS warm you up. "Run 500 meters." Then we stretch and THEN we exercise, Stand and Talks open students up. They warm up their minds and activate an openness to learning through safe ..read more

Hi There! Thank you very much to the inspiration of @cluzniak and https://clopendebate.wordpress.com/ for this College Readiness Project. The class is Pre-Calc for the Liberal Arts--those not going into stem fields (they don't think), don't want to take AP Stats, and aren't strong enough for a STEM Pre-Calc class, but they do want to keep their math chops up after Algebra 2 and want to A) do well on their ACT and SAT's and B) place directly into a college level class. The students had serious Senioritis. As bad as I remember it. I was getting 25% homework in. (In class they were fine, the stu ..read more