Bad news: This is my 1st post since November...oops.
Good news: I have (almost) completed my 9th year teaching.
Bad news: My school for the last 9 years is closing.
Good news: All of the students and staff will move together to another middle school rather than being split up.
Bad news: Due to a lower enrollment, 8 of our staff members won't be needed and are surplussed...myself included.
Good news: I will still have a job next year.
Bad news: I have no idea where that job will be, and I probably won't know until right before school starts.
Good news: I'm certified to teach K-8 as well as math, science, and language arts at the middle school level, so I have a lot of options.
Bad news: I more than likely won't be teaching middle school math anymore.
Good news: Out of my 9 years teaching MS math, I know that this has been my best because of my constant math blog reading.
Bad news: I'm bummed not to get to try even more next year.
Good news: I definitely have some sort of new challenge headed my way!
With that said....I wanted to take a minute to share some of my successes teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade math this year.
One of my favorite aspects of this year was starting interactive notebooks that I referred to as a JAM (journal about math). I loved the flexibility it offered and the fact that for the first time the vast majority of my students had great notes and examples to refer to when needed.
I also loved using giant group whiteboards and individual whiteboards during open ended learning tasks. The students were much more willing to be risk takers if they could easily erase.
I feel like I pushed my students throughout the year to be the ones doing the thinking rather than waiting to be told how to do something. Believe me, this was a constant battle! I found that my advanced students especially were tentative and even a bit scared to jump in and try problem solving without much guidance from me. They were definitely frustrated with me at times and just wanted to be told what to do, but I hope a year of seeing their perseverance pay off will give them confidence in the future.
I loved all of the open ended tasks, stations, and group activities I tried this year. My kids were constantly on the move in my room, and they saw a huge variety of practice and assessments. Even though I haven't been blogging lately, I've kept up on my Feedly reading, and the MTBoS did not disappoint! All those ideas I emailed myself over last summer went to good use this year.
All of the planning and preparation needed to teach this way is surely not easy, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to stay on top of it all year. I'm proud to say that I found a rhythm and kept at it to date! It was a fun way to run my classroom and it was rewarding to hear my students have meaningful math conversations and see how well they could write about their strategies and thinking. This is not to say that 100% of my students met my high expectations, but I do feel like we did more than just cover curriculum...I think that counts as more good news!
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