Reflecting Forward for 2023

I’ve been in a slump for quite a while as far as teaching and learning go and it is now time to get out of it. Here’s what I’m doing to make that happen….

• I signed up for an Immersion Math Circle camp that I will attend next week.
• I signed up for the 2023 Math Summit hosted by NC State College of Education in August. I attended the conference virtually in the past and I am looking forward to being with fellow educators in three dimensions.
• I joined a Twitter alternative. (Mathstodon) The wider online math community has been a source of inspiration and support in the past. A dedicated group of mathematics education professionals are working very hard to revive that community. Join and follow me @vaughn_trapped@mathstodon.xyz . Check out Julie Reulbach’s post HERE  to figure out how to do that. 
• I am going to focus on the good in school (the building as well as the institution) and in people, be they child or adult. 
• I am going to dust off my blog and actually participate in active reflection about my teaching practices. That is a very affirming practice for me and I’ve felt the effects of neglecting that. 

Last year I practiced more self-care than I ever have. I improved sleep patterns, started routine exercise, and took myself out of my comfort zone in the kitchen–trying new recipes and flavors. The changes made for a better personal year. Now it is time to address needed professional changes. 

I began slightly veering away from the prescribed curriculum last year, especially toward the end when coverage necessitated speeding up. This year I plan to be more deliberate about what I keep and what I supplement in the curriculum. I have been an advocate for and faithful user of the Open Up Resources (OUR) mathematics curriculums since 2017. One supplement I use is www.MathBits.com; however, it requires money that neither the school nor the county will provide. It’s inexpensive for what it is, but too much for me to foot the bill each year. I supplement OUR with  Infinite Algebra and all of its variations for which the school/parent organization pays. I also incorporate aspects of concepts formalized in Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics as I have for years even before the book was published in 2021. [A friend (Lydia Kirkman @lydiakirkman) attended a session at Twitter Math Camp (#TMC15) presented by Alex Overwijk (@AlexOverwijk) on Vertical non-permanent surfaces (VNPS) (aka whiteboards) using the techniques he learned from Peter. Lydia shared the techniques for using VNPS with me and I immediately put them to work in 2015.] This year I am going to make deliberate efforts to marry aspects of Open Up Resources and Thinking Classroom as I prepare for each of my math courses. 

The aspect of that marriage that excites me most is a part of the Thinking Classroom I’ve never pulled off. I want to grade/evaluate the Thinking Classroom way (Chapter 14). I plan to use the self-assessments from the Open Up Resources workbooks to build my instrument to record observances of concept progression for individual learners. I am weirdly excited about this. It should help me focus more on my struggling learners and give all students better regular feedback. This will also help me keep learning targets more clearly focused–something I’ve always struggled with.

Another thing I would like to do is use Thinking Classroom concepts to ensure all students have access to rich tasks. I plan to do this by incorporating more “Ready for More” problems from the Open Up Resources curriculums as tasks in my classroom. I hope to rewrite these as tasks for groups to work on before formalizing the math in the course of the lesson. The idea is to give challenging problems up-front so all students get a crack at them — an idea I learned from Fawn Nguyen (@fawnpnguyen). 

I feel good about these decisions and I know there are more aspects to flesh out. I do not want to backslide on my self-care routines, but I need more joy and purpose in my professional life. Wish me luck!