Reflections since Weds

Since Weds, Feb 14th I have observed a plethora of responses to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. My emotions have run a literal marathon. While many of our youth and educators are finally speaking up and having their voices heard I cannot sit back and not listen to some of the ridiculous things I've heard and seen.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but the answer to this situation is NOT to arm all the teachers! 

Putting metal detectors in all schools is not the answer.

Planning walkouts for months away is not the answer; especially on state testing days. They message will be lost there.

Blaming the lack of mental health care is not the answer. 

Pointing fingers and blaming is not the answer.

Sending thoughts and prayers is not the answer.

But more than anything sitting around and not doing anything is also not the answer.

Standing up, speaking out and voting is the answer. Empowering teachers to get to the polls and to have their voice heard by lawmakers IS part of the answer.

Teaching students how to manage their emotions and how to cope with stress IS part of the answer.

Right now too many people are focused on finding the ONE right answer, but there's a problem with that approach.

There is no ONE right answer.

Our country is in need of a new approach to many of the issues we face. We need a new approach to gun regulations and purchases. We need to all incorporate a new approach to teach the WHOLE child and that requires additional training of everyone on a school campus. We need to connect with lawmakers and ensure they really hear from us.

I hope that everyone is doing well and staying strong after the difficult past few days. I also hope everyone is ready to go out and be heard while educating the whole student.

Working on an Alg I STAAR EOC review booklet and I'm running out of ideas.

Since starting at my current school I've created an Algebra I STAAR EOC review booklet for our intervention teachers to use during the intervention periods we have.  I've worked tirelessly on this booklet, adjusting it after the tests are released and adjusting things from what I see the students are able to do.

I'm now starting to run out of ideas of how to change it up for the kids that have been in the intervention multiple times.  

I try to mix in activities with sample released questions or similar questions

As well as some more fun activities that involve coloring or working with a partner.

And this time I've added some pages that have the students practice "chunking" the test.  

But now I'm in search of some more interesting skills activities to have the students work on this spring.  If you have anything on any of the following topics I would be forever grateful!

• Polynomial Operations
• Solving for y
• Exponent rules
• Factoring
• Connecting parts of linear equations
• Linear inequalities
• Writing Linear Equations
• Domain and Range of Functions
• Writing equations from word problems
• Graphing and solving quadratics
• Exponential Functions

Thanks and I hope everyone has a great week!

Those goals from the beginning of the year, yeah....

As I've been checking on the #MTBoS tag today (which I try to remember to do throughout the day on the 11th of each month), I realized that I've been bombing on some of my goals for the year.  :(

The things I've been great at keeping up with were sticking to my walkthrough schedules, getting more involved in educational policy, and I've done some impromptu co-teaching.  So that's 3 of my 6 goals that I'm keeping up with.

While I did organize my twitter deck on my surface I haven't used it as much but I've been a lot better about not going down rabbit holes when I'm checking out my feed.

One of my goals was to actually plan for, participate in and learn something from a Twitter Chat. So I have all these alerts on my calendar that go off each week or so reminding me of twitter chats going on but I keep ending up having different things going on or crazy cats and I haven't been able to participate in as many as I was hoping.  I think I've done 2 since my first one.  Maybe...  That's an improvement though, right?

The goal that I've totally bombed on is the keeping up with blogging.  :(  While I've been more active on twitter this year I'm still working on making it more consistent and not flooding my feed with too many pics of my foster cats.  Speaking of...  I have two precious brothers that still need their forever homes!  

Fingers crossed I can find these guys a home and get back on track with my goals for the year!