#MTBoSBlaugust Day 8 a little late: My biggest inspiration

I didn't get a chance to blog yesterday but I'm going to make up for it today!  

It was a busy day yesterday with helping out with New Teacher Orientation at my school, going to my mom's rent house to make sure the new AC unit got put in and visiting my mom. My mom's health has been declining since December and she's now receiving hospice care at home.  She was diagnosed with many issues last December when I took her to the hospital after seeing how weak she had gotten in just a few weeks.  The biggest issue ended up being a diagnosis of bile duct cancer which she (surprisingly) opted to have surgery on when there were no other options available for treatment.

My mom isn't the type to give up but with this she had her fourth cancer diagnosis and she initially was adamant about not having surgery (she's never recovered from it well).  While I'm glad she's fought as long as she has for her health and to see my brother, me and her grand kids grow up I know she's ready to relax, be at peace and not be in pain anymore.

I'm focusing on her for this post because she really has been the most influential on my career and has been a fantastic mother and a great mentor for my teaching practices at the same time.

My mom got her degree in counseling and ended up getting her PhD in child and adolescent development.  She always said she would have become a psychiatrist if her and my dad hadn't gotten into it so many times when he was trying to help her with her math classes.  (She wasn't the best at math while my dad was a wiz!)  

Growing up I saw my mom impact so many lives as an LPC and as a high school counselor at alternative schools while also teaching college classes.  She has always been someone I could go to and speak to about my personal struggles as well as my struggles in the classroom or with students and she knew exactly what to say.  She also gave me so many tips and tricks for working with difficult students or coworkers and helping students with learning disabilities.  She was also the big reason I finally went to grad school (she told me she was going to go travel with the money she had saved for me for grad school if I didn't start ASAP, LOL).  She has always known how to push me just enough and encouraged my curiosity and desire to further my education and help others in their pursuit for knowledge.  

We were talking last night when I was reading a message to her from an old family friend and we both started tearing up at it.  The conversation went something like this:
Mom: "Haha!! I'm not the only one that gets teary eyed at this!"
Me: "I'm getting teared up because Liz has lost her folks and she is trying to comfort me through this."
Mom: "This is what I'm going to miss the most.  The people that I've grown to know and love.  I'm just sad that I won't be in their lives anymore."
Me: "Mom, you're always going to be in their lives.  You've touched so many people, helped so many people and been a rock for so many for so long that you're always going to be in their lives, even when you aren't physically there you're spirit will be with them.  So don't be sad about that."
Mom: "You're right.  When did you finally grown up and become so mature?"

(Note: I'm about to turn 35 and I'm the baby of the family.  So I didn't have to start maturing and taking care of family stuff until recently.)

So that's it for this post, I promise the rest won't be as sad and sappy!

From before the wedding when she had just zipped up my dress. And that's my baby crib behind us.

Count me in for #MTBoSBlaugust!!!

OK, I gotta join in on this so I can get back in the habit of blogging more regularly!

Here are some of the prompts for #MTBoSBlaugust for those interested.  I'm probably going to be going off topic on some of them since I'm no longer in the classroom but really love being an instructional coach!  I'm also in need of more ideas to diversify the lessons and activities we do in our remediation/intervention/enrichment flex time during the day and I think this will be a great way for me to see more ideas from various people.  I'm really looking forward to it!

I'm hoping to get more in the habit of blogging by participating in Blaugust and I'm looking forward to making new connections, finding new ideas, and sharing ideas and strategies with teachers from all around.

Prompts for the MTBoS Blaugust 2015

1. What do you hope to get out of Blaugust this year?
2. Show us your classroom
3. Top 5 Tips for New Teachers
4. What are your Back to School Must-Haves?
5. What would you like to Start doing this school year?  What would you like to Stop doing?  What would you like to Continue doing?
6. One time in math class… (as a teacher… or when I was a student…)
7. 5 APPS I can’t live without…
8. Something I read/learned this summer that intrigued me…
9. Pinned It, Did It and/or Pinned it, Did it, It flopped.
10. Recipe Swap for Busy Teachers
11. Something that makes your classroom unique
12. A  mentor/colleague who impacted your classroom/teaching…
13. The best teacher I ever had was …. because …
14. How do you tame the paper tiger?
15. Brain breaks for students.
16. Favorite take 5 for yourself?
17. Be the Change.. what will you do this year to impact the culture of your school and/or classroom?
18. Using your school mascot, create an acrostic of character traits you wish to instill in your students
19. What is your focus/theme/mantra for the year and why?  Create and share a notecard for your desk as a reminder.
20. What are your go to quotes?
21. Reblog an old post – reflect how you see/use it now?
22. What are your favorite formative assessment strategies?
23. Professional Growth Goal
24. What are your best organizational tips?
25. Theme song for the year? like your personal fight song?
26. What is something in your classroom that you cannot live without?
27. What’s a positive change you would like to make in your life – could be community/school/home/health?
28. Last time you belly laughed…
29. List of gratitude.
30. Describe a typical day (or hour) in your classroom.
31. What is your biggest classroom pet-peeve?
32. Link to 3 blog posts that impacted you and share why.
33. Read 3 posts from blogs you’ve never visited, give a quick take-away from each.
34. What is your greatest joy in teaching?  What is your greatest fear?
35. Tell us about you!  Post 20 facts about yourself.
36. What are your New School Year Goals or Resolutions?
37. What’s in (and on) your teacher desk?
38. Interact with a new follower and use FORE from Make It Stick reading, then introduce them in a post?
39. What’s the 10th song on your device playlist?  What memory does it conjure?
40. Text 5 people, ask them for 1 word that describes you and reflect.
41. What’s your “One Good Thing” for today?
42. What do you do on parent night / open house?
43. What’s the toughest challenge you face as a teacher today?
44. A favorite activity that is fun and leads to learning…
45. A nostalgic thing/activity in your classroom you wish to modify and improve.

Enjoy! And please tweet out your posts with #MTBoSblaugust so we can follow along!

No longer just teaching

Hi strangers!  Once again it's been a really long time since I wrote, but some wonderful things have happened since I last wrote.

I finished my Master's in Educational Leadership in May, 2015 shortly after getting married in April, 2015.  (I really love the married life!)  After getting my Master's my applied to a few campus and district level positions around the area and ended up getting a position at a local high school as an Instructional Coach. (The official district title is Master NIET Coach, but that sounds kinda pompous to and doesn't really accurately describe the position.)

During my graduate school classes I discover that my calling in education had morphed from being a high school math teacher to being a teacher of teachers.  I'm so excited for what this year has in store and how I can help the teachers with the weekly content specific professional development I'm going to be presenting to them.  They already seem very open to what I have planned and the various ways I want to help them and have them work together collaboratively.

There are great things on the horizon for this year!!!

Long Time No Type!

It's been quiet some time since I was on here and wanted to share many of my teaching ideas and techniques.

What brings me back today is my grad school reading.

Yes, I'm crazy and possibly being turned to the dark side.  I'm currently in a program to get my M.Ed. in Educational Leadership where I will also end with my principal certification.  While this is a route I never foresaw myself going down there are many reasons for me following this educational path that I will delve into in a later post.

As for today, it's the idea of blogging that brought me back!

This is my second semester and the classes are SuperVision and Instructional Leadership (Weds night class) and Professional Development (Mon nigh class).  In the PD class we've been focusing on creating meaningful and lasting professional development that is cohesive with the campuses vision and culture while engaging everyone in it.

What sparked my interest today the most in my readings was what V.E. Killian wrote about in 1991.  Killian wrote about a "colleague journal network" where teachers and their partners "wrote and shared journals".  This sounds to me like what has currently morphed into the edusphere and become viral for many teachers.  It made me want to come back to my blog, I have continued following other's blogs and pintrest boards, and share my experiences.

Just my thought to share today.  I hope everyone is having a wonderful Sunday!!!

Student Quotes from Today

They were really memorable today!

*************
Student: Oh my god Miss! I think I actually get this for once!

************
Me: I heard about your conversation with your mom the other day. About how you feel like I actually want you to learn.
Student: Miss, you really are! I've never felt like this before. No one has ever cared this much before.
Me: Don't you think SBG has helped you feel that way?
Student: Hmm, I think I finally get it!

**************
Student: Yea, I figured I should just show up for the test today.
Me: Good! Because I was going to get directions from your brother if you weren't here.
Student: You never would have made it in my house, we have surveillance cameras.
Me: so? You were planning on still being asleep.
Student: I have lions though Miss. You never would have made it past them.
*silence*
Student: Nevermind, it is you. You could probably tame them.

**************
Student: Miss, I have a random question. What do your Keys kids do now that the TAKS is over?
Me: I make sure they pass the rest of their classes.
Student: Oh...
Me: And we watch some of my favorite movies.
Student: Oh, I'm really glad I'm not in that class then.

What does that say about my taste in movies?!

Educating Parents on SBG

So last night we had an open forum with the parents to educate them on SBG and how we are implementing it at our school.

The parents had many concerns and they were very verbal about them.  Some were concerned with giving kids a 1, 2, 3, or 4 as a grade instead of a number between 0 and 100, which that practice has now been stopped.  Others were extremely upset that their student who up until this year has been making straight A's would be required to go above and beyond to push their grade from a 90 to a 100.  But the biggest push of some of the parents and students was over the concern that it will impact their GPA and class rank.

The problem here in Texas and in our district is that students aren't simply given an A, B, C, etc for a grading period or for a semester grade.  Instead they are given a numeric grade and in our district that number grade is what is used to calculate their GPA as well as their class rank.  And of course in Texas we have the Top 10% rule where the students in the Top 10% of their graduating class are automatically given acceptance to any public university.  I really want to sit down with some of these parents and students and show them how the math doesn't come out to a large statistical difference.

They're so uninformed and we aren't even using TRUE SBG!  We've modified the idea of it to fit our crazy grading system here which keeps it from being the thing that the parents and students are so gung ho against.

UGH!!!!!

Sorry, I just had to vent....

Sharing my stuff

I'm tweeting these links so I figured I should probably post them on here too.  I've uploaded a lot of my stuff to these sites that I think are good and not just bad notes or worksheets from the textbook.  I would love feedback or additional ideas if anyone has any!  I'm starting to get a little bored teaching Geometry.

Geometry Stuff: http://www.box.net/shared/35ddanvx8n

Keys to Math and Test Taking Stuff: http://www.box.net/shared/kxv63cnnhv

More to come will be for Alg 1, Alg 2 and 8th grade math.

I hope everyone has an awesome Friday!!!

Best idea ever!!!!!

Yes I know I have been kind of in mia.  No I have been mia. Things have been crazy, budget cuts And worries about having jobs next year. But luckily I'm safe. Last year was my first year to get a two year contract. Talk about perfect timing, huh?!

Well I wanted to share with you guys what has saved my butt this year.  It may seem simple and logical but sometimes I'm not the most logical, even though I teach math.

So basically my students are able to turn in late work at any time without any penalty.  It has proved to keep me busy with making copies and getting it out of the file cabinet.  So out of frustration one day I finally said "here!  Here is all of the assignments that you have had.  They will always be at the front of the room if you need them.  If you take the last copy let me know."

I love it AND it helps promote self advocacy for the students.  They have know what they need and they have to find it themselves.

Just wanted to share my tidbit of knowledge for today :)

I hope everyone has a great Friday!  More blogs to come soon!

SUCCESS!!!

So I literally just realized that I hadn't blogged about how well my "Keys to Math" students did on their TAKS retest in October.  We got the results shortly before Thanksgiving break and I've been diving deep into the data and crunching the numbers since then.

Last year in the October retest and traditionally we have had ~31% passing rate.  This year I kinda gently tossed the previous system out the window and the passing rate for students in my class as well as the school was 45%.  Here is where you picture me jumping up and down for joy and screaming like a little girl in my Associate Principals office.  And yes I really did that, and yes some of the admin was doing that with me.  :-)

As a result we are taking the system I hit the ground running with and expanding it while also having our Intervention teacher, let's call him "Stu" teach the same course but his is going to be more directed towards the 10th graders that have always struggled.

My principal, the sweetheart that he is asked me to start writing down the process that the students are doing so that, in his words "someday if you wanted to you could have it ready and go out and sell it to other school districts to implement it."  My response; "that would be awesome but I'm happy in my classroom and it seems like a pretty common sense approach to me."  My thoughts now are that I'm going to TM and a circle so that if someone else wants to do the leg work of presenting it to other schools that's awesome and I'll take the credit and royalties :)

So without further ado, here's what I have typed up so far.  I'm also going to share the MASSIVE spreadsheet I have come up with that has tons of the kids historical data in it (basically anything I could get access to).  Feel free to Oooh and Aah when you see the spreadsheet.  It's kinda like my baby.

Here's the whole process
Keys to Math Process

Here's where you can find all of the documents:
this is the one for the beginning of class or when the kid walks in your doors.
Personal TAKS Reflection

TEKS Tracking Chart

Helps me figure out what the kids need help with. Will be online next semester.
Daily Check




My baby <-- This is where you can Ooh and Ahh :) Everything File to Share


Template for Giving New Results
And yes the raw score means more to the Keys Kids than the scale score.

Earlier in the year as the students were still working their way through the steps before the test we had to present to our co-workers and some central admin through a gallery walk things we were trying in our PLC.  I threw this poster together totally last minute at request and got a lot of positive feedback from coworkers, students and the superintendents right hand woman.  Here's the pics of what the poster showed.  I'm going to be moving it to Glogster whenever I find the time.

HELP!!! Need out of the box ideas fast!

With the end of the semester rapidly approaching I don't know why I never took into consideration the fact that my "Keys to Math" students (the TAKS remediation students) would need to take a "midterm" for me and have something put in the gradebook.  The class is a local elective and for some of them won't count one way or another but now I'm pressed to come up with a "midterm" for these students to do.

I know what you're thinking.  "Duh Sarah!!!  Come on!  It's not like you can just have a party and actually expect the kids to show up for their grade."  As far as the details of this are concerned I just texted my AP and hopefully I will hear back from him soon.

Here's my issue:
These kids don't do well on tests.  And the focus of the class was to have them all work on their individual weak objectives, reflect on their progress, work in small groups, and take ownership of their own learning.  This happened for almost all of the students and I'm super thrilled.  BUT I can't give them a traditional or they will revolt.  Plus, the students were working on their own personal weak objectives so if I did come up with a so called test it would need to be tailored to the individual student.

So here's the deal:
I'm in need of ideas, activities (preferably computer/internet based) that aren't super crazy difficult but something that kid would enjoy the fun math challenge of and I could come up with a grade of.  And everyone needs to be able to succeed at it. 

Anything and everything would be greatly appreciated!  I hope everyone's having a great week so far.

A year ago today

One year ago today I could swear i was having a mental breakdown.

My dad had passed away the previous May and he was a big part in me figuring out that I was actually pretty decent at math. I made it through his birthday September 21st and my parents anniversary September 30th without any major problems. But Veterans Day snuck up on me big time. I ended up losing my keys, and not just my classroom keys (which also open all of the computer labs in my building) and as well as the keys for the laptop carts (that work on all of the 18 new carts).

By the end of the day I was wandering around the school backtracking my steps hoping to stumble across my keys. Luckily a good friend from work came along and helped me make it through the last long minutes.

My dad was so proud that I became a math teacher. Especially since I didn't automatically click with math. I know he would be so proud of the fact that almost half of the kids I've been helping in my TAKS remediation class passed the TAKS test they just took. Thank goodness my dad saw what he did in me.

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Interested in thoughts on the "Common Core" (Common State Standards)

So I just got back from a lunch with a coworker that has hooked me into blogging about school and we share a lot of the same ideas on education and the going ons in the classroom (Yes Stacy, I'm talking about you).  One thing she brought up that I have not formed an opinion on is the Common Core movement.  I don't know if it is just because I am currently more concerned with my new upcoming class or if it's because I like to stay out of the politics of education (I just want to teach and work with kids) or if it is because my state, Texas, is not participating in creating the standards. 

I am curious as to other people's opinions, especially those that are not from Texas.  Do you know what your state is going to do with the standards?  Will everyone be giving the same assessments eventually?  I understand the move to common standards is a beneficial one and will *fingers crossed* keep all the states at the same level and prevent some states from "dumbing down" their standards so they don't get in trouble with NCLB.  I would just like to hear everyone's thoughts.  As a math teacher I feel like math doesn't change much from one state to another and it is rigid in the order that things need to be taught.  I would love to hear everyone's thoughts and opinions.

On an interesting note along with this only Texas and Alaska aren't participating in creating the standards, but Virgina is helping create them but they have already made it clear they will not adopt them.  Interesting...

What is this one about?

Why am I adding to the multitude of blogs out there about teaching you ask?

As of this upcoming school year I am going to be teaching a remediation math class to students that are struggling with passing our state mandated test to graduate. We only have about 3 more years (I believe) of this test as a graduation requirement before Texas moves to using an end of course exam requirement (STARR).

As well as the new class that I have to teach, which has no set scope and sequence or mandatory tests (so excited about that!) I am attempting to implement Standards Based Grading with this class. As of my last conversation with my AP I will have 2 sections along with my Geometry classes and I am being given free reign to experiment with ways to make these students feel successful and help them to finally pass this bleeping test.

Just a quick side note- when I was in high school (not that long ago) and I had to take our then skills based test (TAAS) required and they took away my calculator I failed the adding and subtracting portion of the exam. I wasn't the best student myself so I know what it is like to fail these tests as a student and have to retake them.

So that's a little about what this is going to be about. And of course the ventings that come from being a teacher and our education system. I would appreciate any feedback from those of you that have tried to implement these systems and your experiences.

Happy teaching!