It must be almost October

I definitely did not get to my reflections in a timely manner this week! Calling all of my homeroom families is taking lots of time, so other business got pushed to the back burner a bit.
Twitter was the most affected. I did read an article from NSTA express instead. It was about the visiting scientist program and how teachers have integrated these visitors into their curriculum. I definitely want to try to get something like this going, but the topics covered are not in my curriculum, so I am going to try to find a scientist that can be an expert in something I am already covering.
I also listened to a live streaming class called #IMMOOC on YouTube that I referenced in my last reflection. It happened last Monday night, and it had Jo Boaler as a guest speaker about why innovative mindsets are important. I had heard most of Jo's topics before because I took one of her classes this summer, but it was great to hear her talk about the importance of being open to new challenges in any class. She shared a personal story about how people tried to discredit her research, and she talked about if you are not making some people upset you are probably not challenging the status quo enough. We are still using math curriculum that was developed in the late 1800's and it is time to teach students to be problem solvers, not computers. We have really powerful computers so we need to have a HUGE paradigm shift to teach students not to give up when things get difficult. This is especially applicable to my school which is fairly traditional college prep curriculum.  I have homework to do before the second episode of #IMMOOC, so that will be part of my PD time this week.
I still listened to two Science Friday Podcasts and I learned about research studying wildfires and how management strategies for these public lands have changed over time. I learned about Malaria testing and how it is changing treatment in areas that are plagued by that disease. There were some interesting facts about studying glow worms (That aren't actually worms.) in New Zealand caves. I learned about memory manipulation, research on jellyfish sleep, and how dinosaur research can help us now or even in the future.
Truth for Teachers was pretty short this week and it was about infusing growth mindset into your teaching all year. I really wanted to re-listen to this podcast, but I was having technical issues and ended up listening to some of the earliest episodes about positive self-talk and classroom management strategies. These were both informative and a helpful reminder for me about how far I have come as a teacher. I am going to try to figure out how to re-listen to last week's TfT and I am eager to hear more of Angela Watson's insights from previous podcasts if I have time.
I got a new Science Scope magazine, so I want to focus on reading that this week, so Twitter may suffer a bit again.