Stanford

This was by far my most exciting professional development week!
A colleague and I got to go to Stanford for a Mathematics Mindset conference. It was great to meet teachers from other schools who are in various stages of implementing Jo Boaler's ideas of what math classrooms should be. Here is a link to a poster I am going to put up in my classroom. I made some great connections and heard about exciting results out of San Francisco Unified School District. I am excited to keep evolving as a math teacher! The math camp materials provided lots of activities to use in my classes, and it would be a great curriculum to use at Breakthrough Kent Denver to try to give some DPS students a different math experience in the summer. I was looking for resources to try to help parents see why math education needs to evolve. Jo Boaler recommends that parents take the "How to learn math for Students." which is a free online course. There are also lots of resources for parents on the youcubed.org website. I was also able to get all of the names of the researchers whose work has been used to prove why we need to revolutionize math education. All of the various psychological studies and math metrics argue that removing labels and timed tests will help all students have a better relationship with math and earn higher scores on standardized tests. One of my favorite resources was the film we saw called, "Rethinking Giftedness." The changes I plan to implement immediately come from the idea of Mathematical Freedom. I am starting by changing the way students will record the work we do in class, and giving them access to more resources to solve problems. I get to continue to use online resources from the facebook page associated with this conference. As well as following Jo Boaler and the rest of the community of like-minded educators on Twitter.
Podcasts
I just finished listening to the Science Friday podcast this morning because of being away last week I didn't spend as much time in the car. I liked the idea of promoting science literacy in all classes to teach students how to be critical readers of information. The science news was interesting because scientists have recently identified a new species of Orangutan! I also liked hearing about the microbes as well as snails that could potentially be used for cancer research. Can you tell I was a Biology major?
This week the Truth for Teachers podcast really spoke to me. I often have stress over not doing enough and how to balance work with home life. I need to look into the toolkit, Angela Watson and Dan Tricarico have developed. Dan has a website called the Zen Teacher. It makes me want to re-introduce yoga into my weekly routine. I have now registered to get the email when they start the new group for the 40-hour work week club.
#IMMOOC
This recording of the YouTube live discussion with George Couros, Katie Martin, and Dwight_Carter was about Part 3 of the Innovator's Mindset book that I read this summer for the science department. Dwight_Carter is an administrator and author. Their conversation centered around many of the challenges faced by administrators who work in varying environments that change frequently. From standards to variety of teachers in their buildings. It was a good exercise in empathy for me to listen!