I am embarking on a new adventure and headed back to the classroom for half of my time. The other half of my time will be facilitating PD for HS and MS along with keeping all the curriculum maps and assessments up-to-date along with various other tasks.
I have been obsessively been listening to podcasts while I walk my dog at night, trying to gain any sort of new knowledge to help me in this endeavor. This will be no easy feat since I have been living in the middle school world for the last 15 years. I am continuously listening for an insight into how these presenters are throwing out ideas and why people are catching them and running with them. How do these people who have blogs, tweet out, create lessons, present on really big stages like NCTM and NCSM have all these great ideas that people are captivated by? Jo Boaler has a growth mindset. Dan Meyer had so many ways to reinvent the math classroom it would take too long to write about -- but the big one is how he is helping transform Desmos. Robert Kaplinsky has rich tasks, Fawn Nguyen has visual patterns. What will my legacy be for this position? I hope people get out of our PD sessions that all students can learn and at high levels and we can get rid of the kill and drill.
I have been slowly taking notes on what are some of my ideas for PD for next year. I want to make relevant and engaging to all audiences. When someone from a different world comes into yours, you tend to judge and say... "This person knows nothing about my world and how it works." I just hope to shed those assumptions people will make and we can all learn as a community.
I am in the middle of recreating my 4 week CBU class into a 2.5 hour Summer Academy class. As always, I worry that it will not be relevant for my audience or it will focus too much on Middle School thinking and High School people will think it is a joke. Such is the live of a middle school teacher -- caught in the world of middle school and never escaping the peer shame of being good enough.
Hopefully within the next few weeks, I will get some more guidance to find my way along this path. It will be an adventure but one of uncertainty. But I will be able to do it!
