Category: Personal

  • Beauty and joy found in a math proof

    There may be a perception among high school age learners and some adults that math classrooms are not creative spaces. I have heard with my own ears from both groups of people. How large the groups of people are who believe this is up for debate, but not the goal of this post. Instead, I…

  • Why do we punish learners in math class?

    I am all fired up and angry about a new graphing calculator app today. Not that the app exists, but the way they are selling it. Reason number 1: I don’t know what to say about this other than express my complete and utter revulsion at the ideas expressed by this new graphing calculator app…

  • Why I wont use direct instruction

    This post is born out of a PhD class I am taking called “Models of Teaching.” It is a great class, but one of the requirements early in the semester was to write how I would use direct instruction in my classroom. I refused. I wrote a lengthy screed against DI. I attacked it, aggressively.…

  • Math on the Move

    I had the opportunity to read a preprint edition of Malke Rosenfeld’s new book, Math on the Move, and here are my thoughts. First off, let me start off with what this book is not. As educators we have probably sat through a professional development where someone told us that in math class, we can…

  • Is math like ice cream?

    To my last post, “No more broccoli ice cream” David Griswold challenged me with a very serious and thoughtful reply. The phrase, “No more broccoli ice cream” came from this meme that I saved. I collect these memes, just because the provide interesting fodder for conversations about math in class. So who is Denise Gaskins?…

  • No more broccoli flavored ice cream

    The struggle to understand why we teach K-12 mathematics in the order we do, and the content we do is real. I have wondered about this for a long time, and really have never found a good answer. I threw out the idea of teaching y=mx+b as the only way to write lines (even though…

  • Doing what you love means no more impostor syndrome

    #BlAugust Continues strong! Creating a habit of writing is something I need to work on both professionally and personally, so this challenge is definitely useful to me. Thank you Shelli! Wow, I have earned my second Star of the Week from Meg Craig! Awesome! As I was getting ready this morning, I had a thought.…

  • Teaching as political activity 2

    Yesterday I posted about deciding if teaching really was a dichotomy between agency or conformity, and I decided that yes, it really is a dichotomy. It is impossible to be a teacher and straddle the ideas of teaching to change the world or teaching to reinforce the world as it is. And then Andy Pethan…

  • Holding the kitchen hostage – Power in the Classroom

    This post is a call to action. It tells a story that came out of my class presentation last night. I am in a hostile, passion filled mood because of it.   I started with this video. Let me just warn you before you click play. Every time I watch this video, I cry. These…

  • You should make a mix tape

    On Friday last week at the end of the Step 1 class we were talking about engagement, high fives, enthusiasm, and why we are teachers. The conversation started with these two questions:  Write about a lesson / teacher who you remember using a 5E model. Write about a lesson / teacher who you remember did…