Spring and New Beginnings

I love the smell of spring. You know the feeling, the first day you sense that the dirt is churning out baby tulips and the sunlight feels warmer. Opening the front door and seeing the City Park lake, the slightly greener grass and feeling a light, fresh breeze is why spring is my favorite season. Sure, I love snowboarding but I don't like winter driving, winter boots and dark afternoons.

This spring, I booted a not-so-great guy and feel good about it. Spring cleaning applies to boys as well as underused jeans, shoes and old jewelry - they all find a different, and hopefully more well-suited purpose, in another persons life.

My new beginning this spring will start in June. I am heading back to the orange and pink skies of Phoenix for 6 weeks to work at the Teach for America Institute: boot camp for new corps members. I will be an adviser to a group of fresh teachers, most of them will have just received their college diplomas before heading to Phoenix. Call it Greek Week initiation and education on steroids - good ones. We will shape and develop this country's best and brightest to become effective teachers in our country's lost and forgotten neighborhoods and towns.

I am looking forward to the high energy, the excitement and the eagerness of new teachers. After 4 years, I still love teaching - but I know that this opportunity will be rejuvenating, provide fresh perspective and help me blossom. Just like the emerging tulips this spring, not only will I be planting a love of teaching but I will hopefully learn how to grow and prosper from my colleagues from around the nation.

PHX, here I come!

teaching

I don't normally share what happens in our algebra classroom. But today, I will.

We are multiplying binomials - remember FOIL? And my students, who have struggled graphing straight lines and still forget negatives times a negative is a positive are rockin' out multiplying polynomials. It was amazing. They had an 'exit ticket' yesterday which is 6 problems to solve in the last 10 minutes of class. Grades usually follow a pattern but this time, the pattern was transformed. I saw students earning 100%s and over 100% (there was a bonus question). Normally, there are 2-3 100% papers but there were like..20 out of 60 students with 100s. AMAZING. There were another 20 or so with As and just as many with B+ on their exit ticket! I was SO impressed and excited. Multiplying polynomials is no easy task but they rocked it out. I can't wait to see what happens when I introduce the quadratic formula soon.

I am SO proud of my Class of 2013 :)