Aim to Be Awesome, Not Perfect

This week was a short school week, thanks to the Martin Luther King Jr holiday on Monday and the sleet/ice/freezing temps that Austin got on Thursday night/Friday morning.  But it was chock-ful of technology! After much deliberation, I decided to let my accelerated students bring their own devices everyday to aid in their learning. This is just a trial run with 2 of my 5 classes.  We had a discussion on Tuesday about how the devices could be used in note-taking (notes app, Evernote, etc) and they could also use the devices to take pictures of notes/activities/warm-ups. I advised my students that this will continue as long as the devices were used appropriately and they maintain their grades.  Goofing off - BYOD gone.  Bad grades - BYOD gone.   So it was interesting to see my students pull out their devices on Wednesday to use as planned.  I was expecting pictures of the notes but they even took pictures of the warm-up!  Here are a couple photos (with my lovely art skills to disg

My life right now is a little crazier than normal... because it is Girl Scout Cookie Season! I am the Cookie Mom - which means I order the cookies, track the cookies, and collect all the money.  My girls have been very helpful so far this season with getting cookies organized and making sure the members of our troop get their initial orders.  And it got me thinking... everyone should sell Girl Scout Cookies! Okay...maybe shouldn't everyone shouldn't sell GS cookies, but as a math teacher, I think it is beneficial to students to be involved in some sort of business endeavor.  As cookie sellers, here are some skills (math and real life) that my daughters are learning and improving on: - addition (determining a total for a customer) - subtraction (determining change for a customer) - multiplying (determining a total, since all our boxes are $4;  figuring out how many boxes when given the number of cases) - dividing (determining how many cases when given nu

Today was the first day back for my students, and while I was trying to wipe the sleepy dust from my eyes, I thought maybe it would be nice to have another day or two off.  Then I got to school and I realized I was happy to be there and I was happy to see the students. You might be asking, why?  I was happy because I got to see their faces light up with excitement when I asked them about their Christmas break. I watched a lot of it unfold on Instagram (so I knew a little) but I wanted more details. The kids were happy to share and were excited that I asked. One student, who I haven't taught, asked me about my recent trip and shared with me one of his trips to the same place.  Without social media helping us make that connection, this might be a student that I would never talk to.  I know there are a lot of good teachers who don't want to connect with students outside of the school building. That's fine for them, but that doesn't work for me. I want to know t