How many dots are there?  

One of the best experiences about being a teacher is the opportunity to bear witness to student sense-making.  I enjoy hearing learners help one another develop different ways of approaching problems because I know this is a skill that will transcend mathematics class into when-are-we-ever-going-to-use-this land.

I was first introduced to the idea of a Math Talk when I was taking Jo Boaler’s online course How to Learn Math.  This one is simple enough that anyone able to count can do it.  Seriously, take a second and give this one a go:

How many dots are on the card?  How did you determine your answer?

The answer of ten is hopefully quite obvious to your students.  But it’s the incredible number of ways in which they determined that answer that blows me away.  Is it two rows of 3 and two rows of 2?  Or is it 4 diagonals of 1, 2, 3, and 4?  Maybe 5 in the top 2 rows and 5 in the bottom 2 rows?  Perhaps 5 pairs of vertical dots catches their eye?  THESE ARE JUST DOTS, PEOPLE!  All of this awesome thinking over dots arranged strategically on a piece of paper.  But these dots opened the door to my getting my students to explain their thinking to one another.

Fast forward to MCTM this past weekend.  I was reminded of the power of the Math Talk at a session hosted by Christy Pettis and Terry Wyberg.  I knew Fawn Nguyen had some wonderful examples on her website, so I jumped in.

The results have been lovely.

Monday:  Which is greater 79×25 or 75×29?

Tuesday: Visual Pattern #10

How would you have determined that there were 85 puppies in step 43?

Wednesday:  Which is greater 12/17 or 5/8?

There were many lovely responses to all of these questions in each of my classes. But the one that stands out as my favorite was Caytlin in my 5th period Algebra 2 class.  For Wednesday’s problem, Caytlin says that it’s easier to compare the reciprocals of those fractions, so she flipped them over to compare 17/12 and 8/5.  When converted into a mixed number, 1 and 5/12 is smaller than 1 and 3/5.  The opposite would be true for the reciprocals of the numbers.  Therefore, 12/17 is larger than 5/8 since its reciprocal is smaller.

Honestly, isn’t that golden!?  What I love about math talks is that students are asked to make sense of the problem themselves.  They aren’t shown an example or taught a rule.  They develop their own method and then help their classmates by sharing it.  There have been a lot of good experiences in my classroom this year, and math talks rank up there near the top.

(For additional information on math talks, I recommend the book Making Number Talks Matter by Cathy Humphreys and Ruth Parker)

I came clean recently about my addiction to alcohol, and this past Tuesday, March 31st, I celebrated 3 years of sobriety.  As problems have arisen (a broken thumb is a fine example), I know that no problem is so big that alcohol won’t make much worse.  Trust me, I’ve tried alcohol as the solution more times than I can remember.  It failed ten times out of ten.

Rewind about 4 years, and you’ll see a teacher who’s put together on the outside, but falling apart within.  I kept beer hidden in the garage, wine stashed in the basement, and vodka in my purse.  All because of fear.  Fear that people would discover the unhappy person that loomed underneath my smile.  After a drink (or five), I could keep up that smile that I believed others wanted to see.  I had a happy marriage, a beautiful daughter, a great job, and financial security.  There wasn’t a reason to not be smiling, so instead, I drank.  And then I constantly lived in fear that my secret would be discovered and that i wasn’t truly as happy as I outwardly appeared.

As teachers, we are all control freaks. Every. Single. One of us.  I’m even exhibiting controlling behavior with my insistence of putting on a happy face outwardly.  It’s a more subtle type of control, but it keeps others at bay from what’s going on beneath the surface.  It’s similar to those who use humor to deflect serious conversation.  If we keep people laughing, we deflect their attention from the pain that lurks beneath the surface.

Yes, the degree at which we exhibit control varies from teacher to teacher, but can you think of anything more terrifying than a chaotic classroom? I know I’ve been awakened from that nightmare more than once.

Even if you’ve had no brush with addiction I’d venture to guess that the Serenity Prayer is something familiar to you:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Putting any religious context  aside, this prayer has powerful implications to the classroom . what is it in my classroom that I have the power to change? Do I have the necessary courage to face the challenges head on? Can I discern the difference between what is teachable and what is not?

More important recently, am I able to take what I preach in my classroom and apply it to my personal life? Do I have the courage to say “no, I cannot,” but more importantly be at peace with a decision to step away?

Because as control freaks, it’s one thing to say no and quite another to accept that decision. Relating this back to the Serenity Prayer, I’m very good at trying to change the things I can. I’d also say I do a decent job at knowing the difference between what I can change and what I cannot. It’s the serenity to accept what cannot be changed that gets me every time.

If you work at a high school, you probably don’t need a reminder that it’s Friday the 13th, and it’s the day before Valentine’s day.  When it comes to adolescents, the mood is a mixture of giddiness and angst.  A student asked his girlfriend to prom by filling her locker with ping-pong balls.  No doubt every student in my 3rd hour was able to snag one of those little white balls of sound-joy and test their durability all over my classroom.  Good times.

Regardless, I was determined to make an attempt at engaging them mathematically.  Enter Sandman (oops.  DES-man).  I had read on twitter about teachers using this activity as a platform for having students share graphs.

I posted a Daily Desmos graph on the projector and then watched them attempt to create it using the Des-man Dashboard on my tablet.  It was delightfully challenging for them to get the graph through the correct points and restrict the domain perfectly.

Because this was our first time formally restricting domains and ranges for piece-wise functions, I kept to the basic challenges.  Here’s one that stumped a few of them:

(Thank you @marybourassa)

Here was their attempt:

I’m pretty sure I got so excited about the possibilities in my other classes that I took my tablet and raced down the hall to share the awesomesauce with my colleagues.  Not sure they were as geeked out as I was but they humored me regardless.

Unexpectedly, I decided to supervise the commons area during a pep-fest and took that opportunity to take a page from Christopher Danielson’s book and bring some games and leave them for students to “discover.”

I chose a few that were more portable and set them out.  No one bit.  

I could have packed them up and continue on my merry, grading way, but I thought, “NO.”  This was the second time this week my game-bait had been rejected and I was not having it. (The first was from my daughter who caught onto my clever placement of shapes as soon as she walked in the door)  There were about 15 kids in the commons area, and I was determined to get at least 5 of them to play Set Cubed with me.

So I called a few of them over, taught them how to play, and some serious fun ensued.  It was four boys and I for 45 solid minutes, and no one flinched for a second to check his phone.  Not one of them.

Here’s what I learned:

This week was Snow Week at our school.  Four themed dress-up days,  a talent show, a dance, and a pepfest. Something for everyone!  Well…most everyone.   Students who don’t wish to attend the pepfest must bring a note from their parent excusing them or they can sit in the commons area for the hour.  It’s safe to assume that the heavily involved students attend the pepfest, some begrudgingly go, and many students opt to bring in a note excusing themselves.

That leaves a small group of students who do not feel a connection to school spirit and do not have another ride home.  They’re marginalized for one reason or another.  And what do we do to accommodate them?  We put them in a room, ask a few teachers to supervise them, and cross our fingers that they sit down and put their face in their phones for the hour.  We silence them because they don’t want to sit in a crowded, noisy gymnasium and watch the crowning of Snow royalty and see a principal kiss a pig.

I want to be clear, my goal is not to not criticize pep-rallies or school-spirited events.  Our students and teachers do an excellent job of making sure these events are entertaining for those who attend.  But we need to acknowledge and honor the fact that there are students where school is their safe place but overt participation in it is not comfortable for them.  Their needs involve being supported by school, which doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t support their school.  And because of this deep need, we need to offer them a place where they can feel valued and not marginalized and unappreciated.

I will finish with this: it sure felt good making those kids feel comfortable today.

The time finally came for us to move the crib-turned-toddler-daybed out of my daughter’s room and clear the way for her new big girl bed.  While clearing out the menagerie of clutter that remained from under her bed, I came across a card that I must have given my daughter to play with when she was collecting “credit cards.”  It was my therapist’s business card, and on the back, as was typical when I was attending therapy, was a question for me to reflect on before my next session.  “What is Normal?”

Growing up, I experienced more square-peg, round-hole situations than I care to recall.  Moving, switching from private to public school, changing swim teams to find the right fit kept “normal” seemingly out of reach for me.   A career change, divorce, and seven years of therapy later, at the age of 31, I realized that this “normal” that so many of us live in constant pursuit of does not really exist at all.

[Side note: If when you hear the word therapy, you think  “I don’t need to pay someone to listen to my problems.  I’ve got friends for that, I want to be the first to tell you you’re wrong. There’s a professionalism and unbiased skill that a therapist has when uncovering the root of an issue. Just like content experts don’t make the best teachers, friends don’t make the best therapists.]

I’ve struggled internally with how to write this blog post for a long time.  I wrestled with the idea of writing anonymously, but “unnamed” has never been my way about things.  My ultimate goal in this is that my experience, strength and hope can inspire, encourage, and support someone who is having a similar struggle.  I feel I can do that most effectively with a genuine story, rather than an incognito account.  So, without further introduction, I’m taking a deep breath, putting my big girl pants on, and opening up.

Hi.  I’m Megan.  I’m a mother, a wife, a vegan, a dog lover, a math teacher, and an alcoholic.  On March 31, 2012, I admitted my powerlessness over alcohol and this March will mark 3 straight years of sobriety for me.  I’ve attended AA meetings, in numerous cities, and the message is the same:  The addiction is merely a symptom to an underlying problem.

On August 29, 2010, I gave birth to a baby girl named Maria.  Her perfect eyes, toes, and full head of hair illuminated my world like I could not have imagined.  Being a mother was going to be the most rewarding, beautiful experience of my life, yet I felt the heavy burden as the life of this child was placed in my arms. Nothing short of divine intervention was going to come between me and protecting my child.  Nothing, of course, but the power of an addiction to alcohol, which no human force could ever remove.  I remember looking at Maria’s perfect blue eyes and stroking her soft baby skin, while slowly emptying the remaining contents of a bottle of Kettle One vodka I’d stashed under the sink.  Alcohol pulled me deeper and deeper into helplessness as it seduced me night after night.  That first sip after a hard day dealing with students sent a rush of relief throughout my body. But that relief was short lived when the need for more grew greater and greater.

Everyday, people are touched by the promises of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Every profession in the world has been affected by the disease of alcoholism.  But as a teacher, I have experienced the anxiety that comes with wondering if AA is truly anonymous. I hesitated so many times to walk through the welcoming doors and admit my powerlessness over a drug that held me down.  Fearful that inside those rooms I’d lock eyes with a parent, former student, or colleague who would divulge my secret that I struggled with alcohol.  As teachers, we desire control and order.  Trying to control my intake of alcohol was something out of my reach, yet the fear of being recognized as a teacher kept me from attending a meeting and seeking real help.

I still attend AA meetings and no longer fear running into school parents or former students.  In fact, I’ve become friends with a few that also attend meetings.  When I run into former students, I look for ways I can be helpful to them rather than shying away.    Along with therapy, I’ve learned to embrace my abnormality.   I’m a math and dog-loving, vegan, alcoholic.  I’ve been told not to open with that description, but that’s who I am at the core.  I don’t fit into many social circles naturally, but I’m fiercely committed to those I call friends.  Since I’ve put down my drink, my life has not stopped getting better.  And I’ve built a confidence in myself that there isn’t anything I want to accomplish that’s out of my reach.

There’s a lot of cliched “if I can do it, you can do it” rhetoric that follows stories like this, so I’m going to try to go a different route.  Social media does a lot of great things, but the glow of perfect Instagram photos and self-congratulatory Facebook statuses seems to tell us to put our best foot forward and discourage us from showing the hurt that lies underneath.  Many of us mourned when Robin Williams lost his battle with addiction by taking his own life, but how many of us reached out to the Williams’ in our timelines?  The face of addiction isn’t necessarily the homeless person on a bench with a bottle in a bag.  Because it’s also the teacher down the hall who holds it together during the day and falls apart at night.

I will be an alcoholic for the rest of my life, and my goal in posting this is to shed light on the deep rooted issues that even the most connected of connected educators hide.  If you struggle with addiction, please reach out.  Alcohol happened to be my drug of choice, but the many threads of addiction run together under common themes.  Please share this post far and wide, especially if you think it would help someone who is struggling with this destructive, life-threatening condition of addiction.

We open our hearts and souls to our children every year, but struggle with opening ourselves to help.  We support each other with twitter chats and lesson sharing, but I know that so many fellow educators struggle with similar issues that don’t translate well in 140 characters.  But we can’t heal a hurt we keep hidden underneath educational technology and growth mindset posters.  Let’s lift each other up in a way that helps us grow from the inside and helps us appreciate our own abnormalities as perfection.