justin aion

Thanks, Jenks

When you build up a future experience in your mind, it is not often BETTER than how you envisioned it.  Twitter Math Camp was that experience for me.  It was so much better than it looked on a hashtag.

In 2008, I began my twitter journey.  I mostly followed celebrities and friends.  My brother swore that twitter’s true gold was in following real people that have similar interests and ideas.  As it turns out, he was right.  Since jumping head first into the Mathtwitterblogosphere, I’ve experienced nothing but a genuine willingness to help one another become better educators.  TMC solidified my understanding of this network of delightful people that make up the math-educator-online community.

Recently, twitter was abuzz over the thought that TMC should be more theory, less play.  Part of the beauty of this experience was the organic nature in which everyone gathered and collaborated.  At professional conferences, you never see groups of teachers still talking pedagogy at 6pm, still at 8pm, and at midnight, and still at 2am. This went on for FOUR solid days.  Can you imagine this happening at school:  students staying after school into the night to work on the math investigation that they can’t stop talking about?  It doesn’t happen.  But anyone who’s been a summer camp counselor knows that there’s always that group of kids that can’t get enough interaction with their peers and choose to forgo sleep to soak it all in.  That’s why the C in TMC stands for CAMP and not Conference.

Some highlights for me: 

  • Justin Aion is the same ball-of-fun in person that he seems online.  I’m grateful for getting to spend time with him.
  • Max Ray is an artist at facilitating problem-solving.  His session was masterfully orchestrated.
  • Steve Leinwand is a humble communicator but an electrifying presenter.  I was moved by his keynote very much.
  • Malke and Christopher’s willingness to teach Math in Your Feet afterhours was generously spectacular. I was skeptical at first about my ability to engage, but I’m so thankful that I was pushed to do so.
  • Bob Lochel knows more stats activities than pages in a textbook.  I enjoyed working with him in the morning sessions very much.
  • Glenn Waddell is an amazing human being.  I’m humbled to have gotten to steal some of his attention this weekend.
  • Eli Luberoff is a humble genius and a class act.
  • I have the two greatest coworker friends, Teresa and Dianna, who came with me to Jenks and dove head first into the awesomeness of this community.

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I had hundreds of interactions with some fantastic people.  This isn’t something that can be re-created online, despite the fact that the community began there.  Thank you, Jenks, for hosting such an incredible event.

 

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Yesterday:  As much as I get frustrated by the attitudes and actions of my 5th hour, much of my resentment stems from the fact that I believe the situation in my class is my fault.  I feel like I’ve conditioned them by accepting disrespectful behavior in order to keep kids in the classroom.  As a result, the entire learning environment has suffered.

Today: So that was the beginning of yesterday’s post. I was concerned going into today’s class. Last Friday of the year and the fact that the school has been a circus compounds the issue. I was expecting chaos, but what I got was mathematical success. The difference was I demanded their attention in a more respectful way. I was firm, but polite, and it payed it’s dividends in student engagement.
We began with a simple math talk that I modeled from Fawn Nguyen’s March 21st math talk:

Today is the 30th day of the month.  Write as many equations you can that equal 30.

I gave them about 5 silent minutes. Then I let them use their calculators to come up with more gems.  At the end, I had them share their favorite or most complicated equation on the whiteboard.

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Here’s where the real magic happened.

Me:  Look up here and see if there are any equations you disagree with

Lots of discussions ensued about order of operations, square roots, rounding, parentheses, etc.  Overall, the activity lasted 30 minutes, which was about 29 more minutes of math than we did yesterday.

But the fun doesn’t stop there.  To boot, I introduced the Mathalicious Decoder Ring Lesson.  We watched the Christmas Story clip and talked about what a decoder ring does.  What I liked is that most of them were trying to figure out how the decoding worked, rather than just “get the worksheet done.”

Justin Aion stated poetically on his blog today the exact way I feel about this class:

We teach students long-term strategies to accomplish short-term goals and often don’t see any progress.  If we are very lucky, we’ll see the kind of growth we want by the end of the school year, but the growing season on students isn’t as regular as it is for other crops.  Each seed needs its own time to grow.We desperately need to get away from the notion that if it hasn’t sprouted by the beginning of June, then it must be a defective seed.

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