Already Busy

The school year has started and I have already been swamped with more work than I want. I'm having a fun time trying to find the right balance of caffeine to make it through the day, so far I've been failing. We'll see how I survive the rest of the week.

I held my first discussion section yesterday. I met all of my students, they are all freshman! It's excited to be able to mold their first semester of college life. I really want them to do well and further pursue mathematics, whether it be in application or in research. The first day was review of Calc 1 material, tomorrow will be the start of new material. The course already has a wiki for all class information, but I still want to create my own website for announcements and resources. That may be overstepping my role as a section leader and not the main teacher, but I want to be more involved in their learning.

Classes as a student have been good so far, I still have one class that hasn't met yet (it will tomorrow). It looks like a lot of work in my future, but it should be fine. I think I will like it, or I will learn to like it (I guess).

School Year is Quickly Approaching!

The school year is coming and I'm starting to get very nervous, this will be last year semester as a full time student. It all has gone by so quickly, and I imagine that this upcoming year will be quick too.

What will my students be like? What will they think of me? Will I be able to answer the majority of their questions and intrigue them to continue studying mathematics? It's starting to hit me that I am going to be a part of peoples lives, I will be one of their teachers.

From a previous post I had said I want to finish a few things before school starting. I have finished New Teacher Bootcamp through Edutopia, I'm awaiting my completion certificate. I've gotten through some of the Khan Academy videos (not to the point where I would like to be though), and I haven't really done much with MFMT.  For Math for Math Teachers, I feel that there just won't be enough interest in the program and that it will not be worth my time. I don't want to work on it alone, so I would need someone to collaborate with me or just give up the project all together and pick it up at some other point in time.

I am also working on a class blog/website for my calculus 2 class. I need some more ideas on how to use it, maybe some interesting widget to add, or something like that. Anyone have ideas? Here is the website so far: Math 231 AD9.

Summer is Coming to an End

Only a few more weeks until the new semester starts, I'm looking forward to it but I am also very nervous. This will be my first teaching position on top of having my own classes to do. I'm going to be very busy. I have a 14 hour semester, teaching two hours a week plus 8 hours of prep and grading, I will be a grader for an elementary teacher math course, I have my observation class in a high school in Rantoul, and I will still be working at my local tutoring center. I think I can do it.

I'm packing up all of my things right now in preparation for my move back to campus. It's crazy how much stuff you accumulate over a few years of living by yourself. And also working at Bed Bath & Beyond, definitely accumulate a lot of things when you work there.

My goals for this semester as a student:

• Be more organized about studying for exams
• Use neater handwriting
• Don't procrastinate on assignments

My goals for this semester as a teacher:

• Know my material
• Grade assignments on schedule (did this very well last semester!)
• Engage mathematical discussion
• Use problem-based learning
• Integrate the use of calculators into demos for class
• Integrate the use of blogs in my calculus classroom

Any suggestions for classroom management? Or ways to use a blog in class?

#ntbootcamp: Blogs

I am very excited to start using blogs in a classroom. I imagine I would have a blog for each classroom individually in which I posted homework and classroom resources, and the students could comment to the posts. I would also like each student to have his or her own blog so that he/she can use it for journaling exercises. I was taught in my Literacy in Math class and in my methods course that journaling helps students identify their points of misunderstanding as well as build the relationship between teacher and student. I feel that I would want their blogs to be private from each other if they so choose due to bullying and privacy, but it would be nice if there were issues in understanding and the students could collaborate with each other in order to fill the gaps.

#ntbootcamp: Wetoku

This took a while for me to get around to, but I finally did it. I'm not happy with the video quality available on the free version of wetoku, and I am hoping to find another similar online tool that gives better quality. Here is my video that I recorded as an introduction. I am currently speaking with a few of my friends to see if they are interested in being interviewed,  too.




My goals for using wetoku in the classroom:

• Show students how math is used in real jobs (even if the math isn't done by the people, how it is still important to understand the concepts in order to interpret what the computer is doing)
• Have students explore the lives of mathematicians
• Send video updates to parents

Summer To-Do's

As a mathematics person, I always feel the urge to say whenever I do something grammatically incorrect that I'm a math major. I know you're not supposed to put an apostrophe in words when you mean to pluralize them, but especially in math (like if you're like at all of the a's in a problem, or make sure to eliminate the x's and y's), not putting an apostrophe makes it ambiguous and it doesn't really make sense. "Look at the bs on the quiz," or "Great job, class, on getting all As on the test!" It just doesn't look right.

Anyways, I love how when summer starts I always make a hefty list of things I want to accomplish over the break, and just about every year I only end up doing one or two things off the list. This year isn't very different, but I wanted to talk about my goals for what is remaining of summer.

1. Khan Academy - I want to watch all of the calculus videos available on this website in order to review for myself and also see if the material is worth using in my classroom next semester. I have always promoted this website in the past, but it has changed greatly since the last time I had viewed it. There's now achievements and exercises and the possibility to monitor students who set you as their "coach." All of this is interesting and I want to find out more.
2. New Teacher Bootcamp - I am almost done with this one, I have two of the 5 projects left to complete. I am glad I was able to participate in this free summer workshop, I learned more about some online tools but more so I learned how to collaborate over twitter better. It definitely encouraged me to follow and tweet with other teachers and actually build friendships.
3. Math for Math Teachers (mfmt) - I'm hoping to get this group going and have a few weeks set up in advance, it's a group dedicated to reviewing topics in high school math which may not be familiar or had a hard time learning when we were in school. Most mathematics education majors feel a disconnect between our coursework and the math that is actually taught in high school so there is a focus on learning relevant material.

I think those are hefty goals for only 3 weeks remaining of summer. I know I need to finish off #ntbootcamp this week, perhaps next week while I'm packing I can watch some calculus videos. I am then planning on working on mfmt the week prior to moving into my apartment for school. Let's see how this goes!