Note, this was written On October 25, 2020. I will update for my new year's blog bc @druinok is the queen of inspiration. Hello Dear Friends! I don't know what will be the outcome of this post, will it be more math-y or more adventure? You will have to read on to see.

Being At A New School:

I highly recommend it. There is nothing to up one's game then being the new teacher. I haven't been the newest to a school in my-daughter-just graduated-from-college-and-I-had-her-after-working-at-the-same-school-for-two-years years. I am more gracious with myself and making a greater effort to observe without judgment. 

Benefits of being newest: None. JK. There are many:feeling like you were hired with a purpose, not leftovers. feeling that honor as a talent, as a professional, and that your Master's Degree means something and your self driven PD has not been for naught. Being re-inspired by observing new colleagues, learning new routines, and ways to engage and care for students. I could not have done this without the support, intelligence, and care of the MathTwitterBlogOsphere, I truly mean it. 

While I have lots of favorite materials, I am mostly limiting myself to my comfort routines: opener that lends itself to "how does this make sense and now-I-am-less-anxious to learn something new," our everything notebooks, (oh Miss Amy, the trees, the trees), and the "Welcome Mat." I have three preps, Gr 9 Math Foundations (grade 8 standards), Integrated Math 1 (10th graders that had Foundations last year) and Integrated Math 2 (10th grade). I am trying to look through everything with a new lens. (Though relying on last years resource pages for Math 1 and 2). 

The Ss are keenly aware that I have a lot of energy, that I truly care about their welfare and am passionate about math education. They are however, not sure that their nonlinear, non-my-way-or-the-highway, teaching is the sure thing to fill them full of the handy knowledge that will make them successful IB students. As in "Keep, Change, Flip." I am like, WTF? (I didn't say that, but I wanted to!) What are you talking about? 'We know how to divide fractions Miss." But do you know why? Are you supposed to have more or less pieces? Can you draw a picture? There is so MUCH I want to share with them, working with the less confident students forces me to slow down, and take apart the learning step by step.

Having to be your best self everyday is refreshing. (tiring too, sleep 9.5 to 10 hours on weekend nights!) Not making any assumptions about your students, where they come from, how they think, what they think is refreshing too. 

Public vs. Private School:

If you are still reading this, I want to share a little about the IB (International Baccalaureate) and the school. I am at a private 2-3 yrs old to grade 12 international school with 820 students on Cayman Island. To say it is different from the 1750 Students at the comprehensive public high school school I taught at in Northern California for all those years is an understatement. I have gone from 140 students for .83FTE, to 45 for 1.0 FTE. I work longer hours, have more preps and more meetings, homeroom, and houses, and I am not  nearly as exhausted. We are face to face, what a blessing! 

Hello Friends! I hope you and yours are healthy and taking care of each other.

Yesterday we conducted teaching interviews online. From years of experience both on interview panels and being a successful interviewee, I thought I would share some pointers with you. Please share and please let me know when you get the job!

PS These are all real examples, I did not make any of them up!

Please do NOT:

1) assume teaching is causal and show up in jeans or wrinkled clothing. (Many re-entry programs offer free professional clothing)


2) start every sentence with Me, My, I

as in "My students love me or when I took the SAT..." or when asked how you will contribute to a team say, "I don't know..."

3) assume all students are created equal or have access to the same resources.











4) ask "Where are you located?" or "How many students are in your school?" or "What physical safety measures are in place in the classroom?"

5) answer tech questions generically as in "I love computers," and "Computers are very useful."
and finally, oh friend, when conducting an online interview, please don't show the shelves in your frat house living room.

Please Do these things instead:

•  Do your research! All districts and schools have websites. Many have WASC reports or, in California, we have the The California School Dashboard. Check out a local newspaper for the school sports pages or what how the Oddessy of the Mind team did in their last competition. What was the last play, musical, or band performance of the school? Find a friend of a friend of a friend whose kid goes to the school. Know what curriculum they use in advance.

• Show that you are committed to healthy, positive relationships with students. Be specific. Mention a student by name, a colleague by name, or talk about how you connected with a student's family. 

• Have a good failure story. Make sure you talk about how you corrected course and who you reached out to help you.

Today, K came to class after lunch reeking like weed. (Yeah, I live in California, I know what it smells like). I call the campus supervisors and ask that they come get him, his smell is that distracting. I am about to text that he left his phone (Why would he leave his phone? How many kids would forget a phone, unless the consequences of what is on his phone is worse than it getting stolen or him having to live without it for 24 hours?) when I get this text from the supervisors, "He admitted smoking. We gave him something to eat so he wouldn't smell, can he come back to class?" What! No he can't come back to class! The students would all want to know what happened, who said what, blah, blah, blah...Talk about distracting. And yet...he wanted to come back to class. What is the more thoughtful moment? As a parent, what do you want for your son or daughter? Done the road, in one year, two years, as a young adult, will K think, "Zimmer is cool, she let me smoke weed and come back to class." or will he stop and say, "I could have gone through school stoned, but it wasn't worth it?"

Things like this used to be clear cut. Not so much anymore. Where is a student safest? (K spent the rest of the period in the student adviser's office.) Could K have benefited more from my math help or my insistence that he doesn't come to school stoned? I think I know the answer to that. Thanks for letting me rant.

When K returns, I will make sure he knows that I love him, that I won't let this incident define him for me, and let him know I want the best for him.

Write first, title later.

Danielle Buckman: "A rubric for the level of understanding tells a student not only where they are, but where they can end up."

Part 1

This is a two part post--the learning piece is second, so if you want PD and to learn more about writing rubrics for understanding, skip to the second half, I completely understand, time is the one definitively limited resource we have. The first half is how I got to be so awesome. Joking aside, I must give credit for how I have become a more conscientious teacher/human.

How do I know this? I feel it. I can feel it within and from the relationships I have with my students. And my husband, who has been my partner for all but my first year of teaching, has been more appreciative of my work too, less "you are always working," to more, "I notice how calm and confident you are."

I am deeply appreciative of so many people who make me a better teacher: The students for sure, they are my audience and have my full attention when I am crafting. Their feedback is unfiltered and immediate, whether they are humming or delivering crickets.

The #MTBoS community is my rock, where I also get unfiltered and immediate professional and sustaining support. Since 2012, the quality of the human in this sphere makes me strive to be my best self more than any other realm. This is a blessing, but can also bring some sadness, as this is what I want more regularly with my home colleagues and especially my district.

Thank you to College Preparatory Mathematics (CPM) for rich tasks and curriculum I enjoy.

Which brings me to another appreciation, my colleague extraordinaire, Danielle. She is a go-getter. She brings all the best from being a millennial straight into the teaching profession. No moss grows on that woman. We have very different backgrounds, she complements my wiggles and dreaminess with her clearly defined, no nonsense organized approach. We both love the roots of learning.  We both love what good pedagogy and technology can do to inspire a student's curiosity. What makes students motivated to learn? We run from room to room, sometimes 5 minutes before the bell, with, "hey, I can't even do this that I spent over an hour writing yesterday, I'm going to do this instead." and for each other, we are like, "Heck yeah, that is awesome!" In the last six years, she is the one who gets the my love affair with #TMC and understands that the risk of failure is worth the growing pains. This post is about how having a colleague with patience and humility makes all the difference. And Oh, it is about writing rubrics.

Part 2 

My College Readiness students have been working on functions and their transformations.












I started with this kind of function:


And had students make tables and explore with technology (TI-84 and Desmos) what a, b, h, and k do to the graph. Next we looked at the parent graphs and the equations. We even looked at Spaceman Snoopy

f(snoopy) = (snoopy + 4) +8

g(x) = f(-Snoopy)

(We live in Sonoma County the home of Charles Schultz). The students agreed, given an equation, they could mostly move the graph around, and that given a graph to move they were okay with that too. But given a graph of function already transformed was not so easy. We working on this for days and I wanted the students to get serious. Nothing like throwing in a little formative assessment. to light a few fires. What did I want to assess???

In comes Danielle, our TOSA for the year. That is exactly what she asked me: "What do you want to assess?" So now I understand the difference (Thank you TOSA) between writing a rubric for SBG and writing a rubric for level of understanding.  I will do my best to explain:

I wanted to give students a clear picture of what I considered conceptual understanding.  Danielle kept asking, "What are you trying to measure? A standard or a level of understanding?" Further she points out the most important difference, "A rubric for the level of understanding tells a student not only where they are, but where they can end up." I want the students to understand what they know. Of course there are overlaps in Content Mastery and Understanding the Concept. But what information does, "met standard" mean to a learner? Not enough. I want to provide the most useful information to the student. (There is so much I want them to understand!) Slowing down to put it in writing is a very good practice for me.

First attempt at rubric for level of understanding:

5--I can write an equation given the graph of a transformation.
4-- I can explain and accurately graph any transformation from a graph or equation.
3--Basic understanding: I can explain what a, h, and k do to a graph
2- Approaching understanding: I can explain what a, h, or k do to a graph.
1- I am breathing


This was the task was taken from CPM Math 4, Pre-Calculus with Trigonometry
Students were completely engaged, learned how to ask the questions they needed to clarify their understanding. I got mostly 3 and 3.5's with one 5!

Next day after asking D again what is the difference between SBG and Level of Understanding?

I made a few improvements:

5- Deep Understanding: I can write the equation of a transformation given the graph of a parent function.
4-General Understanding: I can accurately graph a transformation given a graph or equation.
3-Basic Understanding: I can explain what h, k, a and b do in the transformation of a function.
2-Approaching Understanding: I can explain what h, k, a or b to the graph of a function.

I wished I had asked them what they thought their levels of understanding were before and after, not just after. This time I will have to be satisfied with end of informative assessment and just after summative assessment.
Always more to think about.

What is an assessment win and fail you've experienced in your teaching?



















approaching met exceeding not yelow  SBG

5--more room for student to grow--level of understasnding 5-points