TMC was different this year.

To adequately describe TMC 15, I need to start from the beginning. I went to TMC 13 with two of my coworkers. I'm shy (at first, get to know me and watch out), so I pretty much stuck to them the whole time. I met very few new people. TMC 14 was pretty much the same song, second verse only now there were 4 of my coworkers with me. I felt like an outsider looking in. There was always this fear that I wasn't good enough/smart enough/cool enough to talk to these great math teachers. It was like being in 9th grade again when all my junior high friends went to the other high school and all the other kids already knew each other. I didn't know how to break that barrier, and in this case I didn't have to because I had a safety net of my best friends and coworkers with me.

The other thing that held me back a little was having conversations over Twitter with people that I don't actually know. It's weird. I've only ever talked to people online that I have met before. Trying to talk to strangers about things that are close to my heart is SO HARD. I have a great local community so I didn't need to push myself outside of my comfort zone to have a MTBoS community, so I didn't.

Fast forward to this year. It started with Casey picking me up at the airport. I had only talked with her for two and half months on Twitter because we were planning a trip to Disneyland with Heather, Meg, and Nicole. She walks up to me at the airport and my awkward self says, "This is weird, right?" This girl could be an axe murderer?! (She's not. She loves Disney. All is well.) It turns out that I needed an afternoon of giving Casey incomplete directions and taking the long way to places, 16 hours at Disneyland with 4 fantastic ladies, and a taping of The Price is Right with a bunch of math teachers to make me comfortable enough to talk math and teaching with people I hardly know.

My Pre-TMC party opened so many doors because I met new people who introduced me to even more new people. For the first time, I felt like I belong in the MTBoS community. I felt like I had things to contribute, and I wasn't just a lurker on the outside. I am smart enough to interact with these people because hey guess what, they are normal people too. DUH.

Ok enough Pre-TMC. The conference started and I had nothing but excitement. I knew from previous experiences that I was going to learn tons of great things, be inspired and invigorated to actually start working on my giant August to do list, and challenged to try new things in my classroom to enhance my kids' math education. I honestly enjoyed and learned something new in every single session.

This community is inspiring. Hearing the history of what I am walking into and joining is encouraging. Hearing other people's struggles, plans, and successes is necessary and important for my growth as an educator. Knowing that I am not alone when I so often feel that way is crucial to thriving in my classroom, not just surviving. I am grateful to know these people, learn from them, be inspired by them, and have fun with them.

It's about the community, stupid. -Lisa Henry

She speaks the truth.

There will be another post about what sessions I went to and more specific things I learned and want to implement this school year. Stay tuned. :)

Also pictures because it's me...

I hopped off the plane at... (that's a lie, but I don't care.)

MOUNTAINS

Pacific Ocean!

How could anyone be sad?

I-10...a very long way from home

This was my room at Disneyland. I teared up a little. Too much excitement.

You do NOT waste time at Disney. Plan of attack.

These are my people.

California Adventure

Secret Minnie meeting

Castle!

Finding Nemo submarine ride

Heather and I waited over an hour. Totally worth it.

Sparkly!

Heather and I got better the second time.

Come on down...except none of us got to.

But we had fun anyway!

The boys really like big glasses. I don't get it either.

MORE MOUNTAINS

mostly we dislike each other. (side note: good hair day)

New best friend

HOW DO I MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND!?

I was teaching solving trig equations at the beginning of the semester, and the kids just were not getting it. There was probably some issue with me diving in too deep too quickly, but the kids were not trying their hardest to understand either. I was fed up and out of ideas to help them understand.

Then I had an idea. What if I just make a dropbox folder with all the homework worked out so they can look and study on their own time. I don't have time to sit and tutor every kid, but if they have the work in front of them, they might be able to make some more sense of trig equations.

Turns out it was a good idea. The kids who use the link love it. The kids who continue to ignore me don't care. Their loss. I want to help the ones who care and want to try. This has done it, and it really isn't that much more work for me. I am going to work every assignment anyway to make sure I know what I am doing and to have an answer key. All I am doing now is letting them all have access to it too.

I had some worry that kids would just go and copy it instead of working it themselves. This has happened in a couple cases, but as the kids were copying (in class, where I caught them) I noticed that they were also thinking through the problem more thoroughly from start to finish instead of getting lost in each individual step. So, also a win in my book. I have also started waiting a day to post it, so it is more of a "I work, THEN I go check" type of situation.

Sometimes I scan the pages. Sometimes I just upload a picture. Sometimes I put them nicely in a word document and post it as a PDF. It usually depends on the time I have that day/week. All of those ways work just fine.

Writing in Math Class

One of my goals for the year has been to include more writing in my classes. Teaching in an area where English is not generally the first language the students speak, writing in classes other than English is crucial. I am also teaching 11th and 12th grade this year and I have become more aware of the need for writing practice that will help them be more successful with SAT, ACT, and college essays.

The first big writing topic I had the students work on was describing function behavior. I gave them a picture of a piecewise graph and had them describe what was happening. They were required to include the domain, whether it was increasing, decreasing, or constant, and what type of function it was (linear and quadratic). They also needed to include whether or not there was an undefined domain on the graph.

At first, I said write a paragraph without much guidance, and I quickly learned they needed a few more manageable steps. I asked them to annotate their pictures first because that seemed doable to them. From there it was easy for them to form sentences because they already had their information in front of them.

Like anything, they needed some practice with this, but they began to figure it out and writing domains became more natural for them. The structure of their sentences could still use improvement, but I still have a lot of time to work with them.

The second writing task I gave my students went along with rational functions. The students had to figure out the places where the denominator would equal zero. Those places could either be a hole or an asymptote.

In their sentences, they needed to include whether it would be a hole or asymptote, where it would occur, and why. I gave them a sentence stem to help them structure their sentences correctly. One thing I've noticed is that they don't know why they are doing things or why certain things happen. Including the explanation portion has helped them solidify why something is a hole verses an asymptote.

Overall, my writing experiment has been really positive. They kids complain because they don't think they should have to write in math class, but the complaining has decreased as they have figured out that the writing is not going away.

I also shared some of these things with my cross-curricular group of teachers I meet with once every six weeks. One of them is a 9th grade English teacher, and she was very pleased that writing with explanation and support was happening in math classes. Some of the other teachers in the group want to include writing prompts in their classes too. I love that this very important need for writing practice is spreading.

My Classroom 2014-2015

My room has gone through a few changes this year due to a new subject, buying crazy technology, and adding 5+ students to my class sizes from last year.

I am teaching Pre-Calculus this year, so I needed some new/different posters for my room. I have a stolen borrowed trigonometry poster from my super awesome Pre-Cal teammate that one of his students made for him.

I have joined the crazy podium sensation that started with a purchase of the Intuos medium tablet and ended with a trip to Fry's Electronics where I discovered boys behave the same as I do in a shoe store. Who knew? 

Learning to use it has been an adjustment, but it's only been a week since school started.

The best part of my room...DISNEY GROUPS!

This part of my room began with @froynboy's idea last year for 90's rap groups. Then my Frozen poster inspired the change to Disney groups.

So @rawrdimus is a genius. DISNEY themed groups in my classroom. Aladdin, little mermaid, frozen, lion king, tangled, beauty and the beast😍😁

— Connie Haugneland (@CHaugneland) August 18, 2014

Yes, I did actually say that. I may pay for such a huge compliment in the future. I was just so excited and giddy that I wasn't thinking clearly.

Here are my fantastic groups. <3

Tangled

The Lion King

Aladdin

The Little Mermaid

Beauty and the Beast

Frozen

Here's some general pics from my room: 

Wreck 'Em!