Summer 2016 and #MTBoSBlaugust 1

The thought of daily blogging seems too overwhelming especially with back to school so close.   So I’ll have to admit up front, my plan is to blog a few times – I haven’t blogged since the last challenge during Christmas break!  I have 2 weeks until our first day of in-service with classes starting 3 days later.  I decided to calculate what fraction of my life is that compared to those first starting out to teach.  Two weeks is only 0.063% of my life now as compared to 0.168% of my life when I started 38 years ago.  So yes time does seem to be going faster!

This summer has been a time to slow down to read, rest, and reflect. Last year was a hard year – I actually took some sick days ( a rarity) due to pneumonia in the fall. Soon after that time, I realized that teaching the extra load of geometry was just too much.  What started out for one year when a teacher left to go back to school turned into four, but it was time to stop after this past year. The other full time secondary math teacher is picking up the geometry as she hands off an Algebra 1 class to the part time teacher that was hired 4 years ago. So now back to my Alg. 2; Honors Alg. 2; College Algebra, Pre-Calculus, AP Calculus, and 2 study halls. The Honors Alg. 2 was causing fits in scheduling so there will actually be 2 sections.

I enjoyed reading the tweets and blogs about #TMC16; watching the periscoping by Julie‏@jreulbach and other videos (And while watching, I found out that my local library has the book, Radical Equations, by Robert P. Moses – it’s next on my reading pile); and playing various Desmos card sorts that folks were making during DesCon. So thank you to all the #TMC16 gang.

Some non-fiction books from summer reading courtesy of my local library:

•  How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims (former Dean of Freshman at Stanford University)
• Cheating Lessons by James M. Lang
• 17,000 Classroom Visits Can’t Be Wrong : Strategies That Engage Students, Promote Active Learning, and Boost Achievement by John V. Antonetti and James R. Garver
• The Wired Soul: Finding Spiritual Balance in a Hyperconnected Age by Tricia McCary Rhodes, PhD
• I was hoping to reread Making It Stick this summer too … maybe after Radical Equations.

Several faculty from my school watched a video series on Ephesians by Donna Gaines, “Stand,” and discussed both personal and school applications. And we got to have lunch together a couple of times. Ephesians is my “goto” Biblical book for spiritual replenishment.

Next blog post – more about the new school year.