PD for life

 As the year closes, I'm refocusing on more intensive PD.  I'm also trying to do better at documenting in my blogging here.  I want to capture what's I'm thinking, what I'm learning and what is happening in education at this point in time.  I'm sure it will change.   I'm currently reading and doing a FB book study on Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl .  What an excellent book this has been so far!  The ideas presented are a result of Liljedahl's research in classrooms about what techniques are useful to deepen student thinking in mathematics.  The book is a summary of the 14 practices he feels are the key components needed to maximize thinking, and thus learning.  Each chapter then delves into a particular practice, one being how to create groupings.  This, obviously, is a popular topics and every author/book/teacher has an opinion there!  Fortuitously, I learned of the Sum of It All Podcast covering this book as well, so I&

I think many math teachers and prospective math teachers cringe at the thought of the required three math CSETs now required to earn a single subject math credential in California.  They are arduous for sure.  The concept seems reasonable - make sure that our math instructors are completely proficient in the subject they teach.  The implementation, however, leaves a lot to be desired.  Let's break that down: The obvious - Pearson makes money every time you fail and have to retake it.  That's just a fact of life there.  Their goal then might not be to make the test realistic to what you need to know.  Enough said. More deeply though, we now know that good mathematics is not about speed and memorization.  You can choose your favorite researcher to get the news on this, but a common reference is Jo Boaler's work.  We now understand that developing excellent math thinking involves verbal/communication skills, creative thinking, slow and deep thinking about a problem, seeing mul

Part 2 of why I started this blog was that, in addition to wanting to document my thoughts as I listened to these podcasts, etc., I wanted to share what I learn and hopefully eventually ... if anyone stops by to read what I've wrote ... people will share their own blogs and items of interest.  To be clear, no, I don't want your spam of buy my blah, blah, blah.  I do want a sharing of ideas and resources you think I might find interesting!  Todays interesting podcast I listened to on my run is from a podcast I do often listen to and recommend, the BeerEDU Podcast .  I drink beer, but that's not why I love this one.  I'm going to admit I often fast forward past the beer, although they do a good piece on it for those who are interested. The guest for episode 96 was Daphne McMenemy , who is apparently a coding/tech teacher for the lower elementary years.  I was just fascinated by her talking about how she handled distance learning with her youngest coders, resources and and

A Few of My Favorite Things Big Question: How can I arrange and archive all the great ideas I hear (podcasts), read (articles, books, blogs) and watch (YouTube), along with my thoughts and insights I personally have regarding them, for me to remember?  So many times I feel a "Wow, that was awesome," feeling about a particularly good topic ... and then life intervenes and those thoughts are gone. I considered a paper journal, organizing them in OneNote, or other methods. A blog I've resisted for about six months, because very truly I've tried before and failed to consistently blog. My blogs in the past have always been for me to go back to and reflect on, though I'm not against others reading if they get anything out of it! It was that and rereading a blog I started when my oldest was a toddler that finally got me committed to blogging. That old blog wasn't consistent, but the memories documented there I cherish, and there were many, many I didn't