Tina starts blogging again...

This summer I attended PCMI and had my eyes opened on a lot of levels.  One of those levels was the existence of this awesome community of math teachers online.  I mean, I knew that any group you could even think of has a presence on the internet (I even managed to find a new family for my degu in a matter of days this spring thanks to google), but it never occurred to me that so many rich conversations were happening both on twitter and on an overwhelming number of blogs.

So, I decided to join in with the fun on twitter, which led me to all of the blogs on my sidebar (I have a feeling I will be sad I've subscribed to so many once the posting picks up during the school year!).  Then the other day I was reading my students' end of year reflections and realized that I could share how adorable and insightful my kids are if I restarted this blog.  (If you look back into the archives you'll find this was once an environmentalist's blog, I'm still living that life, but don't really feel the need to write about it.  Using this blog rather than starting a new one seemed easiest, especially since its address is the same as my twitter handle- can you tell I've been using the same username since the internet was invented? Okay fine, since I was introduced to the internet.)

So, I'll start off with an analysis of end of year reflections, it's good for me to do and gives you some sense of how things were in my class last year.  Before we start that I suppose there are a few things you should know about me:

• I will be starting my 5th year of teaching this fall.
• I taught for 3 years in one school, then last year switched (and it was a really good move)
• I worked within a 90 minute alternating day schedule last year, the previous 3 years were 47 min daily classes (although I taught some double periods so 90 minutes wasn't new to me).
• I end every class with journaling (math learned, another question about key ideas) so the idea of writing in math for an end of year reflection was nothing new for my kids
• I've taught everything from pre-algebra to AP calc. I miss my calc kids but geometry is way fun
• I've done PCMI, PROMYS at BU and undergrad with licensure at MHC (omg abbreviations!)

This blog is really all for me to get my ideas sorted, but hopefully you can get something out of it too.  I'm going to try to end posts with 'take aways' so that I can go back and remember what I want to do when the going gets tough, feel free to jump to the end and then go back and really read if the take aways appeal to you!