I've already reflected on being out of the classroom and the emptiness felt when I no longer walked into a room full of 38 adolescents eager to engage in what it was that we were going to create for the day.  Maybe not 38... let's round down to 30. Yeah, 30 eager and 8 with other ideas.  Either way, I miss the classroom dearly, but today was different.

Part of my job, a big part of it at that (heck, the entire thing), is dedicated to making teachers feel comfortable with the incorporation of technology into their teaching practices.  The more that I have the chance to visit other classrooms, the more great pedagogy and ideas I get to see.  Just today, I met with the wood shop teacher at Ontario High School and he made me want to be a student in his shop class.  Being a garage woodworker myself (and a lousy one at that), it was fun to learn from him.

The real gem of the day, an #EduWin if you want to call it that, was meeting with 3 Special Education teachers at the same high school.  Side note- if you haven't hugged a Special Ed teacher lately, do it. We think we have to put up with shenanigans and have patience, but it pales in comparison to the ongoing nonsense in their rooms (and the IEPs, 504s, testing, BLAAAAHHHHH).

Like I've done a number of times while holding this position, I popped into a classroom during a teacher's prep to check in and just see how things are going.  Can I help?  Is there anything I can do to make your life easier?  Do you have anything cool you want to share?  In this case, it was the second question that needed answering, but it was far more than we were expecting.

We sat down and I was able to walk them through an iPad app that our district has purchased called Doceri.  If you haven't checked it out yet, do. It's impressive and I'd love to show anyone its amazing capabilities. Lately, I've been doubting a lot of edtech startups, but I firmly believe in this app.  We walked through some of the cool features like video creation, sharing slides, adding images, and all of the fun.

In the middle of our impromptu meeting, one of the teachers stopped and said "You know, I would love to have seen you teach".  I was floored.  All of the flashbacks of the crazy things I did to help my students enjoy math came piling on.  But then, thinking about it, this was the same thing.  She was getting the same me that stood in front of 185 teenagers every year.  She was getting an enthusiastic and passionate person trying to show how life could be better with this new knowledge.

There are still days when I miss the classroom (in fact, it's kind of a 5 day per week ordeal), but I'm beginning to realize that I haven't lost my classroom. It's just gotten a whole lot bigger (like, driving distance bigger), the kids have gotten older (sorry folks, truth), and the content has changed a bit.  However, the passion required to show someone a new idea remains the same.  If we don't have passionate people teaching others, the message is inevitably watered down, or worse, lost.

Therein I realized... Once a teacher, always a teacher.

Happy Fishing

Being out of the classroom certainly has its disadvantages, most considerably the fact that I don't get to interact with students on a regular basis.  This means that when I was asked to go in and teach a lesson to show the incorporation of technology into a math classroom, I couldn't say yes fast (or enthusiastically) enough.  Woohoo!!! I get to go back into the classroom!  The only problem?  I've never taught the topic: deriving the equation of a circle.

Have no fear, because this is when the fun happened.  Immediately, I went out to my support group and asked for help:

And, of course, the response was nearly immediate and incredibly awesome:

Some of the best feedback is often the toughest to swallow- pushback.  Bree (respectfully) questioned the flow and intent of the lesson and I appreciated it.  This really made me think about the connections that were trying to be made and how they could be better-formed to match the needs of the students and the topic.  Thank you Bree!!!

Aside from the Twitter love that I felt, and that was pretty strong, I also recruited a few people who I've leaned on quite a bit when trying to create an experience for students.  Matt "PD Aficianado" Vaudrey, Shauna "I Love Stats" Hedgepath, and Jed "Transformula Magician" Butler all lent a hand in making sure that the lesson went smoothly.  Without the community that I've got around me, none of this would really be happening.  What is this?  Let's dive in.

While this started off as a shaky (buahahaa) lesson, it quickly took shake and turned into something that was a pretty fun experience.  Here's the premise:


[side note: this can be changed to apply to cell phone towers, water distribution, or something else that would be more relevant in not-so-earthquaky regions]

• Start off with the hook of the La Habra Earthquake, a 5.1 that everyone in the classroom felt on that dreadful Friday evening in Southern California
  
• Plot a theoretical USGS and have the students find the epicenter in reference to the USGS
• Using the map that represents the zones of seismic activity, create circles to show each zone's radius and center
• Oh yeah, and Desmos all day, every day
• From this information, have students come to the conclusion of (h,k) being the center and r being the radius
• Also, have students come to the conclusion that manipulating h, k, and r is a whole lot like the Pythagorean Theorem and the Distance Formula
• Have them leave class feeling awesome

So now, the reality.  Coming into a brand new class when school is on the back slide of being done for the year is no easy feat.  Fortunately, I wasn't a sub, as the classroom teacher was there to introduce me and what I was hoping to do.  Also, I gave them a nice treat to chew on right away: 

"Alright class, how many of you have smart phones?"
-- whoosh of hands fly up --
"Get them out. They're going to get put to work"
-- shock, awe, astonishment

We went through the lesson and it really helped to have the regular teacher there as a supporter.  He was able to go around and assist students with the technology and, more importantly, help the students he knew would have a tough time with wrapping their heads around the math that was involved. Kids were using their cell phones to manipulate the sliders on their Desmos graphs and it. was. awesome. 

As with any lesson that a lot of time has been contributed to, I'm very critical of the outcome.  In reality, the lesson itself went pretty smooth.  There were a lot of good conversations, some pretty fun "oh yeahhhhhhh" moments, and a couple tangents that I enjoyed.  That being said, it could always be better.  In the future, this is what I would do differently:

• Less humor, more visuals.  These kids didn't know me, so they were playing school. They sat nicely and listened.  This is NOT the group that I'm used to.  With that in mind, I'll remember that I don't have the same easy-going relationship and get right into some visuals that would support the lesson directly
• Go through a basic overview of Desmos.  Most of the students had seen it before, but Desmos truly is a sight to behold.  There are so many things that it can do and I tend to take it for granted.  Next time, I'll start with a scaled down version and go over each component of the lesson
• Plan it for a two day lesson.  This would allow students to play around with the math a lot more and do more of the discovering on their own time.  I ended up staying for the next period and watching the regular classroom teacher rock the lesson and he didn't rush through anything to get it done.  He let the kids explore, even though it was taking time.  This is a great piece to remember

Overall, I'd chalk it up as a successful day back in the classroom (with some definite adjustments to make for next time).  If you'd like to steal any component of the lesson, please do.

I know you.  I know your style.  You have ideas to improve the lesson.  Feel free to comment below with what you would have done to make it better.  Seriously, thank you.

Happy "Not So Shaky" Fishing