Reflecting on the 2020 2021 School Year

I think we can all agree this academic year has been a roller coaster. I have spent a lot of the year feeling like I had very little control and just had to learn to go with it.  I have struggled this year with the last-minute pivots to remote learning, or, the daily surprises of how many students were online vs in person. However, looking back on this year now, I am incredibly proud of the relationships and learning that happened this year and have proven to myself that I am capable to rise to any challenge a school day might bring.

1. What action/learning did you set out to accomplish?Starting off this year I wanted to focus on pedagogy. Leading up to the pandemic I had been reading/learning/trying new methods of teaching and learning for mathematics and trying to push myself to be more creative.  Then the pandemic hit and as strange as it may sound, the pandemic actually seemed like a great time to start. Things need to change because our situation had changed, so why not dive into new methods of teaching and learning for the students?

2. What did you learn in the process? (please include links to any applicable resources)My underlying focus when it comes to pedagogy has been to get kids thinking. Thinking in lessons, thinking on assessments, thinking about math in their everyday lives. I have relied heavily on a few resources this year

   • Estimation 180  I have used this website every day as an attendance question. We estimate to see how we might use number sense in any context. This has also led to conversations with the students about estimating what their answers should be to homework questions. Does the answer they got make sense? Is their number too big? too small? or just right?
   • Open Middle Math I have pulled questions from this site and challenged myself to make my own open middle problems. I use these types of questions as a review and on tests. These questions have been helpful for remote tests since I try to have questions that cannot be googled.
   • Three Act Math Tasks have also been an awesome resource this year. I have found these are great ways for the kids to try to logic their way through the topic prior to being formally introduced to the concept.  I also used this as an assessment tool having kids make their own tasks.

3. What is your big takeaway? 
   My big takeaway from this year was that even the smallest steps help us move forward. I struggled a lot this year with the looming unknown (and it is something I am already anxious about for next year too). I knew anything I was going to do pedagogically was going to have to be done slowly. So I tried to do a few small things, course by course, unit by unit. When planning I would try to look for 1 or 2 opportunities in each unit to try a new thinking problem. In each of my courses, I looked for one opportunity this year to change how I assessed one unit. In the thick of the school year, I didn’t feel like much was changing, but now that the school year is behind me, I can see that in fact each of those small steps has pushed my pedagogy in a direction I am excited to see it going.