{"id":101,"date":"2025-10-04T15:11:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T19:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/?p=101"},"modified":"2025-10-04T15:11:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T19:11:30","slug":"first-blog-post-urgent-vs-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/2025\/10\/04\/first-blog-post-urgent-vs-important\/","title":{"rendered":"First blog post Urgent vs Important"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As a new middle school math teacher, the beginning of the school year felt like a whirlwind of trying to manage everything at once. Between lesson planning, grading, and just getting to know my students, it was easy to get caught up in the day-to-day urgencies. However, I knew I needed a \u201cnorth star\u201d to guide me through the year, a goal that would truly transform my classroom rather than just manage it. After a lot of reflection, I landed on my focus: empowering my students by fostering a continuous feedback loop, with a little help from AI, to build their agency and ownership over their own learning journey.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure many of you can relate to that feeling of the “Important but Not Urgent” tasks getting pushed to the side. For me, that’s where the magic of creative lesson prep lives. It\u2019s in those moments of thoughtful planning that we can design experiences that spark genuine curiosity and deep understanding. My goal this year is to protect that creative space. I believe that by focusing on student agency, I\u2019m not just teaching math; I\u2019m teaching students how to be learners. It\u2019s about creating a classroom where students are active participants in their education, not just passive recipients of information.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is easier said than done. One of the biggest hurdles I\u2019ve already encountered is the question of student readiness. For years, my students have been told what to learn, when to learn it, and how to prove they’ve learned it. Suddenly asking them to identify their own gaps and set their own goals is like asking them to use a muscle they never knew they had. It’s a significant shift, and it requires creating a classroom culture where students feel safe enough to be honest about what they don\u2019t know and brave enough to take risks.<\/p>\n

This is where I\u2019m getting strategic and leaning into technology. My plan is to leverage AI to help create richer, more continuous feedback experiences for my students, allowing them to see their growth in real-time and take ownership of their next steps. On the flip side, I\u2019m also using AI to streamline some of my more time-consuming administrative tasks, like drafting our weekly parent newsletter. By finding efficiencies in my own workflow, I\u2019m freeing up more of my time and mental energy to focus on what truly matters: designing those magical learning moments and working directly with my students.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, this year-long focus is about seeing the incredible potential in my students. I believe they are ready for this kind of ownership, even if our traditional systems of assessment and reporting aren\u2019t quite there yet. My hope is that by the end of this year, my students won\u2019t just be better mathematicians; they\u2019ll be more confident, self-directed learners who are empowered to take on any challenge that comes their way. It\u2019s a big goal, but I\u2019m excited to see where this journey takes us.<\/p>\n

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As a new middle school math teacher, the beginning of the school year felt like a whirlwind of trying to manage everything at once. Between lesson planning, grading, and just getting to know my students, it was easy to get caught up in the day-to-day urgencies. However, I knew I needed a \u201cnorth star\u201d to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":515,"featured_media":103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/susanmatthews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}