It was one of those days, like so many other days, when there wasn’t a moment to breathe and so much was pulling me in so many different directions. Today was the “official” Teacher Appreciation Day, according to the Google doodle, anyway. Yesterday was the day that we had bagels and I received some notes from kids and parents. Today was just hectic and crazy. Plus, we’re having a spirit week. You know, when kids (and teachers) are supposed to dress according to different themes every day and you pit classes against each other in “friendly” competition to earn meaningless “pride” points. Each morning my job is to record who is present in my Advisory and who dressed up. I predict that we come in tied for last. So far, we’ve earned 0 points, and I’m so okay with that. Can you tell I’m not a fan?
After all of this – the teaching, the lunch meeting, the guidance meeting (where I at least got to decompress a bit), the writing emails to parents, the updating RTI plans – today’s after school meeting is in content areas. That means that I get to talk about math & math teaching with a few really cool people. We’re trying to finalize our courses for next year so that we can have kids sign up. (I know, you probably did that at your school in February.) We’re still working out the kinks as we iron out issues with our proficiency-based, student-centered, balance between high demand and access for all. But that’s the good work, the work we not only need to do, but the work I signed up to do. And I am lucky that I get to do that work with good people.
So, happy Teacher Appreciation Day to all of you in the #MTBoS and beyond who keep doing this work for your students. And who every once in a while challenge me to connect with you. Thank you. I truly appreciate it.
rawsonmath 