Friday Night Blues

I came home exhausted today and slept for 30 minutes. I shouldn't have had that caffeinated coffee yesterday since I think part of it was a headache from that. I got up early today (again) to use the pickup truck to help people with their luggage. Unfortunately, it was -20 so I had to really warm it up and also unload the lumber in the back and sweep it off. I was 5 minutes late getting to the hotel and there was no one left to pick up. All for naught!

I have decided to start another blog more related to some acquired knowledge about math resources and pedagogy. It seems like the most difficult class to teach with limited resources is high school math. Those outside the field may think that teaching math is all about the book. To that, I would say, only if your students are motivated learners. If you have all advanced, interested, capable students with auditory and visual learning styles, a book might be enough. But for the other 99% of math teachers, we need to shake it up, make it fun, make it purposeful but connected and interesting. Maybe by Sunday I'll have my new page up and running and begin to have it organized.

In Anchorage, the week of January 21-25, 2008 will be quite a meeting place for educators. The Principal Induction program is having its final Institute, hosting 83 principals for an intensive week of collaboration. NEA-Alaska, the teacher's association is having the Delegate Assembly for voting on new resolutions.

I will be coming right from Kotzebue for the Beginning Teacher Standards meeting. We are working on composing and perfecting professional standards for articulating the exit skills for teachers becoming certified through an alternative route. These teachers will enter the profession with no teacher education (but content experience and degrees) and will be getting certified while they teach and get paid, through a state program. This is our third meeting so I'm not sure how many more we'll need.

I worked for several hours on a math assessment today called FAST (Formative Assessment's) for grades 3-8 in math. The process was that I looked at math GLE (grade level expectations) for Alaska, selected 2 from each of the 6 strands that seemed pivotal and used the state ACFA resources to put together a 15 minute paper pencil assessment for teachers to use. Unfortunately, developing these FASTs is slow! If you want a copy to use with your classes, send me a comment and I will send it to you. The idea is to see where your kids are relative to standards so that you can guide your instruction.

Well, it's Friday night, so I'm off to read, A Free Life, by Ha Jin. It's a great book so far. Watch for postings next week from out in the real Alaska.