Change is underfoot...

I haven't written in what feels like forever.  The start of school has really thrown me for a loop.

The first day of school with students was last Friday.  Overall, I am blessed this year with some pretty good students.  I have three sections of Geometry and one section each of Algebra 2B, Statistics and RtI.  As of today, I don't have students "enrolled" in my RtI class.  That will change in the upcoming weeks as the teachers start to really assess what skills the students need more work on.  As for the other classes, I have about 50 total in my 3 geometry sections.  These are the students that are new to me.  I have previously taught most of the students that I have in Algebra 2B and Statistics.  This makes it a lot less stressful to remember names.  My goal is to have all the students' names in my head by the end of this week, but as I've told the students, this only means I know their names while their bodies are in their assigned seats.  The recognition in the hallway will come later.

I've added a lot to my curriculum this year and am finding it difficult to get everything done on time.  I feel like if I could get a week ahead things would run a lot more smoothly in my head.  I've done a pretty decent job of not letting the students see that side of my fractured brain, though.  I haven't taught algebra 2B for a couple of years, so the topics are "new" to me again this year.  In statistics, a lot of changes have taken place.  I've added interactive notebooks to my list of things to include this year.  The kids LOVE them.  I've heard no negativity about them, but have heard several positives.  One memorable comment came from Joey when he said that the INB reminded him of the pop-up books he used to love as a kid.  Several other students have also mentioned that they appreciate how the INB helps keep them organized when they are typically not that organized.

On to Statistics...
The stats class that i teach is dual credit, which means the students are earning high school credit and college credit (through a local community college) at the same time.  Up until this year, I've done a pretty lame job of making the class interesting or engaging.  Lessons typically consisted of notes and practice problems from the book in the past.  This year, I've decided that some of those lessons need less emphasis and more should be placed on showing the students how stats is used in everybody's daily life.  Here I sat with the prime example  of a math class that is useful to everyone and was doing nothing with it.  Shame on me!

We've started the year off with a more structured introduction to the research process - identifying who, what, when, where, why, and how for statistical studies - and are working toward how samples are collected, different types of studies and the like.  I am doing this because I intend to have my students become statisticians.  Shortly before school started, I emailed my principal about the possibility of having my stats kids do some data analysis for the school.  A week later at the faculty meeting, the principal shocked me by telling the faculty that my stats class would do all of the data analysis for the school and would be disseminating it as needed.  I am thrilled for this opportunity and scared of it at the same time.  

In the same week that I sent the email to the principal, I also applied for my class to help analyze Curiousity data for the Mars rover mission.  I had heard about this as a possibility through a friend and was curious to what it would entail.  I heard back the following day with a message that stated the program would begin sometime in September.

Based on these two commitments, stats is about to become a much different class.  This alone has me pumped (not a word I usually use) for the year ahead!  I am so excited!