Good Morning Blog

Good morning! In September, 2015, I began taking graduate courses at Purdue University Northwest so that I could continue to teach upper level math classes as dual credit/dual enrollment. Through a variety of grants, the courses were available for free to teachers who pursuing the Higher Learning Commission's requirements for dual enrollment instructors. If I had already had a master's degree, I would only have needed 18 graduate credits in Mathematics to meet the qualifications. Since I did not already have a master's degree, I needed to earn one. This was a problem since the universities offering graduate courses were not offering degrees. Not sure what my opportunities would be in the future, I took full advantage of the graduate courses being offered through Purdue University Northwest by earning 9 graduate credits in the first year. Then the grant money ran out. Scrambling for more options, I took advantage of another opportunity through STEM Teach and earned 9 more g...

It's time I came clean about who I really am. What I'm about to tell you may shock you. It may disgust you. But you deserve to know the truth about me. I'm a Patriots fan. And I'm proud of it. Tom Brady is the G.O.A.T. Belichick is a genius.  In Superbowl LI, the Patriots were playing the Falcons, who had built a substantial 28 - 3 lead by the waning minutes of the 3rd quarter. Things looked bleak. It looked like the haters were going to get their wish.  The usually prolific Patriots offense was sputtering and was ineffective against the Falcon defense. The Patriots punted 4 times during the game, giving the ball back to the team that was already beating them. Fans of the game are already well aware of what I am about to tell you, sometimes it's o.k. to punt. Sometimes punting is the right play. In the end, the 4 punts did not hurt the Patriots as they completed the greatest comeback in Superbowl history to win 34 - 28 in overtime.  Sometimes our studen...

So much talk about how relationships matter. So. Much. Talk. If you're an educator and you've been paying attention lately, you are no doubt familiar with the push to improve relationships between teachers and students. Relationships will get students to behave better, be more engaged, learn more, be more emotionally intelligent, and so much more. I recall a training I was at about a year ago. The training was supposed to be about teaching students who come from poverty. But for a training that was a couple of hours long, the overwhelming majority of the training was about defining poverty, characteristics of students living in poverty, and other things of that nature. At the very end, literally only the last few minutes, it was suggested that the way to reach students from poverty was to build, you guessed it, relationships. The Twitterverse and Blogosphere are much the same. Relationships are everything. They're the future. They'll fix all of your classroo...

In my last post, Better Late Than Never , I described why I allow students to complete assignments after the due date. In short, I believe there is instructional value in completing the work even though the due date has passed. But students will get the most instructional value from the assignment when the assignment is completed correctly. And that's what this post is about; why I let students redo assignments. I have seen students receive graded work back and immediately toss it in the recycling bin without so much as glancing past the score they received more times than I can count. If the student was making a mistake that I commented on, they never saw it. If they were doing something especially well that I commented on, they never saw it. I could have drawn funny pictures of cats for all they knew. They never would have seen them. Once the assignment was graded it was over. The students felt there was no more learning to be done. But there was. I made comments about wha...

I knew when I was in the 7 th grade that I wanted to be a Mathematics teacher. I knew I would need to go to college in order to make that happen. I knew I wanted to understand what it was I was going to teach so I would need to pay attention in class and do my homework. And it worked. I am a high school Mathematics teacher. Success! To be totally honest, I don't recall doing that much homework in high school. There are only a couple of instances that I can recall doing homework outside of the school day; studying for a Spanish exam with my brother, and trying to read " Beowulf " in the dimmed lights of the auditorium during play rehearsal. The other stuff must have gotten done. I did graduate. I just have no recollection of doing it. But I'll admit it, I'm not a stickler for due dates. I never had difficulty meeting them, but that was only because of the threat of getting a 0% on something and I wanted good grades. If I could turn in assignments late wi...