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Curve Ball

Well, it's probably good that I never got around to writing that last blog post I was talking about; things took a drastic change for me a couple weeks ago.

I am entering my 17th year in my district, but after a year out of the classroom and in a district instructional coaching role, I'm back in the classroom.  This was totally my decision, and I'm ecstatic I made it; however, there are many parts where it feels like my first year all over again.

Up until two weeks ago, I was going to be a +1 in the department and most likely moving from open room to open room on a sweet cart.  My courseload was going to be two sections of Algebra 1, two sections of geometry, and I was going to team teach two other sections with some of the younger staff.  I was excited, and even better yet, we had a great mindset within the department and we were going to tackle SBG...together!

We had met at times over the summer to map out our objectives, and then gather them under four larger domains/themes/"buckets".  Things were going swimmingly (at least I thought they were) and my mind was wrapping around what I was going to be teaching.  And then I got the news...

My good friend in the department, and the colleague I had given my courses to when I left the classroom was leaving teaching.  While I was aware that he was looking into this career change, it still was a bit of a shock.  Another good teaching friend of mine in the building was leaving (this is now 5 in the last 4 years); however, I would now be getting a classroom and along with it, all my old classes back.

This is a very bittersweet moment for me, but I'm excited to get back into my old classes: geometry, AP Calculus, and AP Statistics.  While we're in essence rebuilding geometry from scratch with SBG, due to time constraints, I won't be doing full-blown SBG with my AP classes.  I currently grade those courses on a 5-point conversion scale with scoring similar to the AP rubrics.

However, this post by Jonathon Claydon (aka @rawrdimus) really got me thinking about my planned structure and pacing in AP Calculus.  I've taught the course for 15 years already, and the sequence of topics was beginning to frustrate me.  Along with thinking about spiraling domains in our layouts of Algebra 1 and geometry, I was trying to figure out a plan for AP Calculus that wasn't just Limits → Derivatives → Integrals.  This is what I came up with after some doodling:



Then today I tried to clean it up into some structure to make sure it would pace out okay over the course of the year:


It's a rough start, but I think I'm going to bite the bullet and give a run this year.  I needed something to intertwine concepts better throughout the year so students could see the interrelationships of topics as well as the links between representations: graphical, numerical, algebraic, and verbal.

Now that I have the groundwork laid, time to start making hay!
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