Unrestricted Domain

Okay, this #MTBoSBlaugust thing is going to make me write, and I'm going to commit to it this year! This past year, I was one of several teachers in our building that piloted our high school's move into Standards-Based Grading, or Grading for Learning (GfL) as we're calling it.  You can read more about my initial planning on this whole process here , as I really only intended to try it out in my AP Calculus AB course.  I also presented on my journey at our Wisconsin Math Council State Math Conference last May, and you can view the slides here . I had originally planned to revamp the structure of my calculus course from the onset as AP scores were falling steadily over the previous 4-5 years, and it seemed that students just weren't grasping the material as readily as well compared to a decade earlier.  So, that was my impetus for a total overhaul and a more integrated and spiraled approach to the topics.  Since I was overhauling everything anyways, and I knew we ...

Well, the Summer of 2017 is almost 2/3 done, and it has been very productive.  My son did 4 hours of summer enrichment classes (STEM, video production, engineering) for the first 4.5 weeks of summer, so that was 4 hours of work time I got each day while he was at school.  I had one main goal for this time that I got to work:  entirely revamp my AP Calculus class; I haven't been happy with how I've had the class structured the past couple years, and student success has been inconsistent, at best, in my eyes.  I needed to change. This coming year will be my 18th year of teaching, and my 17th year of teaching AP Calculus (I was out of the classroom during the 2015-16 school year in a district instructional coaching role).  In that time, I've had some tremendous successes with my students, but it's getting farther and farther away.  I haven't been able to place a finger on it fully, but it just seems that over the past 8-10 years, we've struggled more and ...

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 lar...