The Junior Mints Problem

Am I excited to share this with you guys! But first a little back story.....

At roughly 4:30 pm on October 31st, I rushed to the local store to pick up candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters. I purchased two of these large bags of tootsie-rolls assorted goodies. We had all of 12 kids come to our door, so we ended up having a completely unopened bag. Sweet! More goodies for me and my wife! I opened the bag and to my horror, only ONE box of Junior Mints lay inside.....

Fast forward a week later and I share this story with my 7th grade, pre-algebra algebra class, with this picture

I told them about my struggle.

"That's messed up!" - "You got cheated!" - "I'd be so mad" - "What's a Junior Mint?" Were some of the responses I got.

"Is this a problem? What should we do?" I posed back to them

"Yeah, we need to call and complain!" - the general response I got from the group

"How are we going to prove to them that something is wrong?"
"WITH MATH!" - One kid responded with this, and I'm pretty sure there was a standing ovation, air guitar or something similar...the details are foggy; it was a long day.

"If there's four types of candy you need a one in four chance to get a Junior Mint, not a one in 55!" - Another kid responded, hinting at the math we were going to work on this week.

"Ok, we'll dig in deeper this week to make sure we have a solid case when we email the Tootsie-Roll company"

"Oh my god we are?!?" - Actual response from actual student.

"Yep we certainly are!" Me, dropping mic, walking away.

Using some theoretical probability and relative frequency we are going to find out what a proper bag of goodies should be composed of. We'll even through some ratios and proportions in there for good measure. Then we are going to email customer support at Tootsie roll to see what they think. I can't wait to see what the week has in store and I hope to update you guys when we are done! #makeitreal

REMAST, Instant Relevance, and those darn fidget spinners

WOW! A year has passed since my last blog! Time to pick up the slack!

I had the opportunity to spend the last two days at the 2017 REMAST conference. I talked personalized learning, learned about instant relevance and how to use those darned fidget spinners

We had Denis Sheeran, the author of Instant Relevance, as our keynote speaker. Here are a few highlights from his presentations

• Meet kids where they are at. If they want to talk about something-LET THEM! Bring the math into the conversation
• Turn to the annoyances/discipline problems: What is the best way to dab? What is the best fidget spinner? What gives us the best chance to land that bottle flip?
• Strike while the iron is hot! All of the above examples will not be relevant next year. We have to use what is relevant to the kids NOW!

Short post for now, but an awesome conference/workshop!

A Farewell to #Oklaed

What a crazy year and a half it has been...

December 2014 I had just finished student teaching, graduated from South Dakota State, and moved 700 miles south to Oklahoma.

I never imagined I would start my career teaching middle schoolers after working in a high school for student teaching. Now, I don't think I could ever go back. There's never a dull moment, so much fun to be had, and kids who are still thrilled to be at school every day. Wherever I wind up, I'd take my kids with me in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

The people I have meet through my time with the Enid district, EdCamps, and everywhere else have been phenomenal.

I've learned about my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher, what not to do in just about every situation, how to build a professional network, and after a few stressful days and sleepless nights that I still made one of the best decisions of my life to enter that classroom.

I just wanted to say thanks to #oklaed. Y'all have been great over the last year and a half. My fiance and I are moving to Minnesota this summer. We've thought long and hard about this decision. Now is the best time for us to move closer to friends and family.

Thanks #oklaed,

Andy

Hoops with Mr. Ott

Skipping EdCampOKC might have actually been a really good decision this week. I had the opportunity to work with our Saturday tutoring group. Being a group of mostly 6th grade boys, I drew a little inspiration from the OKC Thunder.

We have a couple of basketball hoops out on our playground, but no actual court. Armed with sidewalk chalk, tape measures and a basketball we set out to find our free throw percents.

First the kids had to find out how far a regulation free throw line was from the basket (18' 10" for those curious). and measure it out with their tape measures. The catch - the measures only had inches. After doing some conversions the had crafted their free throw line and the accompanying circle

I little hard to see with the chalk but here is our free throw line!

Everyone took 10 shots and had to find the fraction and percent of free throws. Thankfully the chalk and the concrete provided great work space.

The kids worked on four different topics (measurement conversion, circumference, writing percents, and ordering percents/decimals), got authentic results, and had a great time!

New Years Resolutions

Halfway through the year, and I am ready to set a few goals moving forward.

Run a more student centered classroom
   
     During the first part of the year, I tried to run my show. There wasn't a whole lot of student choice in activities, assignments, expectations, and more. This came back to bite me several times with some student defiance and lack of morale/motivation. Starting on Monday, when we get back, we are formulating "social contracts" for classroom conduct. We will have some variety in assignment and practice methods as well.

Move and Do!
   
     We sit and do wayyyyyyy to much pencil and paper work in the room. The kids have to be moving and tackling problems with a more hands on approach. Luckily, I have a few ideas and lessons to incorporate this (should appear on a blog post in the near future!).

Spend more time planning and reflecting
   
    To often I've fallen into the planning trap of "I found an activity, cool!" and just rolling with it. Not spending the time to tweak, time out, and reflect on the activity has left me with questionable results. Lack of reflection has burnt me on successful lessons too. Telling myself "That went well!" and forgetting about it has left me without some important info.

Be more "DR"
 
     DR - Developmentally Responsive - is a term I learned in my middle level theory in college. It's realizing that my 6th graders are young adolescents with unique needs. Most of what I have mentioned above falls into this category, but I could always do more to help them express themselves, work together, and much more

Co-Teaching Part 2

This post is really a quick shout-out and thanks to some of the people that have helped and are helping me along the way.

I've always believed in the power of co-teaching from day 1. In my student teaching experience, I was fortunate to work with my mentor teacher Mark Kreie ( @kreiem ) and Jarrod Huntimer. The three of use were able to work with an amazing group of students at Brookings High School in Brookings, SD. I owe quite a bit to the two gentlemen above.

Right now I am fortunate enough to have co-teachers in three classes and my advisory intervention. Kaeli Jantz ( @JantzKaeli ) is an amazing special education math teacher I work with in the morning.

 Mrs. Fields also joined us about a month ago to help with morning math classes. It is fantastic to be able to have three teacher in the room to help with questions, break into small groups, or deliver differentiated instruction.

In my final hour of the day Sue Scott ( @suescottinok ), our speech/drama/PE now 7th hour math teacher is helping me work with a very engaging group. With her help I am able to go on major relationship repair with most of the students in 7th hour and many of the kids are now excited for math!

Thank you to everyone who has or is currently co-teaching with me. The real winners are the students!

Why am I Here?

More of a ramble here...


Why am I here? Why do I continue to show up to school every day stressed and exhausted? The year has been a little more rough than I initially imagined...

I've fallen to the stresses that most young teachers have fallen prey to

1. Pressure from standardized testing
2. Lesson flops
3. Struggling classroom management
4. Large class sizes
5. Teaching in a low SES area

It's been a shock . There was so many awesome ideas I had picked up this summer. I was so excited to put them in use. I was going to teach these awesome lessons, have complete control of my room, earn the respect of my building teachers and administrators, climb to the top as a leader in my building and district, I would earn recognition as one of the best and youngest in my district etc.

Pronouns in the previous paragraph: I, I, I, my, my, my, I, and my. 

I think I might be forgetting 150 people in that paragraph

I had lost sight of the original goal. It's not about me, and it never has been. There's never going to be the fame or the fortune. That's not why I started but that's how it will end if it doesn't change.

So why am I here?

Definitely not for me.