Signed Numbers

I'd forgotten how humbling it is to make something and then send it to another person for feedback. As I was making my derivatives test yesterday, Sam mentioned that he would like to see it to compare with his. As I was writing the test, I was adding specific questions to target certain skills, but I also became highly aware that someone whose teaching I highly respect would be looking at this test very soon. It made me nervous! I'm in the very early stage of my career so I feel like I don't have anything to offer these teachers who have been at it for years. I become self-conscious.  But I sent it anyway, despite my insecurities, and hopefully he'll have some feedback on how it could be better. *smile* Thanks for making me strive to be a better teacher.

...is what it felt like in my Algebra 1 class on Thursday. We had been making major progress Monday and Tuesday looking at function machines, finding outputs when given inputs and a rule, finding a rule and predicting outputs when given several input-output pairs. Then Wednesday we didn't have class because of standardized testing being done at school (Stanford Achievement Test-10...it has Deaf/Hard of Hearing norms so we use it every year to see how our students are improving with respect to their same aged d/hh peers). Thursday it was as if Monday and Tuesday had never happened. While one student was trying to figure out the rule (2-step) for the table he had completed, two other students were struggling trying to complete the table. I had felt confident after Monday and Tuesday because this year I was actually talking about the functions and talking about the rates of change of the input and output, how they were related to the equation, how they related to each other, etc. (...