Signed Numbers

* taps mic * Is this on?  I haven't been here in years , but there is so much that I have been reading, thinking about, and planning in the past few days.  I needed to get some of it out.  Maybe this will forever live in drafts, or maybe, just maybe, I'll be brave and #pushsend. I crawled out from under a rock and started using TweetDeck on my computer last week.  For years I have missed the #MTBoS community, but have felt that it was too overwhelming to keep up with on top of all the typical day to day activities.  Also, I joined Twitter back when I was one of two math teachers at my school.  That community was my lifeline during my first 3 years of teaching.  Now, I have a workroom filled with teachers in real life with whom I can and should collaborate.  The richness and depth of these workroom discussions are not usually the same as what I found online, but it is still critical to support and develop these relationships. Now comes to the r...

For those of you that don't know, I'm about to start teaching at a new school in a new state.  I will be still be teaching high school math to students with special needs, but those special needs are not necessarily deafness or blindness.  I am very excited to work with a math department as opposed to one other colleague (even though she was fabulous).  All in all, though, it's a lot of transition. Here are some things I have learned in the process: - I'm not as good at transitioning as I like to think I am - I have a difficult time making any kinds of decisions when there are so many unanswered questions and uncertainties ahead - It's really difficult to transfer certifications between states - I'm not sure I entirely know what I'm getting into, but I'm still excited - I am *not* a detail person I went to a workshop hosted by the district I'll be working in.  It was great to collaborate with teachers from the different schools and create ma...

Sarah got me thinking about different kinds of graduate level programs after she commented on my last post. I also posted a tweet when I found out the program I had been eyeing has been closed. Our dialog (and some other tweets that have gone back and forth since then, has prompted me to want to do more research to see what's actually out there. I have come to a couple conclusions: I do not entirely know what I want to study I am afraid of making the wrong decision and finding out in 15 years that I am not marketable for what I actually want to do There might not be a program out there that fits my ideal The options I am looking at (so far) are either a M.A. in Deaf Education (with a focus in secondary math education), or a M.A/S in Mathematics Education (as long as there is a program that doesn't require me to a. have a BS in Math or b. student teach in order to get math certification...I already teach math...kthx). Pros for the Deaf Education program would be that...

On my way to an evaluation team meeting today (I want to write more about that...but don't feel I can confidentially...one bad thing about being myself online and not having a blog pseudonym), I had a bit of a heart to heart with my boss (principal). You might think, "on the way" isn't very long...but picture 100+ outdoor stairs from the school building to the admin building where the meeting was being held...lol. Anyway, he was asking me how things were going, if I could believe that the year is already almost halfway over, and how time has flown in the 1.5ish years I've been in VA. He also mentioned that I have 30 more years to go before retiring. After that comment, he asked about my professional goals: When you're getting ready to retire, what do you hope to have accomplished/done? At first, I didn't know how to respond. I'm not much for long-term planning. I'm lucky to know and have decided that I indeed will be staying in VA for at leas...